Blaming video games is the lazy scapegoat

Every so often we see a familiar news cycle of gun violence, minors, and the correlation to video games as an unfortunate triumvirate. I write this piece because the difference this time is the news cycle isn’t from the foreign press, but from rural Philippines.

The Tacloban school shooting incident has seen swift response from authorities banning Gorebox, and public scrutiny of the minimum age to criminalize minors. This is not a commentary on whether Gorebox should be banned or not. That’s a hot topic that’s been discussed  over and over again – about how the link between video games and real world violence is easy pickings.

Faulty logic

Because if we are to follow the same argument, I can say exactly the same thing about Pinoy culture and karaoke. Using AI to scrape incidents from news sources, I compiled violent outbursts due to karaoke sessions side by side violence due to video games from the past 15 years. In 2024 alone there were three news-worthy incidents from Quezon City, Maguindanao del Norte, and Cotabato. In the 15 year span, the height of the incidents was in 2016, seemingly due to confrontations with barangay officials over curfews imposed by the government.

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Karaoke and video games. Both are pastimes. Both are communal. Is Gorebox the “My Way” of video games?

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Of course not.

Games can rehabilitate

This is an odd time to write as well on video games and violence, because on the other hand, earlier this month the Tech.INQ team did a feature on OhmyV33nus’ esports career and how he led Blacklist International in the big leagues. And another feature on Burrito and Papa B, esports veterans, now fathers, who want to transform the esports industry from just playing games into a true ecosystem. And of course who could not forget Aurora Gaming’s championship win last January. The government is both blaming video games as a cause of violence but also uplifting it with Resolution No. 34 to congratulate the Philippine Mobile Legends team for claiming victory in Indonesia. It’s convenient to blame video games when the narrative suits the occasion. It’s also convenient to harp on that same “violence” (yes, Mobile Legends does have some violence!) when it screams “Pinoy Pride!”

The neighborhood computer shop, or *pisonet*, has long been the target of moral panic in the Philippines. We’ve seen the cycles of anxiety—blaming violent sandbox games or late-night gaming sessions for youth volatility. But on the other hand there is also an opportunity to use video games as a form of rehabilitation, as identified by the United Nations in 2025 for Mental Health Awareness Day. It has been shown that video games, especially during the pandemic, helped a wide demographic deal with stress and loneliness.

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For years, we’ve treated these digital hubs as dens of delinquency. It’s a wasted opportunity. If we stop viewing the local internet cafe as a dark room of isolation and start treating it with the same civic intent we apply to the ubiquitous barangay basketball league, we could be looking at the most effective engine for youth development in the digital age.

Banning games or treating the computer shop as a societal threat is a band-aid that ignores the reality of our digital economy. We are sitting on an untapped potential for mentorship and professional upskilling. It is time we stop viewing these shops as the problem and start treating them as the digital courts they already are.

I join the many who grieve for the loss of innocent lives in that tragic event. I also grieve because the Filipinos do not deserve knee-jerk solutions that have not been well-researched. A school shooting? Ban video games. Drunken bar fights? Ban karaoke. Road rage accidents? Ban cars. How absurd.

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