Week 4 – My literature review

There are many different media forms relating to video game violence including: books; journals; television programs; and video games themselves. Whilst there is copious research in this field my literature analysis and base for my essay actually began in the parallel field of violence within television studies. Casey, et al., (2002, pp.252) believed that there is a concern between ‘new’ media controlled violence and its effect on its audience. I then returned to video game based literature to find that Kendall (2009) in his article Modern Warfare 2 - the 'shocking' video game poised to smash records provided an interesting and opinionated look at a particular video game. I was also required to pay particular attention to the video games themselves as this would create a reference point for my audience, in order for me to question them and collect quantitative data to be analyzed. I had to find two video games that showed extreme levels of violence, one within an easy to relate to, realistic scenario and the other not so. After trying various different games I decided that Super Mario Bros (1987) was a difficult scenario to relate to, was also unrealistic, but contained extreme levels of violence, in one example Mario jumps on top of an enemy to kill him, leaving his carcass on the floor. Mario then picks up the dead body and hurls it into more of his enemies, thus killing them – all depicted through what many reviews state, Squidoo (2009) being one of them, as fun graphics. The second game I chose was Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) with features described by ABC News (2008) as ‘…killing cop after cop to mowing down a crowd of people in a stolen police car.’ Considered by most, if not all, to be socially unacceptable. Whilst carrying out my literature review I have noticed that there appears to be a trend towards the media focusing on realistic violent video games as their target, I believe that with the media’s influence over the masses that this may be apparent in the findings from my questionnaire. I believe that the violence within the ‘cute’ and ‘pretty’ game, Super Mario Bros (1987), will be considered by the masses to be acceptable.