“The debate about the short and long-term psychological effects of video game violence on players’ aggression levels is long-standing ongoing debate, and no closer to a resolution than when it began.”

Personally, I do not consider myself to be a violent person: occasionally, a heated political discussion turns a little aggressive, but for the most part, I value harmony and lack of conflict in my daily life. Before this course, I had literally never touched a video game of any kind, and that is in large part due to my conceptions (or misconceptions) about ubiquitous and unavoidable violence that I assumed was present in every single one.

Upon playing this game, my opinions are modified but not completely changed, because from my limited experience, I’ve realized that violence is, in fact, unavoidable, and is more detached than I’ve ever experienced. I find this dangerous. There is no way to go through the game and survive without fighting, with and without weapons. Because of the nature of gaming, any/all violence does not carry the same repercussions as real, physical violence, despite the fact that the fight scenes are made as realistic as possible, and the conflation of these two without the physiological repercussions have, in myself, trivialized violence as a whole.

Reflecting on my own experiences, I did not like some of the traits that surfaced within me while playing the game, such as harming an opponent and yelling “YESSSSS” to myself, or being in a minor fight and using stronger weapons and force than was necessary at all, even depleting my energy stores in the process. In real life, even being within close proximity to a physical fight causes me to recoil with tension, anxiety, and fear, but in the game, I have at points sought it out, which I find disturbing. Even playing one game over a short period of time has modified my perceptions of violence and conflict in ways that I don’t intellectually support whatsoever, and I think that is telling of how even a little exposure can add so much aggression.

That being said, the violence is not as flippant as I once thought. The story lines I’ve encountered have been complex and well-developed, and the violence is not as ever-present as I used to believe. Not every task is confrontational, and in life, it is sometimes an option to avoid and/or opt out of conflicts. I appreciated these caveats, but to be perfectly honest, they did not seem like enough to me. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, the violence present in this game has been a little on the more destructive, as opposed to constructive, end of the spectrum.