by David Clements
Sterling News Service, July 26, 1995
Republished with permission

DAWSON CREEK — When 14-year-old D.J. Vander Wal takes time out to relax from his hectic, summer-time schedule, he does it with a bang. D.J. plays violent video games. He is a well-adjusted teen, does well in school and has a happy home life. He's also a computer junkie. He spends hours on the Internet, fixes his computer himself and has even made a few extra bucks doing consulting work.

Along with this more serious computer work, D.J. plays a lot of video games. One of his favorites is called DOOM.

"There are lots of different skill levels, from 'Please Don't Hurt Me Daddy' to 'Ultra Violent'," D.J. says. "I've finished the game. The skill levels get more violent as you go up in difficulty. At some points, you probably kill about 20 to 30 people a minute."

He also enjoys Rise of the Triad, which he calls a spoof of violent games like DOOM. "It's so violent that it's a parody. Guys blow up in big, bloody explosions and there's blood everywhere. It's really funny," D.J. says.

Games like DOOM are at the forefront of the battle over violent video games and their effects on children. Some opponents argue the games desensitize youngsters to cruelty and may make them more likely to commit violent acts in real life.

That is what has pushed Dawson Creek's Northern Computer to start a policy of not selling violent video games to people under 18. "What finally got it going was when I read that there had been 10 cases in which youths had been charged for murder in nine days," store manager Dave Roszmann says. "That just got my blood boiling."

Roszmann admits video violence is not the only cause of youth crime, but he's sure it's part of the problem. "Today's kids spend hours in front of a television or video game," he says. "They're (the games and televisions) being used as baby-sitters, and that's where kids are getting their values." "And," says Roszmann, "if the games are not being monitored for content, the youngsters' heads are just being filled with all kinds of garbage."

The decision was an ethical one for Roszmann and his staff. They say they are willing to put up with complaints from local residents if it will prevent violent crimes by young people. "If the kids want to play excessively violent games, they can probably still get them," Roszmann concedes. "They're just not going to get it from us, unless parents buy it for them, which is their prerogative. The parents then know what their child is buying and they can monitor it."

Other local businesses have already taken steps to limit the access of youth to violent video games. Leon and Marlies Claus, who own and operate The Jolly Gamesman, say they will not rent violent games to children. "I think the parents appreciate that, Marlies said. "We have kids too, so we understand."

Members of the scientific community have long studied the effects of violence in the media on those who observe it. Brent de Waal, a Ph.D. student at Simon-Fraser University's Media Lab, expanded those studies last summer to include video games. De Wal sat a group of ten 16-year-olds in front of several violent video games and measured their physiological responses. He monitored galvanic skin response; the amount of electrical activity on the skin; and also players' heart rates.

"We consider TV to be a passive medium," de Waal says. "With video games an interactive medium, I wanted to know whether that was more involving and how we could measure that or describe that."

De Waal found heart rates and galvanic skin responses in the subjects rose differently, depending on the content of the game. "When they were playing, there was quite a difference between whether the game they was violent or non-violent in terms of their amount of activation," he says.

The physiological response is an almost euphoric rush, de Waal says, an "adrenaline hit." He says this rush is most attractive to adolescent boys. "They're really the engine of the video game industry," De Waal explains, "and when they buy video games, they tend to buy violent ones more often than others."

"Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these games is how accustomed the kids get to the subject matter," de Waal says. While he is reluctant to draw a link between the carnage of video games and real-life violence, he says video kids are becoming desensitized to death. "Within the game condition, there's a definite cycle that can be described as desensitization -- they get bored with the game. What excited them at first no longer does that, so the manufacturer produce games with more action and more violence in an attempt to get kids to buy," he says. "I think that should be a concern for people raising kids. When they are spending such a large chunk of time in a violent context that they become desensitized to it."

Manufacturers are also trying to outdo themselves to make the games closer to the real-life experience of killing. "The history of video games is to make things more lifelike, and faster," de Waal says, noting the imminent release of Nintendo's Virtual Boy, a virtual reality headset which envelopes the player in the video game world.

Nintendo already has plans for a boxing game, and that's a concern for de Waal. "I think that's really problematic," he says. "My concern is that the media environment surrounding kids is based primarily around violence. We have all these systems of play which are centred on one thing; violence," he says. "Video game designers will tell you that you need conflict for a game to succeed, and without that tension, the games just aren't very much fun."

"The appeal of combative games has many elements to it," adds de Waal. "Part of it is the peer pressure, part of it is that the parents don't like it. It's a well-defined space away from the parents, and it's something that the players have absolute mastery over, that no one else can get to."

For de Waal, banning the violent matter is not the solution. "Because of easy access to the Internet," he says, "kids can already get any game they want without their parents knowing about it. The same goes for games where the parents can block access to more violent aspects of the games; the kids can use them to lock the parents out, so they don't know what they're playing."

"For me, it's really a question of media literacy and getting the kids involved, helping them to understand what's going on with video games and helping them understand how heavily they're being targeted by the manufacturers. The amount of research and marketing is phenomenal and kids should know that the attempt is to maximize profits."

De Waal says parents should watch their kids and monitor the time they spend with games. "I think the biggest concern is if your child plays obsessively, if he or she is playing 24 hours a day, when it takes away time from other activities, and doesn't taper off."

Fourteen-year-old D.J. agrees. "I try not to spend too much time on any one thing. I try not to spend too much time in front of the TV or sit in front of the computer for hours," he says, noting that the games haven't made him a more violent person.