Critical Refletion

In the Article: “Moving to the dark side of the screen, Claims linking video games to murders rattle the powerful industry”, by Deborah Cameron, it is claimed that the two biggest companies in the video game industry- Nintendo and Sony- have earned $ 14 billion in the last year and employ thousands of staff with spending in the billions mainly on marketing. The companies apparantly cultivate influential friends who are either lured in through donations or being actively engaged in the process of video game production. When the Japanese brain surgeon Professor Ryuta Kawashima claimed that video games rendered parts of the brain inert, Nintendo became the No 1 donor to his research institute and let him produce his own game called 'Brain Training'. It sold 4 million copies in the US and is just being released in Australia. From being a obscure scientist, Ryuta became a celebrity within 5 years.

Professor Bruce Bartholow of the University of Missouri says : 'The video game industry is taking the same approach that the tobacco industry took for many years.' For all the power and pervasiveness the game industry prefers the scrutiny. It engages lawyers, advisers and lobbyists to diminish commentators, attacks and to sway public opinion that the research is faulty or findings are inconclusive. Retaining litigation lawyers for court battles in order to protect the main US industry body, the entertainment Software Association, it keeps the upper hand on court cases. For example in a Illinois case, the judge agreed with the pro-industry psychologist, Dr Jeffrey Goldstein, that there was “ no solid causal link between violent video game exposure and aggressive thinking and behaviour”.

The article mentions further that the great future lies in developing better and more varied games for educating trainee soldiers. “It is the fastest way to train troops and the easiest way to save money” says Sergeant Donel Hagelin.

When Kawashima demonstrated and documented his reasearch in 2001 he said, that a subdued prefrontal cortex caused weakness in the neurons, halting brain development. In turn, this affects a child's ability to control anti-social behaviour. This research involved comparing brain scans, involving teenagers playing the Nintendo game: 'The Observer’. Kawashima warned that the importance of this discovery can not be underestimated. Today he calls his research results from 2001 a 'guess', with the suggestion that more research needs to be done. It says further in the report, that neither Kawashima nor the Tohoku University would tell how much money Nintendo donates to the institute.

There seems to be a great push to make people dependent on machines and in particular dependent on video games. Why else is the industry growing in such a big proportion? May it be in form of entertainment or for educational reasons; this enormous industry seems to want to diminish the role of the human being, thereby making huge profits and gaining power over people. Why worry about creating a good teacher if one can do it so much easier, better, more effectively and make more money using a computer? Is that our future? Is the ultimate aim to make a machine out of human beings? The research shows that people show increased conformity in behaviour according to the video game action they've been involved in.

Dr Harald Rau of the Institute of Medical psychology form the University of Tuebingen 2004, wrote a research article about the cross-linkages in the brain that have being reduced. He found that the capacity of stimulus carriers working parallel increased rapidly, with the effect that the brain is not net-working so efficiently any more. Stimuli will neglect certain areas of the brain and go to other parts of the brain with very high speed. The stimuli bypass the emotions which are not developing accordingly. This has disturbing consequences, as the studies carried out by the Rational Psychology Association in Munich show. For example: children can watch horror movies, where people are being torn to pieces, without any emotion of horror or pity, whereas adults feel revolted and refuse to continue watching the movie to the end.

So the more we are in this sort of violence-orientated direct contact with computers, the more it seems our human nature, particularly our feelings of empathy towards human beings is going to change. The networking of our brain is being re-organised the more the computer network gets established. So where does that leave us with our sense of morality? The answer to this question cannot be found in the high–speed moral vacuum created by most computer game industries. I think we need to slow down again, to step back and connect with our inner selves in order to find meaning in our lives.