Lego video games have been released for a long time, some of the most popular being spins on popular, well-known media. In these games, you get to play through the Lego world of Harry Potter or Indian Jones as your favorite characters, collecting items and breaking blocks along the way. These Lego games have found great popularity – they make for simple enjoyment and easy gameplay for anyone interested.

The newest game, Lego Star Wars: the Skywalker Saga, was released in early April, paying homage to the previous Lego Star Wars games. In the new saga, you can play through all nine of the main movies either by yourself or with a partner.

As you play there are over 300 characters to collect and you can play as anyone you want while you visit famous locations and collect studs and Kyber bricks. After playing through the main missions, the map opens up, allowing you to visit anywhere in the galaxy to explore. 

For those who played the previous games, the new saga is an upgraded version of a very nostalgic experience. And for those, like me, who didn’t know Lego games like this existed, it’s a surprising amount of fun. The puzzles are simple but engaging, sometimes causing you to switch characters in order to use a certain machine or speak a different language. Personally, I’ve enjoyed playing as Darth Vader, breaking everything with the force as I run around.

The new saga is a great game and one I highly recommend. If you’ve ever wanted to run through the Star Wars universe, this Lego version is a wonderful way to do it. I also recommend taking advantage of the co-op options and playing with a partner. Overall, playing this game has been surprisingly enjoyable and is currently one of my favorite things to do. 

Although these pay-to-win games have been around since the early 2000s, the West has only recently experienced the phenomenon that is gacha games.

Gacha is a genre of video game that uses in-game currency to gamble for in-game prizes. While most gacha games nowadays are free-to-play, options to buy in-game currency with real money are heavily promoted during the gameplay.

In these games, randomized machines are used to pull prizes of varying rarity. There is a small chance to get 5-star legendary prizes – the rarest of all possibilities – but players will always get something in return. 

Each gacha game is different allowing players to get different prizes, which can range from playable characters to game experience points. For example, the popular gacha game Genshin Impact merges open-world fantasy gameplay with an unlockable character and weapon system, finding players inclined to collect and unlock everything. Many of the most popular games in media right now are gacha games, including Raid: Shadow Legends and Cookie Run Kingdom.

There are many reasons why these games are popular, including their consistent updates, free cost and enjoyable experience. The ability for a player to collect many different items is also a point of interest.  In a lot of the games, players can earn rewards just for logging in and doing daily tasks.

In many countries, gacha games are outlawed due to the loot-box-esque nature of the genre. While there isn’t a clear motion to ban gacha games from app stores in the United States, some argue that the gambling aspect of the games may be unfair or too addicting – especially for children.

Despite the unassuming nature of gacha games, their market-like aspect may not be in the best interest of those who are susceptible to gambling or impulsive spending.

You don’t hear about it as much as you used to, but Fortnite, the worldwide multi-billion dollar online phenomena, has left a legacy much larger than people realize. Trust me, I see Fortnite the same way as everyone reading this does – a game for children to obsess over. Although, there was a moment in time that everyone and their mothers were playing this game. 

Fortnite has professional athletes, Grammy-winning artists and celebrities, in their player base. This, combined with the fact that it was free to play, had everyone playing. It made video games mainstream on a level that it had never really seen. In my opinion, it was at this point that video games stopped being nerdy. People that bullied people for being nerds found themselves behind a controller during its prime. 

Fortnite’s legacy has impacted the way we socialize with each other online on a whole new level, especially in this digital age that COVID has put us into. Connecting with friends and family online has become so much easier and accessible thanks to where Fortnite has brought the market. 

The stage has been set for similar games to take their moment in the spotlight. Such as Fall Guys, Call of Duty: Warzone and Among Us. Everyone is connected, playing with each other and having a great time doing it. Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden has even gone as far as to promote campaign ads in the widely popular Animal Crossing game on the Nintendo Switch. 

It’s been incredibly interesting to see how this impacts relationships. When a relationship is formed and lives only on the internet, it creates a weird set of expectations for some. Life gets in the way a lot, and you’re not always going to be online. So maintaining some of those online relationships ends up proving difficult. 

I know for a fact that a large majority of people reading this have got into fights with their friends or family within one of these games. Shoutout to all my backpackers out there – I know your pain. You’d be surprised, but there are a lot of articles talking about romantic relationships that have ended due to obsessive Fortnite addictions, which is sad but kind of funny. 

Another perspective could be elementary-aged kids who become so obsessed with games like this that they disconnect from their family, making it hard for parents to connect with their children and ensure their social growth hasn’t been stunted. 

However, it’s important to note how much these games have made enduring the pandemic easier with everyone being confined to their areas. Besides, there’s plenty of studies that show video games improve coordination and make people smarter – at least I’d like to think that I can testify to that.

Leading up to this assassination attempt, Hinckley was obsessed with the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.” The action film centers around Travis Bickle, a clearly deranged man who, after attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate, saves a child prostitute (played by Jodie Foster) by killing her pimp and a few others in a gloriously gory scene. Hinckley, impressed by Foster’s performance, became unhealthily infatuated with her, going so far as to stalk her at Yale. In effort to get her attention and prove his worthiness, Hinckley decided to follow the example of Foster’s hero, Bickle, in “Taxi Driver” and attempted to kill the president. Unsurprisingly, Foster was not impressed.

April 20, 1999: Columbine High School seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enter their school on a Tuesday morning carrying pipe bombs concealed in duffel bags. They leave them in the cafeteria, set to detonate during the busiest lunch hour, and return to Klebold’s car to watch the chaos unfold. When the time comes but no bombs have detonated, they grab their sawed-off shotguns and begin a rampage that starts in the school’s front lawn and ends with their suicides in the library. Twelve students and one teacher are killed. Twenty-four others withstand severe but non-fatal injuries. A countless number of people remain psychologically scarred by the day’s events.

Though the attack was frequently described as a lashing out in initial reports, Harris and Klebold spent over a year formulating their plan to be like “the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together.” They saw the massacre as a “mission,” retribution for the injustice they experienced at the hands of school bullies. They wished to reenact the shooting video games they played obsessively. They matched the theatricality of their video games with knee-length trench coats covering plain shirts with custom messages. Klebold’s shirt read “WRATH” Harris’s, “NATURAL SELECTION.”  

May 23, 2014: After sending a 107,000-word manifesto to his therapist, family and a few acquaintances, University of California, Santa Barbara student Elliot Rodger kills his three roommates before driving to the campus sorority houses and shooting three sorority members, killing the first two and injuring the third. He gets back in his car and drives to a deli, where he shoots and kills another student. He drives away from the scene, injuring several pedestrians with his car, until he crashes at an intersection. In the wreckage, he turns the gun on himself and dies.

Rodger spent his life blaming others for everything bad in his life. The reason that no girls liked him or that no one wanted to be his friend or that he failed in school was always other people. So, he abandoned reality, escaping into violent video games where he could control the fate of others. The massacre, inspired by “Diablo II” and “Halo,” was Rodger’s transfer of the control he felt in video games to the real world. Unfortunately, in real life, killing people does not have the same appeal and almost always results in death or prison.

There are several obvious commonalities among these examples. Guns? Sure. Mental illness? Maybe. Although these violent events are multi-causal, I emphasize the role of the glorification of violence.

First and foremost, I think it is tremendously important to maintain a nuanced and balanced view of these events. It is not the sensationalization of violence in media nor poor mental health services nor bad parenting nor gun (de)regulation nor any of the millions of reasons alone that provokes tragedies of this caliber. In every case, a blend of unfortunate circumstances pushes unstable individuals to horrific actions. The blend is not the same in every case. In some, mental illness plays a dominant role. In others, a video game addiction may desensitize an already unstable individual to the point that he believes extreme violence is an appropriate response to a perceived injustice.

However, it is negligent to refuse to delve into a probable cause simply because it is “not the only reason.” A good understanding of every contributing factor is necessary to prevent attacks like these, especially as the rate of massacres in the U.S. increases.

Whether it be in the formative pubescent years or volatile young adulthood, the media possess an enormously powerful stronghold. The thrall of media can imprint patterns incongruous with reality on impressionable minds. A multitude of studies have found that violent TV shows, movies and video games lead to aggressive behavior.

Excessive intake of media can dissociate the consumer from the real world. Especially for unstable individuals, these violent media can enchant to the point of superseding reality. John Hinckley Jr. was plagued with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder that denied him a firm concept of reality or personal identity. He was so enthralled by “Taxi Driver” that, after watching it fourteen times in theaters, he virtually assumed the identity of the main character, ultimately believing that he must kill the president to win Jodie Foster’s love.

Similarly, Elliot Rodger spent entire days in cyber cafés, playing first-person killing games, like “Halo” and “Diablo II,” or “World of Warcraft,” a fantasy role-playing game. Eventually his worldview adopted the offensive elements of these games. He began to frame life as him against the world, and he was intent on winning.

Violent video games are particularly dangerous because they enable the player to commit unspeakable acts without consequence. In his diary, Harris wrote that the massacre at Columbine will be just like “Doom,” a first-person shooter game. He also remarked that he intended to achieve a body count higher than the Oklahoma City bombing. Through a steady flow of video games and movies that conflated violence with entertainment, Harris began to think of tragic events as competitions in which the more profound tragedy wins.

Avid video gamers may be reading this with indignation, presumably thinking, “I’ve played all sorts of violent video games and haven’t committed or even considered carrying out an action similar these.” Perhaps not. But simply because most have not been inspired to commit violent acts because of violent media does not mean no one has. Furthermore, just because you have not noticed any changes in behavior does not mean that violent media has not changed you implicitly.

This argument isn’t meant to advocate a limitation of artistic license in media. Rather, it argues the opposite. Since the 1970s, violence in media has skyrocketed. Scriptwriters have forgone intricate storytelling for fantastic scenes of gore and savagery. Creators have realized that the best-selling content contains two things: sex and violence. Some of the most influential media combine the two to create an even more attention-grabbing and potentially dangerous breed of content. Take “Taxi Driver” or “Grand Theft Auto,” for example.

While I believe mental health is the number one priority in cultivating safety, universal mental health is not a realistic prospect and its imperfection is subject to a number of uncontrollable variables. By no means does mental instability automatically correlate to violence, but violent media can have much more profound effects on mentally vulnerable individuals. Unstable viewers of violent media like Hinckley or Rodger may be so entranced that the content becomes reality. How do we prevent media-born seeds of violence from being planted in their minds?

Many advocate increased government regulation of media, but federal regulation does not seem like an appropriate response. The Brady Bill, named after Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was shot during Hinckley’s assassination attempt, was passed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. The bill mandated background checks and required a waiting period after the purchase of a handgun. Has this piece of legislation affected conspicuous change in the rate of violence? Not evidently.

The prevalence of violent media has only increased. The difference between efforts like gun control or increased mental health awareness and the discouragement of violent media is that, while the U.S. government and NGOs have made efforts to ensure the former, the prevalence of violent media has been left essentially unregulated. Left unchecked, violent media could eventually ingrain itself into American culture.

Though incredibly idealistic, an industry-and culture-wide commitment to move away from media that glorify violence is needed to prevent the proliferation and normalization of violence. A more manageable approach is to provide fact-based data proving the connection between violent media and aggression to schools and parents, who influence what media kids consume. If we bring attention to this correlation and it is appropriately addressed, perhaps we will finally see a downward trend in violence in the U.S.

Photo courtesy of New York Times.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to “Grand Theft Auto.” It should have referred to “Halo” and “Diablo II.”