TASK 5
Detailed Essay Plan
How and why does graphic violence within video games such as 'Call of Duty' attract a teenage demographic?
Introduction
- My essay is going to investigate the conventions the Call of Duty franchise used in order to attract teenagers and the effects that the game has on a young audience.
- What is Call of Duty? (Success, Impact on gaming market, Contextualise Call of Duty).
- Cod = First person + third person video game series franchise owned by Activision. Has become relatively popular for both good and bad reasons and on the 27th of November 2009, the total sales for the entire COD series = surpassed 55 million, taking $3 billion retail sales.
- Over $1 billion sales
- Played for more than 600 million hours = 68,000 human years
- If all COD players turned out in numbers, they would fill 83 of the largest stadiums in the world everyday
- COD gamer spends averagely 87 mins on COD everyday
- If COD created a state = 3rd largest state in U.S.
- Sold 8.4 million copies in North America alone during launch month.
"Media is evolving and today the social aspects of technology and more important to the overall entertainment experience than ever before. COD creates a shared sense of identity for its community and is an integral to their social lives as any other form of digital communication". Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard.
"Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are". Jean Anthelme Bruliat-Savann = just not about our diets however, used in context of how we develop mentally + what we allow our minds ingest.
Paragraph 1
How and why graphic violence attracts teenagers. What conventions does graphic violence use in order to attract their market? Why do teenagers engage in violent games so much? Out of males and females, which plays violent games more?
“If something is repeated often enough it will tend to be believed and remembered.”
"Many narratvies have depended on violence and it is clear that violence in fictions gives pleasure to the audience"
"Some research, such as Bandura's experiments in the 1960s, suggests that violent media texts encourage violent behaviour in the audiences but this is by no means conclusive"
They have, according to critics, sucked the social life out of many of today’s teenagers."
"Some people believe that the violence portrayed in videogames is a primary cause for violent acts committed by children. They believe that games make violence socially acceptable. They argue that children replicate the behaviour they view."
Studies also showed that players high in trait aggression were more likely to prefer or value games with violent contents, even though violent contents did not reliably enhance their game enjoyment or immersion.
Paragraph 2
Looking at the representations and stereotyping within Call of Duty. Also looking at gender and ethnicity. What impacts these representations have on society. Negative or positive representations, fair?
“First, there are the representational issues concerning the worlds depicted in video games, such as those portraying hyper sexualized women or Orientalist depictions of Arab enemies. We suggest, however, that these cultural, sexual, and political representations are not the only forces doing work on the player within the virtual world of a video game.”
“Reinforcing the racism that justifies domination and mass killing becomes a key part of the authenticity of historically accurate war gaming.”
"Games have narratives, and as the player moves through the levels or stages, s/he experiences the game as a character. In this sense this is a unique kind of text because, as you take on the character you are playing, you ‘become’ a representation. We could get into all kinds of intellectualising here about existential postmodern identities."
“Stereotypes are thus neither neutral nor fair, presenting the examination of differences within groups”
"The main task for any student is to challenge this. You must develop a critical faculty that questions and probes how and why this ‘misrepresentation’ occurs. As you do this, the benchmark for most media study will always hold true – what is the ‘message’ behind the medium?"
Paragraph 3
Discussing the media effects of Call of Duty. How these affect the audience when playing the game. How the level of violence contributes to the mindset of teenagers.
Results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but do suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management.
Studies also showed that players high in trait aggression were more likely to prefer or value games with violent contents, even though violent contents did not reliably enhance their game enjoyment or immersion.
“In general, boys were most attracted to violent video games. Boys that scored higher in trait aggressiveness and lower in empathy were especially attracted to violent games and spent more time playing video games than did boys lower in trait aggressiveness.”
"Many people use the games as a way to tune out of the real world and if they want to steal a car, they steal a car in-game instead of in the real world. In could be argued, therefore, that the game stops people breaking the law, although ironically many adults believe that such games encourage kids to steal cars and argue that the games should be banned. The amazingly realistic graphics that some of the newer games have seem to fuel such worries about their impact on young people
"Violence is a unit of meaning that can be abstracted from occasions and modes of occurrence, and measured – with the correspondent assumption that the more violence there is, the greater its potential for influence.
"There is a mechanism, usually called ‘identification’, which makes viewers of ‘violence’ vulnerable to it – such that it thereby becomes a ‘message’ by which they are invaded and persuaded."
"Some people believe that the violence portrayed in videogames is a primary cause for violent acts committed by children. They believe that games make violence socially acceptable. They argue that children replicate the behaviour they view."
"Children in their early teens found that almost a third played video games daily, and that 7% played for at least 30 hours a week."
When video games first came out, indeed they were addictive... however, there seems to be a strong correlation now between the violent natures of games these days and the aggressive tendencies in game players.
"The media do more to shape young people’s attitudes and actions than do parents or teachers, thus replacing them as educators, role models, and the primary sources of information about the world and how to behave in it. "
Negative outcomes include aggressive feelings, aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior, physiological arousal, and desensitization, whereas positive outcomes include various types of learning. Multiple theories predict, and empirical findings reveal, that violent video game exposure is causally related to a host of negative outcomes and a few positive outcomes."
"Media violence produces short-term increases by priming existing aggressive scripts and cognitions, increasing physiological arousal, and triggering an automatic tendency to imitate observed behaviors."
"media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts."
"viewing media violence is a catharsis which may actually help reduce aggression. Violent entertainment may offer viewers—especially young males—a way to explore their violent tendencies without hurting anyone."
"Case studies provided a clear-cut argument against gaming and its negative effects. One boy followed the motto of “eat, sleep and play games” and had got kicked out of higher education, which subsequently meant he was damaging his relationships with his friends and family. Another study revealed the violent results of parents trying to gain control over an “addicted gamer”, the boy kicking a hole in his sister’s wall and becoming full of rage after his parents disconnected the internet. A screen shot of a game character was used to express this rage if the description wasn’t enough."
"It is equally possible that violent media images serve a valuable function by providing audience with a vicarious outlet for their violent impulses. Occassionally, media violence is the subject of a moral panic such as the video nasties scare of the early 1980s."
Paragraph 4
Looking at video games Post 9/11 and Pre 9/11, past games and whether the intent of violence has increased. Were pre 9/11 games as popular as now, has the amount of sales increased since the incident of 9/11. Is the increase of violence post 9/11 a factor which attracts more of an mainstream audience?
"Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to show how these games contain images and narratives that resonate with and reinforce a tabloid imaginary of post 9/11 geopolitics, glorify military power and elicit consent for the idea that state violence and wars are inevitable
Paragraph 5
Media technology, effects of globalisation, news values, censorships and institutions.
"Hollywood and video-game makers not only failed to limit access by minors to violent games and movies but actually targeted children in the making and marketing of violent entertainment.
“Companies in the entertainment industry routinely undercut their own rating restrictions by target marketing violent films, records and video games to young audiences.”
“the media makes the world look a lot more violent than it is."
"The average child will see nearly 100,000 violent images in the media before he or she reaches the age of 18."
"Gurian notes that testosterone is an aggression hormone, and that boys can have 20 times the level found in girls. Because of this, and the way the male brain develops and is formatted, males are more attracted to violent imagery than females are. “Males likewise have more trouble controlling violent impulses,” he said, “which is even more reason for us to come to a better understanding of how the media affects little boys."
"Recent surveys reveal an extensive presence of violence in modern media. Furthermore, many children and youth spend an inordinate amount of time consuming violent media.
"Media violence produces long-term effects via several types of learning processes leading to the acquisition of lasting (and automatically accessible) aggressive scripts, interpretational schemas, and aggression-supporting beliefs about social behavior, and by reducing individuals' normal negative emotional responses to violence (i.e., desensitization)."
"Is it a coincidence that the game came out in 2007, when in January that year an extensive BBC poll found that 73% of the global population disapproves of the war in Iraq?"
"It's not about censorship, it's about protecting our children."
"Shooting dogs, beating children and murdering innocent civilians are dwarfed by the amount of unmitigated evil game developers are having their heroes portray."
"that games do incorporate powerful psychological techniques to create a compulsion loop, but without these there would be no substance to a game."
Paragraph 6
Discussing moral panics which have arisen due to Call of Duty. What are these moral panics, who do they concern?
"research has associated exposure to media violence with a variety of physical and mental health problems for children and adolescents, including aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, fear, depression, nightmares and sleep disturbances."
“Any parent who goes out to the supermarket and shops for food for their kid wants to look at the can and know the ingredients. We don’t have a rating system that is content based, so we don’t know what we’re feeding our kids’ minds.”
“We wouldn't give our children a drug just because they ask for it. It's still important for parents to say no.”
"Children’s exposure to violence in the mass media, particularly at young ages, can have harmful lifelong consequences."
"Learning of aggressive behaviors and attitudes.” Media violence may not make children violent, but it may teach them that violence is a normal way of solving problems."
“Desensitization to violence.” This is the classic problem that horror movies face: Violence and gore may shock viewers initially, but they eventually become used to it. And heavy viewers of media violence may be less shocked by real-life violence."
“Fear of being victimized by violence.” Constant exposure to violence in the media may lead people to believe that violence is everywhere and that they should be afraid. Researcher George Gerbner has described this as “Mean World Syndrome.”
“Based on our results, I think parents should be aware of the relationship between violent video-game playing and brain function.”
"If we don't end war, war will end us." H.G. Wells must not have had violent video games in mind when he fashioned that quote, but the levels of aggression in war and video games is just the same. Some people have asked, "Are video games too violent"? The answer is yes, video games are much too violent, for they endanger the safety of other kids, they can affect a child's aggressiveness later on, and in our society, violence is on the rise. Violent video games are too violent and they must be stopped."
"Violence in videogames have always been questionable since they become more advanced in graphics and portrayal."
“Major moral panics in recent times have centred on fears about paedophilia, AIDS, drugs, knife and gun crime, Satanism, the MMK (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and effects of video games.”
“Cohen defines a moral panic as follows, a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values + interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media.”
Paragraph 7
Theories + audiences ( violent theories, hypodermic needle theory, cultivation theory, effects theory, uses + gratifications theory)
“Younger gamers, typically under the age of eight, tend to be more influenced by games and what they see on screen."
“We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what media do to people and substitute it for the idea of what people do with the media.”
VIOLENT THEORIES
"One would have to conclude that video games have always contained a high degree of violence, but just now are the realism and gore levels catching up to the level of violence in games."
"The violent video games are also the more popular games on the market" (Schutte et al. 1988; Funk and Buchman 1996; Quittner 1999)
"Children who view media violence are more likely to have increased feelings of hostility, decreased emotional response to the portrayal of violence and injury that lead to violent behavior through imitation."
HYPODERMIC NEEDLE THEORY
- Passively intake or inject the mass media's portrayal and tend to believe it.
- Draws attention to power the media producers have.
- Injected Audience > Passive + Powerless
Audience are injected with the idea that war + violence is an enjoyable experience and the misrepresentations of race, gender and ethnicity are the correct portrayals within the video game.
CULTIVATION THEORY
- Different groups/audiences respond differently to the media put before them.
- Audiences gradually develop certain views about the world, some of which are 'false'.
Paragraph 8
Looking at violence in a whole in video games. Looking at facts, figures, experiments based on violence.
"A large portion of today’s teenage generation spends much of its free time sitting in front of a computer screen shooting aliens, zombies or other teenagers sitting at another computer screen"
"There are also those who are more concerned by the notion that games negatively affect their users. Games have been vilified in the popular press for their supposed violence. Much of the apparent evidence for the link is founded on poorly conceived or simplistic research methods, generally combined with a very narrow understanding of what constitutes play, or a game, or violence. Digital games are accountable for their content, just as any other form of media must be. But, as yet, there is no compelling reason to single games out as having a greater ‘influence’ than television, for example."
"There is a mechanism, usually called ‘identification’, which makes viewers of ‘violence’ vulnerable to it – such that it thereby becomes a ‘message’ by which they are invaded and persuaded."
"Violence is a unit of meaning that can be abstracted from occasions and modes of occurrence, and measured – with the correspondent assumption that the more violence there is, the greater its potential for influence."
"Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to show how these games contain images and narratives that resonate with and reinforce a tabloid imaginary of post 9/11 geopolitics, glorify military power and elicit consent for the idea that state violence and wars are inevitable"
“Reinforcing the racism that justifies domination and mass killing becomes a key part of the authenticity of historically accurate war gaming.”
Paragraph 9
Conclusion. Why does violence attract teenagers in specific.
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