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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?
"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.
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.
"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
"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?
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?"
Whether it's worth responding to this article or not, that's a frightening attitude.
It is ridiculous to wait until someone tries to (do something harmful) pass a law banning videogames before you speak up. By the time that popular opinion has moved people to act it is too late to really do much about the situation.
Yes, columnists can generate FUD pretty fast, but it takes time for an idea to really set in.
I think that part of what is preventing "something harmful" from happening is the constant exchange between two camps for and against videogames. If the pro-game faction stopped speaking up (until people consider doing "something harmful"), that's when these "harmful" things would be most likely to happen.
Another way of looking at it would be that simply telling people that videogames are violent and that cause violence is "something harmful", because it shifts opinion towards banning or placing controls on games.
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
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.
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
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.