Does a gruesome virtual death translate to something more frightening in real life? If so is it actual violence or is it something else more or less malicious? This is the basis of my research question, which is, do video games lead to more aggression amongst its players? The research is being conducted in order to look at if violent video games lead to a heightened sense of aggression. On one side of the argument there are people who will claim that video games do not cause aggression or violence. These are people who most likely play or make video games, and who might feel like something they enjoy is being attacked. On the other hand there are people who will most likely disagree with me, these are people who think that video games lead to real life violence and tragedies such as the Sand Hook shooting. Organizations such as Moms against violent video games, or Jack Thompson the anti video game lawyer, are both parties of people who do not play video games and who will disagree with me. With tragedies such as Columbine, or the Sandy Hook shooting that have occurred in the recent past, more and more people are blaming video games for these incidents. While games do cause increased aggression, I think that knowing what triggers the aggression will help everyone look at theses incidents with a well informed mind which is important, so that everyone can benefit and hopefully stop these tragedies through learning what does not cause them. Before we can start to unravel this argument there is a key difference that needs to be discussed and that is the difference between violence and aggression. Violence is the act of attempting to injure someone or hurt them. Like for example punching someone in the face. An aggressive act would be to look at someone and say that you might punch them in the face but in the end you do not. This is an important definition when looking at the difference between aggression and violence and what it causes in someone, and what factors can effect someone’s aggression.

The American Psychological Association is an organization that is based on finding the knowledge to better society through researching different topics. Which brings me to the first article by the American Psychological Association, which is titled, “Technical Report on the Review Of The Violent Video Game Literature.” This is a review of literature done by the American Psychological Association in, which it looks at a couple of definitive factors that need to be thought of while looking at this topic. The literature review looks at different varying factors such as age, gender, level of exposure and aggressive behavior. The study, which was written by seven people who all with PhDs, concludes that the research is not conclusive enough to say that any of these factors have enough evidence to make a conclusive statement that video games do or do not cause violence despite age, gender, or level of exposure. This helps me narrow down my argument in two ways. First being that despite what people might have thought before hand, level of exposure does not affect level of aggression. This also allows the argument to actually be simpler because of the fact that it is not a multi faceted argument because the genders and age do not need to be separately looked at. This also makes much more research viable because of the fact that there is no need to factor in multiple things when looking at some research because of the fact that it is not proven to have huge differences in the levels of aggression and certain factors.

Forbes published an article titled “At Long Last, Video Game Aggression Linked To Losing, Not Violence,” which discusses exactly that video games and losing. In the article they cite an oxford study in order to discuss the repercussions that video games have to the players overall feelings and attitude after playing a game. This article talks about how the subjects would be annoyed while “Being bad at even a non-violent version of the game was more rage-inducing than playing a violent version with instruction” (Tassi). This shows that players of a video game do not need violence in a video game in order to feel aggression, they just need to feel incompetent through failure. This shows that someone does not necessarily need to commit a violent action in order to feel incompetent, so that they then start to act aggressively.

Another article discussing incompetence is titled “Aggression from Video Games 'Linked to Incompetence.'” In this article published by “BBC,” it discusses a game titled “Half life 2,” a game that is rather graphic in the normal version of the game. In the base version of the game, the player shoots humans and aliens alike. This game is considered to be fairly graphic having earned a mature rating for intense violence, but there was a modded version of the game where enemies would be tagged and evaporated instead. This made the game much less violent, and in turn would hypothetically cause people to show less or no aggression while playing the game because no one would die. While this in actuality is not the case. People who played the violent and non-violent version of the game showed the same amount of aggressive behavior. The thing that tied them together was again a feeling of incompetence. As the article states “some of the gamers were given a tutorial before playing the game so they could familiarize themselves with the controls and game mechanics… the players who had not had the tutorial who felt less competent and more aggressive, rather than people who had played the more violent version of the game” (Lee). This shows how people who play games are not becoming violent from the violence, but rather the anger that comes from not being able to properly do something, an anger from of inability to properly play the game. Something that can be felt in other activities as well, such as a board game. A video titled “Why Video Games Make You Aggressive” made by Joe Bereta, argues the same thing that incompetence leads to aggression. The video does discuss the repercussions of feeling incompetent with the statement “When the experience involves threats to our ego, it can cause us to be hostile and mean to others” (Bereta). This again comes back the idea of incompetence, that being that a sense of incompetence can really lead someone to be upset and feel like as if they are not fit to play a game or as if they are not fit. What all three of these studies are saying is that violent or not, videogames are not necessarily what is harmful to people, it is the inability to do well that is harmful.

Know while I can discuss how video games can make someone violent, their had been no proof of someone first hand getting annoyed by a game, through their incompetence. Enter Michael Jones, someone who made a very popular series on YouTube called rage quit. The premise of the show is very simple, he would play and game and he would then yell at the game. The one video that stands out the most is the video titled “Rage Quit – Mirrors Edge.” In the video Michael is yelling because he is unable to figure out how to finish the level and he is getting upset. In other words through his own incompetence he is getting annoyed and aggressive. The very beginning of the video starts with Michael yelling “Fuck” (Jones) as he fails to make a jump. This shows just how upset someone can get through their own failure. He is failing to properly play the game and because he is showing incompetence, he getting aggressive letting his emotions go through expletives and yelling.

The video “Why Video Games Make You Aggressive,” also near the end of the video brings the point up of could incompetence in other games such as monopoly cause someone to also their ego attacked and become upset and cause aggression? To this point, he is correct. In an article published in website called “Kotaku,” titled “The Top 5 Board Games That Really Will Ruin Friendships,” the article discusses how some board games like Twilight imperium and Space Marauders will ruin friendships. How so? Well the author Stephen Totilo talks about how someone can be a sore loser but also an “incompetent” (Totilo) player. Incompetence the same thing that has been discussed in the last three sources is still the trigger for some people to become more aggressive and get angry or annoyed over a video game. This article confirms the claim that Joe bereta made, that being any game, even monopoly can cause aggression. Why? Because games like Twilight imperium are board games, and any form of game where incompetence can be shown will rile some people up. This article proves that any game that can have a player with enough incompetence can cause aggression in any player, not just video games as long as the player is invested enough in the game that is being discussed or looked at. This is vital to remember in order or people to realize that while video games do cause aggression so do board games and it is simply whenever a new medium of media that come out it is blamed for something.

In another article titled “A Review of the Effects of Violent Video Games on Children and Adolescents” the article looks at three factors that cause someone to show a more aggressive response to a medium like video games rather than something such as television. These three factors being video games have active participation, they reward violent behavior, and they are able to connect a relationship with the character and player better than what television can do. These are all three distinct but important traits. None of these three traits go against the American Psychological Associations list of traits that are inconclusive in whether or not a player is affected, and shows that just incompetence can lead to aggression in a player.

Two of the three traits that the article “A Review of the Effects of Violent Video Games on Children and Adolescents” directly coincide with the argument that video games cause aggression through aggression through incompetense. These two traits being they have active participation, and they connect a player and the character so that a relationship is formed. This pairs well with the “BBC” study that was mentioned earlier stating that people would get aggressive and angry when playing a video. It is because of the fact that when someone gets so invested in a game they start to feel not only like the character, but also the player has active participation in the success of the character where a connection was just made, so when failure happened it causes a stronger from a player. This shows more so that video can cause aggression.

In an article published by “Health Day” titled “Violent Video Games Don't Influence Kids' Behavior: Study” it claims that video games do not cause aggression in children. In fact it states that “The researchers also said they discovered that kids who played video games for less than an hour a day were more likely to be less aggressive and rated as better-behaved by their teachers” (Dotinga). While this article might have brought up some interesting points with that statement it is factually wrong so the points are made moot.  The article uses a journal from two thousand eleven, titled “Psychology of Popular Medial Culture” in order to back up its claim. While this might initially sound like a strong counter argument there are a couple of important things to think of. First being in the American Psychological study cited earlier it states that play time has no proven effects on behavior. This would go against what was stated in the “Health Day” article. This also goes against the fact that video games have reverse effects of aggressive behavior saying that children who play games have less aggressive behavior. The journal cited in the article is old, being over six years old, rather than the “BBC”, “Forbes,” and “YouTube” video sources that are all recent, which stated that video gamed do cause aggression that also debunks the article claim that there is no effects on behavior and video games played. The website that this article was published on also seems to be aimed towards parents and could shows some bias that it could want parents to feel a peace at mind while knowing their children play video games. The article is clearly misinformed, it shows how while not all, but most of the counter arguments are either based on old data like this article, or based on opinion and what the author is guessing rather than on proven fact.

In conclusion I do not in fact think that it is bad that video games lead to more aggression amongst its players. There is a lot of research that shows that yes video games lead to an increase in aggression in its players. Not only does the research add up between the Forbes article, ther BBC article and Youtube Video all stating that video games don’t lead to violence, and The article “A Review of the Effects of Violent Video Games on Children and Adolescents,” also states that video games lead to aggression because of the direct player to game character link, it is safe to say that video games lead to heightened aggression. The research that has been done, is being used to combat the idea that video games do not cause real life aggression is out dated data, and is factually wrong. With that being said video games are being blamed for recent tragedies such as the Sandy Hook shooting or Columbine. There are also people who believe that video games do and do not cause real life aggression. Between the two arguments, the research is shown to back up the claim of the former. None of the studies that have just been presented except for one shows that video games as do in fact cause an increase in aggression. With these recent tragedies being blamed on video games people have been becoming more and more defensive and have been refusing to accept any arguments. As someone who plays video games themself it is time to face the facts and realize that video games cause violence. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact it is better to realize that video games do cause aggression. For two reasons one being that an educated argument will usually beat an argument based off of an opinion. With people blaming real life violence on video games they are not educated, so learning the facts and educating people does nothing but good by showing them the facts. This also allows for growth of a community. Showing that people are not making emotional arguments over something that they love, but rather making an argument with fact and something that they love, on how to prevent these mass shootings instead of blaming them on something like video games that has no link to real life violence and video game violence.
