Video game controversy Essay Example for Free

Video game controversy Essay Introduction â€Å"FIFA†, â€Å"Battlefield†, â€Å"Grand Auto Theft†, these are some popular video games from the last decade. If you are born after 1990s, you definitely have heard or played one of these games. Video or computer games have rapidly growing for the last decade, especially for teenage boys, it is a necessity entertainment for them. As of 2001, roughly 79 percent of America’s youth played video games, many of them for at least eight hours a week. (Layton, Julia, 2008) However both mass media and researchers start to make concerns on that video games are affecting the behavior of our generation, of the way they think or distinguish things. So is video hazardous or is it just what the ideal public wanted it to be like? As for myself, I personally agree with what the media was concerning about. The main assumption the media are making is that video games are contributing inadequate message to teenagers, which made them receive information that they are not able to digest yet and let them believe the world in video games are the same as reality without any consequences. Gender inequality still happen? â€Å"In mass media, male characters appear more frequently, talk significantly more, and engage in noted behaviors more, such as achieving and showing leadership†(Thompson Zerbinos, 1995). Women are usually recognized as subordinate and passive dependent to men. (Yi Mou Wei Peng, 2008) Basically all the popular video games are made for men. â€Å"FIFA†, â€Å"NBA†, â€Å"Grand Auto Theft† are all men game, the first two are sports game, and there is girls leagues however they are not making for girls due to small market share so that they cannot have one sport game that using their favorite players to play instead have to play the men one or choose not to play. In the game â€Å"Biohazard†, the story line has one girl character, even so she is just a subordinate of the other men character, she needs to follow what the men order is and cannot work alone because men are the leader and they have the power. When teenagers play these sorts of games, they might tend to start not to respect girls since they saw in game that they have all the power and girls cannot overrule them. It is unlikely for teenagers to identify right or wrong when different resources have different answers. Gender stereotyping When you see a black man on the street, your natural reactions are to try to avoid any contact with them because deep in your mind, you have this image implied that they are most likely criminal. According to my research, black men are more likely to be portrayed as criminal; Asian men and girl are usually portrayed as culturally ignorant and submissive. (Yi Mou Wei Peng, 2008) In the game â€Å"Grand Auto Theft†, game character are mostly brown and black men, it hardly will be a white person, when you keep playing it, it will be likely that you have already convey this image that most of the brown and black men were bad people. In addition, teenagers who played a lot of video games received this image might easily get affected by it and will lose the chance to think critically, also lack of knowledge or direct contact with these race made their attitude stronger and have misunderstanding once they saw them. Starting from ancient time, women usually work as a prostitute. In Dietz’s (1998) study shows that women are likely generally in four stereotypes, which is sex objects or prizes, victims, feminine role or heroes and action character. It is not surprising that 28% of women character were portrayed as sex objects based upon physical appearance or sexually-oriented actions. (Yi Mou Wei Peng, 2008) You may argue that women are portrayed or treated as this were a while before, and it can trace back to long time ago, in addition it will not be because of video games. However, in a YouTube video that shows a video game named â€Å"Grand Auto Theft†, there is scene or gameplay that the character could find a hooker and have sexual conduct with him. (GTA 5 Sex with hooker, 2013)Children and Teenagers brains usually are still developing, and that made them more easily to receive whatever information they get from video games. In addition, it may lead to teenagers who are not mentally ready for it and will not be able to differentiate if it is logical or not. So this brings to my question before, does video games affect how women are portrayed? I would said it is, it is true that women got more attention and get respect more nowadays, but if they created this sort of scene in a video game, it means that they have no reflection. Also they have made the situation worse than before because they have insert scene, which should have a parent guide before teenagers play, in order to that, they let them to gain access to it way too easy and may eventually encourage them to start of prostituting. Dream or reality. â€Å"A game can be more fun when you get the chance to act and be like your ideal self† explained by social psychologist Dr. Andy Przybyisk. (Nauert, Rick, 2011) Studies have been said that people play video games to try and get close to an† ideal self† and not to escape reality is not true, allowing them to play a new identity will make themselves feel better such as increasing their self esteem. (Mail Outline, 2011) From my research, it said people do not watch television like playing video games. They interact with them; games are also based on reward system. So when we started played in video games, we may attach personally feelings and insensibly involved too much and start losing our true identity and eventually become very addict to the character in game and cannot extricate them. Since reward from these games are high and gamers might get what they cannot get in reality, the respect or the attention that they could not earned. That is why they want to seek all of this in game, in addition losing themselves in video games and might not even be able to know which one is reality or dream. One Taiwanese teenage played forty hours video game without eating and sleeping are a good example at how he is losing his own identity during his game. He is playing a game named â€Å"Diablo III†, which his identity character in the game do not need to eat or sleep. In addition time passed by so fast and he is extremely concentrated on adapting to his new identity, he completely forgot about reality, which later he cannot escape it anymore. (Andy, 2011) In conclusion, video games do affect a children growing healthily for now. However I do not think it will be a good idea to kick this entertainment away from teenagers. In the 1950s, lots of people blamed comic books for kids’ behavior, but look at where has it become now. â€Å"Batman†, â€Å"Superman†, â€Å"Iron Man†, these classic comic who once was getting blamed on turned into a great movie one after another. â€Å"Entertainment has always made a great scapecoat†. It has been blamed by years. Although I do agree that company need to carefully produce their product, I think that people have responsibility too. As I stated before, a teenagers died from playing over forty hours of game, to be honest, before doing anything you should have known where your limits are and you should been able to control it. It is similar to eating, if you eat or drink way over what your body should absorb then for sure you will get fat or diabetes from it. However at this moment It has derivative too big of a problem that makes people worry about such as shootings from The United States, teenagers died from gaming a numerous time. I understand it is nearly impossible to control every bodies mind, despite that; company should create games that could pursuit our happiness and at the same time be responsible to the society. Point being is to balance the work that they are doing, mass media are always concerns about public safety, if the public are getting threatened by it, they will use all of their power to try tear you apart, media influence is extremely strong, so if they can show a good balance between games and society, when they got trust then video games will definitely last forever as a good entertainment to teenagers. Yi Mou Wei Peng(2008). Gender and Racial Stereotypes in Popular Video Games IGI Global, 922-937 GTA 5 Sex with a hooker (2013). Retrieved from http://www. youtube. com/watch? v=VM1d5icyHVA Layton,Julia(2008) â€Å"Do violent video games lead to real violence? † HowStuffworks Retrieved from http://electronics. howstuffworks. com/video-game-violence. htm Nauert, Rick (2011) â€Å" Playing with Personality and esteem in video games† Psychcentral. Retreived from http://psychcentral. com/news/2011/08/04/playing-with-personality-and-esteem-in-video-games/28349. html Kilhefner, Johnny(2013) â€Å"Identity Crisis: The Search for Character and Self in Videogames†. Retrieved from http://www. popmatters. com/feature/163393-dolls-and-characters-in-video-games/ â€Å"Video gamers play to ‘adopt’ a new identity and experience superpowers(2011) MailOnline. Retrieved from.