It's been a while -- Project Proposal

Hello again!  I had gotten busy and caught a nasty cold and never got around to updating some of the ideas and things that have been happening on my blog.  In consequence, today is the day that I hope to catch all my readers up the thoughts I have been having over a project I have been working on for my composition class.  I am going to start you off with my project proposal paper, and then take you on a journey through my thoughts from there.

Video Game Violence Proposal

Problem

            How much do children really learn from playing video games?  Does the abundance of violence and gore in a video game make children violent and desensitized?  Video games may very well be the cause behind childhood violence and if so, should possibly be made to be less violent and more educational.

Context

            A possible example of the effect of video games on the behavior of children can be seen in one of my best friends from my childhood.  We met in kindergarten and were together through high school.  When we were in kindergarten through fifth grade he was happy and we played on the jungle gym, and when we were older soccer, during recess.  After school we spent time riding bikes or were not together but were both avid book readers.  During the sixth grade he got a gamming system and began to play many shooter based games.  During the next couple years what we did together began to change.  Our time spent together usually revolved around his gamming console and when he would be getting a new game.  He became more and more interesting in shooting things and going hunting.  In high school his father bought a 9mm pistol for him to use.  We went with his father out in the woods and did some target practice with it and a .22 revolver.  After that every now and again, when his father was away at the National Guards for the weekend, we would sneak the hand guns out of the house, because we were too young to legally shoot them alone, and go and shoot at things in the woods.  It soon became hard to hang out with him because all he wanted to do was either play video games for countless hours or go and illegally shoot at squirrels in the woods.

Research

            I plan on using my blog space as my artifact by posting over different technological topics that may cause childhood violence or any contradicting information that I may find during research.  I will look on some of the library’s academic article search engines looking for related articles on the affects of video game violence on children.  I also plan to search the World Wide Web for other credible, and hopefully recent, sources of information over video game violence and its effect on children.  

Analysis

            I am unsure on what my findings would be.  I think that my findings would be to indeterminate to say that video games specifically or solely the contributing factor to violence in children.  Movies and even television have become increasingly violent and profane.

Solutions

            If video games are the cause of increased childhood violence then regulations should be put in place and enforced.  Games could be made to be less graphic in their displays of death because there is very little chance of them completely removing fighting games.  They could also make the regulations on graphic games more strict and pass legislation to stop parents from buying their under aged children the violent games.  They could also promote the production of educational or cognitively stimulating games by offering subsides to help combat the negative effects of video games.