Author: Juan Ruiz, David Ortiz, Cesar Froylán

Video games have come a long way since Pac-Man ate 
yellow dots. Now video games have automatic guns, 
grenades, and sniper rifles that are used to kill 
characters. These games are very popular with youth 
today, causing concern in parents that their kids are 
learning how to be violent. The two students who 
initiated the Columbine tragedy were known to play 
violent shooter video games. Now there is NARC, a 
video game where the player not only kills video game 
characters, but where a player can do an assortment of 
drugs that either helps or hurts their chances of 
survival. 
About 30 to 40% of current video games are violent, 
said Brian Lowe, the president of South Coast Games. 
The core market for video games is boys age 12 to 24, 
who usually like “shooting games”, Lowe said. He 
previously worked for Midway, Norstar, and Media 
Vision, and helped to create Mortal Kombat and Grand 
Theft Auto, some of the most violent and controversial 
games out there. But he does not let his two children 
play violent games, including the games he helped to 
create. Lowe believes that video games do not make 
kids violent, but it is up to the parents to teach 
their children not to be violent and to monitor what 
games children play.  
“I don’t think video games make people violent,” Lowe 
said. “I think the problem with violence starts at 
home.” 
Plus, sex and violence has been used to sell movies 
for a long time, which is not very different from what 
video games do, Lowe said. 
Yet violent video games can effect certain children 
said Jon Girvetz Ph.D, a clinical psychologist. 
“There can be a direct risk for some kids who have 
violent tendencies, especially kids who have 
difficulty controlling impulses.” 
But overall, video games are not a direct cause of 
violent behavior, Girvetz said, but are a reflection 
of our violent society. 
“Violent video games are symptomatic of a culture that 
plays to violence as a means to solve problems,” 
Girvetz said. “It does reinforce the cultural mandate 
for males to settle scores; physically rather than 
through negotiation.”  
We interviewed our friend Luis, who plays a lot of 
violent video games like Halo 2, at least four hours a 
day. He said that he does not act violent after 
playing a violent video game.
“Video games do not make you violent,” Luis said. “It 
is what is in you that depends if you become violent 
or not,” he said. 
Luis said it is only a matter of time after you begin 
playing a violent video game, that you get bored and 
do not play it anymore.
We certainly think that violent video games do not 
influence the human mind. It depends on the person 
whether they make the decision to be violent. Violent 
video games are for fun only. As Brian said, “Violent 
actions depend on what happens in your family”.