This chapter is an excerpt from "Video games", a book published in August, 2002, in the "Idées reçues" collection of Le Cavalier bleu. The aim of this collection is to explain social, economic and technical subjects to the large public.
Chapter title: «Do Video Games alter our mind?»
Quotation from Gretech (Research group on technology and daily life - Sorbonne University):
«The technology which surrounds us does not take us away from ancient myths. Even if a wind of future pulls us, one finds the old forms of expression of the imagination of men.»
Text:
«It is better than to box my boss, isn’t it?» This testimony was not made by a video gamer, but almost. It was made by Martial, a young man who spends his Saturdays evenings in a laser game: a sort of life-size video game which takes place in a dark labyrinth of 600 square meters, with techno music in full decibels. The objective? To shoot down - virtually - as many people as possible, with a laser gun. The participants put on a suit equipped with sensors; when they are hit by the laser beam of an opponent, their weapon is ineffective for six seconds.
«It is better than to box my boss…» This sentence evokes us the concept of catharsis, described by Aristote in the fourth century before Christ: the Greek philosopher used this word to describe the purification felt by spectators, after the representation of a dramatic play. Some specialists, when speaking, this time, about violence on TV, cinema or video games, evoke a similar phenomenon. «[A boy who has] a difficult personal history (emotional, social, cultural or educational deprivations) [is often looking for] violent images», asserts child and teen psychiatrist Serge Tisseron - the author of “Children under influence: do screens make young people violent?”. «The boy dives into a state of illness in which, unlike the painful events he experiments in real life, he is not alone. For some boys, the images create a sort of emotional religious community.» The explanation is also supposed to apply to violence experienced alone, during a video game for example: the boy imagines he will able to speak about it with friends.
More widely, researchers (psychoanalysts, media experts, sociologists) are more and more numerous in support of the claim that the video games sould have a positive influence on the construction of the personality. Their works are a clear reference to famous psychologist and psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim's theories. In his book «Psychoanalysis of fairy tales», this Austrian-born American, who disappeared in 1990, hypothised that White Snow or Cinderella had a therapeutic function for children and teenagers: they help them to understand the complex world which they are about to face; by informing them about trials to come and efforts to carry out, they calm their fears.
This university research on the impact of the games has to be considered with caution. It is very recent, has not been validated by the whole scientific community; furthermore, at this stage of the experiments, there may be a manipulation from the video game industry, which is always concerned about improving its brand image. In a time when this software is accused of favoring violence among young people, could one imagine a better counter-attack? A study proving that the video games help children, would blow out every criticism…
Anyway, it seems interesting to expose the theory of one of these researchers, Henry Jenkins, director of the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), near Boston, in the United States. «The elements of the popular culture should be interpreted as modern myths which reflect the values and the desires of those who produce them, as of those who consume them», he asserts. According to him, video games, and particularly violent software programs, have four psychological functions. They allow children to experiment sensations of power, bad behaviour, the reality of the world and, finally, intense emotions.
First, the sensation of power: schoolboys who come back under pressure from school are supposed to find in the video games a release of their contained violence; a few years ago, children cooled down by drawning or by playing football.
The second point of his demonstration concerns bad behaviour. A notion with double meaning. First, there is the possibility of virtually transgressing the main prohibition of our society (to kill); but there is also the possibility of drawing the attention of one’s parents (who do not know much about the contents of these CD-ROM, they are not watchful).
The third supposed psychological function of video games is to allow children to confront the reality of the world. Thanks to video games, the child is projected in a (cyber) savage world, and realizes that human beings may be “bad”. It helps him to accept his own violence and to manage this part of himself.
The fourth and last advantage of video programs is to allow teenagers to fill an emotional vacuum. These spectacular leisure activities are supposed to help them forget the problems of their difficult age: lack of self-respect, loneliness, etc.
But if one adheres to these theories about the psychoanalytical dimension of video games, there is one more question: why, then, do these leisure activities also seduce adults? We saw in a previous chapter that it is not rare to see people who are 35, even 40 years old, and who like these games. Does that mean that they too find a psychological satisfaction there? Some experts assert yes! The video games act on two dimensions of the psychology of the grown-ups: regression and the desire to be the other. Regression? A lot of sociologists worry about the regressive character of our society. Video games are supposed to participate in this movement, in the same way as the unresponsabilisation of parents, products flattering our recollections of childhood (slightly acid colors, round forms) or the success of the mobile phone (which is nothing other than a “baby’s doudou” or a modern “baby’s comforter”). The temptation of multiplicity is not new. Protée (the maritime god of the Greek mythology, who could modify his shape as he wanted) knew it well. And, not such a long time ago, carnivals, during which one disguised oneself as an other person, allowed people to realize, this fantasy with complete impunity. Today, multiplicity is perhaps more diffuse, more pernicious. «[People have] now a Chameleon capacity to borrow any identity, to put themselves in any place, or at least to have the illusion of doing so», Régine Robin, sociology professor at Quebec university in Montreal, says. «The fashion of rediscovering one's roots, very strong in the United States, is a consequence of this weakened identity.» The video games are perhaps an other one…
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