Video games are being treated too inconsistently by being rated too harshly for violence, too much controversy for sexuality with a proper rating, and attempting to make it illegal to sell games rated for 17+ to minors.
When Pong first hit the market, it was the hottest selling Christmas gift of its time, and video games have continued their popular success. Unfortunately video games have also had years of oppression against them for some of their more volatile games that didn't fit in with the more kid friendly types such as Pac-Man or Pong.
In fact, the Surgeon General C. Everett Koop during 1982 said that, “(Video) games have no merit and offered little in the way of anything constructive to young people”. If more video game critics were to set their biases aside we would see that video games offer some great merit. For instance, surgeons who play video games make for better surgeons, along with relaxing patients who play prior to surgery.
Video game violence has been a major concern for parents and adults alike ever since the debut of the first controversial violent video game in 1976 called Death Race, in which players ran over “Gremlins” in their car, which many people claimed prepared players for vehicular manslaughter. The army used one violent video game, Battlezone, where players rode around in tanks trying to kill the enemy tanks with superior graphics to train their own soldiers how to drive and shoot tanks.
Of course this was before a lot of the more serious controversy came in 1992 when Mortal Kombat was released. This sparked a tempest of controversy for it's senseless and over the top violence, such as pulling your enemy's heart out through their chest. It was because of this game that the ESRB rating system was created, which is the video game equivalent of the MPAA for the movie rating system. Other more intensely violent video games have been created since the days of Mortal Kombat that have also caused intense amounts of uproar for their violence such as Grand Theft Auto, Postal, and Carmageddon which were released in 1997.
Unfortunately for the media, all this did was boost the sales of these highly controversial games with all the “free publicity” news reports would give them. Yet these games had the proper rating of M for Mature, which is the movie equivalent of a Rated R movie. However, many violent movies never get so much controversy such as the gory movie Saw, which was only a small step below NC-17 or Adults Only rating for video games.
It seems like so much of the media just assumes that violent video games are obviously or inherently worse than most violent horror movies could be. Yet it seems like much evidence shows otherwise, including research made by Surgeon General David Satcher, which says that violent video games have approximately the same effect as violent movies, if only slightly lower.
Another interesting fact is that in almost every study on violent video games, the studies are shown to have effects on aggression, instead of any actual violence. Even more intriguing is the fact that the Surgeon General says that low-level cartoon violence shown in an Y7 game like Pokemon, produces the same levels of increased aggression as a Mature/R-rated video game, such as the infamous game, Grand Theft Auto.
Also, there is evidence to support the fact that parental influence has an effect on the aggression caused by these violent video games. Society needs to learn that video games are not the danger we've been told that they are, and that they are just as valid and dangerous a form of media for prolonged exposure as TV or movies, except with more benefits.
Another area in which video games have come under heavy fire is their sexual content. One of these games was called BMX XXX which had naked men and women doing professional bike tricks, which the media swarmed all over proclaiming it to be a great moral injustice. However, many people in the video game community were attacking this game as well, as it had terrible gameplay, that once a person got past the sexual content there was very little interesting about the game.
Unfortunately this was not the last time that such a dirty trick was played on gamers as the Playboy Mansion was released into the mainstream, scoring less then a C- as it was another game that got rather boring quick. However, the media seems to leap at any chance to make a slanderous news review about any video game with any sort of controversial content, despite the fact that it's rated properly, really needs to stop if video games are to receive the proper credit they so richly deserve.
