Slashdot Mirror
New Mexico Newspaper Row Shows Game Violence Microcosm
Thanks to the Albuquerque Tribune for its pair of editorials, one praising violent games, tongue-in-cheek style, by lauding "the sheer joy of freeform gaming mayhem", and the other a rebuttal suggesting children are genuinely at risk. This provincial echoing of the ever-present worldwide debate starts with Sue Vorenberg's contention that: "There's nothing quite as satisfying as running over virtual French people with a souped-up sports car", and ends with Bob McCannon's statement that "the correlations between violent media and aggression are stronger than between smoking and lung cancer." What can be done to make such arguments a little more evenhanded?
This is all baloney, and is just a smokescreen to argue for censorship. Also consider the Baby Boomers that grew up on the BLAM BLAM BLAM of television westerns. You didn't see them going out and shooting Native Americans.
If you don't like these games, don't play them. If you don't want your children to play them, keep track of what is on their computer or console.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"the correlations between violent media and aggression are stronger than between smoking and lung cancer." Really? Show me. I've seen studies that say that the correlation between viewing any media and violence is strong - be it Rugrats or The Sopranos. I'd also like to see a comparison between how many people are actually hurt because of video games and how many people are actually hurt because of smoking or automobiles or even kitchen utensils. I assure you it isn't even close.
To make it more even handed we simply need to put them all in a padded room together and whoever comes out alive wins.
I don't exactly see the children of the world rising up and killing people. I see some terrible outbursts occur, but to blame media?
:-P but that's something that a child's PARENTS have to decide. But we won't start that flame.
Let's see, the last absolutely horrific inhuman killings IMHO would be the Rwanda Genocide. Now I don't mean to stereotype, but something tells me Doom wasn't to blame for the murder of hundreds of 1,000's of people including many children.
Should children be exposed to such violence in media? I don't think so. They should be watching 321 Contact and Nova
But these fears have been allayed by the phsycologists view that children, right from an early age, can tell the difference between fantasy worlds of cartoons and the real world.
I would have thought the same is true for video games?
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Using such flimsy standards, I guess any media can be linked to violence: the Declaration of Independence led to thousands of deaths in the American Revolution. You could probably make a similar arguement about the Constitution. We might as well censor all of the media completely, because you never know when someone might have something from media in mind when they commit a violent act.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I think that anything, albeit violence, sex, drugs, etc. when taken too seriously by anyone can be dangerous. If a person can differentiate easily between fantasy and reality(some can't, trust I know a few) then they can become more succeptable to acting out on these things that are contained in the "microcosm".
Also, what game features sports cars running over Frenchmen? Hook me up!!(-1 Contradictory, right?)
I think you're mistaking evenhanded for
noncontroversial, or making small claims. If the
correlation is true and as strong as said, it's good to know, even if it appears to be saying something really strong. On the other hand, if it's wrong, then that's also good to know. The pure fact that it's a bold claim doesn't make it a bad thing to present, nor does it speak to its truth content. In sum, don't bemoan it's boldness.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
While it wasn't as big as the Rwanda genocide, the Serbian holocaust, happening during the same decade, put a few hundred thousand Croatians, Bosnians, and Kosovars in the grave and added "ethnic cleansing" to the genocide lexicon. I would count it as "absolutely horrific unhjuman killings", and I don't think the serbs were playing videogames either.
"the correlations between violent media and aggression are stronger than between smoking and lung cancer."
Holy crap! We are a hair's breadth away from suggesting we censor media on medical grounds. Media causes reactions in peope? Why that's a big red "DUH!", people.
Just talking and spreading ideas, can incite riots and revolutions. We can't have that now can we? I mean, think of all the people that could get hurt. Best we tell the media what they can and can't say so people don't get all riled up. Especially those nasty, icky video games.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
No big deal. It's the latest version of Frogger, in which you play one of the car drivers instead of the Frog.
Who cares what the foreign press of New Mexico thinks about American video games? :)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"the correlations between violent media and aggression are stronger than between smoking and lung cancer."
Yes, but what about causation? Aggressive people seek out violent media. That's pretty fucking obvious. Of course there's going to be strong correlation.
Correlation != causation!
The major problem with this argument--and all violent media arguments--is that everybody wants to ban the violence "for the children." It's all well and good, and socially responsible, I might add, to keep 8-year-olds watching Robocop II or Reservoir Dogs or what have you. But there would be an uproar if it were suggested that we ban violent movies for adults because of those (real or imagined) correlations between violent media and aggression.
The simple response is that we tend to assume that video games are a young person's medium, when the truth is that gamers range across ages, genders, and preferences. Remember that the young gamers of the 80s are now in their 20s and 30s. You wouldn't lump a Disney movie in with Tarantino when discussing what is inappropriate for children. Why would you lump a Spongebob Squarepants game in with GTA?
Some games, like some movies, are appropriate for children. Some games, like some movies, are most certainly not.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
Lung cancer really does cause smoking!
I grew up on Roadrunner cartoons and it hasn't affected me in the least. In fact in the course of my job as a professional cliff diver I've even found it useful on occasion.
I think we can safely assume a near 100% exposure rate to violent imagery, and there are something on the order of 11,000 or so murders in the US each year. Where many people don't smoke and it's still the leading killer nation wide, and a leading cause of fires.
But seriously, this sort of fear mongering is choking the life out of america. It's reached pandemic proportions, we've got to act now! I recommend having a post-traumatic stress reaction and going on a rampage killing all the irresponsable so called journalists.
Hell, the survivors would be thrilled. Best. Newsday. Evar.
Ah but the difference here is correlation is not causation, as the media seems to need to be reminded of time and time again. Sure there are some unstable few who see violence in media and emulate it, but there is quite often strong evidence that there was more wrong with those people than just their choices of movies, games and music.
There's a huge leap between pressing buttons on a controller while watching a TV screen and actually going out and purchasing weapons and using them on people in the real world. A leap that any stable-to-begin-with person is not going to make, there are just too many times along the way where they are going to realize that what they're doing is wrong.
People gravitate towards what interests them, violent people play violent games, that's all there is to it. This doesn't mean all people who play violent games are violent, and vice versa, (all generalizations are false, etc etc) but someone who ends up going out and stealing a car and running over pets and people to play real life GTA is most likely going to be someone who had the choice to buy GTA or Tetris and chose the former because that kind of media is what interested them before they even bought their game system.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
If you truly understand yourself, you will stop liking to view violence. Those who like violent games are only seeing the game as a symbol for their own anger. If they work on their anger directly, they will not need the game.
Read The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis
by Arthur Janov.
Also read Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality
by Frederick S. (Fritz) Perls, Ralph Hefferline, PaulGoodman.
I don't profit from book sales. Those are Amazon's codes for the books exclusively.
Here is an article I wrote for a friend about other books I would recommend: Read the Recent Great Books.
Actually, your reading it wrong. What it plainly states, until someone gets a license to put a kid in a Skinner box, is that people with reactions are reached by media.
Wow. You mean the media machine that can put california girls jogging in slow motion into a mongolian yurt can also reach people in america? Fascinating. Given that even homeless people can watch TV, you're going to get a strong correlation for nearly anything. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makes people GAY. American Idol turns people in to black women! There are some really out there conclusions we could be drawing. TV causes violence a little, well unimaginative.
...with it's real crime rates.
Even though the ridiculous claim isn't backed up whatsoever, let's grant them the benefit of the doubt (undeservedly) and say that there is a correlation between virtual violence and emat-space violence.
Well guess the f* what?
Correlation does not equal causation.
If you want to prove something - you tend to need this thing we call evidence. There isn't a correlation between smoking and lung cancer -- there's a direct causal link between smoking and lung cancer. And that casual link is backed up with peer-reviewed, reproducible, scientific studies.
Not half-cocked editorials.
Not half-witted armchair social commentary.
and not contrived anecdotal evidence.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
That's nothing but psychobabble! I like some violent videogames because I like good entertainment, and some violent games are good entertainment. There is nothing else. Shooting a guy in GTA is just pressing a joystick button and affecting pixels on the screen. It has nothing to do with non-existent desires for real violence.
"Read The Primal Scream:Gestalt Therapy: "
Or better yet, ignore them. These are baseless pop-psychological works that have absolutely no scienctific validity; created by scammers who got nicely rich.
From the article:
'Suggest that she/he limit total "screen" time to an hour or, at most, two hours per day. If the child reacts severely, you might need to consult a mental health or pediatric professional.'
If the child reacts severely to a suggestion, perhaps it's an indication that you're a lousy parent with no control over your children. Sadly, the TV/PS2/XBOX-is-the-babysitter syndrome appears to be all too common these days.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The anti-violence article is actually quite even-handed and fair except for the one "correlation" remark.
Firstly, she mentions that the studies that claim videogames are not determental to society are funded by the videogame companies themselves (sound like a certain OS maker we all know here?). She then mentions that there are beneficial games out there too.
But everyone here is talking about censorship, when she doesn't even mention it in her article!
What she does recommend is (gasp!) spending time with your children, and closely watching what they do, especially if certain signs appear (they only like violent games, spend too much time, etc.).
In fact, this article seems to be promoting common sense among parents, a stance usually quite popular here!
"...with it's real crime rates."
Uh, Mexico City is not in New Mexico. RTFM and take a geography course.
nm
I understand the concern posed by McCannon.
From what I see of his work in general (including this article), it appears that he tries to get people to examine who's bias is being presented in media content, and the possible motivations involved in presenting that bias. If you consider that as his main objective, the majority of the article is totally fair.
The one major fault in his article is the smoking/cancer correlation statement. My guess is that it was inserted as flamebait so that the rest of the article may get more attention (such as a sign that starts with "SEX! Now that I have your attention..."). It's unfortunate that it seems necessary to insert such claims.
Um, read the article again. It's NEW MEXICO, not Mexico.
How to Speak Leet
It doesn't try to prove anything. It's supposed to be a humor piece (except it's not that funny). This isn't your normal country-bans-games-by-mistake news, just some d00d writing about something he seems to enjoy doing, commenting on why he thinks people enjoy it.
This isn't worth spending any time on. The general population can generate opinions faster than they can be educated. It's really only worth stepping in when they consider doing something harmful with their opinions.
A recent study shows a strong correlation between raping wombats and breathing air, even stronger than that of the correlation between smoking and lung cancer.
Did you know that 100% of people who rape wombats also breathe air? This astonishing statistic puts anyone who breathes air at risk of wombatphilia. If you breathe air, please, seek professional psychological help immediately.
It makes me so angry. If I ever see him I will kick his ass!!!!
You're right that correlation does not equal causation, but you naively assume that "reproducible scientific studies" can "prove" causation. They can't. What you call a "direct causal link" is nothing more than a strong correlation.
Further this "half-cocked" editorial is not talking about "anecdotal" evidence. The link between aggressive behavior and violent video games has been found time and again in "reproducible scientific studies." A 5 second Google search will back me up, for instance:
http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp784772.html
"violent people play violent games"
Do you have evidence that that's true, or is it just your hunch, based on anecdotal evidence? In any case, the issue is whether video games have a tendency to promote violence or aggressive behavior. Assuming what you say is true, that violent people are attracted to violent games, it doesn't negate the overwhelming research that exists showing the link between video games and aggression. These studies use control groups to screen the selection bias that you suggest. It also doesn't negate the fact that video games are likely to increase aggressive behavior in people who already aggressive.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The way D&D got its breathing room back then was by taking note of which research the critics cited, noting which research specifically refuted that research, and making sure that got brought up whenever the bad research cropped up. Note especially the efforts of the CAR-PGa in that advocacy; they were set up primarily as a clearinghouse for that information.
The goal was simple and straightforward: find the false information that got repeated as gospel (irony intended) by those groups, and refute it hard whenever it got quoted. Eventually, most got the point. Anti-gaming groups were shamed, reporters who relied on sensationalism had their reputations sullied for not checking facts, and people either decided that it either wasn't really worth attacking or was too dangerous to attack.
But you know what? It's still going on. Groups sufficiently uneducated (including police organizations) are much fewer and farther between, but they can occasionally still be found. Just head for the center of the ever-expanding cloud of methane.
(This is a big day for questions for me!) What computer gaming advocacy groups are there out there that we can turn to in our hour of need? And if there aren't any, who wants to form one?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
"the correlations between violent media and aggression are stronger than between smoking and lung cancer." That's funny. I've personally known three people who've aquired lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking, but only two people who've robbed hookers after beating them to death with a baseball bat.
Have you seen what researchers consider to be aggressive behaviour in those studies? Some of the dumbest things imaginable, and also attributable to just being excited (or frustrated if it's a bad game). That is the point of most games, to make you excited. Pretty much every study I've seen has participants being tested shortly after playing the game, when they are still excited. Maybe you can point me to a few studies that show people testing appreciably more aggressively long-term (ie games and only games are making people more fundamentally aggressive and/or violent). I would be very interested to see them, and be proven wrong.
Besides which, why is aggression necesarily always a bad thing? Consider that Canada and various parts of Europe (some countries, such as Germany, have censorship laws) have access to EXACTLY the same media and in some cases are even more lenient about it (many movies rated R in the US are 14a or lower in Canada), and their violent crime rates are appreciably lower than in the US. Also, violent crime rates have been dropping in both the US and Canada for at least the last 5+ reported years (from FBI statistics). So if videogames have such a negative effect, and they're now more widely available and explicit than they ever were before, where's the serious harm to society? I still see people killing each other for all the reasons they've always killed each other (love, money, power, sociopathy).
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
sarcasm Gee I wonder which game inspired that quote... /sarcasm
See a previous response I wrote to this article here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the issues I bring up. That article shows up all the time because it is readily available, but it is not a good one in my opinion.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
I want to see some unbiased statistics that indicate how often children who play "violent" games were involved in violent incidents (in school, e.g.) vs. a control group. How come the studies we hear about only seem to contain vague terms like "agression", rather than anything about actual incidents of violence? Could it be because when it comes to actual violence, the correlation becomes statistically insignificant? I'm guessing, not stating that as fact.
Gak.
Vehemence still applies, fairly rude poke at Mexico's crime rates retracted.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Moderators: Remember, when you don't agree with something, it is a Troll.
All those who agree with you are fine people, all others are trolls.
That's a violent kind of thinking. How did you get that kind of thinking, rather than learning social sophistication? Where did you learn that? Hmmm. Was it playing violent fantasy games rather than actually talking to real people?
Actually, the APA study controls for mere excitement as a result of video game play compared to aggressive thoughts/behavior.
LoneDanger, you're asking for the impossible requiring a study to show "games and only games" making people more aggressive over the long term. Obviously, there's no easy way to test for this without locking people in a lab for a year. Even if the only evidence points to short-term flairs in aggression, it's not unreasonable to posit long-term effects. If you do something often enough, it becomes a habit. Similarly, for kids (especially) who regularly see violent behavior modelled in games and who are active participants in the way that only games (vs TV or movies) allow, I find it hard to believe that this has no ill effects in the long term when the short-term effects are obvious.
I'm not sure what your crime rate and video games argument is. Do you honestly think that you can point to media as the sole explanatory factor for something as multi-faceted and complex as the rise/fall of violent crime?
I recognize that the bias on this forum is strongly in favor of games. The attitude of gamers towards the ill effects of violent media is like the Bush administration attitude towards global warming. They keep saying, I won't admit there's a problem until I see overwhelming evidence that "proves" it. The evidence is there, but gamers (and game publishers for that matter) have a vested interest in ignoring it.
I'm not sure what your crime rate and video games argument is. Do you honestly think that you can point to media as the sole explanatory factor for something as multi-faceted and complex as the rise/fall of violent crime?
Actually, what I am trying to point out is that media can not be the sole explanatory factor in rise or fall of violent crime. I am trying to point out that the effect of violent media compared to many other more critical factors (social, economic, political etc.) is practically NIL. People keep hearing about how games get more realistic and violent and more kids are playing them. Then they maybe turn on the news and there's a report of some gang-realted murders, and think "things are getting worse, games are part of the problem".
I hear it from my parents, from older people around me especially, thinking that things are worse than they've ever been and they're getting worse. But violent crime is dropping, and has been for quite a while. Then there's always the argument that even if we aren't committing more violent crime we are still more aggressive towards each other in everyday life. If this is true (and how could you actually prove this?), it is STILL more likely that the other things mentioned are a bigger factor than games.
As for the control for mere excitement in the study, (this is directly from the study): "Our findings do not rule out the possibility that under some circumstances violent video game effects on subsequent aggressive behavior might be mediated by increased feelings of hostility or by general arousal effects. Indeed, GAAM explicitly notes that thoughts, feelings, and arousal are intricately interconnected, sometimes to such an extent that they can't be disentangled." They are essentially saying that the very formula they used to calculate the aggression itself says that excitement can not necessarily be accounted for.
They keep saying, I won't admit there's a problem until I see overwhelming evidence that "proves" it. The evidence is there, but gamers (and game publishers for that matter) have a vested interest in ignoring it.
The evidence is NOT there. You INFER it from the studies showing short term spikes in aggression/excitement, and assume that short term behaviour has to have long term effects. Hasn't there already been plenty of time for these long term effects to emerge (since Wolfenstein, the game in that APA study has been out for over 12 years now)? If not then how long? What type of behaviour should we be looking for? And IF it doesn't manifest itself in behaviour, what is the problem?
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
...and this is -exactly- why the license plates in New Mexico say "New Mexico USA" on them.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Failed geography did we?