OK I am going to be looking into a game called Saints Row 2, recently released and has been facing scrutiny like Grand Theft Auto IV from the New York Police Department, which they said "These horrible and violent video games desensitize young people to violence while encouraging depravity, immorality while glorifying criminal behaviour." NYPD union boss Patrick Lynch told the New York Post.
Lynch isn’t the only one that is against the selling of Saints Row 2. Jack Thompson called Saints Row 2 a GTA rip-off, suggesting that it pushes the envelope further than the Take-Two Interactive franchise he spent so long crusading against. National News Service followed up on the story by reporting that Leslie Crocker-Snyder, a candidate in next year's election for Manhattan District Attorney, has also picked up the NYPD bosses cause.
You can look into this story at this -
Police union martyrs Saints Row 2
Now I am getting sick and tired of computer games being put into the media spotlight for the wrong reasons. If a murder had happened recently, one of the things blamed for murders would be computer games. This has been happening since the very first Grand Theft Auto released back in 1997. One of the biggest cases that involved a computer game been put to blame was Manhunt in 2004. It was when Stefan Pakeerah, 14 was killed by his friend Warren Leblanc, 17. Now Stefan’s mum put the blame the murder on the Manhunt game. She claimed that Leblanc had been 'obsessed' with the game after he pleaded guilty in court. Now the police denied a link between the murder and the game. Leblanc was found guilty of the murder of Stefan Pakeerah. It was later discovered that Leblanc didn't actually own the game, but Pakeerah did. It was also found out that Leblanc had previously seen a Chucky film at a cinema and it went unnoticed that the murder was identical to one seen in the film; when this became known, Manhunt returned to store shelves. When the investigation was going on the game had been banned from GAME and Currys stores in the UK.
Now I have done a lot of research looking into computer games especially when I was in university and found out that there is very little evidence to prove a link with violent murders in real life and violent computer games.
Now I was looking back at some work I did back when I was in university, I did a thesis project looking to see if there was link between real life violence and video games. I found some evidence from someone called Henry Jenkins.
Henry Jenkins believes that researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. Jenkins does believe it is true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players like for example the Columbine High School Incident. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. He found that majority of kids who play video games, do not commit antisocial acts.
What Jenkins found in a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. He believes that moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester.
Now I know this is an old case study but I feel it can be related to what is happening now. So I’m here to say that video games don’t have an impact on real life. I think lecturers and the media are over reacting to something that comes new to mainstream society.
I thought I'll leave you on a trailer of Saints Row 2.
This is Barryboxx signing out.
