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A Plea To Game Makers To Act Responsibly?
Thanks to AVault for its editorial discussing the responsibility videogame makers have to use their powers for 'good'. The author expresses concern about games' influence on the young: "My love of digital maiming is tempered by the fact that, at this stage of my life, I can tell right from wrong. I have a fully developed set of ethics. I wouldn't say my nine-year-old nephew has quite had the time to develop these tools." The article ends with the exhortation: "Developers and publishers, hear my plea: start injecting a strong sense of right and wrong into your stories. I don't want you to pull back on the gibs, I don't want anything more than a stronger sense of ethics and perhaps a small dose of moral fiber. Take into account the fact that kids are playing, no matter that they shouldn't be."
Gee, maybe your 9 year old shouldn't be playing Grand Theft Auto. It's more the parent/guardian's responsiblity to ensure that their kids aren't playing violent games than it is the game makers.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
So, should Quentin Tarantino take into account that kids are watching "Kill Bill", and Playboy similarly tailor itself to be kid-friendly? I don't think so.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The author expresses concern about games' influence on the young
What the hell are the parents doing?!
Don't we get at least 2 of this type of article on this site per week? It seems like I am always reading the:
"It is the parents' job to teach their kids wrong and right, not the video games."
All these articles are good for is getting gamers upset. Call it Flamebait or a Troll or whatever, but these articles are getting Redundant.
http://www.tomandemily.com
There's always going to be violent video games. The problem is not that there aren't video games that have morality...look at the Ultima games...or the Star Wars ones. The problem is that kids are naturally curious about the games that are BAD. It doesn't matter how many good video games there are out there....kids are always going to find the one game that's evil. Really, there are only three solutions:
1) Forbid all video games that do not impose "correct" morality
2) Raise your children in an isolated bubble, never exposing them to anything that espouses "bad" morality
3) Let your children experience what they want, within limits, so long as you teach them what is right and wrong
You can let a kid play all the violent video games he wants; so long as he has a caring mother and father, he'll turn out OK....and if he doesn't have caring parents, if it's not GTA teaching him how to be a criminal, it'll just be something else. In short, bad parenting creates bad kids who have independent, unrelated desires to play "bad" video games and do "bad" things. Good parenting creates "good" kids who have the same desire to play "bad" video games but less chance of a desire to do "bad" things.
To all of the parents who are always whining "the video games are controlling my childen" I say: you have a thousand times more influence than any video game ever will...if your kids are turning out poorly it's because you're a shitty parent....stop trying to blame everyone else.
I don't understand why the author's article is so upset at this kid playing GTA. If his mom is raising him correctly, he should be able to cap grandmas all day long and still be a well-adjusted kid. If she's not, well, then he's got bigger things to worry about than a video game. Everyone just wants to bitch about the video game to show that they are MORALLY OFFENDED! You know what offends my morals? Watching a mother just dump her kid off in day care for the first 6 years of his life so she can drive a nicer car. I'd rather raise my kid on GTA than put him through that.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
That said, I really don't have a problem with developers and publishers making violent games. Similarly, I don't have a problem with publishers who distribute violent books. I don't shun museums for displaying various garish incarnations of St. Sebastian on their walls. I am one of the vast majority of people--young and old alike--who can distinguish fantasy from reality, and are able to appreciate that the character being crushed by a tank on the game screen is not a real person.
You'll find no lack of people here on Slashdot who played games like Smash TV, N.A.R.C., and Doom as a kid. Staggeringly enough, the vast majority of us are perfectly well aware of the fact that in the Real World, one does not drive a Ferrari at 100 mph on a bridge whilst mowing down junkies, firing rocket launchers, and gathering cash and drugs.
I'm tiring of those who advocate solving the problems of the few by restricting the options of the whole. Let us use our own judgement, for Pete's sake.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Then the international corporations.
Then we might start childing games manufacturers.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Games are where the traditional fairytale style very straightforward plots have excelled in for years(actually, that's an insult against most classic fairytales, most of them have more depth than your basic game plot about a guy in a combat suit rescuing his girl).
games aimed at adults.. well, most of them have very basic plot settings aboug good versus evil as well. sometimes it's just the evil that triumphs over the 'good', but that's just reversed roles of stereotypes(basically what it is most of the time is that it's just a matter of skinning, wether the guys trying to slow the player down are cops or mafia).
personally, I'd hope there to be more character in the characters in games and not always be so black and white, THE WORLD ISN'T JUST GOOD VS. BAD. most of the time the 'BAD' guys have solid motives for their actions as well as the good guys can and have 'bad' motives (imho best, or worst depending on if it's real life or not, tragedies stir from a setting like this. everyone is doing the 'right'/'necessary' thing from their viewpoint but the events lead to catastrophe anyways).
Ever read old fairytales in their original forms? the "bad" getting what's coming to it is usually chopping the head off or something similar(and heck, the 'good guys' play very, very dirty sometimes). public executions and all that jizz.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"Take into account the fact that kids are playing, no matter that they shouldn't be."
Take into account the fact that kids are playing, since their parents are not interested in parenting.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
If you are responsible for raising a child, please teach them that they will one day be entirely responsible for their actions and no one will be there to help them when they screw up. Also, let them know that, currently, you are responsible for their actions, and if their actions should cause you harm, they will be punished, punished so that they will wish they hadn't engaged in said actions. Ie. if they do something really stupid like kill or maim someone, they will regret it for the rest of their life.
Here's a couple more items to instill in their young minds:
That's a start. American youth have many more common mental/social deficiencies that need correcting, but those are some of the major ones off the top of my head.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Personally, I'm with you:
I emphatically disagree with the editorial in question. I don't think content creators should care about 'acting responsibly'. I think they should tell their story, paint their picture, try to entertain. If they're so irresponsibly bad, the market will tell them so, and show them the door. Social responsibility for content is not something any creator in any media should be concerned with as a matter of course.
However, social responsibility for industry business practices is something that needs more attention and positive action.
The problem with your analogies are that the MPAA's rating system is well understood, and local legislation in the U.S. dictates that magazines like playboy be kept behind the counter. If a 9 year old asks his mother to see an R movie or buy him a magazine from behind the counter at 7-11, she knows (more or less) what to expect - regardless of how that 9 year old might want to convince her otherwise.
What gaming needs is precisely that same thing: an honest attempt at achieving consumer awareness of content rating. It needs a system that actually communicates the sort of content provided by the media, so parents can decide for themselves what they want their children to see and play.
Parents have no idea wtf an 'M' rating means, and the ESRB either can, or chooses to, do nothing against retailers who don't restrict the sales of 'M' titles to minors. Hell, the ESRB doesn't even require retailers to post an education poster that breaks down game ratings for consumers the way the MPAA still does.
If the ESRB is unwilling to even try to educate consumers, or enforce its policies upon retailers - at the very least they could lift the MPAA's system wholesale, replace 'M' with 'R', and let us move on with life.
What the ESRB should do, is take a nod from satellite and cable content ratings, and simply spell out all the themes in question.
If the game has cartoon violence, say so on the box.
If the game has graphic realistic violence, say so on the box.
If the game has brief nudity, say so on the box.
If the game has sexual themes, say so on the box.
If the game deals with substance abuse, say so on the box.
The problem is, game publishers don't want that. They don't want 'R', 'graphic violence', or 'sexual themes' slathered across video game shelves. But why not? Are they afraid that parents might actually parent? Are they intentionally leveraging ingorance to drive game sales? What logic can there be for intentionally obfuscating their rating scheme and doing nothing against those retailers who ignore it?
The longer the ESRB pussy-foots around the problem, the more they make such questionable policies and decisions, the more steam Senator Lieberman builds up - and the closer we come to legislative intervention. And no-one: not the industry, not the consumer, not Senator Lieberman himself - wants that.
All these pressures would evaporate overnight if the ESRB would be honest with its consumers.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I was rereading the Hugo Winners Vol II last night, and in the introduction to "Gonna Roll Dem Bones", Isaac Asimov related a coversation he had with Fritz Lieber... in short, Lieber pointed out to Asimov that his stories had people who opposed the hero, but that he never had any villans. Asimov reasoned that it was because he tended to write a more cerebral sort of stoy, more about the conflict of ideas than anything else; and in that case, the a good story demanded reasonable, intelligent villans who did not see themselves as bad/evil, and were capable of explaining themselves and their motives clearly. While they opposed the heros of the story, they had (at least, by their own thoughts) good reasons for doing so.
This reminded me a lot of the role that Magneto eventually grew into in the X-Men comic books - an intelligent opponent who had what he thought were very good reasons for his actions. IMHO, this leads to a much deeper, more satisfying type of story than things like Star Wars, where the villans are villans because... well, just because, you know, they're evil. You never get any background on why they're acting the way they are.
If Asimov had written the Star Wars scripts, he'd probably have set up a situation where Palpatine saw the existance of the Jedi leading to the eventual development of a hereditary ruling class, the destruction of the Trade Federation, and an interminable galaxy-wide dark age of stagnation. A few scenes, a little bit of exposition, and voila! - Palpatine goes from being evil to being a tragic figure, someone who initially desires good, but who finds himself seduced into thinking that the only way to save the Trade Federation from the Jedi is to forge an Empire strong enough to resist them if they were ever to rise again...
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Being in a gang, crew, or mafia can get you killed WAY too easily.
If you break the law, and the cops don't get you, and the FBI doesn't get you, the military will bring in tanks and run over you.
Never play with grenades in an enclosed space.
Molotov cocktails may be fun, but if you're not careful you can catch on fire.
Hookers take your money.
Doing a double backflip with a barrel roll off a cliff is cool... until the end.
25 rounds of ammunition seems like alot of ammo until you have 26 opponents.
Don't try to snipe people while standing on the sidewalk. You'll never see the billy club coming.
Busses are too slow to out run cop cars. Sports cars aren't heavy enough to run through cop cars.
You can't fly a plane without wings. At least not for very long.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Things I remember from growing up:
Superman comics were going to make children tie bed sheets around our necks and jump off the garage roof. The A-Team was going to make children turn violent. Rock music was going to turn us into Satanists. Sweet alcoholic drinks were going to turn the young into alcoholics. The ice-cream man was really a slipping LSD into their ice-cream to turn them into addicts, but only if the punch given to them at Halloween didn't do it instead, and don't forget about all the pedophiles that were just waiting for children in every chat room.
In other words everything that is even remotely popular is somehow going to absolutely destroy the lives of children everywhere.
Articles like this are good for quiet news weeks. In a year or 2 they will be about something new that is also going to end life as we know it. (The evils of golf or something)
I would also hazard a guess that people who came from homes way too poor for them to have ever been exposed to DOOM, GTA etc, commit most of the violent crime.
Have you looked around at the game market recently? The problem isn't just as simple as "Well, don't let your kid play violent video games". The problem is that there's little ALTERNATIVE CHOICE. There are lots more violent games than non-violent ones and if you want your child to play video games you're limited to girl games (Barbie gets dressed up) or educational ones (Putt-putt goes to the moon).
:)
So it sorta makes it hard to find something for your kid to play.
Alternatively, he could just read a book or go outside and play. But do we really want to push this poor kid into sports?
A number of studies show that children understand the difference between fantasy and reality at a much younger age than most people seem to think. Sorry I don't have any handy, but they aren't that old. You can find it if you can wade through all the other ones that decry video game violence :)
But of course, it's the parent's job to teach the kid a sense of moral responsibility before they give them access to violent video games. I don't have kids but my brother has 4, and I know that before they get to the point of playing video games more controversial then "Reading with Froggy" or whatever, they have a strong understanding of right and wrong.
If this isn't the case, it's the parent's fault, not EA's.
That said, I defintely feel there is something wrong with the amount and vugarity of violence in games, especially when considering that this is an ongoing trend. Are we kidding ourselved that the same human instinct that drove the Romans to kill people for sport in an arena is not the same one which keeps me glued to the screen playing Far Cry?
Perhaps as a species we are cursed that whenever a society reaches a level where we no longer have to struggle, people turn to ugly and vicious pursuits.
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
First off let me say that in no way is it up to game developers to put this kind of content in their product if it doesn't call for it. The gaming industry isn't here to raise your child...that is the parents job.
... evil. But that is what makes it fun right? We can play this game and do things that we wouldn't dream of doing in real life. So, in a way this game clearly defines what *not* to do in real life. Isn't that educational in a slightly squewed sense? How hard is it to teach a child that that kind of thing is only ok in video games? It doesn't seem like that big of a leap to me. (not that I'm saying kids should play GTA...god no).
Now then, I don't necessarily agree with the author, but his article has sparked my interest. Not so much in the way of what content should be acceptable in games or that games need to have a clear set of what is right and what is wrong and focus on the 'right'. But in the way that the majority of games out there already *do* have this present...it's just subtle. They don't come straight out and say "This is good! Do this!", "This is bad! Don't do that!", but the elements are all there.
Take GTA... there is no doubt that what you do in this game is bad. It is unethical, it is unmoral, it is just
A better example might be Ninja Gaiden. You play Ryu, a *good* bad ass who is avenging the death of his family and putting a stop to evil in the world. Ultimately that is what is happening in the story. On some level does this not say: "Fight for what you believe in. Don't let bad things happen." Granted the way you carry this out in the game is purely fantasy...but can't the values be applied to life?
The trick is making the connection to what is already present in the games and applying it to real life situations. Let's think who would do this? The parent! If the parent is doing their job they will know the content of the games their child is playing. All it takes is sitting the kid down for 15 min to discuss what is being said / done in the game and why this is or is not acceptable in reality. Kids are smart, they'll understand.
With all that said, could game producers emphasise this more in their games? Absolutely. It would be wonderful to clearly define what is right and wrong. In an ideal world there would be no gray area.
Is it up to game producers to do this? Absolutely not! We don't see this in movies, or books, or TV...why should video games be different. It is the parents job to educate the child, not the rest of the world.
I apologize if my thoughts came out all broken, but I'm in a super hurry...
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.