GIVING UP THE GUN

James McMahon reflects on a year when real-life violence became too much. Is it possible to put down our guns?

Is it possible to give up guns in games? And what happens when you give it a go?

The morning of 15 March I woke up to the news that a 28-year-old Australian white supremacist had walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and opened fire on those attending Friday prayer. Fifty people lost their lives. Another 50 were injured. I had been pretty excited about getting stuck into the newly released The Division 2 that morning.

I’ll be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to begin the download.

As the year ran out, real-world violence seemed to escalate. A mass shooting in Daytona, USA because a man was denied entry to a bar. A massacre in a Walmart in El Paso had racially motivated overtones; 22 people lost their lives. Closer to home we had the terrorist attack on London Bridge, in which two people died. Life outside of videogames is scary enough – do I really want to raise the body count on PS4?

SHOT OF REALITY

I’m hesitant, as knees still jerk every time a mass shooting

occurs; less than a month after 17 students and staff were killed at a school in Parkland, Florida, the US President shared his belief that violent videogames are “shaping young people’s thoughts…”, echoing a 2012 tweet that shared his belief that videogames were “creating monsters.” And yet thanks to games’ status as the world’s favourite form of entertainment, the debate about their culpability in gun-related tragedy has become more nuanced in recent times.

“We’re seeing more and more scepticism of any perceived connection between violent videogames and violent offenders,” says Chris Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University in Central Florida. “I think that’s because people that were gamers 20 years ago are now in their 40s and now they are journalists and politicians and scholars. So it’s kind of like rock music in the ’80s, when people thought Ozzy

Osbourne was the end of society. Now nobody thinks Ozzy

Osbourne was the end of society…”

The truth is, nobody knows anywhere near enough about the role videogames may or may not play in inciting violence. It’s not far short of unquantifiable. It’s just not ethical to put a teenager in a laboratory, ask them to play Doom for the day, then give them a real gun and see what they do with it.

“There is virtually no research on whether or not videogames cause violent acts like school shootings,” says Mark Appelbaum, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University Of California San Diego. In 2015, Appelbaum served as the chair of an American Psychological Association Task Force on Violent Media. He continues, “There is no scientific evidence that confirms or disconfirms that speculation.”

Regardless of what actions violent videogames may or may not inspire in those who play them, on the morning of 15 March

I didn’t want to fire a gun. I watched the footage coming in on the news – teary mothers, grieving fathers, the stench of fear emanating through the TV screen – and I didn’t want reality. All I wanted to do was escape.

YOU, ME, AND AN MK12

Let me tell you a little bit about me. I’m a 38-year-old man.

I’ve more or less been playing videogames since the beginning of both my life and the life cycle of videogames. I should also say that I have fairly extreme OCD, which is triggered by heightened anxiety.

I grew up in a crap northern town before the internet could arrive to show me that there was a world outside my postcode. Sure, I had diversions; I liked punk rock and I liked to draw. But nothing helped me escape both my surroundings and my poor bouts of mental health quite like games.

Okay, I’m going to be honest with you. There was a short period of time where me and games kind of lost touch for a while. It was short and it was miserable and I’d be amazed if it ever happened again, but when I came back, games had changed. The Triple-A industry had been born. Games could now be blockbusters. And for a while, I couldn’t find the sort of games I liked to play; games that transported me somewhere else. I could never quite grasp the appeal of Call Of Duty. If I wanted that kind of stark realism, I could just turn on the TV.

We often ask if videogames influence gun violence. What we ask far less often is how gun culture has influenced videogames. I was surprised to come back to games noting that my controller now had triggers. It’s almost like the controller itself is funnelling us towards FPS experiences.

Not long after my return to games I played Grand Theft Auto III. I knew within five minutes of picking up the controller that games would now be the future of entertainment. At the same time, I felt frustrated that I could be placed within a world with no walls – no linear path in which to follow – and the only thing I could do was reap destruction. I mean, I thought that after a few hours. First I caused some absolute mayhem.

But then I thought, ‘what does it say about humanity that we’re given all this freedom – and all we can do with it is destroy…?’

ON A JOURNEY

On the morning of 15 March 2019 I set myself a challenge. I wouldn’t play a game with a gun in it in a fortnight. I emailed my editor. He replied saying ‘A fortnight without Fortnite!’ and with that quite clever pun, a feature was born. Furthermore, I’d keep a record of how I felt.

I’d stick to the inventory of PlayStation Now. Ultimately

“IF I WANTED STARK REALISM, I COULD JUST TURN ON THE TELEVISION.”

I’d test my fundamental belief that videogames aren’t just a thing to do when we get home from school or work; they’re a thing we can do to make ourselves better.

I was already familiar with indie classics Journey and Flower.

They’re games that I’d experienced before. But the first time I entered the world of Abzû I felt a flashback to my initial love of games that was so intense it actually made me emotional. It was that or the manta rays, anyway. Anyone who’s played Giant Squid’s underwater exploration game will know it’s not a magnum opus, and you can play it through in just a few hours. But I spent triple that time exploring the oceans the game presented to me. What returned to me was a sense of overwhelming wonder I hadn’t been sure games could still provide for me.

In the days that followed I felt calmer, yes, and my OCD was slightly less fiery than usual. But there were also unexpected effects that I couldn’t have predicted. I felt more creative. More curious. It was almost like seeking out things that my PlayStation could do that didn’t involve shooting people in the face was actually tweaking my personality. Is that even possible? I emailed Jamie Madigan, who’s written an excellent book about how games affect our brains called Getting Gamers.

“Personalities are something that we don’t generally change,” says Jamie. “Games can certainly change our mood or emotions in the short term, though. They can make us happy, more collaborative, frustrated, angry, excited… In all the ways that you normally expect. Those changes tend to be short-lived, but they are real changes.”

My wife, whose interest in games doesn’t extend much beyond beating everyone at Crash Team Racing when we have guests, started asking questions about what I was playing. I was playing Giant Sparrow’s The Unfinished Swan one day – a strange story of an orphan in a painted world, and one of the strangest and most innovative games I’ve ever played – and she actually asked if she could take over. And so I forlornly stepped away from the controller and went and did the washing up. That was the first time I actually missed shooting people in the face, actually…

COUNTRY LIFE

I started thinking about the videogame journalist Keith Stuart, who, frustrated with Triple-A publishers’ fixation on guns, once wrote a feature for this very magazine where he conceived a variety of game concepts that were high on innovation, low on violence, and pitched them around the industry. He received one reply, from Rockstar, to a game he pitched called Country Life, in which… well, you walked around the country having a nice time. He says, “If the creator of Grand Theft Auto can see the potential in a completely non-violent, bigbudget, exploration game, surely such a thing is possible.”

That sense of boundless possibility – for videogames to create experiences even more natural and instinctive than resorting to violence – is exactly what

I took away from my gun game detox. Since taking time away from guns, some big games with a non-violent approach to problem solving have appeared on PS4. Recent title Concrete Genie showed how a love of doodling and a creative spirit can overcome bullies, Death Stranding suggested society’s many divisions can be bridged with a parcel delivery, and over in PS VR you can help a lonely cat find a sunflower in Ghost Giant – and if you haven’t, you really, really ought to.

I still haven’t played The Division 2, by the way… and don’t expect to in 2020.

“GAMES CAN CHANGE OUR MOOD OR EMOTIONS IN THE SHORT TERM.”