Brandon Yen

Ms. Ja

Western Culture

10/1/19

Questions:

1. Does the study conducted account for all variables such as behavior before the study?

2. If the government bans violent video games, won’t that just become more popular since

it’s cooler to have the game?

3. Could there be other things that influence people to murder with guns?

Comments:

1. I can tell that the author tries to be unbiased, but they clearly are biased for the banning

of violent video games. They don’t go as in depth into the opposite and have more

evidence for their point of view.

2. Just because they game doesn’t mean that they choose to shoot people because they

play games.

3. 8chan isn’t actually known for games, it’s more of a message board, kind of like 4chan

but for messages.

My Response:

I feel like this article is trying not to be biased, but it is very clear which way the author leans. A

lot of people turn towards violent video games because it is the most obvious choice — there

are guns, killing, murdering, and weapons, so there must be a correlation. People who play

video games must want to imitate that in real life. However, these are usually people who have

other social issues/problems and happen to play video games as well. I know a lot of people

who are perfectly normal and play first person shooters because they enjoy the game and the
 Brandon Yen

Ms. Ja

Western Culture

10/1/19

strategy, myself included. Shooting is appealing because it’s satisfying to beat someone else

other than in physical combat or in a MOBA. I’ve read articles about the shooter Nikolas Cruz,

and part of the reason he shot up his school was because he was socially awkward and never

really had many friends. On top of that, he had access to guns through his household, which is

probably a bigger problem than violent video games are. If he didn’t have access to a gun, he

wouldn’t have been able to shoot up his school.

Another thing the author points out is that in places like South Korea, where gaming is

part of their culture, they play a lot of violent video games, but their shooting rate is much lower

than the US has, which means that video games are probably not the reason why there are so

many shootings.