/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10897996
I wouldn't put the sole responsibility on Doom (or necessary much of any), but the fact that violent crime began trending downwards even further around that time makes it very difficult to argue that Doom's fictional violence encouraged real life violence (that is, if you're honest, to some people those kinds of details don't matter).

It could be one of those contributing factors though. Turning away from leaded gasoline is supposed to have restored roughly 5 IQ points to the human average over time, and most likely IS one of those things which genuinely did contribute towards the trend of reducing violent crime. The question is whether Doom would contribute to that kind of decline by allowing people to vent aggression in a safe way, as some argue, but I don't think that makes an appreciable difference for anyone who has a normal level of empathy.

Rather I think that the wider proliferation of attractive and engaging videogames such as Doom, and other ones (violent or not), both provide an activity which makes problem solving enjoyable, 'sharpening' your brain some, but more importantly that it gave a lot of youth something extra to do in their free time.
Much of youth delinquency comes from having fucking nothing to do, so kids can get prone to going out and doing stupid shit (which over longer periods of time might escalate to vandalism or getting into fights), just because their brains need SOMETHING to break from enduring boredom.
Your brain wants to do stuff, and the longer you do nothing, the more it becomes torture, which is why Solitary Confinement is often regarded as Cruel & Unusual punishment..

During the late 1980s and the 1990s, there was an absolute explosion of videogames, with more availability and more variety than had ever been imagined, and to all levels of economy. A Game Boy was just $50, but downloading an amazing shareware game like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, or Duke Nukem 3D to your school's computer? That didn't cost a kid a dime.