Recently reported in The Guardian, a Norwegian man named Anders Behring Breivik admits to killing seventy-seven people in an act of “political violence.” He claims that he trained for the attack on a video game. The game in question, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for both computers and consoles, has been critically acclaimed for its realism and quality, and even won over a dozen awards from a variety of sources. Breivik claims that his interest in the game was as a realistic combat simulator, providing insight into “target acquisition” using a holographic gun sight. He also asserts that he isn’t the only one using the game for such purposes, but that even militaries use the game franchise to train their soldiers. According to my son who also enjoys the game, there are plenty of actual soldiers who enjoy the game when not on patrol. It had even been reported back in 2008 that some of the British military’s equipment was being controlled using an X-BOX 360 controller. Other reports show similar treatment for Wii and Playstation 3 controllers.
Such information has re-ignited the debate over video game violence and its effects on our youth. Let me say right now that the notion that games have a negative impact on our youth is preposterous. In the article, Breivik also mentions at length the contribution that World of Warcraft made; none at all. The game was strictly a hobby for him. He even took time to dismiss the notion that the game breeds anti-social behaviors, noting that it’s a game of strategy and team cooperation. However, if we look to the story of another, twelve year old Norwegian boy, Hans Jørgen Olsen, who saved himself and his sister in 2010 from a bull moose attack, we get a totally different impression from video games. Hans and his sister were hiking through the woods when they accidentally crossed paths with the moose. Fearing for his sister’s life, the first thing the boy did was ‘taunt’ the animal like a character in the Warcraft universe. Once his sister was safely away, he used a second move known as ‘feign death’. The moose lost interest in the “dead” boy since he was no longer a threat to his domain. If we look at both stories, the only thing we can say with certainty is that Norwegian children really take their games to heart.
What we have here is a trend of video games going back decades. The first arcade games hit the scene in 1971 with Computer Space followed within a year by Pong. The first personal computer game was a text-based dungeon crawl hosted on (and shortly thereafter deleted from) the University of Chicago’s PLATO interactive education system in 1974. Eventually, the potential for recreational gaming on computers led to an entire industry that is worth over $65 billion USD spread over a global market. Anyone who has played a vintage video game knows how endearingly simple the graphics engines were. It has been a constant goal of the industry to improve the quality of the images used, often leading to dramatic improvements in image processing engines. The fact that such games are so realistic that they may give people a queasy feeling is testament to the talent and dedication of two generations of programmers and game enthusiasts.
I think we can get a little more absurd, though. Everyone has seen the footage played on the cable news stations of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan featuring monkey bars. Al Qaeda apparently thought monkey bars were a more effective training tool than video games. Should we ban monkey bars in America because they create hardened terrorists? Children are impressionable, they absorb new information readily and store it away for use later. It helps them learn languages, overcome obstacles, and problem solve, which is precisely why video games are so valuable! There are only so many things you can learn by playing outside with your imagination or friends or imaginary friends, but if you can create a subtle way to teach a child math or science and make it fun to play then you have struck a parenting goldmine. However, if your child starts crushing turtles underfoot, spitting fireballs at your garden, and jumping down pipes, you might want to have them lay off the Super Mario.