s. In the 90’s two of the probably most influential video games of the decade were introduced. Doom, and Quake they were first person shooters in which you went level by level slaughtering your opponents. With the onset of the internet, the companies who made Doom, Quake and others made their games available for anyone to download trial versions via the internet. Along with downloading the video games, gamers where allowed to play other players across the world. Another huge game that had plenty of violence and gore in it was the arcade smash Mortal Kombat. The public finally realized how violent video games were when this game was released in 1994 for home consoles. The publics concerns led to congressional hearings in order to set up a rating system for video games similar to the rating system used in movies and television. ( 375) After the hearings a definant rating system was set on all games in order to prevent young children from viewing the bloody violence seen in games. The rating systems ranged from; “E” for everyone, “T” for teens and “M” for mature. Today violence is apparent in thousands of video games. The question now is, where does the American public stand on this issue? If one where to utilize a search engine and look up the words “Teen Violence” they would find numerous articles, journals, and publications stating several opinions on the issue at hand. They all come down to two arguments: those that feel that video games directly correlate to teen violence; and those who oppose the idea that any video game or media tool could cause such actions in a young adult. Proponents of the idea that video games could directly cause teen violence hold one core belief: video games encourage/promote teen violence directly, and that inherently violent children are only encouraged further by such intensely violent games. The American Medical Association (AM...
