Don't Hate the Player...Hate the Person Behind the Player

In class one day, we viewed a video called Game Over. This video was about violent videos games and how the affect people who play them. 90% of American households have video games, to which people play about 2 hours per day. Throughout the movie, there were different sections in which video games were broken down in. Video games have began to be more and more interactive emotionally and psychologically, by allowing people to actually become the character. Realism is the holy ground of video games, and what draws people in to the violent ones. Video games tend to be very true to life, in the sense that you are the character fullfilling each and every mission sent to accomplish. They are very violent and explicit, showing off the anger that the characters hold in the game.

The characters in the game are another issue that video games have. They give children and even adults a warped sense of what people should look like. Men tend to be hyper masculine, who are large, mean, muscular, loud, and rude. Men are viewed as violent in many of the video games that people choose to play. They force other characters to give them what they want. In wrestling games, the character taunts and bullies the other players, forcing them to give in to their demands through intimidation.

^ The character abover, from Call of Duty: Black Ops is a typical character from a war game. He is hypermasculine, with large muscles, tattoos all over, angry, and violent. (Retrieved from Google Image)

Women on the other hand, in video games, are depicted at the damsel in distress, typically. They tend to be of white ethnicity with large breasts, small waist, pretty faces, and skimpy clothes. It is rare that a female is the main character in a game, however, there are some that have them. Laura Croft Tomb Raider is one of the rare games that has a lead woman character. She is very energetic in the game, and has the common women features that games give off. Women are often sexual objects in video games, which carries out to the real world.

^Above is a picture of Laura Croft Tomb Raider. She is small, with large breasts, a pretty face, and a little waist.

^The woman above is from Grand Theft Auto she is the typical slutty character with large breats, a pretty face, and little clothing.

Race in video games is generally stereotypical. Black men are often looked at as gangsters and bad guys, and whites as the main characters and heros.

Violent video games are negatively affecting young men and women. Through the characters and missions that they are sent on, they learn how to become more violent in life. They are taught through games that violence is normal and that it is accepted. They are rewarded with each person that they kill and taught that stereotyping people is ok. However, even though video games are mostly negative, they do have there positive roles too. F.A.T or fire arm training, is used to train men and women in the military. It is set up just like a video game, where they take on the role of the shooter. However, they are the good people and are shooting the enemies. They are punised if they shoot the wrong player, and they are rewarded for good. This allows them to become part of war and train to see what it is "like."

Images were retrieved from Google images. Information gathered from Game Over.