Week 7 - Gaming
Ever since the creation of Pong, video games have been a widely popular antidote to the incessant drawl of boredom. Like most other modern technologies, the gaming industry has been subject to rapid innovation and is continually increasing in quality, from the Super Mario Brothers of the late 80s and 90s, to the modern day Grand Theft Auto franchise. But, with this increase in quality and popularity, the gaming industry has had its controversies and issues.
There has been arguments suggesting that the rise in popularity of violent video games is the reason behind a suggested rise in physical violence and fire arms related assaults and murders. However vague this argument may seem, it ultimately does have some validity behind it, with Aaron Alexis, the man behind the recent shooting at an American Naval Base, admitting he had an obsession with violent video games. However, it should be noted that Alexis also had a history of mental illness.
Personally, I feel that violent video games such as; Grand Theft Auto or the Call of Duty series do not have a pertinent effect on firearm related murders as these games a widely popular, selling millions of copies worldwide. In Australia, where gun control is highly regulated, and there hasn't been a mass murder through use of a firearm since Port Arthur, these games are just as popular as they are in America, where gun control is all but a pipe dream.
In the definition of media theorist Roger Caillois (1961), games are both separate in time and space from the rest of the world and unproductive. Unfortunately, or fortunately, video games are becoming more realistic and are designed to keep the gamer playing for the longest period of time, making them addictive. This in turn means that some of the audience that plays these games immerse themselves into an altered state of reality, which sometimes leads to this altered reality being played out in actual reality, a la the recent mass shooting by Aaron Alexis at an American Naval Base.
Caillois, Roger: Man, play, and games. The Free Press, Glencoe, New York, 1961 (1958)
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