These days it's practically a given that when you read your favorite gaming news sites or magazines, you're going to find at least one piece about some "expert" banging on about the horridly corrupting influence modern gaming is having on our youth and society at large. Recently, yet another unfair stab was taken at our entertainment of choice on (surprise, surprise) Fox television, as reported by GamePolitics.com. Using only the choice bits of a study, Dr. Bartell beats the drum of anti-gaming to the same rhythm we've been hearing for years. GamePolitics kindly provides a link the counter-argument in a response from the Harvard Crimson. You can read the report yourself here (PDF), but in a nutshell it only tells us that aggressive games can lead to an increase in aggressive behavior. So can playing football, but I digress...
There are plenty of other examples which I won't go into here. Rather, I'd like to point out the similarity between the current debate over video game violence and other "negative influences" in recent history. Since I can only personally relate to those from the 1980's onwards, I'm going to begin there, although I'm sure my argument can be followed backwards with other examples, probably to the beginnings of recorded history.
People of my generation can probably recall the emergence of heavy metal in the 1980's. Riding the forefront of this wave was Ozzy Osbourne. Then in 1984, the tragic suicide of John McCollum brought the fear-mongers down on Ozzy and the entire heavy metal scene. McCollum's parents (along with others in time, naming bands such as Slayer and Judas Priest) took Ozzy to court claiming that the lyrics in the songs intentionally provoked listeners to kill or commit suicide. In each case, not only were the artists' First Amendment right to free speech upheld, but the youth in question were overwhelmingly found to be emotionally disturbed and/or drug abusers.
As one might expect, this certainly didn't stop the self-righteous from going on their own crusade to tell you what entertainment you can consume. The McCollum suicide was among several events which gave rise to the PMRC, the group responsible for those Parental Advisory stickers you may have seen on your music. Although this was not censorship per se, immediately after the inception of these stickers, record stores across the United States began pulling albums and magazines from or containing artists that had been branded with the label.
In the '90's heavy metal passed out of the limelight, and would-be censors soon found a new target in hip-hop and gangster rap. Artists like Ice-T and N.W.A. wrote songs about gun violence, drug dealing, misogyny, and more under the auspices of portraying life in the inner city. Spearheading the charge was the PMRC and everyone's favorite lawyer, Jack Thompson. Perhaps the earliest sign of things to come was the case of 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny," which was temporarily banned from sale in Florida and actually resulted in the arrest of three of the group's members. The Florida court's ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court. Several other Senate hearings and studies were made trying to find a causative link to criminal activity; none was found.
Enter the present decade, where the popularity of video gaming has increased exponentially, and with it detractors claiming it is destroying the youth of America. It seems that every time there's a tragedy in the country, be it Columbine, Virginia Tech, or Fayette, someone (read: Jack Thompson) is ready to pin the responsibility on video gaming. It wouldn't be so alarming were it not that the blame game is spreading to lawmakers from California and our presidential hopefuls. Thankfully for gamers and our First Amendment rights, these laws are repealed almost as rapidly as they can be proposed.
As we've seen in the past, the relationship between violent or vulgar material and criminal behavior has frequently been targeted, but never been proven causative. Being a very new contender in the entertainment industry, video gaming has less financial and political clout than music or film to protect it from self-serving crusaders. Thus it is far easier for these people to mount their lopsided attacks. As a case in point, the UK banning of Rockstar Games' Manhunt 2 (and the de facto ban resulting from an ESRB rating of AO in the US) eerily mirrors the 2 Live Crew case of 1990, and may very well prove to be yet more ammuntion for the haters.
I won't deny that the issue of media responsibility is legitimate, but the reactions elicited in response over the years have been far from the mark. In every case, the strongest argument that could be made was that media was one of many contributing factors, and then not even a major one. From my perspective, it's little more than a case of video games being the latest scapegoat of choice. The real shame is that regardless of how things go with gaming, there will surely be more scapegoats to come until society at large accepts that the roots of the problem lie elsewhere.