On the long way home now from Cheltenham where the public had the chance to ask "Do Video Games Make People Violent?" of a panel made up of me, Caledonian University's Judy Richards and Nottingham Trent's Mark Griffiths. While we gamer geeks tend to debate this question regularly, arguably because of a subconscious need to defend ourselves and our pastime against the knee-jerk responses of "everyone else", we forget how genuinely scared people are of these things.
That's the thing that really struck me. One games industry insider (who left before he could tell me where he worked and the kinds of games he makes) seemed particularly terrified about the future of realistic graphics.
The audience that attended wasn't full of pitchfork-waving Daily Mail readers. They were people concerned about this "media monster" they'd heard was sweeping across living rooms, poised to take the nation's souls and turn us all into murdering devil worshippers. What they asked was laced with genuine fear: "Is my son addicted if he plays games more than four hours per week?" "Can we stop our kids from certain doom if they play over-18 games at a less-concerned parent's house?" They wanted to know about "gateway" games ("Is there any research that suggests that playing a less-violent game will make kids want more violent games in the future?"), whether enacting something on the screen would turn players into people capable of enacting these things in real life, what it was that was wrong with society which pushed people to seek "selfhood" in electronic forms rather than through interpersonal interaction. There was no significant debate. This was a Q&A.TWe forget, immersed in our (usually one-sided) arguments, that they only know what they hear from the people who shout loudest.
The other thing that emerged (primarily from what Griffiths said) was the apparent lack of games research which tackles violence issues head on. Where are the longitudinal studies? Where are the cross-cultural studies? Where is the evidence that takes games out of the "severely deranged" list and plops it back in with the rest of the entertainment formats where it belongs?
After a good hour of trying to make ourselves as clear as possible, I think we managed to persuade some of them to consider both sides of the argument. One guy even said that games needed to get more good press. Well duh.
By engaging in discussions which embrace the issues rather than becoming angry, dismissive and defensive off the bat, we might convince some people to give the games we hold so dear less rubbish next time around.
