![]() We all clutch the special edition Smash Bros. My kids and I have been playing Super Smash Bros. It provides structured and safe competitive aggression without fetishizing pain, gore, or destruction. Wii U, which has no blood, no real injuries, and is structured in such a way that it encourages defensive rather than offensive action, does the same thing. We learned NOT to use violence to resolve conflicts we had with our friends, peers, and siblings. There’s an appropriate place and time for everything. These games actually taught us that aggression belonged in organized play and particular settings. Plus, these games provided constructive ways and appropriate opportunities to let out our natural aggressive energies. It mostly ended in giggling and exhaustion. This kind of play didn’t teach us to be violent. And “Socker Boppers” were giant inflatables that you put on your hands in order to make hand-to-hand combat safe-imagine a cross between a beach ball and a boxing glove. When I was a kid, we did lots of swimming pool chicken fighting. Why is it nobody’s worried about that? Because obviously real-life carnival and theme park games in which players physically embody the act of bashing animal skulls won’t create sociopathic pre-teens. Whack-a-mole is also really violent but nobody would rate that “only suitable for general audiences 10 years of age and older.” Still, I imagine we’d seriously medicate any kid that went around whacking real animals with a giant mallet. And it is not just an issue when it comes to video games. ![]() It seems obvious, therefore, that in order to really talk intelligently about video game violence, we’d need some specific language with which to categorize and bracket out the innocuous aggression that plays a part of most games. After all, the word violence comes from the Latin “Violentia” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “use of force, aggressiveness, passionateness.” If you’re passionately absorbed in trying to defeat your opponent, you may be experiencing violentia. ![]() And even Pong reminds me that there is something inherently violent about competition. Frogger gets flattened on his way across the street. For example, there’s nothing in the Iliad or the Odyssey that bothers me-and many fairy tales are horribly gorey-but place that violence in familiar real life settings and (in most cases) it feels more voyeuristic than it does meaningful.Īlmost all video games feature some sort of violence. This has nothing to do with blood or gore it has to do with whether or not the narrative violence serves a psychological function. ![]() There’s a distinction to be drawn between mythological violence and realistic violence. However, the comment shows me that I have not adequately communicated the nuances. My nine year old recently told me that he thought my version of hell would involve “people smoking cigarettes and being violent while not thinking for themselves.” I’m glad my messaging has gotten through so clearly. I won’t let them anywhere near realistic first person shooters. ![]()
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