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The State of Violent Gaming
Ownt.com writes "Today we talk with Running With Scissors' Vince Desi of the controversial, recently released gore fest, Postal 2. We talk with Vince about The State of Video Game Violence and his thoughts on the violent gaming, where it's been, where it's going and many other aspects surrounding whether or not games actually 'teach' the players to go... postal."
Note; this holds true for most first-person shoot-em-up, right back to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom.
Is it violent? Yes.
Is it speculative? Certainly.
Does it use blood and gore as a selling point? Off course.
But does it leads to more violent bahaviour? Now that is hard to prove... and unless it can be absolutly disproved, there will always be people who claims it does and will try to tell the gaming insdustry what they can and cannot do.
We'll always have parents and 'worried people' screaming up on how bad the latest games are. But instead of blaming the gamingindustry - who are basicly turning out more of whats popular - for perverting the youth, shouldn't they instead be taking time to be with their offspring, and possible keep some sort of controll at home over what games the children plays? For some reason, I'm reminded of a certain movie from a few years back, where concerned mothers started a war with Canada because their kids had learned a few naughty words...
Parental responibility. Is that to much to ask for?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I remember seeing the first Postal. It was practically the only game I've ever found so revolting that I felt sorry for the people who actually thought it was fun. And this is after I had been playing all the Doom and Doom-derivitive games for years. Just going around and shooting people without a just cause is absolutely fucking stupid. At least Doom was fighting against an invasion from Hell or something. In Postal, it wasn't even self-defense.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
The sad thing is that (in the USA at least) graphic violence is apparently more acceptable than graphic sexuality.
That's because it's easier to use violence as a control.
You can better control the populace if you outlaw depictions of sex, because sex is normal and natural. The message sent is that sex is not normal and natural, but the population will continue to have sexual impulses (because we're hardwired to want to reproduce), which will cause them to repress these impulses.
You then make depictions of violence acceptable, which sends the message the violence is acceptable. The popluation needs an outlet for their repressed sexual impulses, will resort to violence (as that is acceptable.) - either through violent crime, or as the police force, who enforces your 'tough' laws by committing acts of violence against the criminals.
It's no accident that countries that have a more permissive attitude towards nudity and pornography have a lower crime rate.
Postal 2 is only interesting due to its violent nature. The general consensus is that the game is offensive but the design underneath the offenses is not solid enough to be worth a purchase.
If you ask me, the fact that using certain words in your language is more of a taboo than watching animated violence or graphic sexuality is even more sad. Though, personally, I like all three.
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The sad thing is that (in the USA at least) graphic violence is apparently more acceptable than graphic sexuality. This appears to be exactly backwards.
Nope.
Sex is a private, personal, individual thing without any conflict at all. Story-wise, it's an extremly graphic kiss, and on-screen sex borders on pornography. (Simple supportive arugment: mainstream movies have been cut & pasted together to porn-like streams of only their "love" scenes.)
Violence, on the other hand, is the most basic form of conflict. Graphic dipictions of violence are actually better than black-bared violence--people who know what the gruesome result will be are less likely to comit acts of unnecessary violence than people who have no solid grasp on the consequences.
To put it another way: when distilling stories down to the spoken word, a discriptivly violent tale is a war story or a cautionary tale; a discriptuvly sexual tale is just a dirty story.
(The inverse is true for static art, like a painting--it's a heck of a lot better to have a masterwork nude than a masterwork corpse--but video games, movies, and television aren't static.)
Classic baby-boomer mentality. So the kid was afraid of you for a couple days? So what?
My grandparents...the "Greatest Generation"...they knew how to take care of children. You just let them run loose and discover things for themselves, but whne you catch them fuck up, you let them know it (with a broken broom handle).
My parents, on the other hand, treated me like I was the fucking Prince of the Universe. You have no idea how this fucked up my head. I was a wuss and crybaby. I thought I was above everyone. All because they tried to be my friend instead of my parents. It wasn't until I got into high school and had some sense knocked into me by some larger classmates that I started turning around. The way I see it, I raised myself from then on. I develpoed a sense of respect and humility that I never had as a child.
Sure I'm always hearing baby-boomers complain about how rough they had it when they were growing up...but that's how it should be. Kids today are too damn spoiled because their parents decided they weren't going to raise their children the way they were raised. So instead they do the complete opposite. Just look at the all the school shootings going on. These kids do this because they grow up without any sense of humilty. They can't take it when bad shit happens to them.
You say it cost you blood, sweat and tears? Hell, the kid's your son. My dad threw me against a wall once (later on in my life...I think it was a "moment of weakness" for him), but I still love him. Sure I hated his guts for a while and I was afraid to go near him, but those emotions only last momentarily.
I say forget all this pseudo-science, psychobabble bullshit and bring back the yard stick.