Serial Game Killers

Today video games are an important part of the entertainment of children and teenagers. However, many video games are characterized by violence which often contains aggressive and brutal elements.

How many times we have stopped playing a game because is too much violent for us? And how many times we’ve stopped because is crap or boring? The answers are easy to find but what is actually important is which the criteria to choose from are. It seams that over the years games have become more violent and now is a big concept of the industry. For example, over the years violent games are among the games which sell most.

Most violent games by vote:

10 Resident Evil 4 (PS2 - 2 million)

9 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2 - 14 million)

8 God of War (PS2 - 1 million in US only)

7 NARC

6 Killer 7

5 The Warriors

4 50 Cent: Bulletproof

3 Crime Life: Gang Wars

2 Condemned: Criminal Origins

1 True Crime: New York City

Also, at the Best 20 Selling Video Games some violent games are very high. At the 6^th place ‘Grand Theft Auto’ with 50 million sales, at the 14^th place ‘Resident Evil’ with 31 million, at the 19^th place ‘Street Fighter’ with 25 million and at the 20^th place ‘Mortal Kombat’ with 20 million sales.

So, what is the real reason to buy one of these games? Is the blood? Is the violent atmosphere? Is the opportunity to do a crime without going in jail? And worst to get credit for that? Is because the violent games give more adrenalin than other games? And how is this valid?

One reason is TV & cinema. Why? Because they have many violent-crime-killing movies, as well as the “News” of the channels are all about war, killings, serial killers, crimes, narcotics, guns and in other words we are all surrounded with violence. So, we are familiar with violence and at one point we have been used to it. To sum up, games with violence are nothing more than games with race-cars for us nowadays. In our conscience is all right because we are familiar with violence but subconsciously we have a problem.

Problems

There is an important number of video games with the same degree of attractiveness for the gamers, which have no violence and offer inventiveness, creativity, education and sociability to the gamers.

Nevertheless, violent games spreading very fast and becoming more and more popular. At the same time, there is a suspicion that people who plays violent video games suffer from changes in their brain such as negatively influence at the personality and at their behaviour.

It is important to be discovered in which degree, the violent games /and generally speaking the violence /, influence or promote the negative and aggressive social behaviour.

For first time, scientists from the University of Indianapolis search with objective criteria the functional effects of the violent games in the brain of teenagers. They distributed with random way 44 adolescents in 2 teams. The children of the first team should play a violent game for 30 minutes, and the children of the other team should play also for 30 minutes a non-violent but equally interesting game.

The results are particularly interesting:

For the gamers that played the violent game, was observed reduction of the activation of regions at brain which are responsible for the self-control, the concentration and the suspensions. Also was observed more activation of structures of brain which involve the emotion of excitation and agitation-confusion. On the other hand, for the gamers that played the non-violent game, was not observed any of the above. This short-term effects on the brain of the gamers may cause permanent changes in the character and the behaviour.

The EU strikes back

The possibility of establishment of limit of age in the sale of electronic games which contain scenes of violence is discussed by the ministers of Justice and the European Union, adopting the idea that the violent pictures which appear have lead to the increase of cases of children criminality.

(The initiative for the beginning of dialogue round the imposition of restrictions in the sale video games belongs in Germany (which maintains also the European presidency), country in which was marked and the last relative bloody incident: the passed November, 18year old get in his school and shooting indiscriminately and it wounded five students, before it puts an end to his life. The Germane police connected his aggressive behaviour with his love for the violent electronic games.)