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Interview With Gary Gygax About Game Violence
bdavenport writes "After yesterday's post on game violence and the relation to real-world violence, i found this interview with legend Gary Gygax. He expounds his views on a range of subjects, one of which is his opinion that gaming violence, having been vilified since the 1970s when it related to D&D, is not causationally linked to actual violence. "
If constant bombardment to violent graphical content doesn't effect our behavior, then why do so many advertizing companies make so much money selling graphic content that they hope will influence our buying behavior? This debate has always just seemed a waste of time due to the obvious answer to the above question - yes there is a positive correlation. I however find there is no room to dismiss responsibility just because there is one. Responsibility and accountability on the part of the person(s) carrying out the violence are more of the areas of thought that I subscribe to. Then even then it's a heart issue and that is not easilly coerced by attempting to control outward circumstances. If someone is interested in promoting their violent agenda, they aren't going to be stop pursuing that interest until they have a change of mind or heart. So materials are really just a matter of convenience, not a cause. doulos (too lazy to look up my password to formally login)
The man behind the magic--literally! It must be really cool to play the characters that inspired a lot of core D&D spells. (Bigby's Crushing Hand, anyone? :)
I could care less about the "violence in gaming", and it looks like Gary Gygax agrees, too. But the rest of the interview is great. (even if I liked The Realms better, because Elminster is the man, it was all still in the D&D universe...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
And that is why I don't buy the "media violence doesn't influence viewers" arguement. Violence is not entertaiment. If you think that it is, you should see a therapist. Now.
Thanks for your opinion doctor. Oh wait. You aren't a doctor, are you? I've played video games for as long as I can remember. Since I first got my hands on an atari. Everything from Combat to Unreal Tournament. Yet I've never harmed anyone. Don't even own a gun. Violence is not something that just seeps into you from playing a game. It requires hate and/or fear as well. I don't feel any of that when I play games. It's just fun and challenging to play with teams of people toward a common goal. I have a blast playing games. It doesn't make me angry or violent. I think it's ridiculous to even suggest such a thing. Perhaps you'd be more accurate saying that if video games make you angry or more prone to violence you should see a therapist.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Haven't you considered the possibility that you might be desensitized because you don't think there's anything remotely wrong with having fun blasting people to bits.
Yes, I've considered that. Then I rejected it. I simply don't see the connection between playing Unreal Tournament with my friends and actually killing a human being. For me, there is no connection between the two whatsoever. I have no animosity towards anyone I play with, many of them are good friends of mine. I know I'm not harming anyone. The game is great fun. You get to play as a team and that alone makes it better than most single-player games. I also play paintball sometimes. I don't consider that to be violent either. The field owners go to great lengths to make sure nobody gets hurt. Players also take precautions and play by certain rules so that nobody gets hurt. There just isn't any sort of violent mindset involved as far as I can tell. It's more a spirit of cooperation, teamwork and sportsmanship like you'd find in other sports.
I think many of these video games are very similar to sports. Football is quite physically violent, but people don't get upset that millions of kids play football every day. Yet they do get upset that kids play "violent" video games together. Why do you think that is? Many people get injured, and once in a great while even killed, playing football. I don't know of anyone who has been injured or killed playing a video game. (well, aside from some wrist strain after playing for too long at a time.) Kids who play real sports are (in my own experience) often violent towards other kids. It's never the math geeks going around beating other people up. It's the football players, the basketball players, etc. I'm not saying there is a causal link between violent sports and violence against others, but it would probably be a lot easier to build a case for that than to build a case for video games causing violence.
Second, while the article certainly didn't prove (or even try to) that there was any connection between the drop in real violence and the increase in violent games, the drop in violence is real. People are becoming more and more hysterical about violence among children even as the number of incidents has been dropping steadily and substantially for years. Why do you think that is?
And it's not their religion which tells them to do it - it's their culture - what everyone around them says is tolerable or even the right thing. They've been desensitized.
They've been desensitized by real violence, not by pointing a mouse cursor at a character on their computer screen and firing a big green ball of lightning at him. People have grown up with such violence being a part of their everyday lives. The boys grow up to be like the men around them who are their role models. They see how the men treat the women and they do the same. That's what desensitizes them. Real life.
You don't change whole nations in one generation, you do it in a few steps. And you usually start with the kids.
It starts with adults. Kids learn from them. They learn to be like the adults. They don't grow up in a vacuum. They usually have plenty of people around them. It's those people who teach them how to act (or in some cases neglect them which leads to a whole separate set of problems which can also lead to violence). Perhaps if kids were raised without proper guidance and in a bad environment, they could learn bad things from tv, movies, music, games, etc. But I don't think those things are to blame. It's the fact that the child is growing up in an environment where he/she is not given the attention and guidance needed to grow up to be a well-adjusted adult.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Hmm, what sort of "goal" is it to blow someone up with a rocket launcher? Or sneak up on someone to shoot them in the back Rainbow 6 style? Does that help you build your socializing or "team" skills? Do you even understand how bad that sounds?
Seems to me that if you maintain even a casual relationship with reality, you would realize that you aren't really blowing people up with rocket launchers or shooting people in the back. You're playing a game in which your character is put in a position where such things are expected, and even necessary for that character's survival. It's not a real situation. It's not a real environment. Those aren't real people. It's nothing more than a game. If someone can't understand that, then they have larger problems and probably shouldn't be playing those sorts of games, but that's probably a decision to be made by a psychiatrist. I don't see games having any sort of desesitizing effect on normal, well-adjusted people. They understand that the game is not real, nor are the actions performed in the game something you would do in reality.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Either that, or do you think it has something to do with supply and demand? In WWII, people were being drafted left, right & center - anyone who was able was asked to fight. Nowadays, the armed forces is a career choice - only people who want to join are joining - so you get more people who join up becuase they, for lack of a better way of putting it, enjoy combat.
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Oh, how original...the laugh to prove the other person wrong treatment.
To make things clear, I'm not trying to prove anything here, anything but that my contempt. Saying that guns don't promote violence is .. ahem ... just ridiculous.
What follows is not an argument either, it's just to explain my POV. In Europe, gun advocates are only found in one part of the political spectrum. Not amongst the liberals, not amongst the the conservatives, not among the communists, socialists, free enterprise supporters ... They're mostly found among the racist, foreigner fearing, paranoid far right activist.
That doesn't prove anything ... it just shows a lot.
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If guns promote violence, knives promote violence. Cars promote violence. Tire irons promote violence. Screwdrivers promote violence.
The only purpose of handguns is to kill. Knives have many other purposes, from spreading butter to sharpening pen. So your bogus cliché does'nt apply.
As far as European gun advocacy, we can continue that discussion when you explain how Switzerland manages to not explode in gun-crazed frenzies, considering that most households are equipped with an honest-to-God assault rifle.
It's the reserve army. Plus the guns have to be stored in a safe place, and (if I remember properly) extracting them of it without a good reason is illegal. Not quite the same thing as your trigger happy NRA friends. Plus switzerland is not very typical of Europe by any stretch.
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My grandfather used handguns his entire life, and never managed to kill anything.
My grandfather used knives and his entire life, and never managed to spread butter. MWAAAH AHA H. Thanks for the laugh.
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Watch my karma go down in flame on this one
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A friend and I decided that if a word got a least 1000 hits in Google, it would qualify as a "real word" (no matter what Webster says).
I'll have to remember that for my next game of Scrabble.. I wonder how many points you could generate with 'xyzzy'...
Your Working Boy,
Actually I believe you have that somewhat wrong.
The point of games like Quake, just like Laser Tag, LARP, etc, is catharsis.
Most people have a certain amount of stress/tension that builds up in the normal course of their lives. Now some people are able to release these tensions without much effort. Others need something to focus in on so they can let off steam.
Some people use sporting events: C'MON! KILL THAT DAMN QUARTERBACK!
Some people drink. Sometimes excessively if their real life sucks bigtime.
Some people actually take up sporting passtimes like boxing, or martial arts to help work it out. Or go to the gym.
And a certain segment of the population turns to role-playing as a safe outlet for their anger/tensions. It's an area where they're able to stand toe to toe with the biggest and baddest, and slug it out.....yet still go to work the next morning without that side-trip to the hospital for broken ribs, or jail for disturbing the peace.
In character, they can do things and release in ways that would be socially unacceptable IRL (hacking things and people to bits, blowing things up with fireballs, sic'ing hordes of undead on a character who's just a bit TOO like your boss, and backstabbing some schmuck aren't generally considered polite).
It also gives the players the chance to explore social situations which they might, otherwise, not encounter. I've seen some really introverted, shy people become absoloute maniacs in-character. And you know what? It was fun as hell! Like improv acting...with magic missiles. And believe it or not, this doesn't disconnect them to society. It connects them.
Yes, it uses fighting and conflict as a facilitator. But what does better business at the movies? Sterile documentaries or action movies?
Some people can just curl up into a good book and live, vicariously, through it. RP is a way to share the book with people.
Also, all but the most delusional understand the difference between the fantasy of the RPG and reality. IOW, there's no cure light wounds when you shove a real sword through someone's chest.
Most of these things apply to Quake-style competitive games as well. Again, violence is a facilitator, but it's still cartoonish, and quite clearly deliniated from real world violence.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Xdaemon dun said:
Better yet, why not check outthe original sketch in MP3 format over at The Dead Alewives' website, seeing as this is where the (screamingly funny) Summoner Geeks skit came from originally :)
(Warning: If you actually play AD&D, watching this may not be such a good idea. Not because of insult...no...just the titters that will happen from then onward whenever someone states they're going to cast Magic Missile... :)
(Then again, most of the AD&D games I've been into invariably seem to transmogrify themselves into episodes of (insert X series of) Slayers. ;) So one character in a D&D game I was in bore an uncanny resemblance to Gourry Gabriev...the guy who rolled it (my husband) really WASN'T trying for Gourry. It just happened. :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
What the hell does "causationally" mean? Is that a real word, or did you make it up? And even if it is a real word, someone once said that good writers never use a five-dollar word where a fifty-cent word will do.
Strunk and White would frag you where you stand.
--Jim
Cute... but wrong. Frag is the sort of word that Strunk and White would love. It's a nice, short, single syllable that explodes out of the mouth. It's simple, unpretentious, and gets the meaning across with effect. It's slang, of course, but is not made up.
Flay is a nice word, too (remember Silence of the Lambs?), but doesn't mean the same thing.
--Jim
In the fifties they nearly banned comic books for attributing to juvenile deliquency.
;->).
In the sixties it was the hippies and the drugs that caused all the violence. Yes, BTW, I know the stereotype of the peace loving hippy but then again every radical politico in the sixties were
referred to as a hippy.
In the seventies it was the drugs still (everyone really liked drugs around this time
In the eighties it was those satanic role playing games.
Today, they complain about video games.
Scapegoats are always going to be needed because people in America right now just cannot accept that some people are freaks and mad dogs that will simply go off.
They have to have a reason so we can prevent it. It is bull. Famous people cannot die without a conspiracy behind their death, John Kennedy, MLK or even freakin' Princess Di. Nothing random can happen and nothing can happen that is totally unpreventable. There are people that actually think that we can actually prevent a warped kid from shooting up a school or some weirdo from attacking kids or terroists from bombing our ships, etc..etc.. ad nausem.
We are not in control. Expectation is just a way of thinking you know what is coming next AND YOU DON'T. Get over it.
ACK
Dick Cavett said it best, when he said "Personally, I see more comedy on television than violence, but nobody is complaining about comedy in the streets."
I get so fed up with people using "common wisdom" to bring their points across... "If a drink costs less at happy hour, people will drink more. It's OBVIOUS!" (Why couldn't it be, "if a drink costs less at happy hour, people will simply save money?").
If it's so ****ing obvious, then do the damn studies, and do them with statistically meaningful numbers. And don't be afraid to publish them when they show that your "common wisdom" was incorrect.
"There's so much violence in these computer games, so they MUST be causing all the violence we're seeing in schools." (BLAH!!!!)
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"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
You feel it desensitizes one. Do you feel that way because you feel it has happened to you? If not, how else can you 'feel' that this is what happens?
I for one am still *horrified* by real life violence.
And I"ve played a *SHITLOAD* of extremely violent video games and watched violent movies.
Google, it would qualify as a "real word" (no matter what Webster
says).
Google reports:
I am 15 years old, and have played violent video games for a considerable time (not that long, maybe since I was 13 ;) I will NOT watch violent movies, and even can't watch the sicko-horror scenes in Monty Python (which I on the whole love, if they'd can the damn animations and b/g/g). I am in NO way desensitized to violence. I am well aware of the difference between a couple hundred pixels on my screen (and a couple thousand on another, not to mention packets and memory state) and a living human being. Hell, I have a hard time sleeping after reading my WWII books. Believe me, I play Counter-Strike and other 'killing' games at LEAST an hour a day (average, of course), but I don't think I'd even shoot at someone attacking me (thakfully, I've never had the chance to find out). In-game I'm a brutal terrorist, but in the real life I'm a soft fuzzy guy who loves his new kitten. There is a sharp difference there. Perhaps I'm different, but people seem to ignore people like me. Perhaps they should actually research non-killers (that is, people who aren't fscked up in the head to start with).
I'm not sure why Gary Gygax's opinion on this subject is really that valuable. A person who writes the material that has accusations leveled at it is hardly an impartial subject....
-Moondog
While video game violence may or may not be linked to real world violence, I can't help but feel it does desensitizes one with related violence in the real world through exposure. One essentially gets used to it.
- systmc
This guy has the Ego of Nerd-dom +3
Where are the keys to my whore?
Gygax and TSR put out such hack-and-slash dreck that "roll playing games" made a better label than "role playing" did.
Maybe that's just because he didn't have you around to point out all the flaws! No, I'm semi-serious -- where were all the modern RPG gods when TSR was pumping out this awful tripe? I'll tell you: they were either in the basement with their D&D books or they thought "D&D" stood for "Death and Dismemberment" and had something to do with insurance.
Whatever your feelings on the "hack and slash" style of play that Gary Gygax implemented in D&D (and promotes to this day despite it's obvious obsolescence) the fact is that early TSR products were pioneering a large number of concepts that are still in use today even in fully modern RPGs. Do you mock the simplistic and primitive Pong or Space War? I think not -- these games not only created the concept of the video arcade game but proved that it was commercially viable to create such a thing.
Despite your lack of respect for the primordial ooze that TSR's early products are to the RPG industry as a whole, I have to agree with you on one point -- TSR's utter lack of appropriate response to the religious zealots who targeted them. Rather than use some of the cash in their (at the time) overflowing coffers to buy some good lawyers and conjure up a defamation suit or four, TSR just rolled over and took it square in the jaw -- giving the religion industry a perfect villian for their sheep to hate.
"Religious fanatics assasinating our character? OH NO! QUICK, change the names of the demons in our monster manual! Issue press releases about how we don't promote satanism! Retreat! RETREAT!"
I firmly believe that it was this lack of any serious effort to defend their products when it mattered most that triggered the beginning of TSR's slide into bankruptcy. TO THIS DAY there are LARGE numbers of non-religious-extremist people who "know" NOTHING about the game other than that it "caused some kid to commit suicide"! They obviously heard or read about some distorted report of the Egbert case and never heard anything after that. What's wrong with this picture?? Can you imagine GM not saturating the media with ads full of James Earl Jones listing off car safety features after Nader's successful recall lawsuit? What was TSR doing while their game was being crucified by critics with pathetic credentials for crimes it never had anything to do with?? Certainly not enough, otherwise I wouldn't be meeting all these people who had their only opinion of D&D shaped by some shitty TV "news" magazine that's been off the air for years.
Originiating in the armed forces, "Frag" means 'kill' in a FPS. oriignally, however, it referenced hitting your own guys with fragmentaion grenades accidentally
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
I rest my case.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
If you're sick and tired of video game violence, push nonviolent games such as Tetris on your kids.
Will I retire or break 10K?
End public education and you see a small decrease in violence by disaffected middle-class kids.
Then watch the riots start.
Then watch the revolutions unfold.
Pick your poison.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
It's funny to think back to middle and high school. I had a knife held to my throat by another kid once in 7th grade (he was "just joking around"). As far as I know, he didn't play any role-playing or computer games.
I saw a number of brutal fights in high school, including one between a guy and a girl where he knocked her knife across the cafeteria and started ripping her hair out. From what I knew of those two, neither played any role-playing or computer games.
The year after I graduated from high school, two kids who were suspended from school paid a visit with a pair of handguns. They shot three staff members, one fatally. No mention of computer or role-playing games.
But I have seen the other side of the coin. I knew a guy in middle school who was very much into role playing games who broke into the school and trashed part of it. He was later shipped off to military school where I understand he found a perfect outlet for his f-ed up emotions.
A few years after high school, I happened to meet a friend-of-a-friend who played some role-playing games and hung out on BBSs. At dinner, he ordered a very rare steak ("put it on the grill, count to five, flip it, count to five, then bring it out"). A couple weeks later he was arrested (and I believe later convicted) for brutally murdering his former girlfriend. The funny part is, I started playing with this guy's old gaming group after that and had a great time with a group of mostly well-adjusted geeks.
There are plenty of people in this world who's brains just aren't wired right. Not all of them can be ex-marines or postal workers when they dump core. Some will use a computer. Some will play role-playing games. Some will be in wealthy families. Some will be vice presidents at large companies.
Various groups of people always seem to be looking for the "magic bullet" when it comes to the cause and cure for crime and violence in society. Especially when the violence was committed by someone very young. Many people seem to just want a scapegoat, something that they can point to as the cause. I think it should be fairly obvious though, that there is never such a simple explanation for any specific act of violence, or for violence in general. It is a very common belief that exposure to violent movies, videogames, etc. desensitizes the viewer. Whether or not this is true, the affect that viewing anything has on a person depends very much on their set of values with which they can evaluate it. Studies have shown that when parents view television with their children, and discuss what they are seeing with the child, it greatly affects the way in which the child thinks about what he/she is watching.
Personally, I don't really play any RPGs or gory video games, but I don't really think there's any causation between viewing violence and committing violence.
I believe that many of the main causes of violence in our society are social and economic factors. Many parents don't spend enough time with their kids, and never give them any context with which to interpret the violence they see. This is much more of a problem than the fact that the kids are being exposed to violence. Inequality and oppression, both social and economic, also seem to sometimes lead to violence. There also seem to be people who for no apparent reason are just pre-disposed towards violence. Mental illness can sometimes be a factor. All of these things and many more can lead to violence. Any specific act of violence is likely to have its roots in several of these factors.
Trying to blame violence on television/movies/videogames/music is just a cheap way to opt out of asking deeper, more disturbing questions.
When books burn, people are next.
I don't think so, but I'm curious what you think.
I don't think that its the games which are really at fault for encouraging any violent behavior in youths. Violence starts mostly with dischord in the child's home and family life. Discontentment and frustration in his or her real life is what can drive them to physical violence. Keeping families working together and stopping the real-life abuse is where we should direct our efforts. Placing attention and blame onto violent games or television shows is not the right thing to do.
Quake doesn't get people angry enough to kill their mother or shoot their high school teachers. Violent games and TV shows just help disconnect offenders from the realization of their crimes, after they've been commited.
:)
Of course violent video games don't make people kill other people. To kill someone, you have to look away from your computer.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
The reason people attack the gaming market is that it's an easy target...
Video/computer games are notorious for their gratuitous violence and lots of blood and gore, along with the fact that the primary users are children.
It's a lot easier to tell people that it's the "violent games" that are causing their children to become violent and socially maladjusted, rather than tell the truth, which is that they have bad parenting skills and don't teach their children the morals that they (children) need to learn.
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Is anyone aware of any actual STUDIES on the subject of video games inducing violence? Because I don't buy it, but it shouldn't be TOO difficult to determine. If you can show that (just for instance, I have no idea what the actual numbers might be) 25% of the population has spent significant amounts of time playing Quake III / HalfLife / UT / etc., and that a disproportionate percentage of violent crimes (like 35% or more) are attributable to people in this group, THEN I might begin to believe it. Such a study is not really possible with regards to violence in most types of media because exposure to them is too ubiquitous (how many people HAVEN'T been watching TV but are still "mainstream" enough to make a reasonable control group?) But it shouldn't be difficult with VGs - there's still plenty of "normal" people out there that have never fragged (I think - maybe I'm just out of touch!) Granted, this is nowhere CLOSE to showing a causal relation (which is really QUITE difficult in anything involving patterns of human behavior; this is why psychology, sociology, etc. are still considered "soft" science), but right now all we have is anecdotal evidence (which is no evidence). "Some kid(s) played a bunch of violent games and then went and shot up their school. When asked what they were all about, the kid(s) said "I play Quake lots"."
But think about it - although the video game industry is steadily extending its audience into the over-30 crowd, the main consumers of VGs, especially ultra-violent VGs, are the under-30 crowd. These are ALSO the people that are the most emotionally volatile. It's nothing to do with VGs, it's just developmental! Teenagers (and to a lesser extent 20-somethings) are still developing mentally and physically and emotionally. They're more volatile. It's this volatility that both makes them likely to commit crimes of "passion" and also likely to play violent VGs! I would contend that the "real violence" and "play violence" are both EFFECTS of an underlying CAUSE - plain ol' human adolesence! C'mon, seriously, how many people here over 25 can honestly look back at their years from age 10ish to 25ish and NOT wonder how on earth they made it through adolesence and pre-adulthood withOUT killing themselves or anyone else or just losing it and blasting things randomly?
I suspect that if my hypothetical study above were conducted that the results would be exactly the opposite - violent gamers are LESS likely to be violent in real life. I think this is because the outlet that it provides to get aggression OUT of your system more than offsets the desensitization effects. At least that's certainly how it works for ME. My bottom line has been stated over and over by others, but it's worth repeating: the dangers of violent games (TV, whatever) are marginal. The vast majority of people that wouldn't have gone on a killing spree or whatever had they never played, watched, read, spong-absorbed this input are NOT going to suddenly flip-flop because of it. The unbalanced few would be unbalanced without it. The slim margin of people that MIGHT flip because of it are NOT worth depriving the human race of its natural talents for creativity. Personally, I'd be MUCH more likely to flip if all I could play was the VG equivalent of "The Care Bears"...
Violent games and TV shows just help disconnect offenders from the realization of their crimes, after they've been commited.
Yes, but then we wouldn't have a handy scapegoat to blame, would we? After all, if we were to focus societal and economic resources on fixing the discord in the child's home and family life, we might get some real results.
Another example would be the War on Drugs. Back during Nixon's time, we spent two-thirds of federal monies on prevention (demand) and one-third on punishment (supply). Now we keep locking up more and more people, and it still doesn't change the behaviour. Because it's politically easy to be tough on crime, not actually go through, program by program, and see what really delivers results.
And this is to the point that over 50 percent of many counties budgets are spent on the justice system, where they used to be in the 20 to 30 percent range.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The other thing most sims don't prepare you for is the fact that the other guy is shooting back.
... sims can make young punks think they know all this stuff and buy a gun and it's sooo easy to pull that trigger and be the big man. And then it jams, it's heavy, you miss and lots of innocent people end up dead. That's NOT good.
Severe duh. Man, where's the whiz and gusts of air from the bullets, the tracer rounds screaming at your eyeballs, the panic inducement of trees spattering as they're hit, the noise, the fires, the confusion even when you're calm and the world has slowed to a crawl and you realize that you know exactly what you're doing and it's happening while you're almost floating above it all.
Until they come out with home theater games with this kind of thing, you're still going to have people who think they know what to do, but don't. The sickening feeling of realizing that that body is a dead person, or worse is wounded, and what you had to do with the whole equation. The friends and what is happening to them. The reality that it really doesn't matter if you call for help, because by the time it arrives it will be way too late, but you do it anyway.
But
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Why did people kill each other before video games? Just curious.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Here's a fact. Being exposed to violence desensitizes you to it. That's any type of violence; verbal abuse, violent murder and rape, and everything in between. Hearing something horrible happen on the radio desensitizes you a little. Seeing it on TV does it more. Doing it interactively on the computer, where you make it happen, desensitizes you a lot.
If you are desensitized to violence, you are more likely to do it yourself. If violence is a viable solution in every aspect of your "play" life, then you will begin to see it as a solution in your "real" life.
The younger you are, the more pronounced the effect is.
Example: Normal people off the street will not, unless circumstances are extreme, kill someone. The US Marines need to train people to kill someone when they are not in direct personal danger. So they use pop up targets with the shape of a human. This trains people to pull the trigger without thinking. This is the same psychologically as playing Quake or Halflife.
However, it is true that video games are not responsible for much violence in society. The amount that they desensitize you is not massive and mind bending. Video games are only really a threat to people who are violent or already in a mentally suggestive state.
[The above is based on the expert opinion of the Chief of Psychology and Administrative Director of the local Phyc. Hospital.]
This is my opinion: I think that putting Solider of Fortune in the hands of 6 six year old should be a crime.
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do" E.Roosevelt
If I become desensitized to something, such as violence, that doesn't mean that I will be more likly to commit violence. It just means that it will have less emotional impact.
Example, I am desensitized to violence and I see someone shot before my eyes and they are now lying in a pool of their own blood. Do I pull out a gun and start shooting people too? No, I assess the situation and call for help. A less "desensitied" person would probably just stand there screaming. I don't have to have an emotional reaction to know what's right.
People are still responsable for their own actions. "Quake" doesn't teach people to shoot real people, it teaches them to click targets on their computer screen....
William Strunk Jr., abandoned by his parents and raised by wolves untill he graduated from the University of Cincinatti, and legendary author of English Metres, is highly cheesed because nobody cared about it. Now he's back with a printing press and a score to settle!
E. B. White was bitten by a highly intelligent radioactive spider that could write messages in her webs. Now he is more powerful than ever and is fighting on the crusade for elegant prose--but can his rage be kept in check? Or will he finally be driven to destruction by people who "done seen things" and don't know the difference between "its" and "it's"?
Find out on the next episode of--
Strunk and White, ActionTeam!!!
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
I am a mental health professional, and the research I am aware of shows the above statement to be false. There have been many, many studies on modeling of behavior that absolutely shows an increase in violent behavior when exposed to media with violent content. The simplest and most well known of these was an experiment exposing children to movies of other children hitting life-sized dolls with a control group of children doing regular play without violent content.
This is an example of the kind of boneheaded research that makes me wonder how the experimenters managed to pass their undergrad classes let alone get a Ph.D or M.D.
Firstly I'll comment on ivaldes3's misdirected ire. Repeat after me, "RPGs do not increase violent behavior". A Role Playing Game is a group activity played by a close circle of friends who exercise their imagination pretending to be wizards, warriors, gods, superheroes, etc. Several studies have shown that the one thing that links violent/suicidal teenagers is the fact that they are usually loners who feel isolated from their peers and family and are the victims of abuse either by their peers or their family.
Secondly, the boneheaded experiment you described is the most contrived piece of garbage I have ever heard of. Children imitate/mimic what they see around them, after all that's how they learn to talk. If you show children images of other children performing actions, it is extremely likely that they will imitate this behavior. The fact that they mimic the behavior of the children in the movie only shows that they are healthy and observant kids. To leap from the results of that experiment to then claim that RPGs cause violence is not only unreasonable but extremely illogical.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Example: Normal people off the street will not, unless circumstances are extreme, kill someone. The US Marines need to train people to kill someone when they are not in direct personal danger. So they use pop up targets with the shape of a human. This trains people to pull the trigger without thinking. This is the same psychologically as playing Quake or Halflife.
Well, I've had quite a bit of training in the Canadian Army myself. Even with training, we still expect that more than half of all combatants will not shoot at another human being, but will miss. This is pretty much a constant.
Playing Quake or Halflife is nothing like using a force-feedback rifle simulator. They used to ban us from paintball games because we actually used weapons and knew about kickback, reactions, wind drift, shadow perception, and all the other factors necessary to complete a real kill. And even a simulator is a far cry from real combat. It's not quiet in real war, it's way more boring and way more exciting, and even the best game is jigged for playability, whereas real combat is a heck of a lot of misses and a lot of unseen targets, regardless of technology.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?