Game Design Blog #3

Video games have been brought various times in the media over the past 2 decades, but usually under very ugly circumstances. With the recent spike in mass shootings in the past 15 years, experts in the media have been leading people to believe that video games are the cause of the shootings.

Recently, the topic was brought up again with the unfortunate shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. An op-ed article on CNN's website questioned whether this was the case or not. Reports from the friends of the shooter, Aaron Alexis, suggest that video games were the cause of his violent rampage. Alexis was said to have been playing violent video games for 16 hours at a time. 

While I won't argue that video game obsession may have played a bit part in the shooting, it wasn't the only reason why Alexis went nuts. Prior to the shooting, Alexis was known to have mental illnesses. In August, he filed a police report citing that he was hearing voices in his head. He also believed that he was being controlled by electromagnetic waves. The problem here is placing all the blame on video games is hiding the true facts that this man was not well. He was on medication for insomnia at the time of the shooting. Could that have contributed to him losing his mind?

This same article on CNN's site also brings up studies done on college students who play violent video games. This study shows that, if a student plays violent video games for 20 minutes for 3 consecutive days, their level of aggressive behavior would go up. The question I have is, did these students play violent video games for 20 minutes and did nothing else the rest of the day over the course of those 3 days? As a college student, I have other things that could contribute to aggressive behavior like class, work, or life in general. There could be other things that made the subjects' behavior change, from life to what they ate that day. My point is that a number of things could have contributed to Alexis' breakdown aside from the things I mentioned.

There may be something we missed as to why this tragedy happened. We may never know. I do know that video games were not the primary reason or even in the Top 5 reasons. It's time for the media to back off and stop using violent video games as a scapegoat when it comes to tragedies like this.