Unit 6 Assignment 3

Many video games have been related with crimes and even murders and the top of the list of these games responsible are Call of Duty and Grand Theft auto. Probably one of the most talked about and brutal killing sprees due to video game in years. This is Anders Behring Breivik the 33 year old man who is said to have used Call of Duty: Modern warfare to help him "train" for the killing of 77 people who were at a politician youth camp in Norway. Killings related to video games are not just a recent occurrence this happened back in 1997 when Evan Ramsey at the age of 16 his principle and fellow students in an Alaskan high school due to the computer video game doom Evan was quoted 10 years later saying “I did not understand that if I…pull out a gun and shoot you, there’s a good chance you’re not getting back up,” This shows the difficultly these specific people had at  determining what was fiction and what was non fiction.

Bruce Bartholow a psychologist at the university of Missouri-Columbia have found that "people who play violent video games show diminished brain responses to images of real-life violence, such as gun attacks, but not to other emotionally disturbing pictures, such as those of dead animals, or sick children. And the reduction in response is correlated with aggressive behavior."  Rick Nauret Phd wrote "investigators discovered people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played. They also found that those who played nonviolent games showed no meaningful changes in aggression or hostile expectations over that period."

It is not just negative points about video games there is also positives aspects to video games.There are now video games out there that can help improve your fitness such as zumba,Wii fit and Kinect sports. These games help people loose weight by getting them up and moving this is also breaking out the stereotype that people who play video games just sit around all day and do nothing. It is not just your fitness that video games can help improve now with the brain training games scientist have discovered that "Playing brain-training video games may help reverse the natural decline in cognitive abilities among older people"

I  mainly have oppositional reading to video games but i think they have there positives such as improving fitness and the brain but they are mainly used for just  entertainment purposes and i think that is fine but when too much time is spent on video games and the person playing the game beings to become anti social and isolated except to the people he or she talks to over the console this is when it starts to become an issue. When gaming starts to get in the way of education and other important priority's i also think that's when gaming can become a problem. I think that younger kids that are getting their hand on games that are much to old for them and younger children can be influenced by these violent game. For example my friends little brother who was in year 3 at the time and he used to see his older brother playing grand theft auto and he used to sit and watch his brother play this game for hours in a day and when my friends brother punched another child in the play ground and when he was asked why he did it he said because of grand theft auto. This shows the amount of influence games like these have on young children and making sure they are not accessible to children.

I don't believe in the effects model that says the audience is passive and has a see it / do it attitude to the media. But i think it can be relevant when talking about younger children and that they are more influenced by what they see or if they look up to a siblings and they are playing certain games. However i don't believe that the effects model has much truth to it when looking at teenagers or adults i feel like if they are old enough to know the the difference between what is right and wrong then what is seen in the  media should not effect or influence life discussions. I and i am sure other people will be offended to think that we are looked at as such naive people that we wont know that copying the actions we see in violent video games are wrong and should not be imitated.Some people may be more prone to behave like this due to mental illness but should be looked at as the minority of people that do this.

   http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8449-violent-video-games-alter-brains-response-to-violence.html#.UxD71Pl_vPx

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/04/brain-training-video-game-old-age

http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/12/11/negative-effects-of-violent-video-games-may-build-over-time/48918.html

When looking at the uses and gratifications model i agree with this theory because i believe audiences are more active then they are displayed in other theory's and this is one of the main theory's  that is in favor for the audience and the perception on audience that watch media. I agree with the idea that audiences can use the media to benefit them  by gaining helpful information from the media. I also believe with the gratifications model on the theory that audience has more control over the media than the media does over the audience. 

 looking at the articles i don't believe that the effects model is any more than a theory. I believe that these articles are very specific cases that you don't hear happening every week, with the amount of people that do play violent video games if they can be so easily affected by it then there should be millions of people committing these crimes across the world but there isn't. 

I believe that the games are not responsible for the actions and crimes that these people committed. These people may have health issues that are unknown or things have happened to these people in there childhood that have made them become the person they are today, which is a very common reason for people committing crimes, not because they played a video game.

I think the positive games are being used for entertainment and education. The  entertainment aspect comes in the form of zumba and wii fit ect even though these games are focused on helping audiences loose weight the entertainment aspect is there and i think that this is one of the reasons it has sold so well. If it wasn't entertaining for the audience members they would be come uninterested and therefor unmotivated to use the game and loose weight. Audiences use game such as Big Brain Academy wii degree and Brain training  for education these games make them accessible to both adults and children it is a family favorite which can spark revelry this may also be viewed as entertainment to audience members. These games have a cleaver way of making sure that audiences don't just play the games once and have done with it, The games give the player a brain age and in order for the player to improve there brain age they will have to keep playing the game to get smarter to reduce their brain age.

   

I don't think that violent video games MAKE people violent  i don't think it is that simple.I think if people murder people i don't feel that a rational reason for doing this is because they played a violent game i think its much deeper than that. Violent games can have an influence on younger children. If you are the age rating given to play that game (usually 18 for violent games) then i don't feel it will have as much as an effect if people started to play the game at 18 instead of  playing at the  age of 12 which a lot of parents said they would allow their child to play Call of duty. I think that parents can do a lot to try and protect their children from violent video games by not allowing them on the game and not allowing them to watch older siblings play the game. As for people who are old enough to play the game i think there isn't a way to "protect" an adult from playing a violent video game if they are on the shelf for them to buy. I don't feel like banning all video games is necessary for the minority who are abusing the games.

http://community.callofduty.com/thread/200389618#.UyIvIfl_vPw - Linked used for information about age parents would let children play Call of duty