Video games

Since video games have been introduced, media researchers have been concerned with the negative effects those games produce. Their studies showed that video games do promote aggressive behavior and sometimes releases aggressive behavior. The effect depends on the type of the game. I am going to study in this report the effects of the known video game Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto is a video game series created and developed by Rockstar North, published by Rockstar Games and debuted in 1998. It includes eight stand-alone games and two expansion packs. In addition, the series has emerged as being so popular and profitable that a long list of Hollywood stars have lent their voices to the games. The name of the game is derived from "grand theft auto", a term referring to theft. The game lets the player to take the role of a criminal in a big city. Many missions are set to finish such as bank robberies, assassinations and other violent crimes. Taxi driving, firefighting, pimping, street racing, or learning to fly an airplane are also involved in the game as adventures which can be done at any time during the game. This game includes a series of sexually explicit scenes. This is why the game should have an “Adults Only” rating and not a “Mature” rating as it is now. Grand Theft Auto is programmed so players can beat prostitutes to death with baseball bats after having sex with them or raping them. This game promotes violence in a direct way and it increases the aggressive behavior in children. For example, Japan was shocked this week by an incident where a 15-year-old boy has purposely murdered his parents, by beating them and then cutting them to death. He then covered his crime by blowing up their Tokyo apartment, using home-made explosives. Today, some media channels are reporting that the boy's schoolmates have described him as an average student who loved playing video games, and that he was a fan of Grand Theft Auto III. This video game is linked to the homicide in Japan. It had a negative impact on the child and led him to commit a crime like this one. We cannot completely put the blame on the video game, but the game did increase the level of aggressiveness in the boy and led him to commit the crime. The boy was arrested. According to police, the boy admitted to his crime when confronted, reportedly saying, "I wanted to kill my father since he made a fool out of me. I decided to kill my mother as well, since she was always saying that she wanted to die because of all the work she had to do. I felt sorry for her."To conclude, violence is an fundamental part of video games. Many of the newer games are becoming even more violent and more realistic. As the violence increases, so does the concern of parents. Many parents worry that games such as Grand Theft Auto may not only cause tension and restlessness in their children, but even violent and aggressive behavior.