Video Games Lead to Cosplay not Violence

Maybe I’m just a natural praxeologist, but I remember making this argument when I was about 10 years old. Praxeology is the study of human action. I wanted to see a violent movie and my Dad wouldn’t let me because he thought seeing violent media would lead to violent behavior. I retorted that perhaps young boys had an instinctive impulse for violence and that if it was channeled into something harmless, like violent movies, it would reduce violent behavior. It was a “get it out of their system” type argument. I have no idea how sound an argument that is. I was 10 years old. But I do know that I didn’t grow up to be a violent person, and this research supports my claim.

Every time there’s a school shooting the pundits and politicians scramble to point fingers at one another, desperate for the blame to fall squarely somewhere else. No one ever wants to look at mind altering prescription medication, largely because pharmaceutical companies are sponsors and lobbyists of the people pointing the fingers. No one ever wants to blame parents, because it’s emotionally difficult and parents represent the largest constituency of the people pointing the fingers. And certainly nobody anywhere wants to apply the slightest shred of scrutiny to the school system itself. No one ever suggests that if you corral impressionable children into quasi-prisons they’ll begin to act like prisoners. And no one ever suggests that if devise a system that dehumanizes impressionable children they might have trouble respecting the humanity of others.

Instead they blame music, or trench coats, or comic books, or guns, and this time it seems like the babbling class is pointing their finger at violent video games. Chief among them, of course, is the National Rifle Association, the supposedly liberty oriented organization that’s calling to station armed guards in the mental gulags that children are herded into.

A legislator looks at the problem of gun violence and says “ban guns” imagining that society will instantly obey their pronouncements, but undeterred by the fact that “ban violence” is already on the books. When one ban fails they simply propose another, and “ban violent video games” is on the lips of many statutory minded people.

But how does a praxeologist approach the problem? A praxeologist looks at things like this. The TSA has likely caused thousands of traveling deaths. Why? Well, because many travelers avoid air travel because they don’t enjoy being molested by bureaucrats. As a result national air travel is way down, but the average distance of road trips is way up. Statistically, driving is far more dangerous than flying. Ergo, travelers are choosing a more dangerous mode of travel, leading to far more deaths. I’m not sure how one could attack that logic. We just haven’t found the actual numbers yet.

So, what if I told you that violent video games reduce the rate of violent crime? A statutory minded person shudders. It can’t be possible. Even suggesting such a thing is dangerous. But to a praxeologist the logic is pretty obvious, and now the science supports it.

According to research conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) at Baylor University and the University of Texas at Arlington video games reduce crime rates because “potential criminal offenders” are busy playing video games when they would otherwise be committing crime. The study, “Understanding the Effects of Violent Video Games on Violent Crime,” can be found at Zew.de.

This from the study:

“Political decision-makers regard playing violent video games as a contributing factor to aggressive behavior of teenagers and young adults. Therefore, regulating and even prohibiting violent content in video games is frequently considered a possibility. The findings linking game play to an increase in aggression are mainly based on psychological laboratory experiments. However, these experiments do neither consider the intense usage of these games by relatively violence-prone people nor the resulting time use effect. This incapacitation effect prevents gamers from engaging in other violent activities during the time spent playing video games.”

In other words violent video games attract “those with a tendency to commit violent crimes” and occupy them with “alternative activities where violence is unlikely to occur.” Gamers voluntarily spend a large block of their free time playing video games, which leads to a reduction of violent crimes.

But that’s just the beginning. School shooters are almost always characterized as anti social, loners and outcasts. Video game enthusiasm plugs a kid into an entire community of other gamers. Bring them to a convention and next thing you know they’ll be more concerned with acquiring a lightsaber or a phaser than finding an actual weapon. Notice we’ve never heard of a rampage shooting happening at a game convention?

Benjamin Engelstätter, researcher at ZEW says:

“Our findings for the United States show that the time use effect on players is stronger than the aggression-promoting effect. Therefore, possible regulations of violent content in video games … would probably lead to a rise in crime rates as a number of gamers would spend less time playing video games that might have lost their appeal due to the regulations.”

So next time someone says to you that we need to ban violent video games to prevent violent crime, calmly suggest to them that we make playing violent video games mandatory to prevent violent crime. Then stand back and watch their head explode.

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