Social and Financial Effects of Video Games

Video games are, like movies, an entertaining way of being in a completely different life. The interactive storylines are one way to lure in people into looking at and becoming interested in a video game. They strive to get people interested in them, so they will become addicted to the game and other games like it. Because of factors such as entertainment value, people of all ages are affected by video games socially and financially.

Entertainment value is simply defined as how entertaining a game would be to the person playing the game. Many video games try to have a main character in a very serious, and interesting, situation, leading to an exciting adventure of some sort. The storyline of the majority of video games attempts to be somewhat realistic or believable, but it overall it isn’t that realistic. Yet, it still adds to the overall entertainment of the game, and the more someone can do within the game itself, it will be more exciting and lure in more people. Many people look for, in games, a good story that leads to several exciting event happening in succession one after another, events that would never happen to you in real life make a game that much more interesting.

Throughout the life of the video game, there have been cases where video games seem to be the cause of aggression in teenagers. On March 6, 2005, in an article on CBS News it was mentioned that “a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to go on a rampage and kill three men, two of them police officers.” (Ed Bradley, CBS News) In another case study, they observed one person playing a non-violent video game and the other person playing a violent video game. After observing their brain scans, they noticed that “[t]eens that played the violent game showed increased activity in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal.” (Kristin Kalning, MSNBC) Since there are many other cases like this, the bigger gaming companies have been making more educational and family-oriented games, so as to create games that are less aggressive or violent. However, many of the games still are extremely violent, so that those who are not addicted to the video games have an interesting game to play.