'Shoot-em-up' Games
The game I will be talking about, well games, are the well known and loved Call of Duty games series. These games have been around since for more than ten years as the first game made its debut in October 2003. Since then this game has been a dominant force in the gaming world, from its 0.4 million sales of the first call of duty to the 7.5 million copies sold only on the first day of the 9th game in the series.
All ten of the Call of Duty games are set in different time era's, from world war 2, to a 21st century cold war set in the future. They all have a campaign mode which is made up of missions you can play on several different difficulties, on your own or with a friend. These missions are put together into one big story and on some of the games include the same characters, weapons and surroundings.
On the 6th game in particular, Modern Warfare 2, there is a warning that comes on when you start the game to ask if you want to play a certain level in which you walk through a airport with a gun and you have to kill all the civilians you can see. This was even discussed in the house of commons by Labour's Tom Watson who said it was 'No worse than scenes in many films and books'.
Obviously with the game having an impact on this many peoples lives the questions have been raised, are these 'violent' games making the players violent outside of the games?. I have looked all over the Internet for an answer to this question but the responses are very mixed. Here is part of an article from Huffingtonpost.com, the article is entitled '8 Ways Violent Games Are Bad For Your Kids'. This was the 5th reason,
'Resolve Conflicts through Violence. Violent video games show kids how to express themselves physically, in a violent way. It's already way easier for a child to push another child when they're angry than to express their emotions and resolve a conflict through words. My boys have their fair share of quarrels, but I don't want them to learn they should resolve conflicts by hurting each other'.
When reading this I can see where she is coming from, but the whole idea is slightly far fetched. If a child is brought up to believe that something that happens in a game is acceptable in real life it is the person who has taught them that who should take responsibility. When I was brought up watching my older cousins and friends playing violent games such as Call of Duty it was pretty much common sense that although I did enjoy the games and enjoyed playing with toy guns etc that the type of behaviour and actions shown and used in the games simply were not not acceptable in the society that we live in.
In some cases there have been times where people have pointed the blame at Call of Duty games for horrible attacks in real life. For example Adam Lanza, who was responsible for the Sandy Hook elementary shootings. As soon as I searched for the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings and clicked on one of the first links there was a quote from his father that said he spent hours in the basement of their house playing Call of Duty, which I thought wasn't that bad as that isn't really that abnormal for a 20 year old boy. I then proceeded to look through some of the photos and videos that were posted along with the article on Dailymail.co.uk and was shocked at what I saw.
The videos consisted of walking through his house and showing the evidence that was used. His wardrobe was packed with varieties of ammunition, a Rifle and other bags of gun related equipment. There was also a photo posted of a small child dressed in camouflage holding a gun, with guns and ammunition in the background. This indicated to me that this particular person was heavily interested in guns and violence etc from a very small age and the Call of Duty games didn't really add to his obsession with guns and violence that much. It is stupid to point the blame at a game when someone has been brought up with guns around the house and an obsession with guns from even before these games were in production.
(Photo from dailymail.co.uk)
There are different types of audiences, passive audiences who are people who dont really have any input on the radio/tv programmes they are watching and listening to. They just believe anything that people broadcast without questioning it, looking at the source of their information or looking for other evidence about the story.
Then there is the active audiences that actually question the information they are hearing and actively partake in the information.
The hypodermic needle theory is the when the media inject information directly into the audience. this theory suggests that the media can influence a large amount of people directly and deliver a specific message to trigger the response they are looking for. This theory is sometimes called the 'Magic Bullet Theory'.
The evidence that this theory works that people just automatically believe anything they hear that is broadcasted on national media. For example there was a radio broadcast of war of the worlds and people who were tuning in half way through the broadcast believed it was a real alien invasion, this even lead to some people committing suicide. This is why being a passive audience is bad. Being part of an active audience is becoming more common as social media is growing and major broadcasted news is becoming more commonly using false information or miss interpreting information.
There is also a theory known as the uses and gratifications theory, which simply means that the user searches out a specific media type to full fill their needs and be satisfied with what they are doing. This theory suggests that the user plays an active role in the communication process and are goal orientated whilst they are using the media, this applies to many different categories of media and other subcategories within these categories.
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