Doomed: Are Teens Taking Video Games to Far? A sniper perched high in a eagle’s nest zooms in through his scope to the head of his enemy, pulls the trigger, the enemy falls to the ground headless. This is a image that is common in the world of war, and now in the world of video games. Teens all over the world have become completely addicted to first person fighting games. With technology as great as it is today game makers are able to designed games that are so real it is truly scary. Millions of teens ( mostly male) play games in which they walk around various levels picking up weapons and killing ruthlessly their opponent. In the same day, we have teens walking around schools killing classmates ruthlessly. As an avid video game player I admit I have played many of the “shoot’em up” games. I completely agree that these games are fun and tend to feed the male ego. I also have played games that are too violent. Games wherein enemies bleed everywhere and almost nonstop. Games that you can see the opponent’s facial expression before your shoot them between the eyes. I have even played a game in which there is a secret level that is modeled after Columbine. Do these violent video games influence teen violence? Probably the first violent video game was Death Race, which spawned in the 1970’s. The object was to drive and kill as many pedestrians as possible. Early games such as Missile Command and Space Invaders both had to do with the destruction of the planet. (Violence, 375) With the onset of “Nintendo” the video game world exploded, going from one home console to a 6.1 billion dollar industry. In the 1980’s video game companies designed games for every audience but many had a similar plot of violence. In a 1982 TV Guide eighteen popular video games were reviewed, fourteen of them were violent. There has always been some sort of violence in game...
