Violent video games for children's development

I recently got to hear news from NoobFeed that UK has taken a new initiative to use pictures from GTA to teach kids about violence and separating real life from fiction. Well I guess it is a very good initiative, but I still do not know how effective this can be. It is because kids are shown the elements of violence with some pictures taken from the game. Kids are always exposed to these images in their daily lives so I don’t know how this would make that much of difference when these pictures are shown in school. I know pictures are worth thousand words but does it affect the children’s mind at all? Do these pictures inflict children’s feeling towards violence? I just cannot say. However I can say that children feelings may change if they actually play these games.

 

Now you all may feel what I am talking about. An avid gamer who is playing games since the age of three going against violence in video games. How I replace the word “against” with “for”. Children are indirectly exposed to many things related to violence. People may not be aware of it but children somehow get the glimpse of it. These elements of violence may come from anywhere; paper, movies (specially) magazines and games. So children have some sort of idea what violence is and it’s up to the parents to take greater responsibility. So if the UK school offers to let the children see the pictures of violence from GTA or any other games or even violent scenes from movies, that won’t make any difference. Unless they find a way to make children feel about the violence and after effects of it, the perception would still be the same. So in order to let the children feel the game, it’s important to make the children play the game.

 

So if the schools in UK let the children play GTA to know how they feel about violence, I still  think it would not let children feel about violence, instead they will have fun playing the game, since GTA is meant to be fun and I don’t think Rockstar did not intend to make the people realize how violence affects people, rather they intended to bring the fun aspects. The schools need something better. So here is my example: Modern Warfare 2. The reason why I chose this game because it has one single level in which the game itself asks you whether you are going to play or skip the level. I am talking about the level where you are disguised as the terrorist and shoot civilians at the airport. Man that single level freaked me out. They way the terrorists killing everyone mercilessly and how the civilians are reacting made me feel what the hell is going on here. The situation, the environment that had been set up was so perfect that it made you feel that you are into the game and part of the group that is killing everyone. When I first played this level, I paused a little bit. When I played GTA, Mortal Kombat or any other violent games I played, I haven’t freaked out the way I freaked out in this single level. I played those games for fun. Since I had to pass this level, I just thought I just follow them. I didn’t bother to shoot as I felt so bad for myself. Even the civilians in the game were begging for mercy. Is that the reason Infinity Ward asked players whether they want to skip the level? So I think Infinity Ward was trying to portray a typical scenario of a terrorist attack or any form of attack and it’s after effects. It was enough for me to freak out. It reached into my feelings. Technology and art forms have improved a lot in games.

 

So here is my proposition. Why not the UK schools let the children play this single level instead of making the children have fun playing GTA and make prejudism of GTA even more intense? Let the children feel how it affects the surroundings when you terrorize it. Let the children feel what happens when they kill someone in that level. Finally let the teachers ask the students how they felt when they played this single level. Based on that, the teacher can make further lectures that can even make children listen with great concentration. If this single level can affect the children a lot, I think children would have a bigger perspective on violence and how bad it is. Killing someone in GTA is one thing and killing someone on that single level in MW2 is another thing because one game shows death or its after effects in non-effective and rather comical way but the other game shows just the complete opposite. Alas, these schools would not let children play these games because there are people who are against these games and also there are rating systems and schools cannot just break the law.