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NY Post Says GTA Worse Than Molesting
wiredbeat2000 writes "The New York Post has an inflammatory article which argues that Take Two's Grand Theft Auto is worse than child molestation and more harmful than second hand smoke. The story, which appears in the business section, calls for an outright ban of video games it claims are no better than snuff films, and concludes: 'Stay away from this [Take Two] stock - far, far away - and you'll be doing both your wallet and your fellow man a favor'." Lucky the author hasn't checked out Manhunt yet, huh?
Can people have atleast ONE avenue of escapism without having to be protected from it? I think that guy missed the point of videogames in general.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Whew! Thank goodness that's still OK.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
calls for an outright ban of video games it claims are no better than snuff films,
So now we're going to take orders from the NY Times? "Oh, dear Times.. do tell us what video games YOU claim we need to ban?".
Also, um... snuff films are more or less considered an urban legend. Aside from (possibly) the Faces of Death series, there are no substantially proven legitimate snuff films.
I would be more concerned if my child was watching the WWF/WWE, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Sex in the City, Judging Amy, Real World, Road Rules, most award shows or any of the mind numbing cartoons on the disney channel.
The "adult world" has never heard of databases, or word processing, or the Internet, they judge "us" (as if we were a single entity) based on one company's artistic expression. Sorry, but the connection you're making has very little base in reality. How is it that video games shouldn't be afforded the same free speech protections as literature? If books are supposedly so much more immersive and stimulating to the imagination, surely books about murder would have more impact than a stupid game, right?
Grand Theft Auto is worse than child molestation
Twenty bucks says this opinionist is a moonlighting catholic priest.
Is anyone else worried that this article elevates the acceptability of having sex with a child just so they can express their distaste towards a video game?
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Why should I go out and get a handgun when I own two rifles? ...and for the record, Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than those two rifles have.
.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
View this article if you must, but it's become all too common for everyone to write articles intended to piss off a great subset of people online in order to drive hits to their site. Please do not reward this silliness--remember to use proxomitron, junkbuster, whatever your favorite tool is for depriving these folks of the fruit of their agitations.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the authors of all of these anti-GTA articles haven't actually played the game?
Ok, it is violent and often that violence is directed towards innocent people, but, violence towards innocent people is not the main point of the game. I mean, you can kill police or civilians but there are consequences. And the whole thing about the Haitians has nothing to do with innocent people from Haiti. You're in the middle of a gang war between the Cuban and the Haitians.
I guess the real problem I have is that people seem to thing that by censoring the game that we'll get rid of violence between racial groups, etc. It's like saying movies that depict racially motivated violence should be censored. Our country will be in a sad state if that ever happens.
I think part of the point of showing these kind of things is that we remember that they do happen. If we pretend there is no racism it won't go away, just get worse.
I know, I'm preaching to the choir.
This isn't news. It's a piece of opinion from some guy at the NY Post. People read the Post to get riled up and nothing more.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Why this sudden obsession with being taken seriously? It's all fun and games for us.
so am i to believe that there are people turning to the new york post for stock advice now?
My sentiments exactly. I had this whole nice long well thought out e-mail written out to send to this guy, and then I realized: It's the Post. No one reads the fucking Post.
My favorite part of this article is the fact that this guy is their business columnist. A business columnist giving out stock advice based on the fact that he disagrees with the moral content of the product a company makes. Yeah, OK.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Exactly. I got stuff posted in a chat with the Washington Post editor after the sniper suspects were caught, chastising them all for their video game prognostications.
I also got contacted by the Philadelphia Weekly after pointing out factual errors in their reporting of the "Warriors of Freedom" case.
Bottom line...we as gamers can't just sit around using all our pertinent arguments to flame each other here. People besides US need to realize how stupid these guys are being.
Write a concise article disagreeing with the author's take on selling Take Two for moral upright reasons, and then call him out for being against video games for some reason, but not against film, tobacco, the people who dump toxins into our water supply, etc.
No cursing, no flaming, no ranting.
Everybody get involved. Someone's gotta feel the backlash.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Here in Canada there was a court case finding that kiddie porn art (i.e. no kids were harmed, these were drawings and paintings) were found to be illegal and so the same laws applied to these paintings.
Taking this one step further like the author suggests, I can envision some wacky japanese game where you get to play a sexual predator. The goal of the game is to prey on women and neighbourhood children. Getting extra points for doing things like luring kids with candy or the promise of toys, and performing date rapes on unsuspecting college girls.
I'm pretty sure a game like the one I described above would not be allowed to be sold in Canada. The majority of society would disapprove of this type of video game. I, myself find it very disturbing.
I guess the bigger question is why, as a society, do we allow the simulation of illegal/immoral actions video games and not others.? Where is the line (so to speak) and why do we draw it where it is? What is the nature of the video gaming that makes some of these things appropriate? Is escapism an appropriate defence for sim murder but not for sim molestation? And if so, why not?
This will become even more important with the next generation of systems that will allow for more realistic everything, including AI.
So I've played philosopher for today. Maybe not very well. But tehre are a lot of good questions out there about this sort of stuff. GTA is only getting the pain right now because it's the game that is currently pushing the envelope...
Isn't the New York Post a Newscorp product these days? Owned by Rupert Murdoch, and part of the same conglomerate that brought us:
Fear Factor
Temptation Island
Freddy Got Fingered
Aliens Vs. Predator (the game)
etc.?
Come to think of it, I wonder if this is in any way, shape or form connected with the fact that this company is also responsible (certainly in license at least) for Simpsons Hit 'n' Run, a game that steals so much from GTA that its a wonder that Take Two haven't sued?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
My response...
I am a 28 year old adult male who happens to play video games. I'm not going to bother with an introductory, and I'm going to get right into it.
To quote the article, "People, this is insane. This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy"
Insane? You're calling playing a video game, something that isn't real and is meant for a mature audience 10,000 times worse than MOLESTING A YOUNG BOY *not* Insane?
Have your head checked. There almost isn't a crime worse than taking advantage of a minor in a sexual fashion. It's beneath human behaviour.
The author argues that there is a ratings system that is unenforcable and means nothing, and is irrelevant.
The ratings system in Video Games is virtually identical to movies. Movies are rating G, PG, AA, R and X/NC17. Games are rated as E(veryone), T(een), M(ature) and A(dult). There is a fifth category who's acronymn I am not aware of, but the category is for the very young, toddler aged, and educational. Adult is reserved for anything containing sexually explicit content, similar to NC17. Mature is the equivalent if AA. T equates to PG, and E is the gaming G.
If a parent buys a child who is under the age of majority, and the game is rated M for mature, how is that the gaming companies fault? The parent should be made aware of the ratings system. Every game box sold in Canada and the US has the rating printed in large black and white letters right on the front of the box, including what the ratings mean. It's as ludicrous as a person suing Take Two, Sony, Rockstar for 244.5 million dollars because their kid took a loaded gun from their house and shot at a highway, killing someone, then blaming Grand Theft Auto. The game is not responsible here. How did the child get the gun? Why was it loaded? Why wasn't it in a locked case out of the reach of children? Why weren't the kids taught by the parents that shooting at a vehicle is not a particularly good idea?
If video games had this much of an influence on the youth of today, I should be a homicidal maniac. I've played video games since the days of the Atari 2600, and have seen just about everything there is to see in a video game. I've dumped enough quarters into arcade games that I should be able to spit fireballs from my hands while screaming death phrases at the tops of my lungs, because that's what video games teach you to do.
Oh, but Vice City is "realistic," you say. Realistic huh? So if I look in one direction, see 3 cars driving down the street, then turn around 180 degrees, see 3 more cars, and then turn around again and those original 3 cars have disappeared (which is what happens in the game), that's real, is it?
I can take a car and drive at approximately 2 mph, hit a hydro pole and send it crashing to the ground, because that's real is it?
I can walk down the street and find a surface-to-air missile launcher lying in someones back yard? Great! Sign me up to live in that neighbourhood!
Oh, but Vice City "looks" realistic, you say. Why? Just because the characters portrayed in it are not cartoonish? I can tell that they are digital representations of people. They don't look like real people to me. For one thing, people have fingers. That actually separate. And bend. And can be used to pick things up.
Video games are NOT REAL. They are fictional. Imaginative. Fun to play.
Michael Jackson has been charged with child molestation. That is real. If proven, that is morally disgusting.
Shooting cars on highways is real. That is a real case currently in the US legal system.
The bottom line: It is because of drivel like this article that I have cancelled my subscription to your newspaper.
Good day.
That editorial was beyond awesome. My favorite part:
"This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy"
If my math works right, with sales exceeding 25,000,000 copies, he would prefer if there were 25 million fewer GTA players and 250 billion more child molestors.
Alternatively, he would find someone turning off their PS2 and molesting a neighborhood kid to be an improvement.
I think we can guess this guy's real agenda (hehe).
"Here's a letter to the NY Post. The worst piece of paper on the east coast. Matter of fact the whole states. 40 cents in NY City, 50 cents elsewhere, and makes no goddamn sense at all. America's oldest continuously published daily piece of bullshit."
Nuff said.
Perhaps newspapers should also be banned?
Probably, just mad because he can't trade in his "Thiller", "Bad", and "Dangerous" CDs for the GTA double pack.
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
Did anyone else get the big Victoria's Secret ad on the side of the article when they read it? You know the one with the model wearing next to nothing. The kind of thing that was classified as pornography not that long a go.
Interesting that they would be so concerned when individuals choose to expose themselves to a game, but they would force everyone's (well, the few people that actually read their pages) exposure to risque pictures of scantly clad models without warning. Glad to know someone else is busy trying to decide what is good for us.
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have an article bashing Victoria's Secret ads a few years back, but now that they are paying the advertising budget they need to find a new target. Maybe Take-Two should just put an ad on the NY Post site. Isn't this sort of thing extortion (buy an ad from us or we will give you a bad review?)
I quit listening to other people's opinions a long time ago.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
"Dwarf-throwing is illegal?! Did I miss a meeting?"
So that's why Lord of the Rings had to be shot in New Zealand!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I wonder if he even knew about Manhunt... which IS a game based around a Snuff film????? Maybe manhunt 2 will have HIM killed in the begining?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
For those who dont know, the NY Post is little more than a regonal Tabloid, they have no honest reporting anywhere in the paper and very often copy other peoples articles from other papers with a yellow journalistic slant. NO one around here honestly takes them seriously, which is exactly how we should take this peice of garbage
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
This guy needs a "one on one" meeting with Tommy Vercetti.
http://www.tomandemily.com
You can kill a cop, steal his gun, and then use it to shoot someone else. Or you can pick up a prostitute and have sex with her in the back of your stolen car, then beat her to death - or shoot her, bludgeon her, whatever you want.
He's right - you CAN do that. You know what? You can do that in real life too!
Someone should tell the cops - oh and stop investing in condom and gun companies.
Reading the New York Post is worse than playing GTA.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, The hands acqui
Free speech doesn't protect libel. Someone recently told me about an old article where a Doctor Shaklee (someone who had earned a PhD or MD or equivalent, I'm not sure what) was described in the NY Times as, "Mr. Shaklee, who calls himself a doctor". This sort of speech is not protected, because it is untrue and defamatory. I would speculate that Rockstar might actually have a case here.
BTW, it was Billy Joel, and the song banned was "Only the Good Die Young". By his own admission (which I was personally present for), it was a mediocre song which suddenly hit the big time when it was banned. The moral is: it is far better to ignore or intelligently ridicule something you want people to avoid than to censor it, especially in American culture.
I did a little research on this guy, and he has several non-fiction books under his belt with the same hellfire-and-brimstone invective. They also didn't cause so much as a blip on the cultural radar. Yet in an interview at Salon.com, he has the gall to say, in response to asking why he had no problem with saying in his column that Martha Stewart had a nice ass, "One of the things I try to do in these columns that I write -- I consider this as kind of a personal mission -- is to try to purge our language of political correctness. It just stultifies. Isn't that what provocative, memorable language does? It forces back the frontiers of expression."
So this guy sees his newspaper column as the beacon of a lingual crusade? I think what we're dealing with here is delusions of granduer, which goes partway towards explaining his vehemence about GTA: Vice City. (But I will not pick apart what he wrote about the game, not for a Bill O'Reilly nutball of the print world.) That, and the fact that he's no spring chicken or versed in videogames, otherwise he couldn't claim the game's visuals were almost photorealistic.
Bah. Don't grace this hack with an e-mail.
--
Evan "I hate being around smokers for asthetic reasons"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
In the name of protecting women from degrading images, they have banned lesbian porn repeatedly.
Canadian courts need to recognize that free speech means that things you don't like might be said, and that's OK.
Before anyone gets excited about a USian attacking Canada, the U.S. isn't doing any better, and that bugs me, too.
Full Disclosure: I used to work (volunteer) on a magazine who had issues banned by Canada. Thank Gloria Steinem for keeping Canada free from the filth I spew.
I forget what 8 was for.
funny how grand theft auto is really nothing but an interactive version of Scarface (which Vice City makes nearly a literal translation) -- yet scorcese is a visionary while the video game needs to be banned. cute hypocracy.
at lest this guy isn't calling for a ban on violent content in video games. oh wait... no... he essentially is by calling the rating system 'unenforceable' (no more unenforceable than the MPAAs rating system) and by suggesting the legitimacy of spurious game-blame lawsuits (suits that contend games make people killers)
the silver lining is that the medium is still gaining momentum. i just hope it sticks to its guns and lets developers make whatever they want, and lets the gamers decide what gets supported with their money.
american media industries that -have- stuck to their guns:
literature, painting, rock music, sculpture, film
american media industries that haven't stuck to their guns:
roleplaying games, comic books, cartoons
one set of these media is heralded as art, as 'legitimate'. individual works are judged on merit and the media itself carries no preconceived notions of 'allowable' or 'appropriate' content.
the other set of these media is heralded as fit only for children. why? because of self-censorship of content.
TSR took 'offensive' material out of D&D. ensuring that under no circumstances would anything other than cartoony child-safe good and evil be depicted. similarly with comic books and cartoons.
these industries willfully decided that only child-safe content should be created in their styles and media. so now their content is wholly marginalized and looked down upon based solely on its media.
consider japanese anime and their comics. sure, we make jokes about tentacle pron but they are not regarded derisively as child's materials in japan. they are individually judged on content, not with a blanket assumption based on its media.
why? because their industry -didn't- decide that tentacle pron was inappropriate for comics, or nudity and demons inappropriate for roleplaying games.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
i hate to get up on teh soap box, but just in case you weren't just playing devils advocate (or slashdot troll)...
here in america we have this thing called 'free speech' and a 'free market'. if protected free speech is found 'inappropriate' by most the 'free market' - people don't buy it and it goes away.
we don't need laws to keep a sexual predator sim off the store shelves - we leave that up to distributors and consumers. if businesses don't want it on the shelf, and consumers don't want to buy it - it quickly disappears - if it ever got published in the first place. if it only exists in someone's private space - then why should I care if no person or animal is harmed?
Canada is starting down the slippery slope of defining 'appropriate'ness of free speech. and once that truly happens then it won't be long before it all goes.
after all, if child molestation and rape depictions aren't protected, then why should murder be protected? and what about fistfighting or war? you can't have a willing recipient of an assault rifle after all. what about obscure sexual fetishes that violate current canadian law? (think scat, beastiality, probably even things such a multipartner and oral/anal if its anything like most archaic US state laws)... then you'll lose unnecessarily harsh or ill-timed criticisms (of government, citizens, religion), etc, etc...
furthermore, there is nothing in art today that hasn't be created before. human civilization hasn't fallen apart for depicting nudity, sex, murder, rape, or even child molestation in art or literature in the 4000 years of recorded history. (rape was a core concept in the original tale of Sleeping Beauty & child abduction and molestation was the prominent event in the myth of Zeus and Ganymede)
Don't get me wrong, I loathe and despise child molesters and rapists, and the people who would create content to promote or condone such acts.
But much as I hate them, I feel strongly enough about our rights to free speech that I would vote to support their rights to say, write, and draw anything they want so long as it doesn't hurt anyone. I wouldn't go into a store that sold that kind of product, and I wouldn't associate with anyone who purchased it -- but I'm smart enough to realize that the individuals in society are mature enough to decide these things for themselves.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Totally. This is like the third or fourth "article" on slashdot in the last 6 months or so that's been based upon someone mistaking the NY Post for a "newspaper" and not a dead fish wrapping device. Could we PLEASE get a feature added to slashcode that automatically rejects any submission with a link to nypost.com in it? And calls the submitter names?
cbyron@nypost.com
"don't you think your article was a tad
it's offensive to you. don't play it. you think it's bad for kids. so keep your kids away from it. don't tell me how to parent. MY kids will know the difference between right and wrong, fantasy and reality. maybe if you'd tought your kids the same, you wouldn't be so worried.
the game is a simple power fantasy indulgence, just like a comic book, a sports car, or newspaper editorial. and frankly, it is an extremely well-done game. they didn't sell millions of copies simply based on gore. sure, that's what grabs the headlines, but the game is truly a tight bit of programming with fun, rewarding, and challenging play mechanics.
"This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy"
the most amazing thing i have ever read in my life is your suggestion that IMAGINARY VIOLENCE is worse for a child than REAL LIFE CHILD MOLESTATION. you say you would rather let your child be RAPED than play a VIDEO GAME. sir, now I am the one who is deeply offended, and frightened for your children."
i could live a little longer in this prison