Shooting renews argument over video-game violence
WASHINGTON (AP) - In the days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a shell-shocked nation has looked for reasons. The list of culprits include easy access to guns, a strained mental-health system and the "culture of violence" - the entertainment industry's embrace of violence in movies, TV shows and, especially, video games.
"The violence in the entertainment culture - particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera - does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.
"There might well be some direct connection between people who have some mental instability and when they go over the edge - they transport themselves, they become part of one of those video games," said Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, where 12 people were killed in a movie theater shooting in July.
White House adviser David Axelrod tweeted, "But shouldn't we also quit marketing murder as a game?"
And Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting, "Video game violence & glorification must be stopped - it is creating monsters!"
There have been unconfirmed media reports that 20-year-old Newtown shooter Adam Lanza enjoyed a range of video games, from the bloody "Call of Duty" series to the innocuous "Dance Dance Revolution." But the same could be said for about 80 percent of Americans in Lanza's age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Law enforcement officials haven't made any connection between Lanza's possible motives and his interest in games.
The video game industry has been mostly silent since Friday's attack, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. The Entertainment Software Association, which represents game publishers in Washington, has yet to respond to politicians' criticisms. Hal Halpin, president of the nonprofit Entertainment Consumers Association, said, "I'd simply and respectfully point to the lack of evidence to support any causal link."
It's unlikely that lawmakers will pursue legislation to regulate the sales of video games; such efforts were rejected again and again in a series of court cases over the last decade. Indeed, the industry seemed to have moved beyond the entire issue last year, when the Supreme Court revoked a California law criminalizing the sale of violent games to minors.
The Supreme Court decision focused on First Amendment concerns; in the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that games "are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature." Scalia also agreed with the ESA's argument that researchers haven't established a link between media violence and real-life violence. "Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively," Scalia wrote.
Still, that doesn't make games impervious to criticism, or even some soul-searching within the gaming community. At this year's E3 - the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry's largest U.S. gathering - some attendees were stunned by the intensity of violence on display. A demo for Sony's "The Last of Us" ended with a villain taking a shotgun blast to the face. A scene from Ubisoft's "Splinter Cell: Blacklist" showed the hero torturing an enemy. A trailer for Square Enix's "Hitman: Absolution" showed the protagonist slaughtering a team of lingerie-clad assassins disguised as nuns.
"The ultraviolence has to stop," designer Warren Spector told the GamesIndustry website after E3. "I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it's in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble."
"The violence of these games can be off-putting," Brian Crecente, news editor for the gaming website Polygon, said Monday. "The video-game industry is wrestling with the same issues as movies and TV. There's this tension between violent games that sell really well and games like 'Journey,' a beautiful, artistic creation that was well received by critics but didn't sell as much."
During November, typically the peak month for pre-holiday game releases, the two best sellers were the military shooters "Call of Duty: Black Ops II," from Activision, and "Halo 4," from Microsoft. But even with the dominance of the genre, Crecente said, "There has been a feeling that some of the sameness of war games is grating on people."
Critic John Peter Grant said, "I've also sensed a growing degree of fatigue with ultra-violent games, but not necessarily because of the violence per se."
The problem, Grant said, "is that violence as a mechanic gets old really fast. Games are amazing possibility spaces! And if the chief way I can interact with them is by destroying and killing? That seems like such a waste of potential."
There are some hints of a growing self-awareness creeping into the gaming community. One gamer - Antwand Pearman, editor of the website GamerFitNation - has called for other players to join in a "Day of Cease-Fire for Online Shooters" this Friday, one week after the massacre.
"We are simply making a statement," Pearman said, "that we as gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost."
"The violence in the entertainment culture - particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera - does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.
"There might well be some direct connection between people who have some mental instability and when they go over the edge - they transport themselves, they become part of one of those video games," said Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, where 12 people were killed in a movie theater shooting in July.
White House adviser David Axelrod tweeted, "But shouldn't we also quit marketing murder as a game?"
And Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting, "Video game violence & glorification must be stopped - it is creating monsters!"
There have been unconfirmed media reports that 20-year-old Newtown shooter Adam Lanza enjoyed a range of video games, from the bloody "Call of Duty" series to the innocuous "Dance Dance Revolution." But the same could be said for about 80 percent of Americans in Lanza's age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Law enforcement officials haven't made any connection between Lanza's possible motives and his interest in games.
The video game industry has been mostly silent since Friday's attack, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. The Entertainment Software Association, which represents game publishers in Washington, has yet to respond to politicians' criticisms. Hal Halpin, president of the nonprofit Entertainment Consumers Association, said, "I'd simply and respectfully point to the lack of evidence to support any causal link."
It's unlikely that lawmakers will pursue legislation to regulate the sales of video games; such efforts were rejected again and again in a series of court cases over the last decade. Indeed, the industry seemed to have moved beyond the entire issue last year, when the Supreme Court revoked a California law criminalizing the sale of violent games to minors.
The Supreme Court decision focused on First Amendment concerns; in the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that games "are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature." Scalia also agreed with the ESA's argument that researchers haven't established a link between media violence and real-life violence. "Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively," Scalia wrote.
Still, that doesn't make games impervious to criticism, or even some soul-searching within the gaming community. At this year's E3 - the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry's largest U.S. gathering - some attendees were stunned by the intensity of violence on display. A demo for Sony's "The Last of Us" ended with a villain taking a shotgun blast to the face. A scene from Ubisoft's "Splinter Cell: Blacklist" showed the hero torturing an enemy. A trailer for Square Enix's "Hitman: Absolution" showed the protagonist slaughtering a team of lingerie-clad assassins disguised as nuns.
"The ultraviolence has to stop," designer Warren Spector told the GamesIndustry website after E3. "I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it's in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble."
"The violence of these games can be off-putting," Brian Crecente, news editor for the gaming website Polygon, said Monday. "The video-game industry is wrestling with the same issues as movies and TV. There's this tension between violent games that sell really well and games like 'Journey,' a beautiful, artistic creation that was well received by critics but didn't sell as much."
During November, typically the peak month for pre-holiday game releases, the two best sellers were the military shooters "Call of Duty: Black Ops II," from Activision, and "Halo 4," from Microsoft. But even with the dominance of the genre, Crecente said, "There has been a feeling that some of the sameness of war games is grating on people."
Critic John Peter Grant said, "I've also sensed a growing degree of fatigue with ultra-violent games, but not necessarily because of the violence per se."
The problem, Grant said, "is that violence as a mechanic gets old really fast. Games are amazing possibility spaces! And if the chief way I can interact with them is by destroying and killing? That seems like such a waste of potential."
There are some hints of a growing self-awareness creeping into the gaming community. One gamer - Antwand Pearman, editor of the website GamerFitNation - has called for other players to join in a "Day of Cease-Fire for Online Shooters" this Friday, one week after the massacre.
"We are simply making a statement," Pearman said, "that we as gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost."
That is game so much fun, love killing the newbs! http://www.airsplat.com/modern-warfare-3.htm
wow! people are gonna be crazy no matter what we do, Hitler was nuts, he didnt play video games. i remember when rap and heavy metal and Elvis were the devils music. We have stopped natural selection that weeded out most of the crazy people, now we have to help the crazies with medication and hugs.
So if someone gets hurt with a butter knife while sitting in a chair, we will ban butter knife's and chairs?Â
there will always be random things that happen, video games are not part of the cause, there just playing the blame it game
Gee, who didn't see this coming? Next they're going to blame heavy metal music.
Mentally unstable young men are doing the shooting. It doesn't have anything to do with video games or gun for that matter. In the 80's the Reagan Administration open the gates to the menial institutions by way of a lawsuit from ACLU and now we have what we have. Ban all violent video games as well as guns and the massacres will still continue.
Hogwash. It's the mental illness that does it.
Ridiculous, there are violent video games in all first world nations and they don't have mass school shootings like we do. Â Shooting someone in a video game as part of a story is completely different than owning an actual gun.Â
Japan which is a violent video game Mecca does not have a problem with mass killing, do you know how many violent gun related homicides Japan had last year? They had 2, that's correct, I said two, because of their gun laws.
 @backinmyday Haha, complete crap. It has nothing to do with their gun laws. It's mostly due to their culture. I find it interesting that I find numbers significantly higher after spending 2 seconds looking. Care to cite your sources?
 @Gadsden  @backinmyday Quite correct. The culture there is hugely different. One example: Suicide. They have a high number of suicides, especially in teens. But, they think very differently about even that. For instance, they have something called suicide parties where people go to off themselves as a group. In these parties they will sometimes mix some common chemicals to make a deadly gas. But, being Japanese, they leave a not on the door for first responders know that the apartment has the deadly gas in it so they can protect themselves.
Other differences: I know of one person who left his wallet in a bar for several weeks. When he came back it was sitting right where he left it, untouched.
Another person I know left his change jar sitting in a telephone booth in a really busy train station. Came back the next day. Still there, untouched.
People like backinmyday want to say its the lack of guns that make the Japanese rates different but its much more than that. Much more.
I believe the school shooter was in his 20's, hardly a child. You may be able to play the games and can tell the difference between reality and fantasy, but for someone who is crazy, they may not be able to. What do you do with that?
 @Serendipity What do you do with that?
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Ban guns.
@komoispropaganda and ban violent video games and movies. Some men, why do they like such violence? It is sad when killing becomes entertaining.
 @Serendipity  @komoispropaganda I have "violent" video games... I have guns... I'm in my 20's.... I've never murdered anyone. Oh... I'm probably the one exception to the rule, right?
This is where attention should be focused. Some of the games are horrific in gore and death. I understand first amendment rights. The second amendment is the guardian of the first.  But when first makes indelible scares upon nut cases who cannot separate fantasy from reality, where are you at then?
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You do not have to see a person's head blown into hamburger in a video game to understand what that is. Each image makes a memory and the more gory, the more jack wagons get numb and high on seeing death.
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They think it is a game. Guess we are finding out what continually pushing out the edges of morality creates.
Don't want your kid playing these violent games? Then start paying attention to what they watch and what they play! It's called parenting people! Start taking some responsibility and quit blaming everyone else. I wouldn't let my kids play these "realistic" shooter games until they were way older and understood the difference between reality and fantasy. I would encourage them to play "Dance Dance Revolution" though since it promotes exercise and is anything but violent.
 @MoonDragonWitch But it was DDR that the Sandy Hook shooter supposedly played....
 @JW  @MoonDragonWitch The article I read says "There have been unconfirmed media reports that 20-year-old Newtown shooter Adam Lanza enjoyed a range of video games, from the bloody "Call of Duty" series to the innocuous "Dance Dance Revolution."
 @JW Yeah, I know...but look it up. It is NOT a violent game, there is not shooting/killing/fighting in it unless you count trying to out step a second player as fighting. How he could have snapped from playing DDR is beyond me...I'm just saying that it's on the other end of the spectrum from games like "Call of Duty".
everything is something or somebody elses fault these days, why not blame the jacka$@ who did the crime?
Its a parenting thing, not a video game thing... And if its not a parenting thing, its a mental health issue.
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Quite blaming video games for the bad apples. There are literally Millions of people out there that play "violent" video games.
 @MjrBoSox420 True but for those with aspergers syndrome audio and visual perceptions that could be taken up a few notches than the average player would perceive the game to be. The problem that I have is that these games place someone in a public area shooting people that could leave some players in a debased state when things can take a downturn in their lives. It looks as if that has happened in the last few cases. These are males that are adults that didn't need a parent to approve them playing a game. We can't blame mommy and daddy in many of these cases (except for the last place). Mom should have put the guns in a safe if she had a son with aspergers.
 @Bubbabear64  If parents know about a disorder in their son/daughter then parents should take care of Asperger-proofing the kids environment. If that means special accommodations and supervisory requirements, it's still the parent that is responsible, or the state if it comes to that. If video games are a trigger then it has to be controlled by Mommy, and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy also have the responsibility of involving the necessary state/county/city agencies before the danger comes of age.
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SOMEBODY is responsible, either legally or morally. It starts at home.
@MjrBoSox420
Yes, it is a parenting thing, or should I say lack of parenting. The thing is, this is what the kids feed on and if the kids are not mentally right, and then sometimes they use what they have learned and act out. Garbage in, garbage out. I have a hard time finding murder as entertaining.
Let's face it, the military uses video games to teach pilots how to fly airplanes, helicopters in combat. This is simulated reality. In most cases there probably isn't any causal link to actual violence. But in "some cases" where there is some mental illness involved, there may well be a link. Just because there is "a lack of evidence" doesn't mean there isn't a link in some cases. You have to look for the evidence, and in the case of these mass shooters, I believe most of them are extremely into these games. Ditto with violent movies. That's an even more realistic situation than games. The fact it's not a participation form of entertainment doesn't mean it's not having an effect on people. The fact that makers of consumer products spend millions to advertise on television means they think people respond to what they see on TV. There is plenty of evidence to support this, it's called the "Marketing Industry". So let's take a few steps beyond blaming guns for violence and look at what might cause people to have these thoughts to go out and murder people. It's not a simple thing, not as simple as banning guns.
 @Scott Collier Most other countries' movies and video games are just as violent as ours, yet their death-by-firearm statistics are far lower. Of course, the NRA would probably call it a meaningless coincidence that these countries have much stricter gun control laws than we do....
 @Sutekh  @Scott Collier Riiight. So if the NRA said yes it is affected by the number of guns available you would still say that its only the number of guns available that is the cause and totally ignore all the other factors like culture etc.
 @Sutekh  @Scott Collier Yes, other countries have pretty much forced their subjects to not own guns. I've seen Japan come up quite a bit so lets use Japan. Yes, they have lower gun related violence. Then lets talk about another country than doesn't allow much gun ownership. Mexico, need I say more?
I grew up playing 'cops and robbers' and 'cowboys and indians' with cap pistols, rubber/plastic knives, guns that looked like so-called assault rifles and my generation did not foster killers. As a matter of fact I felt SAFE when I was a kid.
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Parents are the fault here. I lay it directly at our non-parenting parents. When we start making parents, BOTH OF THEM, responsible for their kids evil actions, these events will be reduced.
HEY MEDIA, perhaps you should start blaming yourselves and how you continually make celebrities out of these psychos instead of everyone else on the face of the Earth. You should be ashamed.
 @Dragnipur "You should be ashamed."
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The media? Are you kidding me? Most of the so-called reporters today believe their own propaganda. Their is no shame in the media, just numbers.
The movie and gaming industries are partly to blame. Not everyone who watches the violence can tell the difference between reality and non-reality. Besides, do we really need all the violence? I would like to see more kindness in our society.
 @SerendipityÂ
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"Not everyone who watches the violence can tell the difference between reality and non-reality."
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How is this the fault of the "industry" and not the fault of the incompetent, negligent, useless, should-have-qualified-for-a-eugenics-program parents?
 @Serendipity Yeah, look at all the murders in Canada, where they love movies and video games.
I am sick of people blaming video games, movies, or other media for somebodyâs actions. I grew up watching violent movies, I currently play violent video games. I never once had any urge what so ever to physically harm another person. It was instilled in me at an early age to understand the difference between fake violence and real violence by my parents. Something I intend to do for my child as he grows up as well.
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Sure there are people that have various âissuesâ that video games, movies, or heck even the nightly news could influence. Why should my ability as a grown adult to play or obtain these fictional games, movies, or books be hindered because of a few people who cannot handle the situation?
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I am all for age restrictions on video games, movies and the like. But taking away aspects of product just to appease a few random cases seems to be like catering to the few vs. the masses. How does that make any business sense for the publishers of these items?
 @DreamTravlerÂ
You're right in that 999 out of a thousand players of violent video games can just turn it off and walk away. It's forgotten, however, it only takes one that is sitting on the fence ready to be pushed over the edge and we can have a real problem. How do we cope with them?
@jean wirchÂ
Why should the masses have to change because a very very minuscule percentage of people cannot control themselves? Â Â
 @DreamTravler And that is why the pro gun people rightfully point out that punishing the lawful gun owners for what a very few nutjobs do is not right either.
Well I believe people have a right to bear arms as well. Including assault rifles and the like. HOWEVER I think all fire arms should be part of some national or state registry and that in order to purchase them and keep them the individual owning them should have to pass a battery of tests; background, mental, emotional, etc to keep said weapons, these tests should be repeated at regular intervals as well. I also think that gun manufactures and some technology companies should work together to find some way to make a gun require certain biometrics to fire. I know the technology is out there but not being a gun owner myself (family members donât like them and I honor their wishes) I donât know if any such thing exists for weapons now. Other then in Science Fiction that is.
 @DreamTravler Very well said.
Mass murders have been going on since 1914. Way before the violent movies or games and before the Bushmaster was even designed.
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http://www.raptureready.com/time/massmurder.html
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Its naive to think banning all guns will stop this. There are over a half a billion guns in the US. You really think the bad guys will give them up?
 @Vince Over a quarter billion but you are correct. Also, mass murder has been happening since before 1914 even in the US. If nothing else just look at how the Europeans and natives treated each other...
Blame anyone, anything except the one that committed the crime.
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 @DontTreadonMe Its because blaming means a political agenda to disarm America can be moved forward. This situation is wrong on so many levels.