Video Games and Real-World Violence
It’s always interesting when people ask me what I do. When I simply say, “I write software”, their eyes sort of glaze over and usually don’t ask any more questions about my work (unless I’m talking to someone else who also writes software). When I say, “I write video games” they tend to have a pretty wide variety of responses. One of the most common questions I get from women (but very rarely from men) is, “Is it violent?” Now, I’m writing a war game, but it’s more of a strategy game. There’s implied violence, but players aren’t shooting a gun, seeing graphic violence or blood. It’s no Soldier of Fortune. I’m sure many people believe that video games encourage real-world violence. There is, of course, anecdotal evidence they can point to (the Columbine killers loved the game Doom, a few people have attempted to mimic Grand Theft Auto in the real-world). Some people are quick to blame the games as the cause of violence. Although, even in the anecdotal cases, it’s questionable what the exact relationship is between the video-game and the real-world violence: were the Columbine killers influenced to kill because they played Doom, or, were they, as kids who had angry and violent tendencies, more likely to both play Doom and actually kill people? It should be obvious that anyone with pre-existing violent tendencies are going to play these games. Most condemnations of violent video games seem to blindly note the correlation and then assume causation.
There are some things that weaken the case that violent video games influence people to commit real-world violence. Taking first-person shooters as our prototypical violent game, we can ask the question, “Based on sales of violent first-person shooters, and comparing them to the number killings that we assume were caused because of them, how much influence do first-person shooters have?” I don’t really have any good numbers on murders that are claimed to have been influenced by first person shooters, but I do know that school shooting (which are often blamed on video games) are actually a small fraction of the total homicides each year. There have been a few mass school shootings over the past ten years, but even in 1999 (a peak year), the Columbine incident involved only 13 of the 15,522 homicides committed in the US in 1999. In contrast, Doom was downloaded an estimated 10 million times over two years since its release in 1993. Add this to the number of other first-person shooters sold since 1993, and you’ll be left with the clear result that the influence of violent video games towards actual homicidal behavior is extremely weak. That’s not to say that ultra-violent games aren’t distasteful, but there seems to be a belief (most commonly among women, in my experience) that kid’s brains are so soft that a violent videogame is a hair’s-breath away from actually committing violence. Some hysterical opponents of video games actually go as far as saying things like “Violent video games are an ideal environment in which to learn violence”, “The violent video games have to be taken out of our homes”, and “[Video games] are murder simulators”.
But, maybe I’m underestimating the number of homicides that are influenced by video games. Because Doom and other first-person shooters don’t appear on the scene until 1993, we can look at how homicide rates have changed since 1993. Looking at a timeline of murder rates and violent crime in the US, we can clearly see the rise in those rates coincident with the rise in violent first-person shooters. You’ll note the rapid upswing in both homicide rates and violent crime rates after Doom was released in 1993. Of course, I’m kidding. There was actually a dramatic decline in murder and violence rates between 1993 and 2000.
But, maybe I shouldn’t be looking at the rates across the entire society, but I should look at the rates for young males - afterall, they are the most likely to play video games, so if video games increase violent tendencies, that’s where we’ll see the homicide and violence rates increase. Below is a chart of homicide offending rates of White Males of various ages between 1976 and 2004. Doom was released in December 1993 followed by a series of first-person shooters upto present day. The dark area of the chart is the period after Doom’s release (because that’s when we entered the dark ages of rampant video-game fueled violence). The age group “14-17″ would be assumed to be the “most vulnerable” to influence by video game violence (being that they are younger and, therefore “less capable of distinguishing games from reality” - or so they say). That group actually shows a large decrease in homicide offending rates - from 24.9/100,000 in 1994 to 7.7/100,000 in 2003 - a drop of 70% and 2003 stands as the the lowest rate for that age group during the entire 1976-2004 timeperiod. White Males age 18-24 also show a decline, but not nearly as dramatic (only a 30% drop). For comparison’s sake, overall US homicide rates dropped 44% between 1991 and 2004. In case anyone is wondering, I could’ve added in the data for black males as well. They show even stronger trends - homicide offending rates of black males between 14-17 declined 79% between 1993 and 2002, rates for 18-24 year-olds declined 50% beween 1991 and 2004, and declined 47% for black males age 25+ between 1988 and 2004. Those are some surprisingly big declines, especially in light of the fact that there are probably tens of millions of “murder simulators” (as Jack Thompson calls them) on peoples computers in 2004 that weren’t there in 1992.
Based on the data, it almost seems to suggest that maybe games provide an safe outlet for violent tendencies so that they don’t happen in the real world. How else to explain the decline in homicide rates over that period - and the decline among 14-17 year-olds which is even faster than the decline in American society as a whole. Of course, advocating the idea that violent video games have a non-existent link to real-world violence is always an uphill battle because most people “know” that the link exists, and it’s politically expedient to for politicians to claim that they’re doing something “for the children” by promoting game purchasing and labeling laws.
(On a side note, I thought it was very interesting to see homicide rates so high between 1920 and 1935. We are often lead to believe that American society is more violent than it ever was. But, the 1920-1935 period almost reaches the homicide rates of the 1980s.)
Links:
Wikipedia: Doom
Homicide Rates 1900-2002
Homicide Rates 1950-2004
Violent Crime Rates 1973-2005
Homicide Rates by Race, Age, and Gender 1976-2004
On a similar note, Joystiq recently posted an article on a “Video Game Violence” documentary. My guess is that they’ll take a negative view of video games, since Video Games are everyone’s favorite whipping boy. Additionally, there is the ominous phrase at the beginning of the trailer “whoever tells the stories defines the culture”. Obviously, many video games “telling stories” and are violent, so it sounds like they’re going to jump to the conclusion that culture is being defined by violent video games (roll eyes). I had to shake my head at the claim that flight simulators allowed the 9/11 hijackers to fly planes into the world trade centers without ever flying a plane, followed by “what do you think happens when a 9 year-old boy sits down in front of a first-person shooter video game..”. First, I was insulted by the shameless co-opting of 9/11 for an argument against video games. Second, the 9/11 hijackers went to flight school, they didn’t just buy a copy of MS Flight Simulator. Third, the 9/11 hijackers weren’t influenced by the flight simulator to fly aircraft into the Twin Towers.