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Video Game Violence

Video Game Violence
Video games have been a part of American culture since the arcade boom of the late 1970's. Games were created as a form of entertainment, to relieve the stresses of everyday life. Over the years video games evolved and eventually came home in the form of Atari, Intellivision and Colecovision. Soon after, Japan followed suit and created the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Sega Master System which became extremely popular game systems in the United States. Since these games were readily available at home children started playing more and the arcades were become less and less populated. Today the average gamer is in his/her late teens and early twenties. More games are being catered to this demographic population, thus games with a more mature level of content become very popular. With mature themed games come sex, violence, the use of drugs and other things of that nature. Should games with such material be allowed to be sold or should these games be banned?
The first game to come under controversy was called Mortal Kombat created by Midway games. It was a very realistic fighting game using digitalized versions of real people. It contained more blood in it than any other game before it. "Some say the game's graphic violence was gratuitous, and was only included in order to generate a
public outcry and controversy that would increase publicity for the game."(Wikipedia Website) The violence this game exhibited had such a dramatic impact that the two top
gaming systems at the time, the Super NES completely omitted blood from the game and the Sega Genesis started a rating system giving the game an MA-17 allowing only those who are 17 years of age or older to purchase the game. This rating system was the first of its kind in the video game world. Nintendo fans voiced their opinions about the censorship of this game: "There was a HUGE backlash from this from players, however. Nintendo was bombarded day and night with...