Monday, 19 March 2012

Response to: If Video Games Make You Violent...


You discussed how Christianity does and should look at violence with a critical eye, as well as how Christians have reacted negatively to violence in video games. In the article for this week’s class by Trothen, she discusses how hockey and Christianity both involve much violence. Even as Christians look at violence in video games as a horrible thing, shouldn’t they be worrying that they are teaching violence to believers as well? With the crucifixion discussed in such detail, shouldn’t people be worried that it is teaching people that violence is okay, because Jesus woke up even after being crucified?

Many people associate video games with violence, because those seem to be the most popular types. The Christian video game that we discussed in class, Left Behind, has the player shoot people with a laser which forces people to get down on their knees and pray, instead of being shot. However, as said in class, the game has been criticized by groups of progressive Christians who see it as a retrogressive game. This is because the idea of the game is that you convert or you kill; this means that you are still able to kill people, even though it points out that killing is the least successful way to win the game. This contradicts Christians’ idea of having non-violent video games, as this Christian video game allows killing. Even the promo picture looks violent, as there are men holding guns, with face masks or military gear. If I didn't know this was a Christian game, I would not have thought it was one by looking at the photo.


I agree with your point about how the relation between video games and violence should be studied more closely before people make such assumptions. As I mentioned in my post, people are exposed to violence in other aspects of life other than video games. I’m sure most of the violence people experience in their life is outside of a video game, so these games most likely do not have as big of an effect on children as people say they do.

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