And it galvanized politicians, special interest groups and the mainstream media against video games.”įerguson said that rather than have these groups focus on the mental health problems and psychological issues that were the cause of the tragedy, they turned to violent video games. “Columbine wasn’t the first school shooting linked to video games – there were incidents in Kadoka, Kentucky, Jonesboro, Arkansas and other places – but it was the biggest.
Everett Coop, Senator Lieberman, and other politicians were out there making grandiose claims about violent video games, including Pac-Man and Zaxxon, acting as a ‘digital poison’ corrupting the minds of youths,” said Ferguson. He’s done extensive research and written numerous papers on the topic. “I think certainly the Supreme Court case helped, especially since they were so clear in pointing out that current research was not able to support that line of reasoning.”Ĭolumbine was a pivotal sociological moment in the violent video game debate, according to Ferguson. “Scientifically, the idea that video game violence, movie, or television violence contributes to mass homicides is pretty much a debunked idea that has no real basis to it,” said Ferguson. After the Columbine massacre left 12 students and a teacher dead, special interest groups and media were actually clamoring for a causal relationship between first-person shooters like Doom and Quake and the planned killings by high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. But even those groups have been much quieter with the Oslo tragedy.” I think it’s irresponsible and thoughtless to try to make political gain off of someone else’s tragedy, but they’re going to do it. “There are groups out there who are going to blame video games on everything,” said Ferguson. But it also could be that video games have become so ingrained in our culture and our lives, that more people understand that they’re just another form of entertainment.
Part of this could be because the tragedy occurred far from U.S. Ferguson said that video games haven’t received the same type of sensationalist media attention with the Oslo killings as past U.S. “People really want to know what kind of boogeyman can we hang this on and video games are still the top choice when it comes to any type of tragedy,” said Ferguson.īut things are changing.
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