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Albert Bandura - Tomb Raider
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Question: To what extent are video games harmful to society? Use Bandura’s media effects theory. The video game is Tomb Raider.
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To what extent are video games harmful to society? Use Bandura’s media effectstheory.
Video games are frequently associated with physical and mental harm to the minds of
society. Whilst that can be true, it is not always the case. Bandura once stated that, ‘both
children and adults can acquire attitudes, emotional responses and new patterns of
behaviour as a result of observing… models.’ The attitudes, emotional responses and
behaviour patterns can both positively and negatively affect video game players.
A positive attitude that players may adopt is resilience. In ‘Tomb Raider’ (1996), there is a
stage nearly halfway through the game where Lara enters an area called ‘Palace Midas’. In
this stage, players are required to jump onto many platforms to get to certain locations. This
act can take time and accurate control of the character, as there is the possibility of falling off
the edge of the platform if the jump is not correctly estimated. This would then mean that
players have to return to the beginning to restart the process. For those who are playing this
game for the first time, they may go through many trial and errors especially if they are
unskilled in this type of obstacle or if they are not familiar with the controls yet. However,
through this, players learn to not to give up as they try jumping over and over again.
Overtime, the player will obviously get better at this skill. Players may know to apply this
method of patience and resilience to other aspects of their life outside of video games. Like
Bandura states, this attitude is acquired from observing the attitudes of models. Lara has
positively impacted so many people and young people want to be like her simply because
she is resilient and strong. Oftentimes when the game becomes difficult for the player, they
would know to take a break and come back later to deal with the difficult stages as their
minds would have cleared and their moods would have improved. This can be applied to
adults who are dealing with important issues but cannot think of how to avoid it or tackle it.
As a result, adults may learn to be more calm and controlled. They may feel a sense of
achievement from accomplishing real life goals. This could also impact a growing young
person more than it would to a matured adult, as children would still be going through
development in which they would come to learn and adopt different attitudes towards life. It
is crucial for a child to have sources in which they can exercise these attitudes, and video
games just so happen to be one of the sources that can be reused over and over again as
well as provide many different scenarios to build up resilience. When children grow, they are
able to become resilient adults.
Negative emotional responses, however, may also be adopted by players. In ‘Tomb Raider
2’, the player controls Lara to shoot down white tigers. Players who are growing accustomed
to this type of violence in video games may, overtime, become desensitised to the death, or
even extinction, of wild animals. Although older players may understand that it is not
necessarily the white tigers who are the enemy or at fault, but are simply obstructing Lara
from getting to her destination, younger players may not have the mental capacity to fully
grasp this concept. They may simply think that white tigers equate to danger and
viciousness, and do not realise that the reason for why the white tigers are so hostile is
because someone has intruded their territory. In a cutscene of ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’,
Lara is seen shooting down opposing soldiers. Whilst murder may actuate audiences to feel
shock or woe, when players are not familiar with the characters dying they do not feel much
in terms of emotions. In this case, all that the players know is that regardless of the soldiers’
goals, they must be against Lara, and that if Lara was discovered by them then she would
have been killed. If the average person was placed in Lara’s position, they would likely fear
for their misfortune deaths, however, because Lara is so skilled in combat and is used to this
violence, the audiences accompanying her are likely develop the same emotional responses
as her. As Bandura has described, such responses can be ‘developed observationally by
witnessing the affective reactions of others undergoing painful or pleasurable experiences.’
Although it cannot be said for definite that Lara either enjoyed killing enemies or despised
the act of it, her reaction afterwards is still recognised by audiences. This could actuate
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