essay

[curtis]

A few months ago in Ohio, a boy by the name of Daniel Petric, shot both and killed one of his parents after they took away his copy of Halo 3. The now faces a life sentence in prison and was found not insane but mentally unstable. Petric was found to be addicted to not a violent videogame, but Tetris. Another boy, located in China in August of 2008, kidnapped himself for a ransom of fourteen hundred dollars because his parents wouldn’t buy him a Nintendo Wii. 16 year old Cory Ryder was grounded from TV and Playstation because of his recent illegal actions, which includes stealing, not going to school and getting arrested. After a long day of arguing with his parents, he threatened to kill them by hiring a hit man. The mother told the police, who sent an undercover agent dressed as a hit man. Cory offered his dad’s truck as payment, and later said “two bullets is all it takes”. He also had a mental disability. I intend to prove that videogames do not promote violence.
Now the reason I am saying this is because all the cases of killings or shootings involving violent videogames all also involve kids with some form of mental instability, and in most cases isn’t the fault of the game at all. For instance, you could put three kids in a room, all playing the same game. If one is mentally unstable, then that is the one with a higher chance of committing an act of emulation for the game. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, it just means there’s a higher chance.
Another point of this issue is the parents of the child. Some of the time, the parents of these children are either abusive, crazy, or just don’t care. That’s some of the time. The other time is the clueless parent’s that really and truly do care, but don’t know what they did wrong to push their child over the edge. There’s a magical company called the ESRB, and it exists for a reason. The ESRB stands for Entertainment Software Rating Board. Their job is to rate the games that we all play. The different ratings are E, E10, Teen, Mature, and Adult. Most, if not all, of the cases of video game violence involve Mature rated games, which the ESRB clearly states as being for age 17 and older. Now while the child can’t purchase any of these games, the parents sure can. Most of the time the parents don’t even read the back of the box, which gives information as to why the game is rated that way, with tags such as Extreme Violence, Blood and Gore, and Language.

[pmaggio]

Liam,
Your facts as to why violent video games do not promote violence can be very supportive. We think that by stateing all of those cases in your introduction about the violent acts the teens comitted after playing specific violent video games is going to make it much harder for you to convince your readers that the games do not promote violence. What made you think that by talking about all of these acts committed after playing these violent games would help you convince your audience that it is not the violent video games causing this. We think the last fact you stated about the ESRB really can convince the reader that it is the parents fault, and not the video games. Even though the 2 facts you stated as to why it is not the video games causing these violent acts, we think that you need atleast one more supporting fact as to why the video games are not causing this violence. We found your introduction interesting, but we think that there are some things you can do in order to support your topic more and make your argument more convincing. Maybe you can mention violent acts that didn't relate to the use of these video games. Otherwise, this persuasive speech was well written.

-Erin and Pat.

[olivialeigh]

Liam,
Although i strongly disagree with this, you do have some very good points in this essay. Your introduction was interesting but i think you should have used that example later in your essay and maybe you could have started off with explaining why people think that video games are violent and how you disagree with that. Make sure you are able to expand on what you are talking about in each paragraph and restate your thesis in your conclusion. There are no grammar mistakes which is great. I think that your speech will be very interesting to listen to. Keep up the good work! :]
-Olivia