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How Violent Media And Game Censorship Interact
Socrates writes "GamerDad has an article up called 'The Media War', a feature discussing videogames in the context of violent media and the well-meaning groups who try to censor it. 'The war against violent media is not new. Learn the history of media controversy, and take a sobering look at what's in store for gamers down the road.' The piece includes quotes from Douglas Lowenstein of the ESA and IGDA spokesman Jason Della Rocca."
..just frag the censors.
~ Better a freak than a sheep. ~
Exactly WHY does the IDSA have squat to do with this?
IDSA == Interactive Digital Software Association
It's essentially a watchdog group paid by various software publishers to be a piracy watchdog group, amongst a few other things.
Therefore, why on earth would they be censoring ANYTHING, if they draw a paycheck from those who would rather not be censored to begin with?
IDSA is a huge racket to begin with.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I've been playing video games since I was 10 years old. Everything from Super Mario 1, to Doom 3, now being 24 and still playing I have no desire to go around and destroy things or kill people.
:)
Mind you that it would be nice to steal a bus and go for a joy ride(GTA3), but common senses tells me that if I did, off to jail i would go...
unless i could go really fast and get away
Later, I would move on to more interesting games, like hunting down a human and stabing him in the back while he guards some ancient artifact. Or perhaps shoot people with a sniper rifle while trying to stop a terrorist plot.
It all comes down to this. I have to deal with idiot assholes all day. If I can't shoot virtual people when I get home, I'm going to have to shoot real ones.
On a serious note, what makes them think video games are more harmful then say movies or even the public education system? If children can be infuenced by 1 media type, couldn't they be infulenced by all? Does this mean that parents can also influence their children? If that is true, shouldn't all children be removed from their parents and awarded to a state approved center where they will only be allowed to view approved material and hear approved words?
Hmmm, perhaps we should sterilze the majority of the population and only keep dedicated breeders, and raise our children in factories. Yea...I mean after all, it takes a village.
<argument
Why in the crap can't people control their children? Its not my freaking fault that you can't - and you don't have the right to keep my mature content away from me, no sir. If you can't handle being a parent, don't even bother to breed.
</argument>
<argument
I'm all for keeping crap out of my children's hands. If you can find a way to help me battle the ton of crap that is launched at my kids brains every day, I'm all for it. I'm getting tired of the things they can show on mainstream media these days. Society is going to the dogs.
</argument>
This seems to be an ongoing issue across almost every media - can't we figure some out that works for both sides?
</post>
"the constant need to fight monsters both teaches bad lessons, and detracts from the enjoyment of the game."
What lessons are those? That mythical monsters need hitting?
Your daughter is a lot smarter than you think, and you should check out the value system being promoted in advertising and media before coming down hard on games. After all, I'm willing to bet that you found the sight of a cat being viciously pummelled by a mouse amusing the first time around? I know I did.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
More and more parents are not doing their job instead shoving the parenting responsibilty onto others. Two extreme examples. 1: Some immigrants from shall we say more traditional countries are complaining in holland that their kids are undisciplined. In their view it is the state via the police and schools that should teach discipline and they are suprised dutch teachers are not allowed to beat kids. (Note that it is not an immigrant issue, school beatings were only recently outlawed in england)
Second example, a recent investigation by a bbc program into daycare nurseries. With an undercover worker they intended to show how bad the care was. Except that I as an old angry white male couln't see what the problem was half of the time. The kids being left alone or in the care of untrained staff that sure is bad. A kid somehow managing to burn its hand very very badly on a radiator (sounds unlikely since anything with a spinalcord would yerk the hands back long before it could burn so badly) that is bad too.
A child being told of for being a pest sounds like teaching the kid a little bit of discipline. No you are not allowed to be a pest to everyone now go play alone until you can play together.
Apparently this is not "right" anymore.
But parenting is not just the parents. It is society as well. I don't mean the complex society, I mean the people in your neighbourhood. I grew up in an old part of town with a whole mix of people. As I grew up it became one of the bigger town in but when I grew up a few houses down was a working farm. So we had the very very old to the very very young. Kids weren't just raised by their parents they were raised as much by the older kids in the neighbourhood. Those unlucky to grow up 4-5 years behind a group of girls never learned to walk until ten being carried everywhere. I watched my sister and in turn was watched by an older girl. It was as normal to get a bandaid from a young girl as from your own mother.
The idea that nowadays both parents work and they don't take care of their kid is wrong. My mother worked and in general most of the mothers did now I think about it. Certainly the farmers wife did. It was just that they made sure there always were enough people around to watch over things. I can't remember ever having been left alone for real. There always was someone responsible around.
Much later I lived for a while in almere. Wich is a very new city and I noticed something. There was a very distinct age border with the kids playing. These kids did not grow up with older kids. No older kids to teach/show them what is and what isn't done.
Where I currently live is a small group of kids in a mostly single household area and they are between 7-10 yrs old. During the summer days they do never leave the street they live in, no kids around to go play with. Their parents don't seem intrestted in taking them somewhere or even playing with them. Their is large park extremely close yet it is rarely used.
Maybe I am just old but I think my childhood was a lot better. I learned not to bully because the kid you bully would have an older brother/sister/nephew/etc. But you also stood up for the younger ones in turn. It was a community.
Every child will go through a hurting other people stage. They simply will not have learned yet that kicking someone hurts. The old way of teaching that is hurting the child back. Not a beating but a hard slap on the leg will soon teach it that kicking other people is bad. If for no other reason then that you will be hurt in turn. Not very nice but it works. Current more PC educators seem not to agree. Problem? There methods don't work.
So I don't think video games are that much of a problem. They are merely an excuse. Sorta like don't kill people they just make it a lot easier.
Kids being not raised by parents who have not been raised because all the parents want to be their kids friends or worse don't want to be parents. Take the recent so-called x-box murder. This has nothing to do with x
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Anyone who actually reads the article will discover...it's a reprint of something from November 2003. Whoopty-freaking doo.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
I have been a consumer of violent movies, music, books and games for thirty-odd years. They have had no effect whatsoever on me, and I'll kill any son of a bitch who tries to tell me otherwise.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Does the violence in games have a positive social effect ? Probably not. Does it have a negative social effect ? Probably not.
But to say that the violence in games is unnecessary to gameplay is going a bit too far . Your argument that having fights is a cheap and lazy way of writing a computer game is inappropriate. It takes a fair bit of programming skill to have good enemy AI, which can vastly enrich the experience of a first person shooter. I found this especailly true in Halo, a game with the best enemy AI I've ever seen. In the case of games like Doom3 the monsters (which have very little intelligence, being monsters) simply add to the atmosphere of fear and dread which is the purpose of the game. It would be a shame if the Doom3 engine was used to make a game full of jumping puzzles (something which I absolutely detest in an FPS, but which you seem to like).
Gamespy just published the <a href="http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539197p1<nobr>.<wbr></wbr></nobr> html?fromint=1">second part of their d&d history series</a> which talks mainly about the controversy around d&d and some kid who tried to kill himself. Some people with their own agendas twisted it to their own purposes, trying to ban d&d. It just goes to show that some people are obsessed with this, and no matter the curcumstances they will try to stop things like this.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Media controversies about game violence are said to be bad for the industry, but they often seem to be good for game sales. Manhunt sales surged following highly critical media attention when it was believed the game contributed to a nasty teen-on-teen murder in the UK. It turns out the media accounts were mostly wrong off-base (the cops said it was related to drugs and theft), but by then the game had been mentioned in news stories around the world. No game maker wants to see their work implicated in a violent tragedy. But game publishers know what presses the media's buttons, and I think some of them count on that to generate buzz about a game. GTA San Andreas is a good example, as the NY Times is already writing about it.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
All active entertainment (and most passive) involves conflict. Conflict can be of many different types (emotional, ideological, etc), but the easiest to depict is physical. Thus, violent games are the most common, simply because they're the easiest to create. There are games with other types of conflicts (Purple Moon games, though very crappy, are examples of emotional conflicts.), but violence is still the predominant form. I guess we'll just have to wait and hope for innovative designers who manage to make compelling games with other forms of conflict. The all-but-disappearance of commercial adventure games is particularly sad in this light, as it was the only type of game to contain a 'man vs environment' conflict that was, for the most part, nonviolent. Judging from this, I expect that games with nonviolent conflicts will spring from the adventure genre, and from the independent game designers who keep it alive.
If games really influence people, then all the kids who grew up playing Pacman would today be standin agound in darkened rooms, listening to repetative electronic music and eating lots of pills.
I have no sig yet I must scream.