P3 - The Effects of Violent Videogames on 16-18 Year Olds Article

Audience Theory

• Hypodermic Needle Model - This is the implication that the media had a powerful affect on its audiences, this implication can be both true and false depending on what media. However in videogames this is not true at all as videogames do not have much affect on people at all, especially 16-18 year olds. There are games such as Postal 2 and Manhunt 2 which are very violent and gruesome but they have not been proven to cause teens to become violent.
• Uses and Gratification Theory - This theory asks how and why people seek out media. 16-18 year olds have many reasons for seeking out violence videogames, such as it is what their friends play, they like the violent type of games, they just may want to do crazy things they cannot do in real life or they might just play games to relive stress or get out of the real world to help with depression or other bad things in their life.
• Reception Study - This is the theory of how games are viewed and played by players/audiences. The views of 16-18 year olds on violent videogames are usually saying that they are desensitized to it and enjoy the violence or just do not care for it. They will likely not view the games they play in different ways because they usually just care about gameplay.
• Passive or Active Consumption - Most 16-18 year olds do not question games or why the story is how it is or what is going on, they mainly just accept it as it is more fun to play when you just accept what is going on. However in some cases there are some parts of games that are so ridiculous that you can't help but ask "are these developers stupid?" because of some of the ridiculous things that happen in games sometimes.

Effects Debate

• Effects or exposure to explicit, sexual or violent content - The effects of sexual or violent content do not really bother 16-18 year olds therefore it isn't a problem with them, there aren't really any effects of this type of content because it is never as explicit as it could be if it was real life instead of a videogame or other media type.
• Effects of Advertising - The effects of advertising are that they can either get good press or bad press but to most age groups it does not bother them too much, especially 16-18 year olds, it's just another thing to talk about, it is usually only the old people who disagree with advertising violent videogames in some form.
• Health Concerns - There can be some health concerns around videogames as it was rumoured that sitting too close to the screen could ruin your eyesight however that is false, also a lot of videogames have seizure warnings on the boxes and in the game.
• Censorship Debates - There is a lot of censorship when it comes to videogames, different reasons in different countries, but the main places where this thing is a problem is Australia and Germany, these countries have lots of violent videogames banned each year because of certain images shown in them, and they're either censored or completely removed from the market in that country. There is censorship going on in other countries but it isn't as bad as these two countries. Most 16-18 year olds would disagree with the banning of games in the first place because everyone is desensitized to them anyway so they aren't going to cause any controversy unless it is pointed out or talked about on the news or on the internet.

Responses

• Negotiated - These are different responses players could have to videogames. Negotiated  reading is where the reader accepts what the game is showing them but may modify it in their mind so that it reflects their own interests, position and experiences. Some people may want to do this so they can get past a certain aspect of the game that they do not enjoy. 16-18 year olds probably wouldn't want to change what the game is showing.
• Preferred - Preferred reading is where the player understands the message being shown by the game and agrees with it. This is the most common response to a videogame however this may be bad if a game is about the Nazi regime and a person agrees with them. 16-18 year olds most likely would agree with the games message/what it's about.
• Oppositional - A oppositional response to a game is where the reader understands the games viewpoint or story that the developer is portraying but chooses to reject it and has an alternative, opposite view. This kind of person should not be playing the game if they do not like the story or want to change it in some way. 16-18 year olds wouldn't be playing games if they had this mindset.
• Participatory - Participatory is when the audience can join in and be apart of the product. This is obviously a key part of video games. This is a very helpful part of a videogame because without it people wouldn't have a say in anything that happens in a game and would not enjoy it as much because they don't have any choices to make. 
• Cultural Competence - Games and other media need us to have a certain degree of cultural understanding for us to be able to interpret them. A basic level would be being able to read the language that an article is written in. a further level would be being able to understand and interpret signs and symbols. A lot of people probably don't understand technical terms to do with videogames and that is a common thing where people do not understand games at all and need to stop pretending they know what they want or need or what needs to change.
• Fan Culture - Fan culture is where an audience takes an active role in the creation of media that is based on an existing product. For gaming this is could include the massive Mod community. This is one of the best things that can happen to a videogame as a big fan base means mods and lots of videos on it which means more popularity and more money. Many people use mods in the newly release Fallout 4 and mods are going to come to the console version of the game which will make the fan base bigger than it has ever been because no other games use mods on console.