I've been hearing about violence in video games for a long time without having any clear opinion about it. Even though it isn't always relevant to educational games, it's an interesting example of cultural models (Gee 2003), and one about which my viewpoint has been changing during this course.

Greenfield states that “there is evidence that violent video games breed violent behaviours, just as violent television shows do” (1984, p. 92) before explaining why “It may be that the most harmful aspect of video games is that they are solitary in nature” (p. 93).

Reflecting on this idea that violence exists in all sorts of media, I still felt that the fact video games are played in an active way results in an important difference, which is encompassed by Gee's Identity Principle (2003, pp. 51-58). I thought that even though all media can potentially generate violence, video games could probably do so more strongly.

But then, Gee's talk about cultural models helped me revise my point of view: I think he's right in saying that violent “group models” are most of the time counter-balanced by “general models” of good which exist in the players' other social groups and in society at large.

So again, it may only be when violent “group models” take too much importance in a player's life that violence becomes a central source of concern. This is more likely to happen with emotionally weak populations such as some teenagers or people having serious personal problems but then, those players don't represent the majority of video game players. With such at-risk groups, parents and friends have a major role to play.

Finally, I found Gee particularly insightful (as usual in his book) when he discusses how locking people into their own conceptions is not necessarily less dangerous than enabling them to experience various perspectives, including bad ones.

References:

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, Palgrave Macmillan

Greenfield, P. M. (1984). Video games. In Mind and media: the effects of television, video games, and computers. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.