Video games offer more than violence
Zack Becker, Opinion Editor
April 8, 2010
Filed under Opinion
A while back, someone else wrote a story detailing the problems with video games. In it, she claimed that video games can cause real world violence as well as other undesired side effects. A look back on the history of video games as well as other choices of games to play reveals that there is more than one side to this argument.
Video games have been around as far back as the invention of Pong, which came out in 1972. Since then, they have had a long and complicated history, but hardly ever a violent side (which has only come about in recent years). Game designers didn’t have the technology to create gore and violence. It was left to the players to use their imagination to figure out what the large pixels of Atari games were supposed to be.
Then, as technology progressed, players began to see more detailed graphics, and although there may have been violent games released, those graphics could not depict accurate gore or violence. They just weren’t real. There was logically no point in kids imitating something that included shooting crazy monsters or aliens with laser guns. The reason behind there being so many fantasy games may have been there was just no reason to mimic real life.
As video games advance closer to the present time, a trend seems to happen. Graphics got better, so designers must have gotten something in their heads saying, “Hey, now that video games are capable of doing more things, let’s see how close we can make them to real life.” It doesn’t make any sense, but the end result is games like Resident Evil, Call of Duty and Halo (although Halo only portrays violence against aliens with usage of made-up weapons.)
There is quite a wide range of video games around for players to experience. Although the Xbox and Playstation contain games in their libraries such as Call of Duty and Halo, both these systems have many less-violent games to play, as well. And here’s another alternative: the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo has had a long history of producing light-hearted and kid-friendly games that still provide hours of entertainment without the use of violence.
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