What if we all had animal within… --- Deep argument against Video Game Violent theorists

Just few days ago, when I re-watched my collection of the Bear Grylls’ Man VS Wild series, there were some interesting thought about crossing my mind, not to the show, but to the video games theories and arguments amount the issue of how violent representation could become a violent transformation, especially how effective to the teenagers. During the show, for many times, he mentions the concept, the limitation of self-wildness acceptance. When human-beings face extreme condition, there are things we could not do in the civilized society, but now, out in the jungle, because of the situation it leaves us with no choice, so therefore, we, or in other term the participant, has been forced to show his wildness. In Bear Grylls’ case, it means Killing animals and inserts alive and then eating them while still bleeding, mostly. You may wonder, how is this relate to the world of video game, and this is how.

During game play, specifically in the violent games, when the participants fully immerse themselves into the game, very likely that they will forget about their true surrounding, completely become part of the digital world. When the narrative in the singleplayer mode, or the high tension interactive in multiplayer modem, causes more and more anxiety and nervous, then the participants are mentally transformed into a phase of bloodshed. They are no longer who they were in the real life, but the digital character who empowered by agency. It is not gamers’ intension to show their aggressive behavior, or to show their violent side of personalities, it is all the affect of the situation. “Even with high intelligence, we still animals.” I don’t know who said this, but it sounds real. God gives us strength to hunt; he gives us intelligence to make our hunting easier. However, when the crisis in the game is gone, the players should able to immediately hide, or seal, their animal-like behavior, and become all civilized again. So, therefore, I argue that, there is still lack of direct evidence between simulated violence and actual violence. Of course, there are exceptions, but are these theorists correct to hold all violent game responsible for the social violence amount gamers? The answer is NO.

The reason behind the “NO” is only one word, “consistency”. In my understanding, there are two kinds of violent game; the one has consistency to the world, and the one that does not. The game such as Call of Duty or Battlefield, seems have lots of similarities once comparing to the real world, and by speaking of consistency, I mean the consistency in killing. When aiming down sight, when pulling the trigger, when shooting bullets into someone else’s body, it feels real, but does it? NO, it is not. We, the gamers, have been told by the advertising and the programmers that the game is a full representation of the modern warfare, but they lay. Not only we have no idea what the real war like, they, the development team, too, have no idea. During an interview, the developers of Call of Duty franchise, Infinity Ward, leaks how they rebuild the feeling of warfare. Instead of going into warfare themselves (they could not any way), what they did was reviewing interviews of soldiers, documentaries, and Hollywood films. After all, when the gamers believe the game is representation of the reality, but the truth is, it is just another presentation. So hence, the game cannot train real solider with real killing skills out of something fake. Besides, there is another consideration should be seriously considered, the motivation behind each shot. Game such as COD and Battlefield, their priority is not to train people how to kill, but how to be patriot. In the game, the participants are empowered by the agency to protect his country by eliminating all the possible oppositions. The focus is always why to kill, not how to kill. They are pure propaganda of the government.      

However, games such as GTA franchise are another case. They are the game which should be partially responded for social violence, and be banned, because the consistency between the simulated violence in the game and the actual violence in the real world. In the GTA, all the crimes in the game have high level of similarity and consistency comparing to the real crime. And all these crimes are committable by everyone. When the participant has his immersion, particular the situated immersion, after the game is finished, but the participant still can’t shift his identity from his avatar to himself, then there is a chance he will carry on his aggressive behavior and none sense of the morality to the real society. But it is still not appropriate to blame the game for his inappropriate acts, because the source and origin of troubles are in his own mental defectiveness. People believe that, games like GTA glorify the existence of gangsters by referring it as brotherhood, fade committing crimes as ways of exploring the world, and last but not least, treat criminal as hero. Really, it is not recommended to teenagers, but if one thing they forget, or refuse to pay attention, it is the targeting market of these games. Clearly Rock Star does not want kids to play the game, but these kids end up with playing the game anyway. Who fail was that?  

People were not born with aggressive behavior, and by playing one game, I wonder if it is even logic to accuse the visual simulation for such mental transformation. The situation was never simply, so therefore, the answer will never be straight forward.