Video games allow players a virtual playground to experience the cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social benefits of gaming (Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 204). For instance, first-person shooter games can promote cognitive skills and therefore be applied into real-world contexts (Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 204). It is said that the elements of gameplay include to &work toward meaningful goals, persevere in the face of multiple failures, and celebrate in rare moments of triumph after successfully completing challenging tasks (Cade & Gates, 206). Violent video games exhibit those elements and as a result have become a popular and successful game of choice to consumers and game makers. The entertainment software rating board assigns age and content ratings to every game, M is denoted for mature audience viewing who are ages 7+ and associated with violent video games however video games seen as holding educational value have misleadingly assigned what they consider appropriate violent content for age groups. Furthermore, school shootings have strongly made deterministic c
onnections between violent video games and aggression which has constructed a concern view to the public eye. Most of the literature proposes that violent video games do place an effect on aggression, physiological arousal and prosocial behaviour (Anderson, 2004). However, some findings have shown that is not the case.
The aim of this essay is to argue that violent video games do not lead to aggressive behaviour. As supporting evidence, empirical studies by Kuhn et al., (208) investigates violent video games as having no effect on behaviour and Gentile, Lynch, Linder and Walsh (2004) to portray the effects of aggression. Both studies will be described and analysed with positive and negative effects explored. Following on, the findings of these studies will be integrated with evidence from wider literature to explore the issues of unstandardized measures of aggression, publication bias as well as methodological issues in previous studies. Finally, conclusions will be formed from the integration of evidence, real-world implications and future research will be considered.