2008 Woodie Awards
Point-Counterpoint: Video game violence an easy scapegoat?
Maggie Te Grotenhuis & Chase Becicka
Issue date: 2/28/08 Section: Opinion
Video game violence can trigger real violence
Maggie Te Grotenhuis
Do violent video games make the gamer more violent or are these games being used as easy scapegoats? The age-old question has stirred much controversy in the past and the media and general public have been debating this for years. Once again though, violence in video games regains the spotlight due to new evidence concerning the Northern Illinois University gunman.
I'm not going to go on a long rant about how everyone who plays video games is the next serial killer. If this were true, a good chunk of Kirkwood students would be on the America's Most Wanted list. Obviously, if that is the point I attempted to make I would not get very far in my argument.
However, the evidence does prove that violence in video games can lead a person to be violent in real life. For example, one of the most well-known school shootings occurred in 1999 when two teens shot and killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. It was later found that both boys were fanatics of violent video games.
There is no way you can argue that if these boys had never picked up one of these violent video games, they would still have known half of the stuff they learned from the games. Repetition increases learning and these boys repeatedly played these games. Thus, they learned from these games the basic premise of how to shoot a gun and how to kill a moving target.
In the most recent school shooting, at NIU in DeKalb, Ill., the gunman reportedly was a fan of the game "Counter Strike." Clearly, there were other factors that contributed to the shooting but there has also been evidence that links video game violence to real-life violence. I cannot say for certain whether video game use was a contributing factor in this case but it does make you wonder, especially when the people who are playing these games are the ones involved in school shootings.
Chase Becicka's opinion article can be found on the next page.
Maggie Te Grotenhuis
Do violent video games make the gamer more violent or are these games being used as easy scapegoats? The age-old question has stirred much controversy in the past and the media and general public have been debating this for years. Once again though, violence in video games regains the spotlight due to new evidence concerning the Northern Illinois University gunman.
I'm not going to go on a long rant about how everyone who plays video games is the next serial killer. If this were true, a good chunk of Kirkwood students would be on the America's Most Wanted list. Obviously, if that is the point I attempted to make I would not get very far in my argument.
However, the evidence does prove that violence in video games can lead a person to be violent in real life. For example, one of the most well-known school shootings occurred in 1999 when two teens shot and killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. It was later found that both boys were fanatics of violent video games.
There is no way you can argue that if these boys had never picked up one of these violent video games, they would still have known half of the stuff they learned from the games. Repetition increases learning and these boys repeatedly played these games. Thus, they learned from these games the basic premise of how to shoot a gun and how to kill a moving target.
In the most recent school shooting, at NIU in DeKalb, Ill., the gunman reportedly was a fan of the game "Counter Strike." Clearly, there were other factors that contributed to the shooting but there has also been evidence that links video game violence to real-life violence. I cannot say for certain whether video game use was a contributing factor in this case but it does make you wonder, especially when the people who are playing these games are the ones involved in school shootings.
Chase Becicka's opinion article can be found on the next page.
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