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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."
but I'm off to bludgeon my parents for not getting me this game.
I'll let you know how it goes.
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*smashes screen because site is slashdotted*
> First let me say that if I thought we could make a game that would
> honestly motivate people to do things in real life, then I would
> make a game about fucking, cause this world needs more sex than
> killing that's for shit sure.
I have no motivation problems in this area.
John.
I think not. Someone had to create this game in the first place. Chances are that these people that created the game aren't really 'qualified' to be teaching people how to kill and whatnot. I think that when game creators come up with an idea for a game, it's an idea that ANYONE could have come up with. Game makers aren't some special elite force that knows how to kill. Maybe they do a little research before hand, but I highly doubt that they are any more expericned at 'going postal' than anybody who plays these games.
Also, wouldn't you think that the game creators would get thier brains tweaked a little bit, considering that they have to actaully CREATE the violence?
What's your opinion on the statement "Games make killers out of gamers"? ...I honestly think our society has blown itself into a jerkoff corner and now we cant figure how to get out. How about we start with disciplining our kids, yeah I mean hitting them, and as for criminals fuck rehabbing rapist, I wouldn't even waste time with castration, just get the power generator going and hook it up to a big ass sofa and start the bbq. And we should start with criminal politicians that would help clean up that pimp house known as Congress.
BULLSHIT. If that was actually true we'd have a helluva lot more Columbines and snipers, but thank God we don't. I'll tell you whats really disturbing that a lot of good people are being fed that shit and actually eat it up. I have 1 thing to say RESPONSIBILITY, what the fuck ever happended to saying you're wrong, I made a mistake, I did it
People don't have to take responsibility for their actions anymore. Parents don't punish children they give them time-outs (hey folks, it doesn't work). Parents in some areas can now pay for their children's community service hours so that they don't have to work them...
Kids do dumb stuff and used to get in deep shit for it. Now we can't get kids in trouble because that hurts them later in life. NO SHIT? You mean fucking up when you are young might have ramifications later in life? What's the detterent to doing stupid stuff?
Guns don't cause violence and neither do video games.
I was hopeing that the artical would just say "maine" or "ohio" and just declare that the state of violent gameing.... that'd be cool...
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
No, no crappy joke this time..
I for one enjoy playing violent games, in particular Grand Theft Auto Vice City... but if I had kids old enough to use a console, even as teenagers, I'd be very reluctant to let them play such a game. Am i a hypocrite?
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
These guys are the ones who really give "violent video games" a bad rep. Postal/postal 2 aren't nearly as clever, or in the same league playwise, as something like Doom or the GTA series. These truly are third rate games who's only selling point is the violence and bathroom humour.
These are the games the Donahues of the world want to bitch about, but they're so forgettable that Doom or GTA take the brunt of the complaints.
Not that they shouldnt be allowed to make whatever game they damn well feel like. Screw all these morons, who for some reason or another, think that video games are for some reason not protected forms of expression.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm never actually going to go around shooting the heads off of innocent pedestrians just to see the blood spurt out of their necks, but in GTA: Vice City, I can do just that. I can also drive around in a tank and blow things up, and all without anyone getting harmed. I'm not a violent person, but I do enjoy some violence.
There is a ton of violent media out there, and has been for a while. Up to a certain age, it is the parents' job to censor that. After that point, those who imitate things like postal were missing a few cards in the deck anyway. If it's not a video game, it'll be a movie or something else that sets them off.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
Now if the media would report that, we wouldn't be looking at legislation against it.
People like to be emotional, and education for the media-destined points this out. That's one reason it's hard to find unbiased media...it simply doesn't make people feel emotional, so not enough people view it for it to become mainstream.
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also to teach them the difference between fantasy and reality? the games have ratings so parents can make a responsible choice. Most kids know that a game isn't real or should be copied, those that can't figure that out or haven't been taught should play violent games. After all, most stores won't sell games rated "M" to kids. But of course that requires the parent to acctually tell little Johnny NO and back it up. Oh, well I guess that won't happen.
and for those who don't like violent games, don't buy them. No ones forcing them into your house
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
We stop violent games so we can shelter everyone from something that only a relatively FEW people can't handle mentally? Bad apples are everywhere; they'll find a way to be bad with or without violent video games.
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.
Parents don't punish children they give them time-outs (hey folks, it doesn't work)
I totally agree with you there. A time-out is really a time-out for the parent. All you do is tell the kid that you can't handle it anymore and you need a break.
gj.
A friend of mine pointed out recently that you can actually use the ESRB Rating Search Engine to show all the games that contain blood, gore, and violence. She went on to comment that she was sure it wasn't their intention, but that they've provided a great way to find good games. :)
Has anyone noticed that, after playing Grand Theft Auto or Vice City for several weeks, you start to look at parked cars a little differently?
Jason.
It's a standard reaction on behalf of the parents and a sad one. There are kids who will go out and do terrible things, but violence is not exactly a new thing in human history. If anything, todays' societies are remarkably non-violent compared to past ones.
For the parents - especially of the killers - it's an attempt to find blame somewhere. I feel sorry for them: since Freud's time, parents have been told "you are responsible for the way your kids turn out", when in fact many studies show that parents are amazingly irrelevant to their children's character. One long twin study showed approximately 50% coming from genes, 45% from unknown sources but presumably peer influence, and 5% from parents.
There is violence in our genes, but it generally needs a certain kind of culture to bring it out. The place to look for the causes of such killings are the youth cultures these kids hung-out in. There is no evidence at all that violent games or movies influence children, but it seems clear that violent children prefer to express themselves through violent games, virtual or real.
Court cases like this resolve absolutely nothing, because they divert the discussion in meaningless directions. Let's ban all violent games and movies... OK, will that change anything? Take a look at (random selection from a large pool) Uganda, where the kids watch no movies at all, yet 10,000 young (5-12) killers roam the north.
It is very difficult to change a violent culture, but it is possible.
The first thing is to understand the way violence is propagated. Like all youth cultures, it goes from youth to youth, bypassing all adult control. You have to work at this level, thus.
The second thing is to understand how individuals get drawn into violent behaviour that reinforces itself and finally becomes habitual. Can a young man turn to authority for fair protection? If not, he is more likely to use his own force for self-protection. Can a young man who uses drugs turn to authority for help? If not, he is likely to resort to retribution and violence. Can a young man escape from a violent or oppressive environment? If not, he will eventually give up on himself and "go postal", taking his own life but first taking the lives of as many of his peers as he can, in an attempt to regain some face.
I think it's clear that the rigid and somewhat intolerant mentality of adult-youth relations in the States is a large part of the problem.
Banning violent video games goes further in the wrong direction. Now we make criminals out of those youngsters who want such games. Excellent.
I could go into the big news headlines of kids killing their sisters with WWE moves, kids with guns, etc., but I'll go with this one:
My buddy has a 3 year old. During the time his wife was away, my buddy would play GTA: Vice City, and his son would watch. The son thought it was cool when daddy "beat the shit" of of other guys with the bats. Well, Mom came home to see her son, and saw her son going to town on his favourite teddy bear with a kid-sized hockey stick. He said to his mom that it was because daddy did this "on tv". (And yes, the son would say daddy "beat the shit" out of somebody on tv.)
Whether you decide to play these games is up to you, but I believe we do have to be careful with our kids. We need to make them understand the difference between reality and fantasy, and if they can't tell the difference right now, then that's a lesson for later.
I believe it's called parenting.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
Parents don't punish children they give them time-outs (hey folks, it doesn't work).
I know lots of parents that sent their children to time out, and it worked. Mind you they imposed other restrictions on their children as well. Time out was used for mild punishment, and restrictions on use of technology, or 'play time' were used for harsher punishments. But for them, time out wasn't useless. So I agree with your comment on the use of detterents.
Insofar as whether video games cause violence -they do, in a sense. Responsible studies show that playing violent video games causes children to become more violent. Which isn't saying they will become violent people, but that playing these particular games incites more violent behavior than what would've been the case otherwise.
Who cares about the state of violent games.
... just games, the same as television and films and books are just their own types of fiction. To criticize one without criticizing the other is not just inconsistent, it is fundamentally dishonest.
I'm more concerned about the state of violent politics, the underpinning of big business by law makers at the expense of the individual citizen, and the subversion of law and justice in the name of profit.
Games are
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Three things are needed to kill someone, 1) A weapon, 2) The skill, 3) The will to kill. It's been noted that games claim to provide two out of the three.
1) The cardboard box isn't a good weapon, neither is the CD.
2) Sure, I'm deadly with the rail gun in quake 3, but that doesn't mean I can fire a sniper rifle. Hell, I wouldn't even know how to load one.
3) If anything, a violent videogame would divert a killer kid's energy away from real people. And it's certainly doesn't provide a 'will to kill' to a normal kid.
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
When I was thirteen, I remember passing up Mortal Kombat and Doom for some Super Mario Kart with my dad on more than one occasion.
If that doesn't speak to parents, I don't know what will.
Games are supposed to allow you to do things you couldn't possibly do in real life. That's why I never liked Burgertime, if I wanted to make hamburgers I could get paid for it.
People still don't get it. Last week a Michigan State Law Professor published an article claiming that videogames (especially violent ones) shouldn't be protected by the First Amendment. LawMeme takes apart the argument here.
First of all, it is incredibly hypocritical of a society to shelter their young from naked bodies doing sticky things, while guns, explosions, and violence are all A-OK to be shown right after SpongeBob's timeslot.
Secondly, it is also hypocritical of a society to preach the virtues of peace, condemn violent art and video games, while simultaneously waging a bloody, arbitrary war on nameless strangers a world away.
What's more disturbing for little Timmy to see? "Terminator 2" or CNN? Why is fake violence so heavily restricted and regulated, but actual people bleeding and dying is completely OK? Would you scold your neighbor if you found out your kid was visiting while the father was watching CNN? What if he was watching porn?
You see, that's a major problem with North American culture, and it really surprises me that so few people recognize it.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Guns don't cause violence and neither do video games.
This won't stop Congress from shredding the Constitution further with insane laws to sate their retarded constituents.
Gun laws, drug laws, parent surviellance, no freedom in school...these are the things that breed violence and crime among frustrated and stifled kids. Give them some slack!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
People don't have to take responsibility for their actions anymore. Parents don't punish children they give them time-outs (hey folks, it doesn't work).
Regularly using time-outs and actually enforcing them *is* a punishment, and liberally taking away privileges as punishment works.
Some of the problems I've seen with implementing this are:
* Warning a child of an impending time-out by counting upwards. A countdown implies going from something down to zero, not the other direction. Children understand it when they're running out of numbers, where counting up gives them unlimited room for expansion.
* Threatening punishments but not delivering. I've seen parents threaten their child, but when the child yanks away from them, screams, whatever, the parent impotently lets the child get away with it. Apparently the child is either running the show, or the parent is afraid of appearing mean in public or something.
* Shortening time-outs because you're in a hurry, or giving back lost privileges due to expediency. If you're serious about punishing your kids, you sacrifice. When you give in and give back things you took away, the punishments have no meaning and the child won't care about being "punished".
Amazingly, my kids usually quickly stop most small-to-medium infractions when they hear the word "five". They know "four", "three", "two", "one", "zero", and "time-out" are coming. They remember all the other times they've been sat facing a corner for periods that seem endless to children, bored out of their little skulls. They know that Mom and Dad will stop what they're doing, just for the purpose of waiting for them to finish a time-out. They also know that a privilege taken away is not coming back, so they try to avoid losing the privileges in the first place.
Parents don't need to beat their children instead of using time-outs, they need to actually spend more than the minimum effort needed to raise their children.
Running with Scissors
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I Doubt many parents would buy kids their M rated games if they actually sat down and watched their darling little ten year olds blowing up buildings, brutally murdering people etc. Or maybe I am just out of the loop and thats what parents want there kids to do when they grow up...
DUKEY!
Yeh, have you seen Pong?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Video Games and Guns cause violence like condoms cause sex like a car causes auto accidents like a knife causes you to be a chef.
I'm so sick of scapegoating. Nothing but a nation (or planet) of less immature children on a proverbial schoolyard.
Stop. Just, stop.
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.
First it was comic books. Then Rock music. Then D&D. Then Beavis and Butthead (remember when Beavis smoked? Good luck finding it now.) Now violent video games.
I don't know how this bar is set; maybe it's whether the activity is nostalgic or patriotic, or if it's just different enough to scare the generation in charge. Did anyone ever question running around with plastic guns playing 'Cowboys and Indians'*? 'Cops and Robbers'? War? Did plastic Army Men ever have problems? Paintball seems acceptable for teens, and it involves ACTUALLY SHOOTING AT REAL PEOPLE WITH WEAPONS THAT REALLY CAN HURT THEM. (I've had enough paint bruises to know.)
Personally, I think it's more that video games are used instead of family interaction. Whether it's games, books, drugs, TV, or staring at a wall, if there isn't any home interaction then good social skills will come harder. If they aren't nurtured through school activities, then it just gets worse and worse. I've generally found that a naturally outgoing person will find ways to grow socially, it's the naturally introverted that suffer most without a strong family upbringing. (Note - by 'strong' I mean 'open, talkative, compassionate, etc.'. There's no magic formula for that.)
Blaming the current fad instead of poor family life will probably never change. The reasons for it would probably be an interesting socialogical study, but most likely no one who could fund such a study would want a true, balanced answer that 'kids are just kids, and home environment matters most'.
(Offtopic footnote)* - besides the obvious moral problems of whether it was right to subjugate the indigeonous people, I'm simply refering to the fact it idolized violence in general. I'd guess it isn't played very much anymore, though that could also be put to the fact there are fewer westerns nowadays.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
you've given your personal example. Let me give a counter example : I remember a few years back when our youngest son (then 3 years old) had been playing in potted plants we have in the corner of our hall. I had a very long, tiring day at work, my wife was sick, and we had told him a few times before we didn't want him to play with those.
:-)
In a reflex I still regret, I grabbed him (he saw me coming, so it was not an unexpcected grab from behind) and gave him a single, solid clap on his bottom while i said in a loud voice : you know you're not supposed ot touch these !
The results frightened me completely : he freaked out, cryed his heart out and peed is pants (which he hadn't done since he was 2) There was a total, insane panic in his eyes and he yelled for his mom like as if i was cutting his balls of...
but that was not the scariest part. That was when it took days for him to be sweet again to me. I had (and now have again) a very very good bond with my kids. I can talk to them about everything even some stuff that they don't tell their mom (and vice versa
During those days, he did nothing wrong, didn't touch those plants, didn't break anything, didn't do anything naughty, finished his plate... pefect... He was like an angel. But an angel that was prety damd scared of me and wouldn't let me hug him.
Dude : it has cost me blood, sweat and tears to bring our relation back to normal, and I have NEVER ever hit our kids again.
Now when he does something fancy, I take him apart and talk it through. Okay, he looks at me with a "oh comeon dad I got the message, stop preaching man". But quite often, a few hours or even days later, he comes over to me and admits "yeah, I was pretty stupid back then." and we can both laugh about it.
I don't expect him to say "sheesh, thanks for pointing out to me how stupid I am and how smart you are, dad" but then again, I guess you never said that to your dad either after he put his belt back on ? Hitting is the easy way. Talking to your kids every day, even when you're tired and they're a royal pain in the ass is the most rewarding way.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
So, the age-old question. Do violent video games negatively affect kids, make them more likely to be mass-murderers or amoral killers?
My usual response would be, "Hell no!" But a couple of days ago I started thinking about it again. Thinking about people who lived in North America in, say, the 18th century, when quite a lot of things that are no longer acceptable (e.g. slavery) were acceptable, and quite a lot of things that are now acceptable (women wearing miniskirts) would not have been.
Someone who was born in 1798 and lived until 1844, for example, might quite possibly have been of the opinion that it was perfectly acceptable to own another human being as property. Would we, nowadays, blame that person, say he was an evil, immoral bastard? We'd most likely say that he was a product of his times. Granted there were people who, by our modern standards were more "forward-thinking" than that, but certainly not an overwhelming majority, like today.
So why did our hypothetical pro-slavery guy believe what he did? He was subject to it as he grew up; it was part of the culture he lived in. Say he lived in the deep South, e.g. Georgia, in a culture whose livelihood much depended on slave labor. We could hardly blame him.
Imagine another hypothetical person, growing up in a hypothetical place and time, where the use of violence as a problem-solver was as prevalent as the Southern use of slave labor was in the early 19th century. Again, would we blame someone who lived in that time for resorting to violence to solve problems? Probably not. He'd be considered a product of his times.
But now we come to the early 21st century, and we have a burning question: do violent media affect the likelihood that young people will be violent? On one side, we have people (like me) who say that, no, of course not, just look at me and my friends. When we were young, we all played horrifically violent video games that involve murder, genocide, and things being bloodily hacked to pieces; but none of us are violent. We don't go out and kill people. People who believe this, let's call them the Unaffected.
The other side says, ah, but look at all these cases of young people who have played lots of games like this, and subsequently gone out and killed people. Or scientific studies that have concluded that exposure to violent media (not just games, but movies and TV as well) impel teenagers to be more violent. People on this side, let's call them the Influenced.
So who's right? I'm beginning to think that neither side is on the money. I realize that this isn't scientific, but it's become intuitive to me that anything we experience can influence who we are. The key word there is can. Not everything we experience influences us to the same degree, or even, necessarily, to any measurable degree. It seems intuitive that certain people are more easily influenced into committing violence than others; or rather, that some people, when seeing violence, think that it might be a good idea to mimic that violence.
The continuing explanation from the Unaffected is that proper parental guidance will (generally) teach children that the violence they see in TV and movies and video games is not real, and using such violence to solve problems is not an acceptable way of going about things. The Unaffected believe that whatever current epidemic of media-induced violence there may be, is due to a lack of proper parenting.
Meanwhile, the more hard-line of the Influenced claim that children can be corrupted by exposure to such violent media, regardless of how good their parenting is.
This last bit is unambiguously false. At the very least, some non-zero number of children can be exposed to vast amounts of violence and be none the worse for wear. I'm certainly living proof. I saw countless violent movies and played countless hours of violent video games as a child -- but my parents, especially my father, were always sure to reinforce the idea that violence
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Much of what we now recognize as great art was produced by people who were just trying to make a living. A videogame may or may not be a form of "meaningful" expression, but the fact that it is produced for profit is entirely irrelevant to the issue.
And so we start a child-rearing pissing contest. Come on people, every child is different.
Everything works for some kids.
Nothing works for all kids.
The most important thing is to know your child, and what he responds to. Trying to tell other people what works for a child you've never even met is silly.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Actually, the punishment depends on the child. Timeouts, for example, work extremely well for one of my daughters. She really is crushed when she is put on timeout, and it prevents her from doing future behavior that landed her on timeout in the first place.
:) Spanking works, timeouts are a joke to this one.
The second one...well, she just needs to be smacked around sometimes.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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.
Actually, it depends on the child. Kids are unique individuals. They're not like little mass-produced robots that only function according to a fixed set of commands.
A few of my friends have children that are generally pretty calm and mild-mannered. Punishing by spanking isn't really necessary, and probably just hurts the parent more than it does the child. (EG. After a spanking, you have to endure the kid screaming and sobbing, and possibly even putting on a show of ignoring you completely for the next 30 minutes or so.) If a "go sit in the corner for 5 minutes" or "Stop that, or you're going to lose privilege Y!" is effective, great!
On the other hand, yes, some kids won't respond to anything less than spanking. Sometimes, it's because they're at an age where they want to test their limits. If parents won't take things to the level of spanking, the child keeps piling on worse and worse behavior, trying to provoke some sort of response. (Eventually, they just decide they can do anything they want without consequences more serious than threats that don't get backed-up with actions.)
One big problem, nowdays, is with people too concerned with what "the other parent" is doing, and not enough with their own lives. Do I think twice before punishing my daughter in public? Unfortunately, yes! I shouldn't have to - but ignorant people out there will file complaints, report you to store security, or any number of boneheaded things.
Just last week, I barely escape a big incident over nothing at the local WalMart store. I went in with my (18 month old) daughter to buy her some clothes and get some food items. When the cashier rung me up, my kid started fussing (wet diaper), so I was distracted. She bagged everything for me, but when I went to grab the bag I thought she put the clothes in - she stopped me, saying "That one's not yours!"
She was already ringing out a guy behind me who was also buying some clothes - so I figured it must have been my mistake, and I left. When I got to the car, I saw the clothes weren't in my bags at all - even though I just paid for them. I wasn't going to try to run back in with my fussing daughter (and she was more calm sitting in her car seat anyway) so I left her in the car and ran back in.
It wasn't more than a minute, but when I got back to my car, security was already there, starting to write up some kind of report, and a lady was talking to the guy about the "kid abandonned in the car"! Come on, people! I can understand trying to be helpful and all - but don't jump to conclusions about something you know nothing about. At least spend a few minutes making sure the parent isn't right around the corner before filing complaints.....
And what came in at No 2? "Pirates of The Caribbean".
Ooo, scary
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
That's what French class is for.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Ditto here. 2 young kids, both sons, both different. The first is very social and outgoing, therefore timeouts work pretty well. He hates having to sit there alone and quiet. The other, well sitting there alone with his own thoughts doesn't seem to phase him in the least (he probably just uses the time to plan his next evil scheme :) In his case it's usually a sharp smack on the hand or behind that's needed to get his attention.
Golfers watch golf on tv because they love golf.
Any non golfer (such as myself) will be bored to death watching golf on tv.
My point: Golfers watch golf because they are golfers. The columbine kids played violent games because the kids were violent people.
Playing the game did not make them violent. If thier parents had done a better job and took notice of thier kids gun collections, the SWASHTIKAS on thier walls and the animal abuse they commited maybe those nice boys would have been playing mario golf instead of doom.
Or at least maybe they wouldn't have killed thier classmates.
Now I'm not saying that anyone who plays a violent video game is violent. What I am saying is that this is the reason THESE particular kids played this game.
I played doom because it looked cool, was fairly scary, and presented a good challenge. I think this fairly sums up the criteria for most gamers. The gore? it just looks cool. In real life, gore is a lot less cool. Just like in real life a car chase is a lot less fun.
These sick little fscks at columbine played the game because it allowed them to kill. To them, this video game was an extension of thier real life wishes.
Remember a clockwork orange while when reading the bible, rather than identifying with christ the protagonist identified with the romans?
This is what I am talking about. The same thing meaning two entirely different things to different people.
The trick is determining for who the game is mere fun, and for who the game is an extension of real life desires.
I haven't RTFA because its /.ed. but the videogame industry really needs to get a bit more proactive. They need to run some commercials during prime time shows that kids don't watch and explain that not all games are for kids. These comercials need to tell parents about the rating system. It might not do any good. Parents might not listen, but at least the industry could say, "Look! we're trying to educate the public!"
Also I think it might be time for Microsoft to implement some parental controls in its OS. An OS that calls itself "home edition" should have some features that are usefull for families. A simple to use parental control system would be a nice feature for them to hype. One that can be configured to block IM's and chat, limit access to programs and an equivelent of a v-chip for games so that the actual software of games could notify the OS of its rating and parents could determine what rating they want their kids to be able to play.
Of course all of this could easilly be bypassed by a smart kid, but once again, that isn't the point. It's PR. Microsoft could promote the fact that they give parents control giving the appearance that they care about what children do so that they too can say, "look we are trying to protect children!"
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Look, I don't usualy bust someone's balls, but here goes:
My wife used to stop at the post office and leave our kid in the car seat. It was a small, one room post office and the car seat is a real PITA. When I found out she was doing that, I went ballistic.
First, nothing is more important than your kids. Not mail, not a bag of clothes, not that next hit of crack.
Second, you never know what's going to happen. If you are sepperated, then you run the risk of something happening to one party and the other is unaware of that. What if you'd fallen in the store and been knocked unconcious? What if the car had been hit by some teenagers playing around acting all 'fast and furious' in the lot? What if someone broke the window and grabbed your kid? You can't stop bad things from happening, but the least you can do is be there for yourkids when those things do happen.
Third, while reporting you to the cops might be a bit harsh, people in this world do care. I care about you and your family. If it was early, i'd stop to help jump your car. If it was late, I'd offer a ride home. I gave almost 15% of my gross income last year to charity. I care about people. Sometimes people who care offer friendly reminders like this one. Sometimes, we call the cops to make our message loud-and-clear.
In short, I think spanking is OK, repeated hitting is abuse. Letting your kid be independent is OK, but letting them run arround a store unsupervised is abuse. Definately seperating yourself from your kid just because it's convenient for you shows a lack of priority in your life.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I am a firm advocate of the ESRB(Youthful minds are easily influenced), but if video games affect us as much as the media tries to make it seem, then every bug tester at video game companies would never live long enough to retire anywhere else than a federal prison.