Even as people across the nation
continue to mourn the children and teachers who were killed in the Sandy
Hook Elementary School shooting, the question of what drove killer Adam
Lanza to commit such a horrific crime is already being debated.
Violent video games were cited as an aggravating factor by some even
before it was discovered that Lanza was an avid fan of the "Call of
Duty" franchise -- a brand of enormously popular first-person war
shooters.
This should come as no surprise; in the wake of many earlier atrocities,
video games have shared in the blame. In the case of the 1999 Columbine
High School shooting, for example, perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold were found to have been obsessed with Id Software's classic
shooters "Doom" and "Wolfenstein 3D." This led to a host of accusations
that those titles played a role in encouraging mass murder. Yet research
on the subject appears inconclusive.
Some maintain that video games exert a deeper psychological effect than a
passive medium like film or television because the gamer takes an
active role in the violence at hand. Those who disagree point out that,
despite study after study, no tangible link has ever been established
between bloody video games and real-life violence. In fact, it's been
argued that just the opposite is true -- that "play" violence actually
provides an outlet for destructive urges that might otherwise be acted
on in reality.
Certainly video games by themselves do not a killer make, given that
millions who play them don't end up slaughtering children -- or harming
anyone, for that matter. Still, it seems quite likely that Harris and
Klebold's constant playing of "Doom" or Lanza's hours put into "Call of
Duty" may have brought previously latent tendencies to the fore.
How should gamers of faith view this issue? The teaching of the church
has always emphasized the personal nature of sin. While collective
factors or social trends may contribute to shaping misguided values,
each offense against God is first and foremost the chosen act of an
individual.
To say that violent video games can have negative effects on the
personality of the player is not to say that all gamers will go on to be
rampaging sociopaths. Still, interactive entertainment can affect real
world behavior to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the
individual's personality.
To look at what may be an analogous situation, a connection between
pornography and rape has been shown to exist. Not everyone who engages
with pornographic images becomes a rapist, of course. But, given the
consequences of original sin -- the burden of concupiscence that all
human beings bear -- the harmful effects of obscene material may take
their toll on otherwise well-balanced people in far subtler ways.
Such repercussions may range from an addiction that causes
responsibilities to be cast aside to an inability to form relationships
or a disposition to flout marital vows. The damage wrought by
mayhem-filled games may be equally insidious.
There is, obviously, a qualitative difference between the two
activities; unlike the use of pornography, playing video games is not
inherently sinful. But morally minded gamers should evaluate the kind of
influence to which they may be subject from the games they choose to
play. Will some offering enflame negative emotions or have a
desensitizing effect, inuring the player to actual violence?
Perhaps another useful comparison can be made with the art of cinema.
There is all the difference in the world, after all, between movies
nicknamed "torture porn" and films which necessarily include violence as
part of the story they have to tell; Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private
Ryan," for example. A similar gulf separates games that invite players
to relish opportunities for bloodletting -- the recently released
"Hitman: Absolution" would be a case in point -- and those in which
violence is merely incidental.
The Newtown tragedy should prompt more than just a discussion about how
violent games may affect the mentally disturbed. Rather, it should
inspire healthy players to take a step back and ask what the games they
play are doing to their minds and, by extension, to their hearts and
souls.