Sunday, March 2, 2014


          Video games can cause many effects on people. Many researchers focus on violent video games and their effects. Violent behavior and aggression are some negative effects that can be received from video games. Video games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield portray a person in real life war combat. The person playing the game gets to see through the eyes of a soldier in a virtual world that could very much resemble a place in reality. The player's objective for the majority of the game is to shoot and kill his enemies. The player gets to feel a sense of accomplishment once a mission is completed. On the other hand, a feeling of disappointment is had when a mission is failed. The mission is replayed over and over again until the player succeeds by killing the enemies in his way, by any means possible.

          These games can produce an increase in aggressive behavior by making the player more infuriated with the game when the player does not complete a mission successfully. On some accounts, players punch a wall in their room, throw their controller to the ground or yell in an aggressive tone. In the case of figure 1, the two boys have stated that they have been subject to much violence in their lives. They did not like what the newspaper header said and decided to take their anger out on the newsstand. The boys leave the newly demolished newsstand enraged. Figure 1 shows that when violence is experienced or shown to people, behavior that resembles said violence can increase. Many people cannot hold their rage in due to violent video games and they must release it through a violent action. Others can contain themselves when playing violent video games. Different people have different brains which in turn lead to different reactions and different effects.
          Aggressive behavior is one of many effects of video games. Violence in video games has been studied and researched for many years and evidence has proven an increase in aggressive behavior and aggressive cognition when compared to people who have not been exposed to violent video games.

Works Cited

Seltzer. "Unknown". Digital image. Parentstv.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.

2 comments:

  1. Matt,
    Reading from the perspective of someone that doesn't know very much about video games, I think you describe these games of combat well. I can see how actively playing through the eyes of a soldier in a virtual world could get the player wrapped up in a false reality.

    However, at times, your post was a little repetitive. For example, " Video games can cause many effects on people. Many researchers focus on violent video games and their effects." These sentences could have benefited from being condensed or rephrased. You also start out several sentences with the same words. Including a little more variation of sentence structure could help to keep your audience further engaged and your writing more fluent.
    Some words in particular to watch out for: "video games", "the player", and "effects".

    In your second paragraph, you write about many interesting and relatable aspects of playing video games. I think some statistics could be very beneficial in supporting your point. The idea of video games being the cause of increased aggressive behavior is an interesting concept. The image you chose captures your exact argument. Nice job!

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  2. Yup, Matt, Jackie is exactly right. This post reads very repetitive. You don't offer much for your reader to latch on to. When you include this image in your paper, be sure to acknowledge that the cartoon is a parody of the supposed aggression that video games cause. You imply in your post that the image is a piece of empirical evidence.

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