Giovanny Aguirre

Personal Statement

There are many topics I am interested, but none grabbed my attention as much as the

topic of video games causing kids to turn into violent people. Part of the reason why I was

interested in this topic is because I enjoy playing video games. Another reason why this topic

pulled me in was because video games helped me out when I was going through tough times.

My parents separated in my early years of elementary and half way through 3rd grade I found

out my dad was arrested and soon after that he was deported back to Mexico. I did not talk about

how I felt about the situation because I had trouble knowing how I felt and video games helped

me keep my mind off the situation and keep my family from worrying about me. I have played

video games for over a decade and the fact that I am not a violent person made me wonder if the

people that make this claim are just trying to prevent others from playing or if there is some truth

to what they are saying.

For me to begin this project I first had to see how many people claimed that video games

made them violent. I saw a news station covering a case or two regarding this, so I decided to

search the internet and found more cases. The crimes varied from robbery to murder all within

the activities that occurred in the video games. After seeing this I still felt that the assertion that

video games make people violent was untrue. People were still convicted of the crime despite

their claim. I could not believe that these games were partially responsible for causing people to

commit these heinous crimes. This however lead me to take action on my own to prove that

video games are not the cause.

What I decided to do was run an experiment with multiple games from different genres

and with different ratings from the Entertainment Software Rating Board. I would play each

game for at least an hour so that the game could start showing some affects. This experiment
was made so I can see any changes in my behavior and urges to cause violence. I would repeat

this at least two times. To complete this experiment I missed out on outdoor activities with my

brother and my friends, skipped my chores and left my homework incomplete. Although I did

not turn violent after this experiment, it did show me a new path to look into. It was not what

game I chose to play, it was how I played the game. There were some games that were extremely

violent and how I played prevented a lot of violence from occurring. Compared to a few videos I

saw on YouTube, people who played the same violent games did show more violence through

aggressive tactics as they played.

I invested a lot of time to do research and conduct this experiment and it cost me in a few

ways. I am somewhat distant with my friends and family, I failed a few of my classes all

because I chose to continue on my little project. Although it gave me a bit of closure that it is

behavior and play style that lead us to become violent, there is so much more I want to know.

For instance, I would still like to know why many of us show different responses to the violence

we see in games. I will have to put that off for another time because now I want to focus on the

more important parts like finishing the school year with passing grades.