The issue of how video games affect people’s understanding of the world has been raised over and over again. Dr. Carole Lieberman was interviewed by Fox News about violence and sexual situations in games. Dr. Lieberman has been active in evaluating the effect of exposure to violence in the media on children for many years and is considered by many to be an expert in the field. So when Fox News asked her about the violence and sexual situations in Bulletstorm she gave them her honest opinion.
Dr. Lieberman said:
- “Video games have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, actions and words.”
- “This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts.”
- “The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in video games.”
And Fox News twisted this into “sexual situations and acts in video games — highlighted so well in Bulletstorm — have led to real-world sexual violence. ”
And journalist with even the slightest sense of integrity can see what happened here. Fox News wanted a juicy story to drive page views. Dr. Lieberman told me that she asked them to correct this perversion of her words and they outright refused. Of course, I see this as backing up my statement that they weren’t after “the truth” and instead just wanted to fan the flames of controversy.
And fan the flames of controversy they did. Dr. Lieberman has received hundreds of threatening emails from gamers and has had her recent book Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them and How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets been Amazon bombed. For those of you who don’t know, Amazon bombing is a phenomenon where trolls who have nothing better to do post negative and non-truthful reviews of a product. In this case, you get Fox News creating a problem and a bunch of people overreacting to an inaccurate quote by attacking Dr. Lieberman.
For those of you who wonder what I think about games and violence, I have written and spoken about violence in video games for many years. I’ve debated the influence of video games and their place within our violent society on local and national news channels, written editorials that ran in a variety of magazines, and organized community events for parents to learn about the issues. I regularly receive email and phone calls from parents asking me if they should buy this game or that game for their kids.
To lay my cards out on the table, I believe that children should be raised by their parents, not by the video game industry. Blaming a game for violence is like blaming a gun for a murder. I know it’s a hackneyed expression, but just as guns don’t kill people and people kill people, video games don’t kill people. Video games are even less to blame than guns, which I feel are to blame as much as a hammer or a screw driver for violence in our society.
It’s how a person understands the game that influences them. I believe that a responsible parent should help their child understand that sexual and violent situations in games are different from real life. Parents should accept responsibility for raising their children, not look to blame the entertainment industry.I spoke with Dr. Lieberman about this controversy last week and she not only clarified her position but also had some interesting things to say about the fallout from the interview with Fox News. Dr. Lieberman was not saying that video games cause rape. She was simply saying that as people consume more violence they become more likely to become aggressive. “I was not saying that every gamer is a rapist, I was saying that studies show that the more consumption of violent media the more likely a person is to become aggressive. They may not kill or rape. They may instead become aggressive in other circumstances. It is also important to take into account their childhood and how angry they are in general in their lives.”
Wow, that’s a lot different from what Fox News said. I bet someone from Fox News would read the above quote and print “…video games cause rape…”
The Amazon bombing is somewhat of a different story. Once people read what Fox News wrote the whole thing got blown out of proportion. It’s very easy to see. Before the Fox News story ran there were 3 reviews of the book. Since the story ran there are now hundreds of reviews of the book, all of which are negative, many of which using almost the exact same wording. Conflict can play out in many ways, and apparently posting angry comments as book reviews is one of them.
The ironic thing is that Dr. Lieberman worked on this book for many years, conducting interviews with hundreds of men and women to understand how people get trapped in relationships. The book, in my opinion, serves to expose the bad girl tactics to good men and women. This way, men can learn how to recognize when they’ve encountered a bad girl – and we’ve all encountered bad girls and known that we wish someone had warned us. The book also includes self-assessment tools so men can figure out to which tactics they are the most vulnerable. None of this has anything to do with gaming and violence.
The bottom line here is that the record needs to be set straight. The people judging Dr. Lieberman should understand what she really said.
And leave the book out of it. As Dr. Lieberman said, “I don’t mind so much the attacks and the misrepresentation, but what I do mind is that the book I wrote to help men and women find love is getting caught in the crossfire.”
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