Here’s a headline you’ll never read: “Child Funnels Rage Into Violent Video Game, Leads Stable and Happy Life.” I, for one, don’t have to read about it — I lived it.
In the summer of 2001, I received the worst news of my life: my father had committed suicide. I was 10 years old. No words can convey how sad, how angry, how broken I felt. This world ceased to make sense.
So I retreated into virtual worlds. Eager to please me, my mother allowed me to play some (but not all) video games that boasted a ‘Mature (17+)’ rating. The first ‘M’ game I played was Crave Entertainment’s Kengo: Master of Bushido. Set in feudal Japan, Kengo is sword-fighting game where martial artists duel to become the best warrior in the land.
Still reeling from the recent tragedy, there I was slicing samurai into bloody little bits with my cold, hard steel. The digital death toll grew to dozens, hundreds, thousands. Any time I felt a wave of anger arise, I switched on my PlayStation 2, popped in Kengo, and tore some swordsmen to shreds. They bore the brunt of my confused fury.
Kengo wasn’t a magic fix, of course. Rage exhausted, I’d conclude each play session in sobs. Once the game was off, I was not a martial arts master, but a 10 year-old without a father. I no longer felt angry, though, just depressed. Kengo served as my emotional outlet: rather than generate new aggression, it absorbed my existing anger. After playing for hundreds of hours as a blade-wielding warrior, I never once attacked someone in the real world. Some years later, however, I earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Though relatively few games are rated ‘M for Mature’ — in 2010, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board assigned 1,638 ratings, only 5% of which were ‘Mature’ — this subset of games is routinely demonized by critics. In February, FOX News proclaimed Electronic Arts’ Bulletstorm to be “The Worst Video Game in the World” due to its profane language and copious carnage. Later that month, Australia banned Warner Bros’ upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot owing to its excessive violence.
In an age when violent video games appeal to a large proportion of the population — Activision’s first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops sits in one of every eight U.S. households — it’s inevitable they’ll shape our character development and behavior. Mental health professionals remain divided on precisely how video game violence affects us, so I won’t cite their contrasting studies. Rather, I’ll state what should be common sense, but is habitually ignored when lawmakers craft policy regarding games. Like other media, not all games are appropriate for all audiences; games provoke distinctive reactions in different individuals. The responsibility should fall on parents to determine what their children are playing. Not all 10 year olds should play Kengo: Master of Bushido, but in my case, that violent game helped me cope with a real-world tragedy.