In keeping with the dog and pony show spirit of American political discourse and decision making, Vice President Biden recently met with video game industry representatives to chat about violent video games, guns and cheat codes (for the grandkids).
This, of course, part of the storied tradition of due diligence in crafting policy.
Who can forget the landmark meetings between the U.S. government and Hot Wheels to discuss car safety in the wake of the Ford Pinto controversy?
Or when officials met with Milton Bradley/Hasbro, makers of the game Operation, to discuss new surgical and medical regulations?
How about when the makers of Monopoly were brought in to help bring antitrust charges against Microsoft?
Classic.
You can only solve serious problems with serious meetings. With video game industry reps. And gun lobbyists. Serious stuff.
These meetings are apparently only for the sake of keeping up appearances. To make it appear that we’re ‘doing something’.
It seems that if media outlets and pundits flap their jaws enough about anything, the government will have a meeting with someone about it.
Perhaps even create a task force.
A TASK FORCE!
So here we are. CNN headline: Gun violence task force meets video game leaders as debate continues
This particular powwow has to be the most nonsensical of all of them though since these weird things called ‘statistics’ don’t jibe with the purported purpose of the meeting. At all.
Chief amongst the findings in these ‘stats’, as nerds call them, is that while violence is on a precipitous decline, video game sales have soared:
More games, less violence: from the Electronic Software Association
What’s more is the fact that gun ownership has also been declining, from 47% in 1973 to 36% in 2011. Here’s a chart with an even longer timeline (you know what they say about longer timelines):
As you’d expect from the previous 2 charts, there’s a corresponding decline in gun violence:
From Bureau of Justice
There’s been a decrease in violent crime in general also:
From Gallup
Accordingly, homicides have also been falling, falling to the lowest levels since the 1960’s.
No increase in youth violence either, that one’s also on the decline (oddly enough, the average video game player age is 30):
From ChildStats.Gov
So while movies, tv, games, et cetera get increasingly more realistic in their violence, there’s no corresponding increase in real life MDK’s.
However, what has increased since 2001/2002-ish is the public’s perception of violence in America:
From Gallup
In other words, since just after 9/11 you’ve thought crime was going up, even though it hasn’t.
At all.
And no one’s been telling you.
Double :(.
The perception is that people are desensitized to violence because of the games. The reality seems to be that people aren’t complete idiots and tend to pick up on the fact that there’s a difference between games and actual lives.
Quick experiment; do you still believe in Santa?
If no, I think you get my point.
If yes, spoiler alert, he doesn’t.
Triple :(.
In a previous article about violence in America, I quoted Aristotle’s ‘The Poetics‘ and it’s certainly worth revisiting;
‘…a tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious…with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions’
Thus, playing violent games and seeing dramatized violence may have the opposite effect of what’s being bandied about by the NRA et al.
I.e., all that jazz might serve as a purging of those violent emotions rather than an instigator of violence.
Some studies show an increase in aggression among video game players, some don’t and point to the weak nature of the studies showing correlation/causation.
Nonetheless, some parents seem nervous and distressed about their kids and those violent games.
So while the VP meets with video game makers to talk seriously about things of no consequence, here’s an idea for you worried parents; if you’re concerned with your children playing violent video games, maybe, just maybe, you could stop being terrible parents.
More at CNN, Time, HuffPost, ProCon, Forbes (x2), Electronic Software Association and News Burner