While computer games such as Warcraft, mobile legends, red alert, valorant (valorant rank boosting), and others are trending in the gaming world, many politicians are not happy about it after many mass shootings have surfaced recently.
You can’t just stand by and watch when teenagers and young adults commit serious acts of violence after consuming killer games, said long-forgotten CSU politician Günther Beckstein. That was twelve years ago and seems to come from another world. But for a brief moment, the past few days as though you were back in 2007.
Once again, a politician had made a direct connection between a heinous act and the consumption of video games. “Many of the perpetrators or the potential perpetrators come from the gaming scene,” said Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.
Stop Blaming Violent Video Games For Mass Shootings
Yes, the perpetrator in Halle deliberately chose a video game aesthetic, spoke in gamer slang, and created abnormal achievement lists, so “achievements”, as they also exist in games. It said, for example, that he wanted to kill people of different religions in the act. However, the medium of play in itself did not drive him to act. It is hideous, right-wing extremist ideology and it’s long-ignored soundboards on the internet do.
The fact that video games are not triggers – or even the reason – for such serious crimes as in Halle has been proven many times. There are numerous studies, particularly in the USA: There is little evidence of a connection between playing violent video games and the actual execution of violent acts, wrote about twelve researchers from the American Psychological Association in 2017 in a joint statement.
And yet in our society, we have to talk more about video games. Not enough is discussed about their content, but enough about certain game communities, the shadow areas around them. Platforms such as Steam have remained unobserved for far too long, and in some areas now offer a breeding ground for hatred, agitation, and right-wing radical ideas. The contributions are often only moderated – on a platform with more than 90 million active users per month. The vast majority of contributions, it cannot be emphasized enough, are harmless.
In addition, there are so-called imageboards such as “4chan” and the now “8chan”, simple forums in which everyone can create posts anonymously. In most cases, harmless images are exchanged here or all sorts of topics are discussed. However, these forums have increasingly deteriorated into a pool for dissatisfied, mostly white, young men, who spread their abstruse worldview undisturbed here – and are receptive to radical-right ideologies, anti-Semitism and hatred of women.