Games People Play

THE Supreme Court’s decision to strike California’s ban on selling and renting violent video games to young people raises the obvious question: what are children and teens playing on their computers and digital screens? 

The answer isn’t pretty. Among the most popular “casual” games (so called because they are quick and simple to play) are twisted, violent games with names like Beat Me Up, Bloody Day and Boneless Girl.

Young people don’t need to rent or buy casual games. They are available on computers, tablets and cellphones — free. (California’s law wouldn’t have applied to these games, even if it had survived the court’s scrutiny, because they are not rented or sold.)

Many popular casual games contain as much violence as notorious video games like Postal 2 and Grand Theft Auto 4, if not more. But they tend to exist under the radar; they’re part of an obscure world into which teenagers and children escape and about which parents are often in the dark. (I learned about them only after I asked my 12-year-old son what he liked to do online.)

Nickelodeon’s addictinggames.com, a premier casual game site, calls itself “the largest source of the best free online games.” It attracts 20 million unique monthly users, mostly children and teens. Though violent games aren’t the only type of games on the site, they are well represented — and many appear on the site’s list of most popular games. A quick look at the list supplies a sense of what entertains many of us.

Like other leading casual game sites, addictinggames.com makes money by running advertisements. According to Viacom, the site’s corporate owner, the aptly named site allows “junkies” to “gorge themselves” and to “fuel their addiction.”

Viacom’s interest in promoting addiction helps explain why Nickelodeon, the award-winning children’s network, might want to push brutal, violent entertainment. Violence sells. And it continues to sell to children, teens and tweens “hooked” at an early age and hungry for more. The games at addictinggames.com and other premier game sites may be casual, but their use of graphic violence to generate profit is strategic and calculated.

Joel Bakan is the author of the forthcoming book “Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children.”