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Michael Wendler Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1103 2/2/12 Are video games related to violence in teens? Introduction/Overview The topic that has the most interest to me is the medias description of a correlation between violent video games and violence in teens. Personally, I as a individual who plays many video games including violent ones, am interested in if there actually is a correlation or if the games have no effect on individuals at all. The recent rise in the number of personal gaming systems has created the need for an investigation into violence that may be linked to video games. Recently in the national media there have been numerous crime reports that mention that the defendant is blaming his or her action on an image or persona that they have found in video games. There is no doubt that games are rated M for mature for a specific reason, one of which could be violence. But this may not be the only thing that led them to cause a violent crime. Originally I made a quick Google news search for violence related to video games. This alone produced a large pool of differing articles and opinions about whether or not one can blame a video game for causing violent outbursts. To further my research I plan to look into a database for crimes related to video games to see if there is game or type of game that is most often cited in these outbursts. From this I plan to look into the game(s) to see how it compares to

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games. I also plan to look into other factors that are present in the reports of crimes. From the quick reading I have done it seems like there is a large number of pre-documented underlying mental issue at hand. A large number of the uninformed general public feels that violent video games are the problem. The other side vehemently opposes this claim stating that there are a large number of people that play video games but do not go out and cause violent crimes. By doing this topic I hope to shine some light on this dark topic. Initial Inquiry Question(s) Some of my initial questions on this topic are; what if any types of games are most associated with the crimes? How and why is a games rating formed? What makes a game a violent game? How many crimes a year are associated with games as a contributing factor? How does this number compare to crimes related to other sources that expose the people to violence (books, TV shows, movies, ect)? How many people buy violent video games? Has this number increased over the years? Has the number of crimes increased? What defines a true correlation? My Interest in this Topic I am interested in the topic of video game violence for a few reasons. First off as a person that plays video games for about 2-3 hours per day I want to know if I am at risk. Also violent crimes are very bad in this society and I think people need to be aware on what really causes them. If it is video games then we need to know what plan we can take to better protect our youth. But to go along with this if video games are not the problem then people need to know so they dont hurt the image of video games by using them as a scapegoat. I hope to learn if there is a real correlation between video games and violent crimes because it can shape the future of gaming if there is one. I wonder why the media tries to blame games when the people

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have a documented mental issue. I already know that some video games are violent and show blood and gore, but I also know that I can control my reaction to these themes.

Next Steps To further my research I plan to look at various newspapers for crimes related to video games. Such sources are The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Next I plan to make a Facebook poll asking about peoples perception on video games and if they believe they are related to violent crimes. Also I will be visiting the Entertainment Software Rating Boards (ESRB) website in order to get an idea on how games are rated E-M. I will be searching for studies done into video games and a persons brain reactions to them. I will then attempt to find a crime database to search for video game related crimes. Finally I will use The Curious Researcher to find ways to organize my topic and look for more information.