TIME TO HOP OFF THE MORAL OUTRAGE BANDWAGON

PUBG, FORTNITE (ITS

STRONGEST COMPETITOR TODAY) AND CANDY CRUSH, ARE PUZZLES THAT ENGAGE THE PLAYER ENOUGH TO MAKE THEM WANT TO KEEP PLAYING

In 1976, arcades in America were introduced to a new kind of video game. After inserting a coin into the slot machine, players saw a black screen with the image of a car and two stick-like figures. The time at the top of the screen read: 30, giving the player 30 seconds to play. Once the timer began, they were meant to chase after and run over the moving stick figure images, turning them into tombstones after a deafening shriek. With every kill, the players got a minute added to their game. If the players rammed any obstacle in the car’s way, including the tombstones of the people they killed, it was game over.

The game was called Death Race, and was met with instant criticism for promoting violence among young people. However, with the emergence of full-motion video, the games that would follow would be far more graphic, and their storylines more engaging. Since then, the American Psychological Association has been conducting research to prove the link between real life violence and violence in video games. But often, the research methodology is messy and even contradictory.

The reason behind the hue and cry over video games (Death Race, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, PUBG) is moral outrage. Moral outrage is the idea that without these elements — violent video games, explicit music, erotic books and sexualised TV shows — society would be a kinder, less violent, and better place. In effect, it pits people against each other, the moral vs the immoral, and can exacerbate social conflict.

India also hopped on to this bandwagon, with ministers in Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh calling for the ban of PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG), an online multiplayer video game. Players are parachuted on to an island where they must do whatever they can, including kill, to stay alive. Developed by South Korean company, Bluehole, the game encourages strategy and procedure. The problems raised as reasons to ban it are: it promotes violence, and is highly addictive.

Let’s look at the first. Forty-three years since Death Race, there is no defi- nite link between violent video games and real life violence. But moral outrage continues, with Donald Trump recently blaming video games for mass shootings in America. The number that play video games vis-à-vis the number of killings inspired by them is disproportionate. Bluntly, if a significant number of people were actually influenced by these games, there would have been many more killings. This holds true for India. According to Statista, PUBG reached 400 million players worldwide in July 2018. Indians alone spent $19.65 million on in-game purchases in 2018, according to a KPMG report. However, only a handful of PUBG-related violence has been reported, of which one man was attacked by his sister’s fiance after his battery ran out while he was playing. Does that corroborate the claim that PUBG is making us violent? No.

But does it mean that it’s addictive? Certainly. The growing influence of the virtual world gives us reason to believe that an age restriction on explicit content can help formative minds. The Entertainment Software Rating Board, America’s self-regulatory organisation, was formed after the growth of explicit video games in the 1990s. PUBG, Fortnite (its strongest competitor today) and even Candy Crush, are, in many ways, puzzles that engage the player enough to make them want to keep playing. The solution is to regulate the time spent on them. With growing tech-dependence, we are overloaded with ways to keep ourselves occupied online, and the plausible route is to limit on-screen time and find better ways to keep young people engaged.

India must move away from this historical pattern of moral outrage. America’s music industry witnessed a sad time in the 1980s when the then Senator Al Gore’s wife Tipper Gore went after rock n’ roll musicians like Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snider, accusing them of corrupting young minds with their music. Similarly, India’s film industry has been known for strict censorship rules and bans. Livemint reported on February 26 that censorship has reached a new peak in India, with the proportion of films without any cuts reaching the century’s lowest levels in 2016-17. Art cannot afford it, and neither can video games.

And if young people are actually turning more violent, it may be time to look for other causes in the real world to figure this one out.