Due to popular demand, I present: my speech

One day in the year 1995, just after the release of “Doom” (a shooting game known for its use of blood and gore and for being one of the pioneer’s in the violent video game industry), there were several mass shooting’s in various states in the U.S. The shooters were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two teenagers who had played “Doom” extensively. At that time, “Doom” was a best seller in the video game industry, and its success (based on critic reviews) was mainly due to the fact that the game was three dimensional and utilised a “first person shooter” perspective or “FPS”. Although many think that this event was no coincidence -after all both the game and the shootings were within a year of each other- I disagree.. Honourable judges, ladies and gentlemen, and fellow students, I would like to speak to you about violent video games, and how gun violence has no relation to it.

Strangely (you might think), consumers actually buy more violent games over non-violent ones, as many statistics indicate. Games that are violent sell many times better than games that aren’t; and about 64% of grade 4’s (male and female) report that their favourite games are violent ones. In 1979 when “Mortal Kombat” (a very famous fighting game) was originally released on the SEGA line of consoles it was a hit success. Several months later, when its main competitor Nintendo released its version of “Mortal Kombat”, there was no blood and gore, which was included in the SEGA version, which was probably done because Nintendo games are targeted at younger children. The Nintendo version sold horribly. Upon realising their mistake, Nintendo re-released “Mortal Kombat” with blood and gore. The re-release sold several hundred-thousand more copies than the original SEGA version and helped propel the company to surpass SEGA and eventually dominate the gaming industry that we know of today, which leads me to my next point.

With higher sales of violent video games, the amount of gun violence has actually decreased. After the release of “Doom”, violent gun related crimes has actually decreased drastically, especially when violent video games sell well (normally Q3-Q4 of most years). For example; the amount of violent gun related crimes/100,000 people was around 500 in 1994, but that same year, when “Doom” was released, it began dropping quickly. In about 1 1/2 years, it went down to 400. I don’t think this is a mere coincidence. At that time the violent video game/FPS industry was worth roughly $3.4 billion. Now, the industry is worth about $16 billion, and the amount of gun related crimes/100,000 people has lowered to about 250. The amount of gun violence has halved in 2 decades, in part because of the success of violent video games.

“The first thing you see in a violent game is the violence… And that's kind of been the main intrigue, because of how graphic and obvious the violent content can be…” says Paul Adachi, a Brock University PhD student who is currently investigating violent video games and their mental effects. His findings are intriguing, because they prove that it’s not the obvious graphical violence in video games that instigates violence in real life, it’s the competition of those games. In his findings, he experimented on two individuals. One played a violent game and the other played a non-violent one. There were no changes in aggression following that, but when two control groups were playing the games competitively against each other, the violent video game group showed telltale signs of aggression, especially in the people who lost more frequently. “Even younger kids…a lot of the time they know that playing this Call of Duty shooter game…is a fantasy-type thing,” said Adachi. “It's not something that's real … whereas the competition in the games is more real.”

The success of the video game industry has been skyrocketing since the first game was released, and when violent video games were first introduced, they were embraced by consumers as a marvel of human programming skill. Now, even when it has surpassed all of our expectations for what a game can really be, people still blame gun violence on it. Video games have never killed anyone, and never will. Their sales have increased radically over the course of two decades and it has so much remaining potential. It has (in part) reduced cases of gun violence/100,000 people significantly, almost cutting the rate in half, and in studies conducted by PhD student’s the relation between violence in video games and it’s direct relation with violence in real life has proven that there really is no bond, and that crude assumption is merely human qualities that push us to beat each other. Even though so much proof exists, why is violence still blamed on violent video games? This is a tumultuous battle that will never end. As Kratos from the game “God of War” said; “there will only be chaos”. Thank you for listening.