Over this past week our class finished presenting our research on pornography, and began to look into how video games displayed race, gender, and violence. Our class viewed a documentary titled Game Over: Gender, Race, and Violence in Video Games (2000). This documentary had many interesting points regarding its subject in analyzing how gender, race, and violence is portrayed in video games and the large impact these portrayals impose and subconsciously impose on its users. The documentary had mentioned that in 1999 approximately 90% of households with children either on or rent video games. I believe that since this documentary was made, that percentage has escalated significantly. I don't even think I know any children or men who don't own a gaming console. With that being said, I don't think I know anyone who doesn't play video games of some sort, or have played them at some point in time. The documentary began addressing that realism is the grounds of the video game industry, and allows the players to become the characters within the game. Hyper-masculine, over sexualized femininity, stereotypical portrayals of race, and extreme violence can all be found in practically almost every video game. This can be an issue for those people who allow their understanding of life be explained to or controlled by what they learn from video games. For children, this is probably the most problematic concern simply because they are looking to everything around them to enhance their understanding of reality. The documentary had suggested that overtime the distinction of reality and fantasy become transparent and hard to separate from one another. Does this mean that anyone subjected to violent video games are going to become murderers? Absolutely not!
I can remember as a child playing video games, and all of these characteristics were perpetuated into them back then. However, as technology has advanced the video games we see today are much more graphic, and potentially shows more violence, more hyper-sexualization, more hyper-masculine characters, and even more racial stereotypes within their characters. For instance, video games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, and Resident Evil are all very violent games, that one's success level within the game does depend on how many people you kill. However, these are all games that at some point in time I have seen my boyfriend or one of my brothers play. I do not see them yelling at the game when their character dies, but the storyline of most of these games require one to kill or be killed. To them it is just a game, some mental stimulation, and relaxation. Most of every one I know who plays these games, aren't playing with 10 year olds. I think there are rating systems in the video game industry for that purpose. I don't think it would be necessary or appropriate for a 10 year old to play games like these. If some young teenagers do play these video games, the frequency of playing should be regulated by an adult, and they must still be able to consciously separate fantasy from reality. However, this also goes back to the idea of how long children and teenagers should play video games for. Do they play for a couple hours every now and then, or do they play day in day out? I see no problem with people playing video games for fun or on occasion, but when a person's life becomes revolved around them there is a huge concern and issue. The issue would be that they are putting their leisure time before priorities in life, and the concern would be how much of what they are playing is being merged into their reality of believing. When a person's life is revolved around this, it is all they begin to know, and that is when there is a concern of fantasy vs. their own real life reality.
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