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A History of Video Game Controversy
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Sex, violence, animal cruelty, and scandalous pixels -- GameSpot has posted an in-depth feature examining the history of controversy in the video game industry. The feature examines several "major offenders" dating back as far as Death Race in the arcades up through more recent games like Grand Theft Auto III and Manhunt. Also included in the feature is coverage of the so-called "retail rogues" (games controversial enough that they were pulled from the shelves), as well as a docket of game-industry lawsuits and a look at the lighter side of game controversy. Who wants to bet that that the use-confiscated-drugs-for-short-term-benefit gameplay of Midway's upcoming NARC will make the cut in future articles about video game controversy?"
People hem and haw about violent videogames but games like GTA are good games with violence put in.
On the other hand, excessive games like Manhunt and BMX:XXX (both mentioned in the article) have pointless violence and sex that doesn't drive the game forward. In many ways, this mirrors movies: a movie like The Matrix may be violent but has a decent story behind it. Other action films feature a lot of violence but lack a decent hook.
Violence may sell, but when the consumer realizes the lack of anything besides the violence, the game stops selling. BMX:XXX tanked, to my knowledge, as did DOA:Extreme Beach Volleyball. I think its too early to say about Manhunt (which is widely regarded as really disgusting and way too far, even by gamers).
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
society in the U.S. has been going the past 20-30 years...away from any conception of personal accountability or responsibility. We look for someone or something to blame society's ills on, when WE'RE the problem. Frivilous lawsuits related to lack of common sense, warnings on music and video games, "outrage" over the tiniest slights or perceived lack of "political correctness" in word or deed... Maybe getting offtopic a bit, but video game controvery is just one example. An interesting read, kinda sad though.
The standard answer when youths "go bad" is to search for the evil influences that twist their minds. /. comment put it. Mass-production education, absent parents, junk food and junk society... these warp minds. Violent video games? Diversions that keep kids off the street and most likely beneficial insofar as they provide a release mechanism.
It's bullshit. Young minds do not need violent video games to give them ideas. What they need is decent supporting social contexts to show them the alternatives.
Society has to address the "economics of behavior", as one
But... hey, it's easier to blame the victims than address the real causes of social problems.
My blog
Games are becoming more and more like the film industry, seeing just how much they can get away with and still make it to mainstream market. Also like the film industry they have to have as much violence, nearly nakid pixels, and if you can get lots of swearing in the narrative... all the better.
.. like the first couple of the dizzy series, and time and magik.. great games...
I remember when games didn't need all this crap added to them to make them good to play
Think I will go dig my emulator out and have another go... you can see a field, exits are [north] [east] and [south]
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
The ironic thing is that I'd be willing to bet good money that the members of those groups pulled their kids to see "The Passion of the Christ"...
Talk about violence and scars for life...
Since you're the parent, then you should be able to tell your child not to play these offensive games. Asking the government, wal-mart, or EA to do your parenting for you is absolutely ridiculous. Its not like these games don't have a big rating label on the front of the box; optionally, you could always just look around on the internet to get a pretty good idea of the content, or most shockingly of all, just watch them play the damn thing. These people are letting their children be the parents, then blaming someone else because they can't ever be bothered to show any interest in what their kids are doing. You're the one paying for the game...decide if they can have it or not.
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I've been playing video games for a long time (and I still suck at them.) I remember playing Pong on some tv console thing in the mid 70's. I remember early arcade games (very abstract :), and I've played my fair share of FPS's.
Other than some motion sickness caused by FPS's, I don't think they've affected me at all. It's a way of blowing off some stress from time to time. Just because I may get in GTA and start picking off random citizens doesn't mean I'm gonna find an M16 laying around and do the same thing in real life - never mind the fact that my aim is even worse in real life than in a game!
The only violence that I can think of that could be attributed to video games happened in the early 80s. And even then it's more of a parenting thing. We had an arcade in a strip mall. Some teen girl was in there while her parents had gone to the supermarket. She left the arcade with a couple of guys who raped her. The arcade then instituted a policy that if you were under 16, you had to have a parent in there with you. Pretty much killed their business. We used to ride our bikes up there just to play games. After this happened, it was a ghost town in there. And it wasn't the games or the arcades fault.
The old Sierra game titled here happens to be one of the freakiest games that I have seen. There was no need for violence, but still when I originally went to purchase it back in my youth, I was warned that it would send chills up my spine. It is too bad that we don't see violence used to further a story line and now we have it projected as an element of entertainment. We do not need gibs in BF1942, but the violent noises of death really add.
I must say the gargling noises of people in that game still gives me flashbacks. It adds to the experience, but in a way that gibbing people in UT2004 does not.
I hope that we see this as a passing fad and in the future we place more emphasis in realism vs. violence. Afterall, watch KillBill. The experience is only entertaining for the first few minutes and then slowly gets boring when a simple use a realism could have changed the effect.
SP --- OT as usual.
I'm always amazed at the ignorance of easily offended people. It's easier to go into a public library and pick up mystery/thriller books by James Patterson (and many many other authors), which I would state are more violent and graphic by way of explicit details in what was done (murder), how it was done and why. Just go look at some of the published Editorials available on his books. The point is that apparently the first ammendment stopped these offended people from making noise about the authors! I fail to see the difference in video games.
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein
It's not just video games that create controversy. Remember how Dungeons & Dragons was viewed?
Any game that doesn't fit the "norm" will create controversy. A little parental supervision will help in any of these games. Know the capability of your child to determine what types of games they can handle. If they can separate fiction/reality, they can probably handle some of the controversial games. Some kids may take longer than others to differentiate what they see on TV/video games/music/etc... and therefore should be buffered from the content. It's all up to the parents to make these decisions and deal with the consequences.
There are some things about the hentai games for the SNES and GB(A) though:
1. Nintendo didn't license them, and they already say, "Don't play games with out the Nintendo Seal of Approval." I doubt they'll comment on unlicensed games.
2. (As far as I know) none of them have been brought to the US (at least not openly - you can't buy hentai games in the store like you can in Japan, you have to order them), and Japan is a far more open society, both to new ideas and technologies, but in this case more open to forms of entertainment. There isn't a social stigma around pornography in Japan to the extent that there is in the US.
People who don't like it actually participate in capitalism the way it was INTENDED to work: They vote with their money and don't buy it. They don't sue the companies that made it (at least not anywhere near as much as we do). The people who do like it do the same, and they buy it, and it continues to get made.
Back to the US: It bugs me how people are so opposed to pornography. If you compare a few polls about how many people like looking at pornographic materials and how many people think they should they should be illegal, you'll see there's a striking overlap - people who buy porn, but say it should be illegal.
Porn is considered so socially unacceptable that if you ask people, they'll say it should be illegal even though they have a limited edition of Debbi Does Dallas hidden under their couch. It's like the smoker who says (between weezes and coughs and lighting a new ciggarette) that the tobacco companies should be forced out of business.
That difference, of course, only exists if you're Christian. If you're not, they're both multimedia works about violence against fictional characters.
Oh, in GTA, you're actually in control, so you have to make a moral choice, while in Passion, you just absorb.
Nope, violence is violence. Just because it happened in the past doesn't make it any different.
Apart from that, it's not about "my right to violence". It's about freedom of speech. Steven Spielberg wants to make a movie about people getting blown up (SPR), I want to make a game about blowing people up - why exactly should it be OK to censor one and not the other?
They do, and have for a long time. When I was young (early 80's), violent movies were the big target. Video games are newer. Holywood is established and entrenched, and it's unlikely any amount of litigation will budge them an inch. Video games are getting there, but there's still enough give in the market that they can win little victories here and there.
The religous conservatives want the games banned because they feel the games are morally wrong.
OTOH, liberals want the games banned because they beleive that games cause violence. It is a liberal mentality that suggests that society, not the individual, should accept responsibilty for an individual's actions. These same people believe that guns cause violence.
The extremists on both ends of the political spectrum are the ones trying to ban the games.
That may be so, but The Passion is rated R .. and from what I have heard for a good reason due to the use of violence as a shock tool in order to make a point about the sacrifice that Jesus made. The (quite reasonable by the sound of it) R rating is meant to protect children from just wandering in and seeing it.
:-)
Yet there *are* many examples of Christian parents taking their kids to see this movie without having seen it before themselves. This is totally irresponsible and I feel an extremely hypocritical action on behalf of those parents.
There was also the story this week of the 6th grade teacher who showed long excerpts of this movie to their class without the parents knowledge/permission.
Such blind belief that because its Christian, that any amount or portrayed violence is acceptable is worse than what is in a video game, because the adults are *forcing* their childrento see it.
OT There are a lot of interesting stories in the Bible that would not make it to any sermon due to the extreme levels of sex and violence. Check out "The X rated Bible" for more info
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"Germans have a history of building up a meticulous and highly ordered societies, then burning up everything in a orgy of violence and mayhem"
What history was that? Are you talking about the 1st and 2nd world wars? If you've studied history, you'd realise they were part of the same war, a European (and eventually global) 'civil' war.
Germany has learned more than most countries, and has decided to err on the side of caution when it comes to dictatorial implications or nazi imagery, and this was an example of that. Anything regarding the world wars has to be presented in such a way as to educate the viewer about the dangers of [nazi] totalitarianism, as opposed to glorifying it. Hence, nazi swastikas and other imagery are banned in Germany, unless there's a really good reason to have it (ie museums, etc.).
Funnily enough, a video game featuring Germans fighting other countries was looked at with some scrutiny.
Saying this is as simple as "get rid of the red square otherwise we'll see WWIII" is unjustly trivialising a very complex and deep situation.
Germany has a very strong technical sector, and saying they don't innovate is ridiculous. Just thinking a statement like that is even logically viable shows a great insight into your perspective ;) It's akin to someone saying "All the French surrender on first hearing a shot" or "All muslims are terrorists" or "All Americans are addicted to twinkies and murder".
After WWI there was a great fear that the return of all the trained and experienced killers from european battlefields would create a violent crime spree of endemic proportions. Never happened. If real violence couldn't create that kind of effect, how come video violence is supposed to be a surefire violence trigger?
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
And I think that maybe you're thinking that the libertarian way of thinking is in juxtapose to traditional liberal philosophy?
Don't let TV tell you what a 'liberal' is. And for Christ's sake, don't let a Democrat(hell, or Republican) do it either.
The words 'liberal' and 'conservative' have been around for quite some time and have meanings other than those espoused by the major political parties.
But hell, if we're making a game of it all, I suggest:
What causes violence?
(C): violence, control, hate, greed, weapons
(C)represents anarchistic philosophy - "blame" implies something is wrong. So long as everyone consents by taking part in the system that perpetuates violence, f'ck it. Let'em kill each other.
Personal Responsibility! These kinds of stories should be moot. Bottom line, no one forces kids to play these games. Typically a kid gets the game from their parents or money provided by their parents. If this is not the case, the parents still have the right/obligation to NOT allow their kids to play the "violent" games. Parents, stop asking the government to raise your children and do it your damn selves!
--Ryan
People seem to want the government and other organizations to take care of them and take care of their children.
More importantly, they want the government to deal with their neighbors as well, in much the same fashion as the original Puritan colonies did. That is, "do things according to my moral code or I'll get the government to beat your ass."
The Constitution is of little concern to many Americans. They're far more invested in oppressing the people around them to confirm that they have the power to control their environment. Rights interfere with those activities, and because the Constitution is about rights it's an impediment to their goal to exercise power. The fact that such a view will come back to bite them in the ass is of little concern as they're sure that *they* will never become the target - since, of course *they* are RIGHT and everyone else is WRONG.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
For every idiot spewing BS about violence in videogames, there are three game-savvy people who can shout "ESRB!". This industry self-regulation system actually works quite well when people, media and retailers get involved with it. It's very efficient when the circumstances are the right ones.
The problem is, it's not as widely enforced as the movie rating system, and it's worse in some countries I've been in, where the ESRB rating is completely ignored and the video games can be sold to minors. Countries in Central and South America come to mind, and some countries in Asia. The US has been improving in this area, as some retailers actually ask for ID when selling mature games, but the situation is still far from perfect.
Let's remember the one with the money is usually not the child, and most of the cases where the offending game gets to a child's hands is the parent who bought it. Whenever there's a case like this the parent simply blames the company or the videogame industry altogether, and of course there's always a "Paladin of Justice" of sorts, ready to take the issue to the media or to some control circles.
In Mexico, for example, I saw a case of some people on national TV saying Pokemon is the devil's work and a priest encouraging children to burn their Pokemon toys (the priest, by the way, used to own a video rental store, ironic, huh?). This stupid issue stopped the very second some news arose about none other than the Pope himself endorsing Pokemon and praising it for getting children together to play. Pokemon is a children's E-Rated game, completely safe to play and yet there are people ready to use it for their own agendas. Now think about the real trouble makers like the M-Rated Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto or the upcoming Doom 3.
Every once in a while I get to see stupid, ill-informed articles about the issue on media in many countries. I think it's time the videogame industry defends itself by making the same amount of noise as those sensationalist idiots do. We have a good rating system, we need people to effectively use it, we need to strongly enforce it.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
The Constitution is of little concern to many Americans. They're far more invested in oppressing the people around them to confirm that they have the power to control their environment.
Wow, I didn't know that. Here I thought I was trying to do the best I can by my family and working hard to better myself, but it turns out I've been trampling the Constitution with my power-mad ways. Thanks for the heads-up.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.