Ban those Evil Games

Within digital gaming there is a vast quantity of violence that is shown to many different audiences. This has often been given a lot of bad press in the media due to the consequences the violence has had on some gamers and the impact that it is seen as having upon western society. Newspapers like the Daily Mail have printed front-page articles on saying that all violent games should be banned with titles such as, “Ban These Evil Games”(July, 2004) and “Murder by Playstation” (July, 2004).

Due to the rare violence some gamers have been made to show within real life, some people have been using rhetoric to say that all violent games should be banned due to there influences on gamers themselves. Rhetoric is said to be “generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral or written language” (Wikipedia, 2007). It tends to be used to persuade an audience of someone else’s values and beliefs. An example of rhetoric being used to comment on gaming is the Daily Mail articles that I mentioned before. Where one single gamer has used violence in the outside world, so one person has the view that all games are bad. They then try to tell everyone that this is the correct view to have on violent games. However the idea of using rhetoric to say all games are bad and trying to ban them, can have the opposite and in fact, make the game even more attractive to some gamers. In the incident of “Manhunt”, trying to ban this game, made gamers want to get their hands on the game even more than before. This can also be seen within trailers for games. Such as a trailer for the game “Doom 3”. In this trailer we notice the violence and distinct comparison with horror movies, that would attract a violent audience to play this game. There is also a short message that carries through the trailer saying “A routine mission… Becomes anything but routine”. A male voice at the end states “Your death is coming”, spelling out the violent behaviour that would be involved in playing the game.

“Doom 3” shows that using stuble rhetoric to show the violence within a trailer or any other means can easily persuade people to buy or play a particular video game.

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Bibliography:

Doom 3 trailer. Retrieved from world wide web on March 5th, 2007 from:
http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/video_player/popup.php?sid=6103853&pid=469881

Rhetoric (Date Unknown) Retrived from world wide web on March 5th, 2007 from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric