The extent to which video game violence incites psychological aggression continues to be an ongoing dispute. From my own experience with Guild War, the game doesn’t have much influence on me psychologically because I haven’t been a gamer for a long time. GW2 mainly serves the purpose of a case study for me; thus, even though I consistently play the game every once a week throughout the past few months, the period of time that I am engaged with the game remained short-termed. Since I am well-aware the reason why I am playing the game, it is easy for me to see my in-game experience and my actual lived reality as two separate worlds.

There are a number of things that I would never have engaged in real life that I had in GW2, mostly refers to all violent practices. The GW2 functions with a very simple ideology – that is for the magical wonderland to restore its peace, all the antagonistic monstrous beasts have to be destroyed. All quests reproduce the same storyline, agitating players’ natural instincts to destroy them because these animalistic characters are labeled as evil and threatening. The act of constantly killing and destroying living things is something that I would never engage in. In situations where I feel threatened, I would only feel the urge to protect myself from danger. In no circumstances, I will ever feel capable of eliminating the threat through violence.

When studying aggression and violent acts, I believe it’s hard to ignore the power dynamic that is embedded in them. The only reason GW2 gamers feel equipped to kill the animalistic being is that there is often a back story ( often delivered by the NPCs) to justify our actions. Not only we were given weapons and power to kill the beasts, the backstories of why we destroy them also empower us. The more quests we complete, the more a sense of control and prestige is amplified.

In reality, the feeling of entitlement and assurance is being stripped away. In a dangerous environment, no one can have the same level of assertion and aggression unless one feels superior over the other. Perhaps, this is always the case for me in reality. As an Asian female, I often feel inferior as an individual. As an Asian, my voice is often unheard; as a female, I am constantly being reminded that in the face of sexual assaults and rape, I will always be vulnerable due to my physical weaknesses. These limitations not only put me in a subordinating position, but they also make all adverse encounters more destined. Because I am powerless, I can be destroyed. Just like the animalistic beasts in the GW2 – they were powerless as an antagonistic presence in the storyline, so they are destined to be destroyed. The battle had been won before it’s ever fought.

As a result, I don’t think simply questioning whether video game violence has a role in psychological aggression is sufficient enough. Rather, it is also important to question what kinds of aggression pervades our lives and why we let them. Why some people are entitled to be more aggressive over the others, whereas we put others in a subordinating place. Why certain ideologies promote us to be angry towards certain discourses, whereas we remain ignorant and distant over other subjects.

Lastly, I believe that I have the ability to separate my in-game and out-of-game experience because I take on a critical lens whenever I play the game. Perhaps, this is one of the most important conducts when examining popular culture. To always question why certain ideologies are constantly being reproduced and upheld; to stay critical towards all structural inequalities that we tend to perpetuate in daily lives. Just as Prof Rosi Braidotti had said at the end of her keynote lecture, “ we need affirmative ethical political perspectives and not taking a flight into a new corporate humanities; we are in this together and we need to be recomposed humbly, soberly, in a united manner, united by the shared hope that the practice that we engage in – whatever it may be, need to be postulated collectively as a stepped into direction of posing new ways of being human……what an amazing time to be alive, but there is work to be done. Let’s not be triumphalist; let’s be sober together, to be worthy of the complexity of today.”

Reference:
Centre for the Humanities Utrecht University. (2015, November 20). Retrieved March 23, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1953&v=3S3CulNbQ1M