A History of Virtual Violence

Apparently you can commit acts in certain video games which, if players were to do the same thing in real life, would constitute war crimes. Quite why anyone would conduct a study to establish this fact is beyond me. But they have. Moreover, they've called upon game designers to incorporate safety mechanisms within games to simulate the international laws which supposedly regulate the conduct of warfare, and would therefore prevent players from committing atrocities. Or, at the very least, make them aware that they are about to become a (virtual) war criminal. I have problems with all of this on several levels. Most significantly, I really can't be bothered to get worked up into a moral outrage over something that hasn't really happened - it's all just a game. Nobody really got killed. No real war crimes have ever been committed n the virtual world - because it isn't real. Of course, there's the hoary old question as to whether people's behaviour in the real world is affected by what they watch on TV or their games consoles. Personally, I've never been convinced that there is a causal link between experiencing make-believe violence and actually committing violent crimes. And why is it only horror films and war/action based games which supposedly cause violent outbursts in their viewers? Couldn't watching Holocaust on TV result in viewers finding themselves gripped by the urge to go up to Golders Green and murder thousands of Jews, as Peter Cook claimed on one the Derek and Clive records?

Of course, the critics would argue that that's the difference between games and most other forms of entertainment which depict violence - the lack of a moral framework. Books, films and TV series usually place violence within a social and legal contest, showing its consequences, whereas in games, the player rarely suffers any comeback as the result of their actions. True, but in real life, people generally don't stop to think of the consequences. After all, in the heat of battle, do combatants actually stop and think, "Oh God, I'd better not kill these prisoners as, under the Geneva Conventions, I could be tried as a war criminal!" The evidence of the Iraq war is that such international agreements do not act as a constraint for many participants, on all sides. Consequently, building them into games wouldn't be terribly realistic. Ultimately, it all comes back to the fact that these games are fantasies. The people who play them are never likely to even get close to doing any of the things they do in these games. Which, of course, is the whole point. Furthermore, there's the question of opportunity. Even if someone was to be influenced by playing, say, Call of Duty, and became a raving psychopath, the chances of them actually being able to re-enact anything from the game are minimal. Contrary to what the Daily Mail would have you believe, it is far easier to obtain a games console in this country than a firearm. Let alone hand grenades, flame throwers, bazookas, tanks and heavy artillery. At the end of the day, I'd rather people carried out virtual violence and war atrocities, rather than the real thing.