Cory GuthrieWriting 1Mr. VanLoocke9/06/2018Do the Games We play Cause Violence?My name is Cory Guthrie I am a freshman at Youngstown State University and I have recently read the article The Irony Of the Jacksonville Mass Shooting. This article talks about the mass shooting that happened at the Madden NFL video game tournament in Jacksonville Florida and brings up the question: is the violence we see in videogames inspiring people to do horrific acts like this one? In my honest opinion I do believe that video games may be inspiring people to do these unspeakable acts, but videos games are not the sole cause of violence in our society and things like emotions tie in largely to violence in society.The main reason I believe that video games is one of the factors that cause violence in today’s world is the fact that video games are now largely advertised and companies’ will use their popularity to their advantage. Let’s look at one of the most popular games in the world today Fortnite.

This game is dominating the online gaming community almost entirely and probably will be for the next several years. Even people who have never played the game can tell you the basic information about the game because of all the advertisements that are played on the internet before a good portion of videos on YouTube. But this raises the question is can Fortnite be inspiring the violent outburst we see in today’s society? Well the answer is no I do not believe that Fortnight itself is inspiring the violence.

The reason I don’t believe a game like Fortnite can be inspiring people to launch attacks on others is from what I’ve seen compared to games of the past this is a very tame game when it comes to violence. But it’s actually the players who are causing the problems not the games. There are probably hundreds of thousands of videos of players loosing and getting angry about it. But this isn’t a new trend caused by Fortnite but the spike in the number of videos of kids getting angry over a video game is alarming. These videos involve players who violently act out after losing a game. The thing that scares me about these videos is how the age of the players fluctuate drastically from eight-year olds actually managing to break their consoles and television sets to thirty years olds crying and moaning over losing.All of these videos say a lot about the world we live in today, a world where a parent is willing to record their young child playing a video game meant for adults and getting upset when they lose that game. The only reason for this is so that they can make a quick buck.

But in other games the player is forced to do violent actions which have inspired some terrorist attacks. In the game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 there is a mission called No Russian where the player is forced to commit a massacre in a Russian airport that kills hundreds of innocent civilians. This wasn’t a side quest this was a part of the campaign that the player had to do to continue through the game. Unfortunately, this mission itself was blamed for a terrorist attack on a Russian airport. So it is true that video games can inspire violent acts but when it comes down to it video games aren’t the sole source of violent acts people do.

A potentially even more influential cause of these violent acts are something that all humans have and that is emotions. Emotions have the most potential to inspire someone to commit an act of violence for the simple issue that as humans we have no controls over the emotions we experience and in some cases this can lead to us doing terrible actions.One of the emotions that draws out the worst in people is anger. Anger has the most potential to cause violent acts because not everybody knows how to control their temper. Some people are more vulnerable to anger and they let it consume them. This may cause the individual to cause harm to others and in severe cases end up killing people. Other people take out their anger in different ways like punching bags, running, and in some cases through violent video games.Another emotion is one I think everyone has experienced at least once in their lives and that is jealousy.

We’ve all seen something we liked but could never obtain like love, friends and glory. But jealousy can drive someone into doing the unimaginable wither it’s stealing a jewel from a museum or in severe cases kill for what then could never obtain. Probably the most influential emotion humans have is sadly hate. Hate is usually influenced by factors like family, culture and religion. Hate inspired things like racism against African Americans, the Holocaust and the 9/11 terrorist attack. Hate is an emotion that is usually passed on down the family tree and sadly still exist in our world today.So video games may be inspiring these acts of violence but they aren’t the sole reason violence is happening in todays society.

There are many reasons violence occurs in todays society and to blame just violent videogames is absurd. So I do agree with the fact that video games may be causing violence in the real world, just not to the extent some people believe.