Video Game Violence Is Not Real: That’s The Point [Op-Ed]

Video game violence is not real.

I have yet to encounter an instance where someone actually committed true murder in a video game. Gamers who participate in violence in a video game are usually doing what they know would be illegal in the real world.

Some religious figures and politicians have been notorious for their insistence that video game violence is the cause of, or the same as, real world violence. A decade ago or so, it was Joe Lieberman, the US Senator from Connecticut, who claimed violent video games should be banned. Back around the start of the most recent console war between the Xbox One and the PS4, religious leader Franklin Graham stated that video game violence is real violence, and had nothing to back up his claim other than a few opinions based on what he claimed was in the Bible. In fact, a Fox News reporter actually showed him using factual data that he had no idea what he was talking about, as previously reported by The Inquisitr.

Now once again, we have Pat Robertson, a Southern Baptist minister much like Franklin Graham and his late father Billy Graham, saying that video game violence is the same thing as violence in real life, as also previously reported by The Inquisitr.

Here are the facts. Japan has much more violent video games, and their murder rate is less than half of that in the US. After you shoot someone in the head in a game like Call Of Duty, and then turn the game off, no blood was spilled and the only real damage was to the time playing the game. Many gamers these days use violent video games as a way to vent their frustrations from the real world, and none of the violence committed in those games has ever resulted in a real world fatality.

I’m a gamer who has played several violent video games, and I’ve never been to jail once, nor have the police ever knocked on my door and arrested me for murder. Those things never happened because I never murdered anyone after indulging in video game violence.

Of course, the politicians will point to the school shootings in the past decade and say that those kids who shot several of their schoolmates played violent video games. Okay, so what if I said James Holmes was a big Justin Bieber fan? If it were true, would that mean that listening to Justin Bieber makes you a killer?

The point is, just because violent kids happened to like a certain kind of media, that doesn’t mean the media made them do it. Those kids were probably angry at the people they killed, or severely mentally ill, or their parents didn’t do anything to stop them.

All violent video games do is give people with possible violent tendencies an outlet so they don’t commit murder in real life. Let me know when someone actually murders someone else after engaging in video game violence. Otherwise, religious and political leaders, keep your mouth shut and stick to what’s actually in the Bible, and other facts.

Do you think video game violence actually leads to real world killing?