On the points made by Gerard Jones about violent video games and their effect on young people, I am delighted to see they are not negative. Whenever a young person performs a violent act on others, people always come to question whether or not he/she played violent video games. If the discussion makes it to the news, the people watching it get the idea that anyone who plays these video games could grow up to be a murdering psychopath. Being a person that plays video games that have been called a bad influence on kids and teaching them bad lessons, I take a bit of offense. This isn't true. Out of all the people out there who play violent video games I doubt that more than a small portion of them ever committed a violent act. I enjoy that Jones has made this article not only stating this point, but making several other convincing arguments as well.
Jones says in his article that he was able to start reading comics because a student of his mother had told her that the comics were “devoted to lofty messages of pacifism and tolerance.” (Jones 36) This is a true statement that people don’t often realize. Yes, comics and video games are full of violence and fighting, but they also have messages and morals.
It’s nice to see an example of how violent media helps people. Jones’s story about how he grew up in a sort of “uptight” household, discovered these wonderful portals into another world, then grew up to create them himself is the general sort of dream I see a lot of people have. Many fans of a certain video game dream of growing up to work on the art or making of that franchise. Some do, others go into a similar career as game designers, and many others just go into other career fields, as a lot of people do even though they once had a dream job. I myself once dreamed of growing up to work at Nintendo, designing new Pokemon and working as a graphic artist. But I soon realized this dream job was not for me, because I could never live in Japan, so far away from my family. Plus I would be competing with the thousands of other people who wanted the same job as me and odds are I probably wouldn’t cut it.
Jones says “Children will feel rage" (Jones 36). And that is true. It is much better to have a child take out their rage on a video game by yelling at it in frustration rather than screaming at their parents. I know from experience that most of the time video games don’t influence kids to do bad things. The game Pokemon, for example, is seen by some people to “advocate animal fighting” (Gurney 1). Yes, when put to its most simplistic elements, yes, it is two creatures fighting against one another. Despite this, not anyone I have ever met who plays Pokemon would ever think of harming an animal. In fact, their pets are the dearest in the world to them. I know that isn’t the best argument for this subject, but it seems okay to me.
Works Cited
1. Jones, Gerard. “Violent Media is Good for Kids”. Mother Jones
28 Jun. 2000
2. Sally Gurney, “Pokemon - it genuinely worries me.” Epinions, June 29, 2000
http://www.epinions.com/game-review-330B-709F097-395B74B4-prod2
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