Should Games Like Call Of Duty Be Banned After Sandy Hook Shooting?
The Sandy Hook shooting has left many people confused and asking why, and now people are starting to point the finger, trying to find some sort of explanation as to why it happened. Now, games like Call of Duty are being blamed.
The debate over violent video games has been reignited, with some video game designers even saying that “ultraviolence has to stop.”
Gunman Adam Lanza, 20, was reportedly “obsessed” with the Call of Duty video game series – a military first-person shooter game which features assault rifles similar to the one that he used to slaughter innocent schoolchildren last Friday.
Even before the massacre, however, there were concerns that current-gen video games were “fetishizing violence” and that they would “ultimately cause (the country) trouble.”
“The ultraviolence has to stop,” said designer Warren Spector.
“I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste. Ultimately, I think it will cause us trouble.”
Spector is not the only one who thinks the ultraviolence in video games needs to be curbed.
“The violence of these games can be off-putting,” Brian Crecente, news editor for the gaming website Polygon, agreed on Monday.
Like movies and TV, however, the video game industry is under pressure to keep the blood and gore because violent games sell well.
Many politicians and celebrities have voiced out against violent video games and movies since the Sandy Hook shooting.
“The violence in the entertainment culture – particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera – does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.
Should the millions of people who play Call of Duty and never hurt a fly in real life be penalized for the polarized incidents of a very select few? Wouldn’t these individuals commit these heinous acts without being prompted by video games?
Stephen Willard | Elite.
