Violence, Video Games, and Regulation

Prelude: When I was in elementary school, I can recall some horror stories that were related to me by well-meaning adults who were concerned about the violence and satanic influence of Role Playing Games. They were certain that anyone who threw the 12 sided die was going to end up on a murder streak one day because they were giving their soul to the Devil.

15 years passed and then there was a new enemy: Violent Video Games

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The first game I played with any sort of violent content (other than Super Mario Bros where Mario would squash evil turtles and spit fireballs at Koopas) was Wolfenstein 3D. It gave me headaches because the motion on the screen was a little jumpy and my eyes hurt because I often forgot to blink. Now, it was a really innovative game when it came out, but it almost seems arcane compared to the sort of graphic generators gaming developers are using to create hits like Halo and Call of Duty.

And game play wasn't nearly as popular as it is today. I think there were only a handful of other kids in my class who had a PC and maybe a handful more who had an NES (or a SNES). Gaming wasn't something that was "cool." It was something that the socially awkward gravitated toward. The kind of kids who were verbally abused and teased by all the other kids in school.

So, to pin violence in kids directly on violence in video games may have been a bit of a stretch 10-20 years ago when I was growing up. It may have been violent video games that caused Columbine and other school shootings- but it could have been that these kids had suppressed anger issues from years of abuse by other children and suddenly they snapped.

Since the video game industry is only about 30 years old, there's hasn't been an awful lot of research on the effects of gaming, but limited studied have shown that non-violent video games are actually a positive influence on children (assuming that video game play is restricted to a few hours per week).

Positives include:
- Introduction to computer technology.
- Practice in following directions.
- Practice in problem solving and logic.
- Practice in use of fine motor and spatial skills.

Violent video gaming, however, is another story. Early studies are showing that violent games really do have an impact on aggressive tendencies. In fact, one study I found showed that in adolescent boys, the least aggressive gamers who play violent video game are more prone to violent aggression than the most aggressive boys who don't play any video games.

(The only flaw I find in the study is that there's a possibility that those with a predisposition to aggression may be the ones who are also playing video games, but the fact remains that whether it's descriptive or prescriptive- violent video games are at the very least associated with violence if not an agent of aggravating violent tendencies.)

There's some good news about violent video games, however. The gaming industry has been rather quick to respond to early research and they put a rating system in place even before the FCC got involved after the Columbine Shootings. The industry realized that they would have to self regulate or the government would step in and "help" them regulate their material. So they came up with a rating system (E, for everyone; T, for teen; M, for mature; etc.) and refuse to sell games with violent content to minors. Secret shoppers have found that they are compliant with their own regulations about 80% of the time which means that they're pretty close to the compliance percentages among tobacco, alcohol, and firearms (all of which have state or federal regulations regarding age).

That said, my question for today is this:

Does the Gaming Community (violent video games in particular) need a government regulator / watchdog system to ensure that minors are not purchasing mature content?

Feel free to discuss.