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Looking at Video Games and Violence
rootrider writes "Mark Rahner of the Seattle Times has written a great article discussing the recent trend here in the US to outlaw the purchase of violent video games by minors. I'm sure articles have been written in the past that refute the idea that video games lead to violence, but this is the first mainstream article I've seen that details the issue and does it well." The trend isn't really that new. In the past, Ozzy Osbourne and Dungeons and Dragons have been favorite scapegoats, and when I was in high school it was gangsta rap music. I can't wait until we can attribute violence to the nightly news.
During times of war I tend away from video games which involve killing people. Images in the news, particularly if you've gone to the Al-Jezeera site and looked at their un-censored images (yes, this is what war is really like, unlike what you see on US news broadcasts), disturb me and I tend to shift of to strategy games and D&D (where I'm hacking monsters to bits, rather than humans.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I do have an issue with the 'embedded' coverage not showing complete combat footage or dead bodies. There should be an adult news channel where the full account resides - to remind us what is being lost in those battles.
War is sad, its just sometimes necessary. The whole truth of it should be shown regardless.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Minors should be no more or less allowed to purchase adult video games as they are other adult products.
/. threads on this, with most thread authors sharing the opinion that violent video games don't hurt kids. While there is little evidence to prove this either way, I suspect allowing a 10 year old play 50 hours of Quake or Grand Theft Auto every week certainly "could" desensitize them to violence.
There have been a lot of
However I've yet to see any of these proponents of allowing minors to purchase M rated games answer the key question.
Why should video games be exempt from similar restrictions on other adult media? I can't think of a single good reason.
A short introduction: My fridge kicked the bucket two weeks ago. I quickly started investigating where to buy a new and cheap fridge fast. The trip went to the Expert chain on the other side of the road and I inquired about the latest Whirpool fridges. I talked to the salesperson on the showroom floor and then went to the checkout to investigate the prices. I also started to look for a stove and a to-piece ceramic plate for later
There I saw a familiar sight. There was a poster of GTA3 along with a printed message saying "This store does not carry the following games: GTA3, GTA: Vice City and BMX XXX. because we don't sell violent games to youngsters. We boycott these games"
The really catered to the asshole in me and I asked exactly why they did not want to sell these games. The clerk stumbled out som answer like "We don't want young people to see graphic contents etc.". I asked her if she had actually read the covre of games like GTA:VC. The cover here is covered with a warning not to distribute to youngsters, approx 1/3 of the front in size. She had not.
I asked her if the store prevously had a practise of selling this game to children, thus ignoring the manufacturer's warning. She said no.
I then said that if you only sold the game to people 18 years of age, why boycott it? She could not give an answer to that.
I then spoke to the store manager and said: "I disagree to your boycott and have decided to cease all purchases from this store and all Expert stores until you let people think a bit for themselves. This wil cost you the following in lost sales in near future."
The owner really got something to think about then. He looked dumbfounded.
I walked out of that store and went to a mom-and-pop electronics storer that did not carry videogames at all and they were nicer and cheaper. After completing the purchases there I went to the Expert store and showed the manager the 3000USD reciept for sales he missed. I underlined that I would NEVER purchase anything there, but walk a click to the next store.
Again, I believe he started to think about the boycott.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/cv2.htm
overall, violent crime in the US has been on the decline since 1993.
interesting coincidence: the decline started the year DOOM was released, one of the first widespread, graphically violent games.
and a proven statistic: the higher the unemployment, the higher the crime rate. does this mean we can make bad economic policy illegal too?
What ever will happen to (y)our Government's new military recruiting tool?
Speaking as a) a norwgian, b) an officer in the Royal Norwegian Airforce (RNoAF), and c) as a officer in the RNoAF whos duties involes recruiting youngsters for a military education, I would say that AA is a pretty useless / stupid (delete as appropriate) tool for recruitment. It is a middle to good game, but is gamers what the armed forces really need? I'm more in favour of - and has used as recuitment tools - information given in school / at fairs, visits to the various bases for the ones interested, ads in the papers around the date to apply, informations given to recruits at bootcamp (we have a defence based on consprited soldiers and profecional officers / NCO's) and such. In a few causes I've allied myself with collegues from the Norwegian Army and treated a few potentional cadets to a week of 'army life'; marching, woodlife, trip to the shootingrange and so on. All in all I feel that this sort of approach is more likely to reach the ones we want to join, than placing a free game on the 'net.
Besides, I've have a few friends who describe them self as 'typical gamers'. No way they would survive a week of real training... *smiles*
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Someone mod this dude up. "redundant" is an unfair mod.
Seriously tho, there is a Brisbane Australian Academic who I'm verry fond of called "John Hartley", and in his book "teleology, studies in television", he uses a word "Paedocracy"; Rule by children for children.
Basically the idea is that in the interests of "protecting the children", adult interests are subsumed to the point where we become as children under the regulatory reigme of parenthood. The adult never gets to 'become' an adult.
Interestingly almost EVERY study done thats found that violent tv or games causes probs in kids have tended to either come from
(A) Right wing think tanks, which most academics I've met rate somewhere around creationism in the legitimacy stakes (ie zero) or
(B) Have methodological holes the size of craters.
What *HAS* come across however, is that the only tv violence that does seem to mess with kids is.... news violence! Basically the idea is that for young kids, the violence on TV is real, and de-contextualised. Kids have a surprisingly well honed ability to tell real from play, and the worse "play" violence on TV/games seems to lead to is occasionally rougher play in the schoolyard. (Ie recreating powerrangers etc), but not to fisticuffs or anything.
Now, just the other day, a friend of mine told me in rather exasperated terms how he was freaked out that his 4 year old daughter was terrified that mister president bush was going to fly a plane and bomb her day care center. She didnt understand that the little blown up kids on the tv set (Hey nice one TV guys, showing bodies on newsflashes during 9am cartoons.. gee thanx) was part of a complex series of political events staged on the other side of the planet. The 4yo brain just dont get that iraq is not a 5 minute bus ride away, and that the Americans are 'on our side'.
Basically , she dont get the context, but knew the killing was real.
And thats the rub. Real violence causes real problems, while 'pretend' violence only leads to 'pretend' problems.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Does an adult have the right to choose to buy/play/watch any movie or game he wants? Sure.
Does a 10 year old? No. The 10 year olds legal guardian does. People constantly blame the parents, but then decide that they can usurp the parents and market sex and violence to little kids for the sake of the almighty buck.
It would be nice if there was some voluntary corporate policy, and some larger chains have caved to public pressure the way the MPAA did decades ago. They decided they wont sell content rated mature to a 10 year old. They have the right to not sell anything to a 10 year old if they choose, but the current compromise is good enough.
A violent video game does not in itself make a murderer. But constantly bombarding kids with violence has a desensitizing affect, and just plain vulgarity is having a negative effect on society as a whole.
The problem with "gangsta rap" is that now you have 8 year olds calling little girls hos and bitches, and they think its acceptable to do so.
It's had a terrible effect on black society, as it's been teaching the children that the only possible role models are basketball stars and rappers, that education is unimportant, and that any sign of class or intelligence is a bad thing.
Couple that with the liberal shift to some sort of mindset where it's wrong to punish children at all, and you have a recipe for a decaying society.
I wonder what the country will look like in a few decades, when these kids have grown up with a sense of entitlement, a lack of respect for others, no education, and completely oblivious of the fact that there are consequences for their actions.
I dont agree with government controls in principle. But the corporations continue to bombard kids with crap, and theres a growing segment of the population saying enough is enough.
I mean, if someone comes into my home and starts swearing and acting like a jerk in front of my kids, I'll tell him to stop, or boot his ass out. MediaCorp should get the same treatment. You just dont do some things because its just wrong.
Corporate america will learn these lessons via boycotts and angry consumers, but they're slow to learn anything. NBC learnt the hard way what happens when they decide to put gangsta/pornographer Snoop Dogg into a Muppets special. (The fucking Muppets - and Snoop Dogg, I mean what the fuck were they thinking besides making a cheap buck?) People got pissed. People stopped watching them. It hit their pocketbooks, they smartened up and apologized. Pepsi learned the same way that using Ludacris to hock soda to kids would get the same reaction.
Short of that, or a government rule (which I wouldnt want), they wouldnt care. They'd base a saturday morning cartoon on Charles Manson if they thought it would sell some more Play Doh ads.
Anyhow, I'm pretty confident this whole issue will just slowly resolve itself. All people have to do is not be dickheads. Make your tittie porno BMX video game, but dont sell it to little kids. Not because some law got passed, because it's just an ignorant thing to do.
You know the funny thing is.. when i play GTA2 (my favorite one) for extended periods of time it really does affect my thinking a little. I live in Jersey and don't have a car so I always think about how cool it would be to snatch the next asshole out of his car and get home faster. This wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that I keep finding myself thinking those thoughts (how would these people react if i just started mowing them down in an icecream truck right now?) involuntarily.
However, at the same time I also acknowledge that I frequently involuntarily will apply racial stereotypes to people. However I was taught in a psychology class that although racial stereotypes were a bad thing, not being a racist didn't mean not possessing racial stereotypes. It meant being aware of the fact that you were percieving a stereotype that probably wasn't true and actively counterring that in your head. This is a working technique to reduce your level of racism but certainly not preferable to never having the stereotype in the first place (which is very possible if you weren't raised in the US).
Video game violence is similar. If you're exposed to it, IT WILL AFFECT YOUR THINKING. But it won't affect your behavior if you're mature enough to counter it actively.
My brother and 3 of his friends stole a car. After stealing it they drove down the highway screaming "GTA baby! yeah!". My brother and his friends are equally young but he was the only one who chose not to get into the car, reminding them that in reality this was a felony. He possessed the mental faculties to stop him from doing what he was tempted to do. They didn't steal it for money (they returned the car when they were finished) but because games like GTA made ALL of them think it was cool. However it was not a foregone conclusion that it would make all of them do it.
The point is, which is preferable? Having the racial stereotypes or violent inclinations in your head and counterring them logically or never having them in the first place?
But one of the things I rarely see mentioned is this - not terribly unlike the JFK consipracy theorists of the world, people who make the bold sweeping claim that video game violence caused things like Columbine do like to hang on to the tiny shreds of evidence that support their theory and ignore the mountains of evidence against it.
The lawyer mentioned in the article has attempted to make a living off of suing video game makers. His Kip Kinkle and Columbine cases were thrown out, so either he's making money either way or he's getting really frustrated right now. In addition to the Beltway Sniper case, he's suing the government over the America's Army game. His mentality is that of a spammer - it doesn't matter how sleazy and slimy what he does is, so long as he gets paid.
And the fact is that all you have to do is bring a picture of a dead kid and a waving finger to Congress and you can get any law in the world you want passed.
But think about it - how many violent kid incidents do you ever hear about? Columbine, Kip Kinkle, those kids in Arkansas, that kid in Flint. That's what, four? And what did they all have in common? Well three of them were white kids shooting white kids (the kid in Flint was a black kid shooting a white kid - significant since the kids were six years old). But what about black kids shooting black kids? It happens all the time, but the news never centers on it. Similarly, when Elizabeth Smart went missing it was Chandra Levy Part II, but the same week a black girl from a poor neighboorhood was kidnapped and no one outside of her state cared.
So the parents groups, mostly white people terrified of this happening to them, use this handful of incidents and blow them out of proportion. The game industry is growing while the overall crime rate is dropping. We haven't had a big school shooting since Columbine. And the biggest retailers (Wal-Mart, Target, GameStop) won't sell M-rated games to minors.
Personally I support not selling M-rated games to minors, but not at the point of law. The movie industry hasn't needed laws to enfore R-rated movies. Do kids still see them? Sure. But they can't just walk in. And consider this - kids can't pirate cigarettes, but if you make it to where kids can't buy M-rated games by law they'll just hit up the newsgroups.
Schnapple
.."But MTV's "Jackass" doesn't make kids try dangerous stunts"..
Actually it does... There are lots' of teenages performing jackass stunts nowadays.
Let us take international relations. If you're brought up in the idea that your country is the best in every domain and the rest of the world is just made of jealous jerks, you obviously have a different outlook on violence - specifically, you may not be reluctant to approve the use of violence by your government.
Very insightful..... I wish more people read the press from at least two other countries regularly.
Or here is another example-- I read the Israeli press quite often and one wonders what lead six Israelis to attempt to detonate a large explosive device outside an Arab-Israeli girl's school (six have been charged with the incident). I think this is a good example of how the news and editorials ("Arabs only understand violence" sorts of messages) can clearly push people towards attrocities. For the record, when I have been traveling, I have met many Israelis, and with one exception, they have all been peace-loving and deeply inspired by the work of Peres and Rabin, and I would not want anyone to assume that I see all Israeli Jews in light of the six alleged terrorists.
News is clearly more influential because it purports to be true.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Just recently I watched a show on Court TV about a 12 year old killing his baby cousin (one or two years old) using a WWF wrestling move. He was left to babysit his cousin alone as well. The show also talked about video game violence in brief, basically saying that it's on of the mediums that kids may want to immitate in real life.
The question that comes to my mind is: Are video games/wrestling/media/etc causing the violence, or are the kids?
Well, that's a no-brainer, kids are committing the acts. I've known many young boys who really look up to WWF wrestlers and immitate violent acts such as those in video games. Not because they want to hurt anybody, but because they want to immitate their idols and what they see. With wresling, the see a guy get a beatdown, and magically get back up, and after the show is over, they walk out of the ring unscathed. With video games, I think it's the player's interaction, coupled with the glamorization of violence that would make some kids want to try it out in real life.
Kids *are* impressionable like that. Which on one hand makes this topic understandable. But what is the media in general supposed to do about it? Make everything sugar-coated and soft for the sake of preventing some deaths? Should the world go on a censor-spree because one kid may pick up a gun and decide to go on a killing spree while exclaiming "I'll bury you in a lunckbox!"?
Every parent wants to blame video games, the gun manufacters, the internet, movies, you name it. It's easier to pass the buck then it is to accept the responsibilty. Oh parents are taking responsibility because they banded together and got a bill passed in to law? How exactly does that help?
"Because just as parents don't want retailers to sell beer or wine to their children or tobacco to our children because it's bad for them, they're saying 'Help us. Don't make this stuff available to our kids.' Parents absolutely do need to take responsibility, but in society today, you and I both know that it's pretty easy for kids to go next door and get hold of something that parents won't allow them to have."
This is understadable as well. Retailers shouldn't be selling alcohol or tobacco to minors, just as gun manufacters shouldn't be selling guns to minors. There are laws to prevent that, and they do help the problem. However, these are things that directly harm children. With video games and the media, they're more passive, so the direct link isn't as clear.
In any case, there's something about American parents not wanting to take responsibility for their children. You shouldn't leave a 2 year old in the care of a 12 year old, period. Or if your child gets a hold of your gun and kills someone, who's at fault, you or the kid?
Most of these cases are directly linked to the parents inability or laziness. It's true, parents can't keep an eye on their kids 24/7, but they can take steps and get more involved in their kids lives. "Let me read the box on that video game", or "what are you watching on tv?" Just don't leave them to do whatever they want. Spend time with them and what they're doing, be their moral conscious and guide while their playing that video game, or cheering their favorite wrestler on.
The more you get involved with what you're kids do, the more you can instill in them what is acceptable in real life, and what is not.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!