Cognition Dissemination: The Poor Responses to Claims That Games Cause Violence

The United States is still reeling from two recent mass shootings that occurred within less than 24 hours of each other, one in El Paso, Texas, and another in Dayton, Ohio. They’re the latest in too long a string of shootings the country has seen in more than the last decade. But instead of identifying the real issues, gun rights advocates, many of whom are funded by gun lobbying groups, are once again creating a distraction by blaming video games. The scapegoat has been around for nearly the entire lifetime of several Damage Control writers, with one of the first big publicized uproars against violent games being U.S. Congress’ screed against Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. This happened in the early 90s, and certain officials and politicians just can’t leave them alone.

The latest schadenfreude is all a distraction from President Donald Trump and the worst right-wing ghouls in existence, but people and organizations who should know better are playing right into their hands — intentionally and unintentionally.

Take Walmart, for instance. It was reported by VICE Games on Thursday that the main corporation instructed employees in their stores to remove ad signage and demo displays (playable and unplayable) for violent video games around the US, especially if they involve guns. They also provided the same order for violent movies and hunting videos in the stores, but it’s clear what the real focus is here. Since this is America, of course Walmart stores around the country that sell guns haven’t been told to do anything about them. Kudos to the employees who saw through this, and are trying not to do anything about the stands and demos, knowing they’re not responsible.

Don’t think Walmart is falling for anything here, which is giving them too much credit. The Walton family, which runs Walmart, used to be reliable GOP donors; they’ve since switched to contributing to the campaigns of both Democrats and Republicans they like in recent years. But they still lean conservative, and are willing participants in pushing the narrative that video games bear some responsibility for the recent shootings despite no evidence showing this. The evidence actually shows that video games don’t cause shootings or crime, but enough people believe they do for these narratives to continue working.

Funnily enough, several Walmart employees tried to walk out in protest of the stores continuing to sell guns after the incidents, the far larger problem with mass shootings. Walmart responded by deactivating employee access to their accounts, which they need for their job duties. A Walmart spokesperson contacted by Gizmodo said their access would be restored once they returned to their jobs, but this shows  how little the company cares about addressing the actual issue.

In terms of people who should know better: There’s Greg Miller of Kinda Funny Games, who wrote an editorial titled “Video Games Are So Much More Than ‘Violent’” for Newsweek. This is well intentioned and would have been fine if it was aimed towards people in power who were simply ignorant, but we’re dealing with ignorance and nefariousness. No one who needs to read this will do so, especially President Trump, who does not read at all. Miller acknowledged that this violent video games nonsense is all a distraction in his editorial, which ironically invalidates the piece’s premise.

It’s also not a good idea to counter the propaganda that video games are too violent by presenting examples of mostly non-violent and arty games. It accidentally implies that there’s indeed something wrong with violent video games, despite the aforementioned evidence that they don’t cause mass shootings. It’s reminiscent of when Games for Change posted a counter video full of peaceful and meaningful games to counter The White House’s violent games montage the last time the right tried to label games as the problem in mass shootings, just after the incident from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Kotaku had the right approach upon saying that violent video games don’t need defending, along with Please stop falling for this.

It’s tough to tell whether ESPN and ABC realize or care that they’re playing into the “video games are to blame” narrative by cancelling the airing of the Apex Legends tournament, but they did. This was originally set for Sunday, August 11th, but has now been delayed until October 6th out of “respect for the victims.” They’ll have to keep delaying it if they’re convinced these games have anything to do with the recent shootings, despite, again, no evidence proving this; but they shouldn’t have needed to move the time at all, because it’s not responsible.

It’s unlikely that anything will happen to video games during this time, but this was all a sufficient-enough distraction that games will be used again and again when the next mass shootings happen. For as frequent as these incidents occur these days, that could be next week.