The recent massacre in Oslo, Norway that left 76 dead has once again opened up an international debate centering on violent video games. The terror suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, who is now in custody, wrote about how he used Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and World of Warcraft to help train for the attacks.
But clinical psychologist Christopher Ferguson, a leading expert on video game violence and mass killings at Texas A&M International University, said video games aren’t to blame for this tragedy. Nor are games like Doom and Quake to blame for past U.S. massacres like Columbine. In fact, he believes placing the blame on video games whenever a white male is guilty of a killing spree is racist.
“I know it’s a little controversial to say but there’s a certain type of racism in place with these killings,” said Ferguson. “When shootings happen in an inner city in minority-populated schools, video games are never brought up. But when these things happen in white majority schools and in the suburbs, people start to freak out and video games are inevitably blamed. I think that there’s a certain element of racism or ignorance here.”
Ferguson said that mass killings are going to happen and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Fortunately, they’re not going to happen very often. They’re like lightning strikes. You can’t predict them or stay them off, but society doesn’t want to hear that.
“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.
But things are changing. Ferguson said that video games haven’t received the same type of sensationalist media attention with the Oslo killings as past U.S. massacres have. Part of this could be because the tragedy occurred far from U.S. soil and no Americans were involved. 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.
“There are groups out there who are going to blame video games on everything,” said Ferguson. “They’re like ambulance chasers, really. 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. That’s what they do. But even those groups have been much quieter with the Oslo tragedy.”
Things are a lot more muted since 1999. 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.
“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. “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.”
Columbine was a pivotal sociological moment in the violent video game debate, according to Ferguson. He’s done extensive research and written numerous papers on the topic.
“Surgeon General C. 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. “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. And it galvanized politicians, special interest groups and the mainstream media against video games.”
Ferguson 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. The crusade was to ban games in the hopes that by illuminating violence games, the problem would simply go away.
“What was so scary about Columbine was that it could happen anywhere, even in a seemingly safe suburban high school,” explained Ferguson. “People wanted something to blame and video games became the target. And they wanted to just regulate games away.”
But something good came from this tragedy. The scientific and research community, including Ferguson, decided to explore whether there was any truth to the media and political claims. Prior to 2,000, there was very little research dedicated to violence and video games. Today, there’s extensive research on the topic. The Supreme Court used much of this research, including studies by Ferguson, to make its recent decision on violent games.
“One thing we’ve learned from research is that approximately 95 percent of young boys have played a violent video game,” said Ferguson. “That becomes a tricky thing when these mass homicides occur and the shooter is a young male. The odds are he’s played violent video games.”
But that wasn’t the case with the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, which is the deadliest shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Ferguson said that fact that killer Seung-Hui Cho didn’t play video games is a statistical anomaly. It also shows that these things happen randomly and video games aren’t to blame.
“Linking the playing of violent video games to a mass homicide when the perpetrator is a young male is like blaming the killing on the fact that he was wearing sneakers,” said Ferguson. “The base rate of that behavior is so common that it has no predictive value whatsoever.”
Ferguson said that it’s also interesting that when older males, or females, become mass killers, the media, politicians and special interest groups never bring up video games as a cause. When you look at the fact that the average gamer is now 37 years old and 25 percent of gamers are over 50 (according to the Entertainment Software Association), this shows just how “off” these groups are in targeting violent games.
Unfortunately, Oslo won’t be the last massacre in the world. Nor will it be the last time violent video games are brought to the international spotlight. But as more people play video games on mobile phones and tablets, on PCs and on gaming consoles and portable devices; more people out there understand that games are entertainment. And games are no more at fault for a crazy person going on a rampage than movies or TV shows.
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