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GTA and Rating of Video Games
Gamer writes "There is an interesting debate on Grand Theft Auto and rating of computer games going on. It started with Lawmeme's Paul Szynol wants 'distribution control so that minors don't get access to inappropriate material'.
Greplaw's Mikael Pawlo has a reply saying 'Computer games are art and should be dealt with accordingly, without any references to the prohibition tactics of the 1980:ies.'
Would the world not be a better place without the violence in GTA? I don't understand Pawlo's art argument, although I love gaming. I agree with Paul Szynol. Kids should not get violent games." I really don't have a problem with regulating violent games- its when the government tries to outlaw them that I have a problem.
By banning them, They increase demand exponentialy.
These games are costing ~$45+, do you really think little timmy is buying this himself? Of course not, His parents buy it for him. So who really cares if they'll sell it to minors?
Personaly, I used to play plenty of M-rated games when I was 7+. Never tried to perform a fatalaty on anyone. No mental scaring, either. Shielding children from content is just going 1)Make them want it more 2)Increse effect when they finally do get it (they will).
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
and I'll say it again.
The answer is not regulation, the answer is parents getting off their lazy butts and paying attention to what their kids are doing. I grew up with violent video games, just like most of the rest of you. For the most part, we turned out alright. Granted, they're getting more violent, more realistic, more graphic, etc... But you know what, so is everything else. Video games should be like the movies. Kids cant get into Rated R movies without their parents, and they shouldnt be able to but Rated M games without their parents. That's the only acceptible way I can think of to "regulate". Really though, I think it should just be done the way it's always be done, and try expecting parents to be responsible for a change.
I suspect your logic is a tad flawed. It doesn't make you a better football player, but it just might make you a little more susceptible to picking up a ball and tossing it around or going to a game. I think this is probably more what they are afraid of. If someone has violent tendencies will this be like a "gateway drug" to push them into actually commiting a violent act. The jury is out on this one.
:)
I don't believe it makes people more violent, if anything it may actually satisfy some of the violent tendencies people have.
I also don't believe that playing violent video games are the cause, but a symptom of a more subtle problem.
Just my opinion which is definitely not qualified
This is all overgeneralising, us Europeans (i'm in the UK btw) play FPS games as well as the US, but the reason there are no high school shootings here is because you can't get guns.
I am 15, and play voilent and nonviolent games, yet I do not end up fighting with people. To be influenced by a game you have to be stupid (or at least highly impressionable), and if you can't distinguish real life from a virtual creation then you need help rather than censorship for all people under 18.
Y'know, I'm not sure this is humor at all.
When GTA3 appeared in our music studio, there was some pretty serious gaming that went on for a while (an unusual circumstance; usually, the toys we play with are exclusively musical, but the appearance of the PS2 caused a weeks-long hiatus). Now, I rarely drive cars at all, as PDX is an extremely bike-friendly town. However, I noticed that on those occasions when I remained sober to drive those alkie bandmembers home, I noticed that some part of my brain had associated the act of driving a Real(TM) Car with playing GTA3.
At no point did I seriously consider flattening pedestrians or ramming cops off the road. Keep this in mind - my ability to distinguish fact from fiction remains intact, despite a world-class suspension-of-disbelief-generator mounted on a microscopic rack bolted to the inside of my skull.
However, when I looked to the left or right of the vehicle, I sure did use my index fingers on the steering wheel as if I were holding a PS2 controller - L2 for looking left out the window. I would spend a microscopic instant considering flight everytime I saw a guy in a black European Audi-lookin' car - those are Mafia, they have serious ordinance, they'll fsck joo up!
Most disturbing, every time I heard a chopper overhead, even when on foot or bicycle, the most proper and immediate response in my mind (for an instant, mind you) was to whip out the bazooka and take it out.
This state of affairs lasted for about a week and a half, during which time my daily consumption of GTA3 could be reckoned to hover somewhere around 2-3 hours a day, every day. I haven't played any game that much since ultima 6. As soon as I stopped playing daily, these sensations went away.
BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
1) I wasn't kidding about my world-class suspension-of-disbelief generator.
2) Even though I can cause myself to temporarily believe almost anything for a while, these GTA3-inspired beliefs never caused me to take any untoward actions. Every time I felt a desire to ram that guy in the Patriot off the road, I was able to recognize same as a game-generated impulse and squash it without effort.
3) Lots of folks are better at separating the rules and regs of the mundane world from their digital fantasy worlds better than myself.
4) We're going to have to assume that some folks do NOT perform this separation as competently as we might hope - certainly less competently than myself.
5) Perhaps some of the people in #4 also play more games than do I.
6) Perhaps some of the remaining people found in #5 are quite young.
7) I know I'm not alone in having GTA3 leak into my brain when I'm not actually playing. Many of my friends have reported the same sort of sensations that I described above, similar to that which the AC poster described (perhaps humorously). None of us, of course, have gone and DONE any GTA3-inspired crimes, but we have carefully reinforced grips-on-reality.
See, what we want to make in our music studios and game-design thinktanks and writer's groups is art that moves people - that comes back to haunt them long after they've put the book down or pressed STOP on their (insert media-reproduction device here). That's why I make media, anyways - because my life has been permanently altered by the stuff I put in my head, and some of that stuff haunts me forever after, and I have basically unlimited respect for the folks what make it. Right now, I'm particularly haunted by the works of Neal Stephenson, Scott Herren, and Arvo Part - they've made stuff that follows me around everywhere.
However, for a few brief days, I was consistently haunted by a piece of media made by the guys at Rockstar Games. That GTA3 is some pretty potent mind-altering stuff. Just like the booze, just like the prescription drugs, I say: keep out of reach of children.
Children are not able to fully understand and cope, on their own, with the violence evidences in such games.
Assuming that is a true statement, define children. How old does a child have to be before they can cope? Do we suddenly get granted this magical ability at 18?
Children growing up in an environment where such media violence is taken for granted often take real violence for granted in their life.
Really? Could you show me the scientifically valid survey that prooves this? Because everything I've read has show that the research on the subject is, at best, inconclusive.
The big problem I have with ratings systems and regulation of games, etc, is that it doesn't take into account the fact that children mature at different rates. This is less of an issue with video games because, regardless of rating, the parent can always buy the video game for their child. That's what's important here is the parents right to choose what's okay for their child to see.
I remember parents who wouldn't let their kids listen to Madonna thinking it would corrupt them. That's ridiculous in my opinion, but I fully support that parent's right to make that choice for their kids. As long as video game ratings remain a voluntary advisory system they are all okay in my book.
What I've loathed for a very long time is the movie ratings system. When I was 15, I was mature enough to deal with anything I've ever seen in an R rated movie but I still couldn't go see them in the theater unless my mom really wanted to come sit through it (which did happen on occasion thankfully). She couldn't write me a note of approval, or even just show up to buy me the tickets, she had to sit through the whole damn movie. If she had no desire to see it, I had to wait for video or HBO. The greatest irony was that the strict enforcement in the theaters did nothing to stop me from seeing the movies, it just delayed it.
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Until I babysat some kids and showed them Terminator II, I didn't see a connection between a violent movie and violent behavior, but now I am certain there is one.
Yeah, and if you you had organized a football game with the kids, you would have noted more aggressive behavior, as well. Movies, games, sports - anything that makes the adrenaline flow can trigger short-term aggression.
However, there's a big difference between getting pumped up while watching WWF or the Matrix and brawling with your brother versus getting a gun and killing people.
There was a story back a month or so up here (Canada). Apparently (I haven't seen the movie, so I'm just describing what the report said), Moore goes into a Walmart in Ontario, goes to the gun counter or whatever, and asks the clerk for some ammo. Next shot, he gets his ammo. No ID check, nothing.
A Justice Department person has then commented that this is illegal in Canada: you cannot buy ammo without an ID check. So, either the clerk at the Walmart didn't ask Michael Moore for his ID, or Moore edited the ID exchange out of the movie.
Calls to Mr. Moore on whether the clerk did something illegal, or the scenario was "edited," have gone unanswered.