GTA 5 released yesterday, and already there are reports of violence connected with the game?
In London 3 people are in custody after a robbery and stabbing in which a copy of GTA V was taken. With $800,000,000 in sales already in the books, how long before every episode of child or teen violence is equated with Grand Theft Auto 5?
It’s not right if you ask me to blame violent actions on the part of an individual on games. Yes social learning theory says people who view acts of violence are more prone to viewing it as acceptable behavior. Operant Conditioning says that being rewarded for violence (yes even in a game) makes us more prone to it through behavior modification. Neither of these excuses the pater familias and the mater familias, you know the parents from their obligation in supervising and ensuring their children are being introduced to material that is socially acceptable or that the children are mature enough to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
It’s not like there are no tools available to help parents make these decisions. Back in 1994 after the outrage revolving around Mortal Kombat the ESRB (Electronic Software Ratings Board) was founded to be followed in 2003 in Europe by PEGI (Pan European Game Information) as a means to provides ratings on games similar to how film is rated in the US. The ESRB for example has :
- EC : For Early Childhood
- E: For Everyone!
- E 10+: For ages 10 and up.
- T : For Teen
- M: For Mature
- AO: For Adults Only
- RP: For Rating Pending.
PEGI on the other hand has a simpler system with ratings of 3, 7, 12, 16, and 18 which correspond with the recommended ages. Now you can more or less line up the PEGI ratings with those from the ESRB yet few do, and even fewer parents take the time to pay attention. On the other hand I find it surprising that there is no legislation requiring retailers to age check or inform buyers of the rating on games they sell. It makes me wonder if this is due to corporate lobbying by the retailers, or to keep a fat scape goat lined up for slaughter when necessary so your favorite politician to drum up some brownie points in the activist column.
I’m waiting on the news reports blaming everything from shootings, to car theft on GTA V, and politicians around the world to make it a rallying cry for managing the industry, while doing absolutely nothing about it. The one group of individuals never blamed are the parents who failed to teach their children right from wrong, fact from fiction, illusion from reality and most importantly failed to pay enough attention to their children to see to it that they learned these lessons.