My family was channel surfing the other day when we came across a program. I don’t know what the program was about or what context I was viewing it under, but one part stuck out before the channel changed.
For the two minutes or so that I was watching, the show detailed how a U.S. military unit attacked a group of people from what I think was a helicopter of some sort. I think what had been shown just before I looked up was that the unit had rained a hellacious volley of bullets upon these people, who were either insurgents or possibly some terrorist group. I don’t know for sure. Regardless, after their first shots, the pilots audibly pleaded for these people to pick up a weapon so that they could fire more shots at these people.
Suddenly, a makeshift ambulance arrived to pick up these wounded victims. The pilots asked for permission to engage the vehicle, which was granted. With glee, the pilots unleashed even more bullets, obscuring the people and ambulance from view as a giant dust cloud rose up.
The show cut to a man talking, who mentioned that while watching it, you could feel the pilots were detached, like they were playing a video game. I cringed for a second because of that. I was about to be up in arms over the mere idea that video games were being linked, yet again, to violence without good reason.
Then I stopped. I mulled it over. The person said the footage of the attack was like a video game — not that games caused it. As I thought about it, I agreed. The footage looked like the view from a helicopter in “Call of Duty,” “Battlefield” and any other war games about this time period I may be forgetting.
I should not cringe whenever video games are brought up in the mainstream media — which I hope to be a full-fledged member of someday soon. There should not be an inherent negative connotation associated with one source of entertainment. When a man is arrested for trying to imitate the latest car movie, we don’t blame the film industry for making entertaining films that some people want to imitate.
Yet for some reason, that’s the exact response we see when video games are involved in anything that is deemed newsworthy aside from this week’s E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which I am genuinely excited about for the first time in years.
Video games are entertainment and stress releasers — nothing more, nothing less. But they generate hits on websites and ratings for news broadcasts. It’s a highly volatile subject, one that is almost guaranteed to provoke viewer responses. It even provoked an entire column from me.
The best way for video games to move past this stigma of causing violence may sound counterintuitive. We gamers need to stop rallying around games as some holy and pure source of enjoyment that is above reproach. Our passion to defend games is partly what drives stories about them. Executives know we care, which essentially guarantees an audience.
The largest professional wrestling promotion, World Wrestling Entertainment, faced a crisis when one of its top stars, Chris Benoit, murdered his family and then himself in June 2007.
Despite the negative publicity and outcry that stemmed from it, WWE made it out of the situation just fine. They did so by taking a unique approach: Instead of denying that wrestling could have caused it, WWE treated the incident as an isolated event that, while tragic, was an anomaly, and the company moved on.
The same approach would assist gamers. Reacting as we do now only focuses on the games, not on other possible causes. As such, this will be my last column on this issue.
Logan Ladnyk is a UF journalism junior. His columns usually appear Tuesdays.
