Is it true that video games cause violent behavior?

The short answer is "maybe". Just like how the majority of people can enjoy a beer or some wine without becoming alcoholics, the majority of people can play video games without becoming violent.

Probably the most important thing to remember about this topic is that all of the things we consume - the books we read, the videos we watch, the music we listen to, and yes, the video games we play - can affect how we think and see the world. If it didn't, then things like advertising and propaganda wouldn't exist.

Since there is no single answer to this problem, I've tried to group the major concerns and questions into their own sections. Hopefully this page can shed some light on the issue, though I wouldn't be surprised if I've missed something and I doubt it will be enough to truly answer the question.

Before continuing on, I think it's important to talk why people may choose to play violent video games. After all, these games attract millions of players, so there must be something about them that people enjoy, and the idea that it's specifically the graphic material is rather disturbing.

Now, I'll be upfront here: there are some violent games that I'm rather fond of and play from time to time. But when I compare these games to my favorite non-violent games, it becomes clear that the main draw isn't the violence - instead, it's things like the gameplay, the game's ability to challenge my skills, and the way even the oldest games in my library offer new places to explore and discover.

But I do have my limits: there are some games that are too graphic and too violent for my taste. I tend to just play these when I'm reviewing them or need to refresh my memory in order to review something else - and that's assuming I'll review them at all. Just because I have a strong stomach doesn't mean I want to fill my time with this stuff.

I can only guess why other people choose to play violent games; perhaps their reasons are similar to mine.

But I have noticed something that may explain some of it: many people don't take many risks when it comes to buying video games. The games they do buy are the ones they've heard people talk about. This skews the trends towards games that have better marketing, and when it comes to marketing, there's no such thing as bad press.

Many of the biggest names in gaming got there by being controversial. The more people rallied around protecting children from them, the more people heard about them, and in turn, that led to more sales and more people playing these controversial games.

This is why it's a good idea to stray from the beaten path occasionally. For every well known violent game out there, there's at least a dozen non-violent games that are just as much fun. If you're interested, I have a little list that can help with this problem.

There is also another, much more serious, reason why some people are interested in playing violent games: violent people like violent entertainment. Such people are typically rare, but in the context of this article, it also means that the material they surrounded themselves with didn't turn them violent - they were that way to begin with.

I'd like the reader to leave this section with a simple question: how do you choose what music you listen to, what movies you watch, and if applicable, what video games you play?

Are you willing to hold yourself to the same standards you want other people to follow?

"Desensitization" is a ten-dollar word for becoming disinterested in something you see on a regular basis, and it's often heard during discussions about how entertainment affects people. Despite how pretentious it can sound to use big words like this, it really is something we should be concerned about.

All forms of media have the ability to desensitize us to various things. This becomes a problem when we start casually allowing things we shouldn't. Let's say you started hanging around people who swear constantly. Over time, you may stop noticing when people use foul language, or perhaps you'll even start using it casually yourself.

Since video games can depict some extremely unsettling things, people worry that players might become desensitized to violent behavior or worse, become encouraged to chose violent solutions to the problems they encounter in real life. I can see the logic here, but I don't agree with it.

In my experience, someone's current situation plays a big role in what they see as appropriate behavior. The choices we make in games make sense within the framework of the game we're playing, but may not make sense in reality or even other games.

Take public restrooms for example. Game developers never include rooms or environments unless there's a reason for the player to visit them, so players will typically visit every bathroom (regardless of their character's gender) to see what's in there. This curiosity tends to be rewarded with small caches of supplies, interesting easter eggs, or even traps, so players always assume it's worth taking a look at least once.

However, applying this logic to real life sounds incredibly insane. Even when they need to use the facility, many people would rather hold it than go inside a public restroom, to say nothing about the thought of keeping something they found in there.

Another way games don't reflect reality is that the majority of video games don't give the player that many options. Often, the most the player can do with an obstacle is jump over it, dodge it when it moves, or attack it. This doesn't give them room to resolve conflicts in a sophisticated way. But in real life, there's always a million ways to respond to a situation, and very few people are willing to choose to violence when safer options are available.

So to sum this section up: no matter how terrible things can get on screen, I just don't believe that people would react to a real life situation the way we'd react to the same situation in a game. It just doesn't make sense for anybody to behave that way.

Games are supposed to be fun. That's literally their entire purpose. But, many video games can infuriate the people playing them, and this may lead to the player acting out in various ways. Young children are especially vulnerable to things like this, as they are still learning how to handle their emotions constructively.

So what can cause these outbursts?

There are several possibilities, but the root of the problem is that video games follow their rules extremely rigidly. There's no negotiating when you lose, nor is there a way to call a time out when something goes wrong - and when a game isn't well designed, things will go wrong a lot.

To elaborate on this, video games aren't perfect, and there's always a chance that something in the game will handicap the player unfairly. Poor controls can make things more difficult than they should be, unclear directions can waste your time, and badly designed mechanics can drive players nuts.

Probably the most irritating thing a player can encounter is lag - a delay between the player signaling they want to take an action and the game executing that action. Lag is often unpredictable, and this becomes a recipe for disaster when a video game requires fast reflexes. To give you a non-gaming example of how enraging something like this can be, think about the last time you were in a hurry and needed to print something.

But here's the problem: regardless of what's frustrating the player, there's always a chance that they'll vent that frustration on someone else. If someone is struggling with something and they are interrupted, they may yell at or otherwise lash out at whomever interrupted them. Unfortunately, it's not always clear when someone is having trouble with a game, and that makes it look like these outbursts come out of nowhere.

So what do you think? Does this count as making people violent?

I'll leave that judgement call for you to make.

Before moving on, I'd like to point out that problems like these are usually linked to a specific game or games: if these outbursts are a recurring problem, then it's best to put that game away for a while. Play something else, or maybe find something else to do with your time. Life's too short to spend it angry at some software.

Children learn by imitation. It's something we've all done, as it's a normal part of growing up. By experimenting with different roles, children develop healthy imaginations, learn to understand the world around them, and mature into well-rounded individuals. Throughout history, children have imagined themselves being ninjas, cowboys, robots, pirates, or just about anything else that captured their attention.

It also makes sense that people are worried about who children will imitate - if they choose a negative role model, then they'll likely get into trouble or maybe even hurt themselves. Many different "watchdog" groups have been formed to try and limit the risk of this happening, but it's ultimately the parent's job to ensure that their children have good role models to emulate, and a big part of that is ensuring that their children are given age-appropriate entertainment.

Fortunately, it looks like many parents are pretty good about selecting age-appropriate movies and TV shows. The problem is, people seem to have a blind spot when selecting video games. Time and time again, children are given games that contain very inappropriate material, and then the adults react with shock and horror when those children draw graphic images, talk about killing things, or act out violent (or even sexual) scenarios with other children.

While some people might say otherwise, this isn't proof that the video games have some powerful corrupting influence. Children who indulge in inappropriate entertainment - be it a TV show, movie, video game, or song - often display inappropriate behavior afterwards. It's as simple as that.

So how can parents, many of whom aren't interested in video games themselves, be sure that the games they provide for their children are appropriate?

The simplest solution is to become familiar with the way video games are rated. Just like how movies are given ratings like "G", "PG", and "R", there are official ratings boards who examine what sort of content a video game offers and assign it an appropriate age rating. These rating boards have existed since the mid-1990s, and importantly, the most famously violent games out there have always proudly displayed their "18+ only" warnings.

Of course, it's important to note that developers aren't legally obligated to have their games rated by these boards, but it's a good business practice as many stores refuse to sell unrated games.

If you're just now hearing about this, I'd suggest taking a moment to learn about the rating system used in the United States via this nifty little page, which described what the ratings are and how to find them on a game's packaging or online storefront. On a side note, I always provide the ESRB's official rating, if there is one, for any game I review.

One of the difficulties of discussing how video games affect people is that many parents will attribute their children's misbehavior to whatever video game they happened to be playing around the time of the offense. But that's not really fair to anyone - children have always been experts at getting themselves into trouble, and they've never needed video games to help them.

Since Cain and Abel, kids have been getting into things they should leave alone, teenagers have been lazy and rebellious, and siblings have always found reasons to bicker. A video game might be involved in a situation, but we should make sure that they really are the root of the issue before assigning blame.

For example, throughout the ages, children have "forgotten" to do their homework. Homework is rarely enjoyable and often thoroughly boring, so parents have always had to put in some effort to keep their children from getting distracted. Despite this being a problem in just about every household since the homework was invented, people started treating it differently when children began playing video games instead of getting their homework done.

Suddenly, it's not the child's fault for ignoring their homework - it's the fault of the video games, as they've caused the child to become "addicted" or "obsessed" with their entertainment. But I have to ask, is this really any different than anything else, like a toy or comic book, that a child would prefer over homework?

A similar issue can occur when children are asked to do a quick chore when they're busy playing a video game. It's not always possible to leave a game without being penalized for it, so the player might need a moment to reach a place where they can put the game down.

But problems can arise in one of two ways. Some parents refuse to give their child time to reach a place where they can safely leave the game, as if they expect their children to ask "how high?" whenever they are told to jump. This attitude will lead to fights, and it wouldn't surprise me if the adults blame the video game instead of reviewing their own behavior.

Another way this can go wrong is if the player is still playing the game twenty or thirty minutes later and the chore still hasn't been done. It's not that difficult to find a place where you can pause a game, so they should have done the chore by this point. Frankly, it reminds me of how kids would sometimes "forget" chores in favor of watching TV - they were in the wrong in both cases, but never was the fault of their entertainment.

A similar problem can happen when someone's playing a video game and it's time for them to do something else, like come to dinner or get ready for school. It's possible that they misjudged how much time they had before the next activity, as children can have trouble understanding how much time it takes to do something. Again, this isn't evidence that games are evil - kids used to make this same mistake when watching TV or playing outside. The real problem is when they refuse to put the it down.

Over on my page entitled Simple Rules to Keep Games Fun, I've listed a series of rules to help prevent problems like this. In fact, one of the rules is a reminder to check that you have enough time before the next activity to play your game, and it's there for exactly this reason.

As a side note, I've set aside a little section of my game reviews to give people a rough idea of how long the player needs to set aside for a reasonable session of each game. On average, it seems like most gaming sessions need a minimum of about fifteen minutes.

I consider myself to be both educated on the topic of firearms and generally reasonable about gun ownership. To be more specific, I'm familiar with the Four Rules and proper trigger discipline, and I'm also aware that painting a gun a different color and adding some accessories doesn't magically change the gun itself. Along these same lines, I know that the "bad guns" are already illegal, and no laws are going to keep them from getting into the hands of criminals.

But I'm also going to tell you that giving children unrestricted access to guns, even their own, is a terrible risk.

If you're wondering why I'm talking about gun safely in the middle of an article about video games, allow me to explain. A lot of the people who are concerned about how violent video games might affect the player also worry that these games may encourage real life gun violence. This is a completely understandable connection to make, and unfortunately there's a reason to suspect a link between the two.

As I explained earlier, children learn through playful imitation. The catch is that there's never been a shortage of things that make guns look cool and exciting. In the past it might have been books, tv shows, or movies, but these days it's likely to be a video game. Combine that innocent play with real firearms and bad things happen. Full stop.

In order to be sure I had my ducks in a row while writing this article, I spent some time researching real life cases where a child killed someone with a gun and their entertainment was blamed for it. I don't recommend you do the same - it's the sort of thing that make your soul start hurting. But I did find two noteworthy cases where a child played a video game and then killed someone using a firearm.

The first case is sometimes cited as the first video game related murder. One afternoon, two young kids competed for the high score in an NES game they both liked. When the game was over, the victor went back home, while the loser went to his bedroom, got his hunting rifle from its case, took aim from the window, and fatally shot his former playmate as she was playing on the sidewalk.

The second case was just plain tragic. A little boy had been left unattended while playing a video game. When he was done, he somehow found the handgun that his babysitter had brought with her and started playing with it. Eventually, he ended up killing the babysitter, though it seems like this wasn't intentional.

In both cases, people rushed to blame the video games for corrupting the children. But does that really sound a reasonable conclusion in either case?

Seriously folks. Store your weapons properly. Children are not mature enough to handle them responsibly, especially when they're angry.

It only takes one bullet to ruin a family forever. Don't let it come from your gun.

School shootings were not a thing when I was growing up. We didn't need to worry about someone sneaking weapons into class, nor did we have active shooter drills. This has changed drastically in the last twenty years, and unsurprisingly, people want to understand where things went wrong.

When a school shooting happens, people immediately want to know what made the shooter different than the rest of us. Often, they'll have played violent video games, and this makes people wonder if there's a connection between their games and their actions. After all, our entertainment can influence us to some degree, so maybe the games gave someone some bad ideas.

But, when you stop and look things over, it doesn't seem like the games people played had much to do with the shootings themselves. In fact, if you really take a good look at the statistics, you'll probably find that something even stranger is going on.

According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, there were about 15 to 20 school shootings each year from 1966 to 1990. I don't remember hearing about any of those. Things escalated between 1990 and 2018, where the average rose to around 40 a year, and then after 2018, the number of school shootings skyrocketed to several hundred each year. What on Earth happened?

One thing we can do is add a few more points to the chart. The Columbine Highschool Massacre was the first big school shooting that everybody heard about. It happened in 1999, and the game that allegedly inspired it was released around 1992 with a sequel in 1993. There were also more installments in that franchise, released in 2004, 2016, and 2020.

This looks like a promising explanation, as the chart does repeatedly spike after each release of one of the games in that franchise, but there are still some problems. To begin with, how do we explain the shootings that took place prior to the first game's release? And why would only one franchise be enough to explain it?

Another problem comes a chart further down the page that breaks the shootings down by cause. Apparently the vast majority of these shootings resulted from a dispute escalating into gunfire. This is strange, because whenever there's been a big school shooting, we almost always hear that the shooter had been planning it for a while or took the time to write a "manifesto" before they went on their rampage.

Sadly, there is something else that might shed some light on this issue, and I'll admit that I didn't know about it until very recently. In some dark and dusty corners of the internet, there are communities where people fantasize about committing a school shooting or even worship school shooters as if they were celebrities.

I don't know how long these communities have existed, but I do know that during the COVID lockdowns, a lot of people spent an unhealthy amount of time on the internet. Communities like that are breeding grounds for violence, and if a lot of people started hanging around them during the lockdowns, then it would explain the sudden and severe spike in school shootings.

When my day is over and it's time to relax, I like to spend some time watching YouTube. While I was working on updating this article I noticed that one of my favorite channels, Tale Foundry, had uploaded a video talking about violence in our entertainment. It's titled Why We NEED Video Game Violence, which was a surprising choice. Their videos are often very thoughtful and carefully done, so I took a look at it to see what they had to say.

You can watch it here. It's about twenty minutes long, and does contain some graphic scenes from different games (notably DOOM 2016). Tale Foundry has a lot to say about violence in our media, but the point that stuck out to me was this: by focusing on the violence, we just might have missed the real issue.

Put bluntly, there is a difference between violence and cruelty. Killing the demons in Doom is definitely violent, but it's not cruel. Mario squashing goombas and turtles under his boot is also violent, after a fashion, but it's not cruel either.

In fact, it takes some effort to find games that encourage or capitalize on cruelty. That's largely because the wider gaming community has almost uniformly rejected these games and refused to support them. In other words, while violent games can be fun or even cathartic, cruelty takes things too far.

This also reminds me of what I saw from Cult of the Lamb's fanbase. Cult of the Lamb is a game that outright encourages players to be evil and cruel towards their underlings, but a sizable portion of the fandom doesn't like to choose that option. Instead, they choose to treat their followers with as much kindness as they can muster.

Perhaps the real thing we should be watching for isn't a love of violence, but a love of cruelty. Maybe that's the key to this whole mess.

No.

Any entertainment that we consume has the potential to affect us in a negative way, and it's important to understand that. A simple example I mentioned above was that games featuring a lot of swearing may encourage players to swear more often. Another example would be that games with sexual content can cause an otherwise chaste player to think about immoral things.

When it comes down to it, St. Paul had good reason for writing Philippians 4:8, and we need to heed his warning.

Now, this page only talks about the potential for video games to inspire violence, as this is a very contested issue that needed to be singled out and discussed on its own. However, this is not the only way that games can cause trouble. You can find more ways to avoid problems with games on the page entitled Simple Rules to Keep Games Fun, or you could continue on to the page about video game addiction, which is a newer problem that's doing some real damage.