Videogames: A Discursive Essay

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Videogames: A Discursive Essay

Whenever the issue of the benefits and harms of videogames has been brought up, the responses are always controversial. The importance of this subject is derived from its popularity amongst the masses, most significantly in children of the ages of 11-16. If these children are going to make up the next generation, it is imperative that we investigate the effects they have.

The incentive people have to play videogames stem from the idea that they are real-life simulations from the graphics and sound to the interactivity. In addition to this, the game developers are employing a new strategy in order to attract customers: they claim, while backed up by doctors and researchers, that they have medical benefits. This is in the midst of research and claims linking videogames with violence, crime, photosensitive epilepsy, headaches, hallucinations, nerve and muscle damages and even obesity in the long run. While it is confirmed that long hours spent playing videogames could cause Repetitive Strain Injury, this would apply to almost any other activity which involved computers and the television.  

Videogames and Violence

The notion that videogames are linked with violence is a very common objection people have with videogames. In the year 2000, the observer reported that a “definitive” piece of research had been published showing that “physiological damage could be inflicted on even occasional players of videogames”. They cite as an example of this the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado where two teenage boys killed twelve class mates in addition to the teacher and themselves. In a video they left behind, they stated that the slaughter would be just like “doom”.

Game developers and those working for them disagree. They bring forward the principle “correlation is not causation”. They assert that such people as the teenagers mentioned above were already mentally disturbed which is why they were attracted to the game in the first place. They contend that the results would be similar whether they watched a violent or TV program and that the game did not specifically alter the workings of their brains to cause such results.

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On the other hand, the study cited by the Observer, maintains that playing such videogames are more detrimental since when watching a violent movie you are merely observing, while the player of the videogame is actively identifying his/herself with the aggressor. Another study, also quoted in the Observer’s article, run by someone who had studied 300 college students declared that the adolescents who make up the majority of the demographics with regard to videogames, are still in the process of developing their ideas and attitudes. He believes that the graphically violent scenes of many of the games are going unnoticed by ...

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