Violence and Immersion

It always annoys the crap out of me whenever someone tries to blame violent video games for tragedies like school shootings. I'm sure it annoys most of the people in this class. But I think the biggest problem with these supposed activists (*cough* Jack Thompson *cough*) is the fact that a lot of them don't actually play video games themselves.

For my assignment I have been playing a lot of Goldeneye and Donkey Kong 64. The other day though, my flatmate was watching me play in the lounge and I felt inclined to apologize to her for all the cursing I was doing while playing. Her presence made me a tad self conscious of how I appear while gaming and as a result, I noticed how often I swore at virtual opponents. My most common expression was probably "Die cunt!" whenever I disposed of a villain.

Seriously though, I'm not a psychopath, you won't see me running around uni shooting people with guns or throwing coconuts at them yelling "Die cunt!" as I do so. Now, if someone were to watch me play, someone who doesn't play many games, he/she would probably think I was displaying violent tendencies. They would think that playing that game put me in a violent state of mind. However, they don't realize that once I turn off the console, I don't act that way in the real world. For them to understand my experience, they would need to play the game and know how it feels to be immersed in a video game.

Many of these figures who are against video games are people like parents and teachers. Many parents don't actually play many games themselves and see their children exhibiting behaviour like mine. And I know for a fact, having played multiplayer games online and been to netcafes, that there are people who are worse than me when they game. Basically my point is, even though people of our generation, a lot of which play video games, disapprove of such theories, it's hard to blame some of these people for coming up with these opinions if they've never played many games in their lifetime.