Video Games: Pros and Cons

Did you know that almost 91% of American children between the ages of 2 and 17 play at least ONE  hour of video games PER DAY???
They fuel a $11.7 billion domestic video game industry!!

As a child, I had always dabbled in a couple video games here and there, but never was something of my forte. I always preferred to outdoor activities or girly dress up games. However, the technological advances video games have made in the past decade has surpassed any amount of creativity a child could image that their daily game could posses.

Another really important aspects addressed is the  prevalent violence included in them. Violent video games. Violent video games have been blamed for school shootings, increases in bullying, and violence towards women. Critics argue that these games desensitize players to violence, reward players for simulating violence, and teach children that violence is an acceptable way to resolve conflicts.

Negative evidence of violent video games include:

1. California passed a law in 2005 that would have required violent video games to include an "18" label and criminalized the sale of these games to minors. On June 27, 2011, the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association  that the law violated free speech rights. 
2.  In 2008, 298.2 million video games were sold in the US, totaling $11.7 billion in revenue. Six of the top ten best-selling video games included violence, with four of the games carrying a "Mature" rating recommended for persons aged 17 and older.

On the other hand, there has been positive feedback to these games shown, including: 

1. Video games often reward players for simulating violence, and thus enhance the learning of violent behaviors. Studies suggest that when violence is rewarded in video games, players exhibit increased aggressive behavior compared to players of video games where violence is punished.  
2. Violent video games teach youth that violence is an acceptable conflict-solving strategy and an appropriate way to achieve one's goals.A 2009 study found that youth who play violent video games have lower belief in the use of nonviolent strategies and are less forgiving than players of nonviolent video games  These two weeks of research, I decided to focus on the aspect of video games as that is what I plan on creating later on. This research has been more dense heavy as there is such copious amounts of data out there that it was hard for me to start.

I think that this research is crucial to my project since I want to create my own video game later on. I think that addresses the Pros and Cons of video games in my research will be important as it will help me decide what aspects I want included in my game. For example, I addressed earlier the onset of increased violence due to its appearance in video games. Therefore I decided, that for my game, I will focus on something else for cognitive brain function instead of violence.

My next steps in the process include further advancing my coding skills and beginning to program the game. There are several online game creator websites that maybe helpful to my use. I will first want to experiment and tinker with them to see their use and play. However, the most desirable result would be to create my own video game as that would be the most genuine and hard working.