I seriously can’t believe we’re still talking about this. It’s been twenty years since politicians were blaming Doom for two assholes shooting up their high school in Columbine, and since then, nothing’s really changed except the names.
Look, here’s the thing: if violent video games really caused unstable assholes to go on killing sprees, then the streets of Redmond, Washington would run red with the blood of rampaging software testers. At the bottom of the career ladder, entry level video game QA is basically playing the same game over and over again, for months on end. That means a lot of time testing the latest entry in franchises such as Halo, Call of Duty, Doom, and of course, never-ending multiplayer shooters like Fortnite.
QA dies hundreds of deaths, and kills thousands of virtual avatars. Moreover, QA positions in game development tend to work long hours, have lousy health benefits, and tends to be populated by the kind of people who will roll into work running on three or four hours of sleep and as much Monster Energy as they can drink. For a bonus, throw in the stress of knowing that your job can end at any time.
If that’s not a recipe for a mental breakdown in the civilian world, I don’t know what is.
And yet, no one is shooting up the Microsoft, Sony, or Epic campuses. It’s almost like mentally stable individuals can tell the difference between reality and fiction.