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Game Violence Critics Ignore Community?
Thanks to CNET News for their opinion piece discussing why critics of videogame violence miss the bigger picture. They suggest: "What critics consistently miss is that gaming is very much a social and community activity. This is true every time two fifth-graders rush home from school to play "Zelda" together. But on a broader scale, gaming's socializing effects are even more evident at an event like QuakeCon..." The violent games angle is also discussed intriguingly: "Some research says violent games make kids act more aggressively... But that's what adrenaline does, regardless of the medium.... How that short-term spike translates into the rest of a person's life depends on the socializing effects of everyday influences such as parents and peer groups - including other gamers."
Someone finally gets it right. This is absolutely fucking beautiful. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE needs to forward this to Lieberman and every other anti-violent-game advocate out there.
I highly doubt the video game is the problem. It's the lack of parenting skills involved in the child's upbringing that is the root of the problem. If the parents used the GAME system as a GAME every now and again instead of using the GAME system as a BABYSITTER and actually paid attention to their children, I doubt that the children would become as violent in their teenage years as they are becoming. When I was a kid, my mother paid attention to me. As a matter of fact, she was knee deep in my shit constantly. I didn't have 5 free seconds to masturbate, let alone sit in my bedroom building bombs and amassing guns to go reap some sort of vengence on my classmates.
it's about doing the right thing either, it's about doing 'something' for the community or at least appear like you do, and so called violent video games aren't exactly the only thing.
'but, but, but think of the children!' is fairly commonly used phrase to attack anything you don't happen to like personally for whatever real reason. maybe you feel that your sunday reading circle is offended by games or something similar and get twisted in your mind to defend it..
it's not like 'play' violence is exactly new either.. hmm. few thousand years perhaps? wide reading of books(and discussing them) is not that much older thing than vidoegames either, and you don't see that banned.
rock was very 'bad' too few years ago, not to mention rap.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And since the adrenaline can't be influenced by the violence that actually induced it ... we have nothing to worry about!
People are violent. If TV, movies and games cause people to be violent, wouldn't the Romans have been (more) peaceful? Violence is simply systemic throughout human history, it's at our core; it's not caused by or fueled through Man's creations, but by Man himself. Why don't we take a little responsibility for our own actions and stop trying to place the blame on everything else? People have no accountability, they accept no responsibility.
So I'm just going to blame YOU for all my problems now and personally, Slashdot causes me to be violent.
"Joan of Arc, up top!" - Ghandi, Clone High
It almost seems like anything associated with men eventually comes under some form of attack. Yes, I know there are plenty of female gamers out there, but by and large gaming is a guy thing - and I can't help but wonder if this is a motivating factor in the drive to restrict games.
The activities that society values are usually not activities that guys instinctively enjoy. Society wants us to be nice, submissive, drones - to earn our paycheck and keep quiet. But we want to be hunters and warriors. Sometimes I wonder if someone is offended by that desire.
It's just one writer's opinion. How does this get on Slashd... ooooh, I remember.
"Fuck the children! They get entirely too much attention."
Live your lives with no regrets. Pursue your own happiness. We need to get political and remove the village raisers that give all these wanna-be nannies power over us. I'm sick of having to justify my activities to a bunch of losers who won't be satisfied until I'm on my knees praying to their false gods.
When I first started dating the girl I married, she'd lay a bastard sword between us when we went to bed, to make sure I behaved myself. And she kept a 9mm H&K under her pillow.
I would have married her too..
D00D F U!
BS CHEATER
etc.
The people playing online, with lots of exceptions, don't generally act like a bunch of intellectual notables. So the bit about 'community' is stretching things a bit.
But let's not forget the deep bonds which are inevitable when
"Mr. Sticky" throws a grenade at "The Crimson Warlord"
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I find myself in a dificult position wrt this issue though because I have experienced negative effects from gaming myself. I used to play motor racing games. A lot. But then I stopped playing motor racing games because I found that my driving was becoming more agressive.
I drove faster, I braked later and took more risks. Quite simply, playing TOCA 2 in glorious high resolution with force feedback wheel and pedals was too close to the real sensation of driving my car on twisty British roads for comfort. I was driving like an idiot and if I'd kept at it I'd have killed someone. When I stopped playing racing games and hung up my force feedback wheel my driving improved.
I've played first person shooters both alone and on LANs since Doom came out back in the early '90s. By the same logic as above I should be a crazed killer by now. But I'm not. Unlike driving a car which I do every day, I've never had to clear out a Martian ore plant of aliens armed only with a chainsaw.
I sometimes wish that the critics could recognise that games are just another recreational activity with all the pros and cons that brings. After all, I dont hear them wanting to ban fencing and they use SWORDS ferchrissakes!!
Oxford Dictionaries Online
One point that I think that isn't covered because it's potentially obvious is the potential effect of ultraviolent games on the fairly young. I don't mean your average teen who has watched enough TV and movies to know what a hollow point does to someone, but the young who are just beginning to learn things about the world.
I worry about the kids who have violent video games (such as SoF 1 or 2) as their first major violent expereicnce. It's one thing for a child to see a bar fight or mafia war on TV. It's another to be _in control_ of a game persona that can shoot an other person into little chunks. Even if the child is explained to that "____ is not real," there's nothing like experiencing err, virtually first-hand, something like that.
But then again, that's what games are nowdays. I can't pretend it's not fun to go around and get frags (Unreal, Quake), run people over (GTA*, Carmageddon), or chop or beat down others (MK* and Time Killers comes to mind)... However the fact that I and millions of normal fun loving gamers think nothing of doing these things in virtual personas is just a little disturbing.
Just my 2c...
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
This is some sort of joke. What is the average age of attendees at gaming conventions and LAN parties? Probably something above the impressionable young age that game violence critics are worried about. Not to mention that these conventions are rare and only a tiny tiny fraction of the gaming community ever takes part in them. The vast majority of gamers don't participate in LAN parties or any sort of "gaming" that results in social contact or development. Please don't tell me your counterstrike clan has caused you to build character.
And how stimulating is it to wait your turn at Zelda? Face it, my open source mountain-dew-gurgling sweatstain factories: your precious videogames are distractions from loneliness and inherent in your chronic _lack_ of social skills, not proof of their existence.
Yes, this might be flamebait to FARK-drunk Something-Awful-forum-loving techies like most of you. But plain and obvious truth to those of us more, well, well-adjusted. And no, I won't let my little kids play Grand Theft Auto 5 when (and if) I have them.
i am not a socialogist, but it seems fairly clear that the violence problem occurs earlier in a child's development than something induced by violent videogames. There's an interesting article about daycare centers in Melbourne and how they are banning superhero costumes. Why? cause little kids dressed up as superheros have much more violent / aggressive / dangerous play behavior.
Obviously this isn't a scientific study, just observations by daycare supervisors, but it illustrates that violent behavior is being exhibited by children that are presumably too young to be playing the violent video games that are often cited as the cause.
perhaps we should ban superheros first...
Games are the reason that when I moved to a new town I already had friends here. I recently moved away from my smallish town of 100,000 or so people to go to college in the big city of Arlington, smack in the middle of the DFW metroplex. Fortunately that first weekend I was already hanging out with my clan buddies at a local Cici's scarfing down pizza like mad.
We still do lots of stuff together, from playing paintball to going to see Carlin on new years eve, and of course, playing Quake-based games against each other. Anybody who's never gone over to a friend's house and watched demos of quake 3 matches still isn't a true gaming geek.