Whenever a particularly violent video game — Grand Theft Auto, say, or the new Bully — hits the market, researchers and pundits renew the debate over whether shoot-‘em-up games increase players’ inclination to real-life violence. In The Wilson Quarterly, reporter Chris Suellentrop attempts to place that debate in a broader context, drawing on the history of game playing and the rising popularity of “serious gaming.”
Mr. Suellentrop makes note of the U.S. Army’s embrace of video games, which are now being used to recruit soldiers and to train them in how to handle their weapons. To critics of video-game violence, “the affinity between gaming and soldiering may seem nightmarishly logical,” he writes.
But Mr. Suellentrop is quick to point out that even the Army’s training games “don’t reward indiscriminate slaughter, the shoot-first-ask-questions-later bluster that hardcore gamers deride as ‘button mashing.’” And a growing number of theorists, he adds, have argued that all video games — even those crude button mashers — have at least a modicum of educational value. (Thanks to The Kept-Up Academic Librarian for the link.) —Brock Read
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