The Chicken or the Pixelated Egg

I've always had a relatively pussy way of playing through Grand Theft Auto games. My friend, who's loaned me the games in the past, would occasionally mock me for not killing people unless it was pertinent to the current mission. In his eyes, I was not fully capitalizing on the freedom the series famously affords the gamer. I was lovin' it nonetheless, but that's not to say that accidents didn't happen. I've flattened several computer-generated pedestrians during a high-speed chases, but I insist that many of them were jaywalking at the time. And yes, one time I did kill a computer-generated old lady with a katana, but it too was an accident, for I was trying to hit a rival gangmember who was filling me with bullets from a Tec-9, and the lady's pixels were tragically within the arc of my swing. I could barely concentrate for the rest of the day.

She didn't have to die.

Needless to say, most gamers don't approach the GTA games like I do, which is why the video game industry is under the increasing scrutiny of lawmakers and parents. Lately the battle over adult content is going back and forth. Still hurting from the Hot-Coffee scandal, Take-Two Interactive might change the name of its upcoming game, Bully, in Europe to calm protestors (it's Canis Canem Edit now -- Latin for Dog Eat Dog). So game developers are smoothing some edges from their games in response to widespread criticism, but they're not losing the free-speech front. Last week Louisiana courts blocked a measure to ban the sale of M-rated games to children -- a measure that sounds similar to what we already adhere to with R-rated films or parental advisory music, but it's much more restrictive (Theaters and retailers are not federally bound to bar minors from such purchases -- they enforce those rules themselves as part of agreed practice). The "anti-game crusaders," led by the likes of Florida attorney Jack Thompson and Sen. Hillary Clinton, aren't going to get any of their proposals passed this way. They're trying to argue the corrupting nature of violent video games in order to pass more restrictions purchasing mature content, but their lack of evidence will continue to stifle them.

First off, this anti-game camp likes to swing "scientific studies" like a club. But what they're holding most of the time is only a whiffle bat: pro-ban prosecutors and politicians are particularly proud of any that claim individuals who play violent video games tend to behave aggressively. I see nothing inherently wrong with that statement, but hopefully one bears in mind that it adds absolutely nothing to their argument. These studies fail to take into account the possibility that violent people are perhaps drawn to violent video games to begin with, and these people could have initially been "made" aggressive by unrelated means. This is much like the study that recently came out linking increased sexual activity in teens with the listening of modern hip hop. That shouldn't shock you either, but with this study also, scientists can't truly say which propensity begat the other; they can only infer that the behaviors maybe reinforce one another, at the most.

Now, if San Andreas or Bully could be proven to mold a naturally non-violent person into a beligerent one (or "train him/her to kill", as Jack Thompson insists) with no other discernable socializing factors involved in the process, then they've got something resembling tested evidence. We'd know which one was the cause for the other. But researchers would have to devise a study satisfying all those criteria, and I'm glad that's not my job.

But all media, I'm convinced, not only influence a culture's tastes but are in turn dictated by them. You can complain about the pervasiveness of Nick and Jessica news coverage in lieu of the reconstruction woes in New Orleans, but ask yourself: Aren't we getting just what we want? (Sites like Yahoo News list the day's Top Viewed and Emailed stories if you're ever curious about what we've been wanting lately) Although it's reasonable to say that the onslaught of trifling celebrity drama stories, for example, helps fasten them into our American consciousness, a strong affinity for celebrity worship had to be there for us to buy the crap in the first place. You don't stay in business as a news network, magazine, and yes -- video game publisher -- unless you can cater to your audience's already-existing tastes.

I'm led to believe it's a give and take. So when it comes to video games, something has to be there within us to want to venture out and virtually behead a prostitute, as it were, or thin out a crowd of zombies with a lawnmower (Dead Rising). That drive may have come from other mature video games, but that's giving games too much credit -- I'm thinking movies, music, TV, politics, poverty, family, life, in addition. We should be just as concerned with the societal factors that lead to the popularity of Mature-rated games among kids as we are about their influences on their behavior. If not more so.