The Relationship with Violence in Video Games

With Video Games becoming a staple on the world household front, the amount of social impact they have is widespread. “Video games have became a billion dollar industry in North America, with revenues topping almost $20 billion in the United States in 2009 alone” (Bowen, H. J.,). In many different Video Games, violence plays a key role in their overall theme .Violent Video Games (VVG) exposure has been shown to increase aggressive tendencies according to Anderson & Bushman, (2001) but only for short periods of time, 15 minutes or less in a study done by (Sestir & Bushman, 2010). In a study conducted by (Greitemeyer and Osswald (2006) they found no significant effects VVG's have on our society positive or negative. They did however, find that video games can have positive effects on behavior, if the games have pro-social content.
When starting to test VVGs, Tear and Nielsen, (2010) decided to put controls into place to keep the test results clear and concise. The first step was to take the pro-social questionnaire before and after game-play. They tried different test using linear games so that game-play was more consistent so that all users in the test would have similarities throughout the test. The violent video games that where tested where Call Of Duty: Black Ops II, and Grand Theft Auto IV. The results were far off from the general expectations of a large part of society.
Researchers. of course, had to include controls which were non-violent video games. These two games were World of Zoo, and Portal 2, where the controls provided so at the end of the test, researchers could see the behavioral variances from playing the two different types of games. The games did provide an environment that was inductive for the player. W...

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... to guarantee the results accuracy. The only thing that is a constant with VVGs is the amount they sell. The player base is expanding and the market is already overrun so as long as people keep selling and people keep playing and the consequences of extended VVG playing are knowledge of great demand.

References
Bösche, W. (2009). Violent content enhances video game performance. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 21(4), 145-150. doi:10.1027/1864-1105.21.4.145.
Bowen, H. J., & Spaniol, J. (2011). Chronic exposure to violent video games is not associated with alterations of emotional memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology 25(6), 906-916. doi:10.1002/acp.1767.
Tear, M. J., & Nielsen, M. (2013). Failure to demonstrate that playing violent video games diminishes prosocial behavior. Plos ONE, 8(7), 1-7. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0068382.