In case you've been living under a rock, Battlegrounds Mobile India is getting unbanned soon and will first appear in a 3-month trial phase. Yes, the popular game that was banned from India under the Chinese apps purge a couple of years ago, will finally be available for Indian gamers to play and enjoy. Albeit with a few noticeable changes, like green coloured blood — more on that below.
During this period phase of BGMI's return, the Indian authorities will check if the game has fixed some concerns pertaining to the safety and security of the players. One of those conditions could be to change the colour of the blood graphics in the game to green from red. That makes us wonder, whether green blood will make BGMI any less violent.
Before some of you take out your pitchforks and come at us shouting instances of violent acts by video game players including BGMI, we acknowledge there have been such unfortunate incidents.
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According to two studies done by the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, aggression in video games does tend to increase player’s “aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour both in laboratory settings and in actual life”.
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There’s a psychological conditioning that does tend to happen, called Priming, which means the brain tends to subconsciously associate to the activity and get rewired over the course of time. However, the studies also admit many other variables also come into play in a person’s behaviour. There’s an argument to be made about how one’s personality and temperament decide how one reacts to a situation or stimulus, and not just the stimulus itself or its long-term effects.
If you think about it, while playing a game, people are focused on it and use the game as a potential outlet for their stress, anger, frustration or aggression. Also, there is no exact correlation between the number of “violent” game releases and violent crimes taking place in society.
Even studies favouring video games are there. One such study by the University of New South Wales in 2018 states says those playing violent titles feel less distracted by violent imagery in their regular life. This has been coined by the author of the study as “emotion-induced blindness”.
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So, it all depends on what kind of a person you are and if you follow limited screen time, it can help your mental health. It’s as the old proverb says, “Excess Of Everything Is Bad.” Hopefully, the newly induced changes in the game not only help in its permanent return but also help put sufficient guard-rails around current and future players of BGMI.