I get doubly affected every time I read about someone going off the deep end and shooting a bunch of innocent people somewhere.
Like everyone else, I'm at first sickened and shocked by the kind of senseless violence that people can inflict on each other with such casual and detached brutality. But once those feelings subside, I find myself cringing, and waiting for someone - some news agency or anchorperson - to inevitably link the tragic event with playing video games.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not minimizing or ignoring the violence, but rather trying to ensure the right things get blamed.
Recently, alleged Norway mass shooter Anders Behring Breivik testified in a court appearance that he played the first-person-shooter (FPS) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a way to practice shooting. Breivik also admitted playing computer role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) for up to 16 hours a day.
Commentators had a field day, and I just sighed and rolled my eyes.
Thanks a lot, Anders.
You just gave every conservative, overzealous game-hater another piece of supposed "evidence" linking violent video games and real-life violence.
The debate over whether violent video games can incite violence rears its ugly head every time it's revealed a shooter or killer played those types of games.
The most famous of these cases was the two teenaged gunmen involved in the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.
But let's look at this issue with a bit of logic.
Considering the video game industry outperforms the movie industry, chances are almost everyone today has at least tried a video game in their lives by now.
Millions upon millions (that would be about 10 million) of people play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (myself included), and to my knowledge the vast majority of players have not gone off the deep end and gone postal somewhere (myself included, my co-workers would be relieved to know). Oh, and by the way, World of Warcraft involves elves, orcs, swords and magic spells and Breivik used none of those - to my knowledge - while supposedly committing his atrocities.
But think about the millions of people that play the city-building video game Sim City, yet I'm pretty certain none of these guys suddenly become architects.
Sure, the guy said he used a FPS game to train for shooting, but he could have easily done the same thing at a target range or even by briefly joining the army. The shooting action in the games is not even as realistic as you would think (this coming from a real ex-soldier).
Personally, I would have looked more to, say, Breivik's xenophobia, fear of Islam, conservatism and ultra-nationalism as the major factors to focus upon in the media that and the fact the guy is obviously just plain crazy.
But despite recent scientific research to the contrary, it's always easier and more conveniently headline-grabbing to blame violent video games (or prior to the introduction of video games, movies, rock music or comic books) instead of examining failings within a particular community, family or society.
So, I'll just continue to defend the entertainment industry - games, music and books - and roll my eyes until we tackle the real problems. One day we may not have to react to these kinds of stories on the news anymore.
