Eric Harris

Video games are more popular than ever, with the value of over 17.68 billion U.S dollars. Yet with that amount of success, comes criticism. Video games have caused much concern, especially among conservative non-gaming pundits. 18 years ago, the 1993 video game Doom and 1994 Doom 2: Hell on Earth were allegedly an inspiration to the high school massacre at Columbine and received the title as the worst school shooting in American history. The police reports revealed that Eric Harris, one of the culprits, had created a private website mainly to provide commentary about the levels of the video game Doom; in addition, the site not only spread hate and violence, but it also spread death threats and plans of killing certain individuals. The people

For these reasons, people began to blame the video game Doom for its violent content and the apparently satanic themes that led these teenagers to commit their crime (“Columbine families sue computer game makers”, BBC News). In an article published by the New York Times, Nizza had revealed research conducted by Dr. Jerald Block, who came to the conclusion, that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their shooting rampage at Columbine High after their parents seized their computers; moreover, he stated that they “relied on the virtual world of computer games to express their rage and to spend time, and cutting them off in 1998 sent them into crisis”. (Nizza). Even recently, US president Donald Trump has blamed video games for the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School even though researchers now generally disagree that video games are responsible for such violent

Admittedly, some Satanists seem to indicate that video games seem to help them practice their religion, and worship Satan (D’Anastasio). Greg Perreault, for instance, has examined the connection of religion to violence in video games, to prove to his readers that video games represent religion in a negative way (Schreier), that encourages atheists to play video games that promote and supports atheism; on the other hand, these video games must not necessarily be a promotion, and may be used to grab the attention of the player by providing him or her an exciting story for them to play. Likewise, Burris argues that students who are atheists enjoy playing video games more than religious students, because religious students apparently are put off by a difference in their morals and those of the game.