The inception of video games features controversy due to perceived connection with players acquiring violent behaviors, primarily when used by children. The popularity of video games increases by the day, making it necessary to evaluate whether playing them makes individuals aggressive. Scholars conducted scientific studies leading to divergent findings whereby some conclude that violent video games influences individuals such that they acquire violent behavior traits. On the contrary, some scholars argue that aggressive behaviors do not associate with violent video games. If any relationship exists between the two, it is too little to make an impact. Based on an empirical review below, playing violent video games increases aggression because it involves active participation, internalizing behavior problems, low empathy, desensitizing viewers' negative emotions, and behavioral responses.
Video games require players to engage in active participation correlates with neural patterns that lead an individual to engage in aggressive behaviors. According to Weber et al. (2006) , individuals playing violent video games experience neural changes characterized to be indicators of aggressive cognition habits. The study established that gamers experience increased activities in the dACC while suppressing the amygdala and rACC. The changing patterns in the individuals' ACC targets eliminate the positive emotions that an individual naturally have and replace it with the aggressiveness required to play the game successfully. Extended exposure to violent video games where an individual actively participates in the games can negatively influence an individual's character. The neural changes encourage an individual to use aggressive behavior while handling challenges in life. A recent study argues that even though playing violent video games leads to spontaneous changes in an individual's neural pattern, and it does not associate with the habits that the individual acquires (Szycik et al., 2017) . Nevertheless, Weber et al. (2006) addressed the study's aspect by arguing that the resulting neural pattern changes do not necessarily lead to aggressive behavior. Instead, the scholars argued the patterns could illustrate fear emaciating from the individual's endangered virtual life. The aspects where players feel endangered demonstrate that they can result in violent behaviors to exert self-defense.
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Playing violent video games associates with individuals internalizing behavior problems leading them to express their feelings through aggressive habits. According to Quwaider et al. (2019) , individuals that participate consistently in video games lose contact with their social lives as they are likely to spend most of their time by themselves. The result will be the players internalizing their behavioral problems, including anxiety and depression. Furthermore, video game players tend to choose gaming characters that resemble their personalities. An individual can adapt and reflect the aggressive nature of a gaming character. The negative experiences that contribute to a character in a game being aggressive correlate with an individuals' ability to be hostile in real life (Quwaider et al., 2019) . It is essential to note that the level of realism in video games easily influences an individual to be more aggressive in real life. Besides a video game player being violent, he or she can prefer to engage in delinquencies due to the connection that people create with their selected characters in video games. Thus, to avoid such incidents, it is critical to encourage society members to establish a social life beyond the internet since it will help them express their internalized behaviors and probably get help before they can reflect behaviors demonstrated by virtual characters.
Participating in violent video games influences individuals by making them more aggressive in their social life by denying them the capability to be empathetic. Empathy is an essential value in life because it enables individuals to engage in moral valuation uprightly. Furthermore, a compassionate person manages to relate to another person's misery and connects with the victim's emotional distress. Anderson et al. (2010) argue that an individual to have effective moral valuation depends on the specific person's attitude towards violence. Video games require the gamer to participate in the game actively and have a strong capability to influence the individuals' ability to be empathetic. Subsequently, a lack of empathy will encourage violent video game players to engage in violent behaviors. They are also likely to inflict severe pain on the victim because they cannot sympathize with their suffering due to the exposure to gory images and facilitate pro-social habits. Due to video games' ability to influence empathy, it is critical that developers exert measures that can alter the strategies to instill empathy in people instead of depriving them of this vital virtue.
Excessive exposure to violent video games triggers aggressive behavioral responses from the gamer due to the weakening aversion to violence, thus increasing the probability that they become hostile to others. Violent video games desensitize an individual's perception of war, such as shedding blood and gory images' involvement to find pleasure in violence. Such a perspective is dangerous in creating social relations because an individual will create a negative attitude towards other people and physiological arousal that might trigger violent engagements (Theses & Kneifer, 2014) . Based on this aspect, it is unacceptable to expose children to such content because they will lack empathy and be desensitized about interacting with people. These children will carry the attitude characterized by low emotions to adulthood and will not adequately relate with other members of society. Similarly, adults exposed to violent video games for prolonged periods tend to have negative emotions compared to individuals playing non-violent games. Subsequently, engagement in violent video games is ineffective for society members as it facilitates negative behavioral responses that make them have challenges creating social relations.
Summary
The literature review demonstrates that playing violent video games influences individuals' character by making gamers more aggressive towards other people. The themes pertinent to this argument include active participation altering neural patterns to friendly to violence, internalizing behavioral problems, reduced empathy, and behavioral responses. The presence of opposed perspectives created a challenge in identifying the relevant materials appropriate for the literature review argument. The literature review's strength is that it adds value to the present knowledge through the involvement of multiple scholars' findings. Accordingly, the arguments made are more convincing and persuasive to the audience. Furthermore, basing the literature review on empirical studies emphasis different features that elaborate an existing phenomenon. On the contrary, collecting data is time-consuming since it involved studying, comprehending, and sorting numerous studies. Furthermore, the lack of a standardized format of presenting findings makes it complex to acquire the intended information. However, the literature review is informative because it enhanced my understanding of the impact of violent video games on participants and why it is essential to protect children from these games.
References
Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H. R., & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin , 136 (2), 151–173. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018251
Quwaider, M., Alabed, A., & Duwairi, R. (2019). The Impact of Video Games on the Players Behaviors: A Survey. Procedia Computer Science , 151 , 575–582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2019.04.077
Szycik, G. R., Mohammadi, B., Münte, T. F., & te Wildt, B. T. (2017). Lack of Evidence That Neural Empathic Responses Are Blunted in Excessive Users of Violent Video Games: An fMRI Study. Frontiers in Psychology , 8 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00174
Theses, G., & Kneifer, C. (2014). Scholar Commons A Comparison Study on Violent Video Games: Explained by the Gamers Themselves . https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=6446&context=etd
Weber, R., Ritterfeld, U., & Mathiak, K. (2006). Does Playing Violent Video Games Induce Aggression? Empirical Evidence of a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study. Media Psychology , 8 (1), 39–60. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532785xmep0801_4
