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Views on Violence in Video Games
CBS News' GameCore site is running a series of articles discussing the ever recurring debate about video games and violent behavior. They start with prominent anti-gaming lawyer Jack Thompson. From the article: "The heads of six major health care organizations testified before Congress that there are hundreds of studies that prove the link. All the video game industry has are studies paid for by them, which are geared to find the opposite result. Lawyers call such experts 'whores.'" Tim Buckley, of the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del, had the chance to put forth an opposing viewpoint on the subject. According to the site there will be more coverage on this topic next week from other gaming community members.
Here's a study that was done...interesting?
Recent medical brain scan studies at Harvard, Indiana University, and elsewhere prove that adolescents' brain functions are damaged by a steady diet of violent images. The heads of six major health care organizations, including the American Medical, Pediatric, and Psychiatric Associations have all testified before Congress in June 2000 that violent entertainment contributes to teen violence. Video games are literally "murder simulators" teaching our kids how to kill.
As time goes by the studies concerning video games and violence will get better and better. We are finally reaching a point where video games with real detail have been around long enough that major studies can be done on them. Studies that have been done in the past are amazingly accurate because the sample size and length of the study can only be so long.
A new study was released yesterday by Tulane Medical which tracked video game users over a 8 year period testing how much the video games they play affect their tendency toward violence. The study found that among those who played games 8% went on to have some form of violence conviction while only 6% of the non-gamers did.
The head of the project though did say that this is something that need a lot more data before any major conclusions can be drawn.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
But not much can be done about it. Games make money. Lots of money. When there's that kind of power behind an industry, the most critics can do is get warning labels on the boxes.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Violence must be caused by video games. There was no murder or violent crime before Grand Theft Auto came out and tainted all of the children!!
...what does that make Thompson? Seriously, this guy has his head so far up his ass, he makes Helen Lovejoy sound rational.
English is easier said than done.
These people are retarded. If they want to stop violence then they should just ban killing people instead.
I find it funny that Jack Thompson is calling the experts that don't agree with him 'whores'. Seems like that's a pot-kettle-black issue to me.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
I'm sorry, I don't understand people who think that you can expose yourself to hours and hours and hours of violence and not become, at least, desensitized to it or, at worst, enticed to it.
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
From the article: I'm sure that at one point or another a golfer snapped and beat someone to death with a 7-iron.
Let's ban golf, shall we?
Wow, how witty. I completely saw past the simplisticness of the allegory there. My mind sure is made up after that comment! Now just throw in a catchy slogan, and I'm hooked!
-- (Score:i , Imaginary)
That violent games can translate to aggression in young boys I think is fairly easy to illustrate. I don't think that means there needs to be wholesale bans or anything but there should be ratings and limits. We don't allow 12 year olds to see rated R movies (okay, we've all snuck into a movie that aside...). We don't allow them to view porn. We shouldn't allow them to buy violent video games.
A lot of people compare this whole issue to television and movies. They say that violent games are no worse then the violence that kids see every day on the news and in the movie theaters. I disagree with this greatly though.
When I watch a movie it is a fairly passive activety. I sit back, enjoy the flick without much involement. When I play a game though, such as grand theft auto or the like, that is a very active thing. I look for pedestrians to run over, I look for police to beat up. Now, I don't think that this nesassarly translates into violence in real life but it is definetly worse then what you see in tv and movies.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
and do something about the idiot parents who let their kid hang a swastika in their room and collect empty gas canisters.
Being an avid gamer and all, I've never ever seen a study published with conclusive evidence linking violence in games to real life. Since supposedly there are hundreds of them I'd imagine stumbling across one would be easy but it is amazing difficult.
With millions of people like myself who play violent video games, why aren't we all mass murderers?
Think about it...of course major health care organizations are going to find some sort of link between video games and violence. Think of the BILLIONS of dollars in potential revenue to be had by "treating" kids who play too many games. Now who's the whore?
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Does age or sex play a factor in violent, aggressive behavior?
Sure, the sex and violence centers of the brain overlay one another, which is why the increasing mix of sex and violence is troubling. Armies have been known to go on rape rampages after battles because the violence stimulates sexual aggression. How lovely that GTA weds sex and violence in the same game. We are training a generation of teens to combine sex with violence, just what America needs.
Does this man not understand that in the English language, "sex" can refer to gender? What does he write on forms that ask his sex? "Yes, please?" Probably, "Goodness, no!" actually.
By the way, I'd like to know where these "sex and violence centers of the brain" are. Maybe we could just lobotomize everyone and cure all our ills.
English is easier said than done.
American football is basically gladitorial arena combat (which makes it neat), but nobody complains about the violence it induces in our children.
To the Media: Stop the perpetuation of unfounded fear! It's almost as though they want to keep humanity in constant fear...oh wait, they do.
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I'm sure that many lazy parents are going to be fully in support of the causality link argument, so they can continue to not have to monitor what their children are playing and can point the finger elsewhere and say "it's their fault little Billy burned down the school".
An exaggeration, but still... people need to take some personal responsibility for how their children behave. Linking violence in games to children's actions is beside the point when they should not be playing M-rated titles to begin with.
Right. And there were no evil corporations before Microsoft, no lawsuits before that lady spilled coffee on her lap at McDonalds, etc.
Personally, I think there is a link to violent behavior and how we as a society have come to accept it as "normal". Video games are a part of that culture, but they are by no means something you can point at as a single cause. We have a US President that is a war monger. You can see people getting killed all over television, but show a bare breast and the entire country freaks the F out. Over the last 20 years or so, we have been propagating the message that violence is normal and OK. We are a very silly nation.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I found it difficult to take him seriously after the first question:
Again and again throughout the interview, he basically takes an elitist stance that says "if you don't agree with me you're stupid." Here, if you don't agree that "M-rated means violent" then the implication is that you must be too dumb to accept what "everybody" thinks.
It would have been interesting to see him actually answer the question, as Tim Buckley did. Compare and contrast:
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As a disclaimer, I must first state that I have had no direct interaction with either profession, however it is my understanding that whores provide a pleasurable, possibly valuable, service in exchange for money. I am fairly sure that lawyers do not, and so any analogy between the two is misleading at best, and insulting to whores at worst.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I have no earthly idea, and no one can guess at that. I can tell you that some crimes would not occur but for the violent entertainment. For the families of the deceased, that is the only statistic that matters.
Francis Schaeffer once said "Art reflects culture". The fact that so many people buy and play violent video games (which is an amazing art form) tells more about who we are as a culture than will the history books. To blame the manufacturers isn't getting to the root of the problem.
I don't know what the answer is. I think there probably is some link between people being desensitized to violent and playing violent games, but I also don't think laws will do anything more than to fuel debate and make lawyers wealthy.
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Sure, they may play Grand Theft Auto and shoot at people. But they could just as easily get inspiration from the latest 50 Cent album or even a TIME magazine article detailing the Columbine massacre. Hell, there are enough wackos blaming their crimes on God speaking to them, shouldn't we point the finger at religion too?
The bottom line is that you never know how the mind of a sociopath is going to interpret something - so video games hold no more blame than anything else.
Despite the contentious issue of violent game playing on player health, I concur with James Gee of UWisc. I'll paraphrase one of his arguments, as I can't recollect which precise article it's in:
While game playing might contain violent aspects, the cognitive engagement is far different than, say, bullying or beating up some poor kid. How the player thinks about their experience - entertainment and fun, for example, rather than punishment or retribution - is important.
Furthermore, some of my own research asks, despite violence in videogames, what do players learn through their playing? The results have, so far, been a surprise. Younger players use the medium for socialization with older players; groups of players focus on teamwork skills (nothing amazing there) and the game environment requires active thinking about strategy for success. My own next step is to explore "gaming clans," and clan players' motivations.
Nonetheless, the question we should all be asking is, given that violence is inherant to our humanistic being, in what modes is it possible a constructive experience, and in what modes is it destructive?
Bandura's social cognititve theory might suggest that the illustration of violence begets further violent behavior. But that we haven't all killed each other, and that we don't punch random stranges on the street, despite having watched violent television programming, indicates a compromise.
More later, this is a wonderful subject! --dave
So is *every* industry full of whores?
I challenge anyone to name a single industry which doesn't conduct "studies" which favour itself.
Nothing's as bad as the pharmaceutical industry. Or how about the world of financial analysis at the end of the 90's? Those were some pretty screwed up "studies".
And now we've got characters like David Lereah (head of the Association of Realtors) on TV everyday screeching "There is no housing bubble" (although he's sounding very depserate lately).
Using the media, the legal system, the court of public opinion, and analysis/forecasting is *how* business is done today. We live in 'spin land'. If you're going to start calling people whores than apparently we're living in one big giant brothel.
Hey... how come I'm not getting laid?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Take a look :
:
Statistics
from the link
"Serious violent crime levels declined since 1993. "
"Firearm-related crime has plummeted since 1993."
"Violent crime rates declined for both males and females since 1994. Rates for males and females have been getting closer in recent years."
The last blurb I find particularly interesting.I am willing to bet that most girls DO NOT play violent video games, whereas most males probably do. Perhaps the games are allowing people to work out their aggression in other ways?
This chart is also interesting. Remember DOOM came out in 1993, at almost the peak of the chart.
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The only thing this guy says that I can really get behind is that we need to restrict the sale of violent video games to minors. I firmly believe that developers have the right to make games like GTA or Manhunt, much the same way directors have the right to make games like Pulp Fiction or Goodfellas. But I don't believe that minors have any right whatsoever to buy them. I was once the manager at a video store, and I think I was thought of as a ratings nazi, because if you weren't 18, and your parents weren't okay with it, you weren't renting it. Simple.
The problem, of course, is that you can make it absolutely impossible for kids to buy these games and they'll still get them, because the average parent is too damn stupid to know that GTA may or may not be appropriate for their 10-year-old. There is this idea that the over-40 set has stuck in their head that *videogames are automatically for kids*...same way cartoons are automatically for kids. They can't grasp the idea of either one being made with adults as an intended audience. I was working at said video store when GTA:III first came out. I told every parent whose kid convinced them to rent the game for them, whether they solicited my advice or not, that it might not be appropriate. Most were like, "what, is there some swearing or violence in it?" I would reply the same every time: "You can beat hookers to death with a baseball bat to get back the money you gave them to have sex with you in the back of the car, which you stole from an old man who you also beat to death with a baseball bat."
Nine out of ten put it back. Parents just don't get it. Maybe if the game industry had paid whatever the MPAA was more than likely asking to use their ratings scheme it would sink in a little better...parents see an "R" rating and they think 16 or 17 and up. They see "M" and they think 10 or 11 and up. Because again, videogames are just for kids, right?
My opinion is that violent movies can have nearly as much effect on kids as games, but you don't see a push to ban violent movies. It's not hard to figure out why this is, of course...lawmakers actually watch violent movies. They don't tend to play games. I think ten years from now when the videogame generation starts getting elected to office (if they get up of the couch and run, that is!), maybe this will finally become the non-issue it should be...because the people in office will actually understand that videogames aren't much different from movies, and that violent players are the rare exception, not the rule.
On a final note, I am so damn sick of hearing video games being blamed for Columbine. Nobody seems to think that maybe the way kids treat each other, combined with general lack of give-a-damn from parents and faculty, combined with relatively easy access to guns that led to that incident. The video games were just an excellent scapegoat.
Other studies have proven that kids that are raised on alcohol and heroin grow up to be druggies.
That's why it's the parents responsibility to keep them out of their hands, not the governments nor anyone elses.
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
When I have one I will think of them, and being the huge gamer I am I know there will be many games my kids won't even see untill I think they're at the age where they can handle them.
I'm just so god damn sick and tired of lazy parents pointing the fingers everywhere else.
*DrugCheese rants*
Take a random selection of at least 100 people, divide it into two groups of at least 50. Force, and I do mean FORCE one group to play violent video games for a period of however long you think is neccesary to make them violent. 1 year, at 1 hour a day seems reasonable to me. If they don't enjoy playing the game, tough. They have to do it.
Prevent, and I do mean PREVENT one group from playing violent games for the same period.
Compare both groups violent tendencies, IQs, etc. etc. with the people deciding who is "violent" etc. having no idea which group the subjects belong to.
Such studies have been done before. They found ZERO, NADA, NO increase in violent tendencies.
So of course the fools claim "you got the age wrong" or "You didn't force them to play enough" etc. etc. etc.
Not a single study has demonstrated causality. I personally think this is because there is NO causality. People that like violent games grow up to be violent. People that watch violent games think violent thoughts for a short period after (24 hours is the max I have seen tested). But neither of those things means that watching the games makes you act violently.
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One of the most fundamental facts of human behavior is that we are literally shaped by what we choose to put into our minds. We become what we dwell up and it does affect how we act whether you will acknowledge it or not. While I'm not saying that playing a game will make you a killer, it does beg the question... If a 30 second spot can sell you on a product, what can hours upon hours of interactive, life-like entertainment sell you on?
All of the parents who I know who are similar in age to me (mid-30's) played (or had high levels of exposure) video games as children, and violence in gaming isn't something really to get bent out of shape on. The sex still bothers this same group of people to varying levels, but the violence does not, which illustrates our unfortunate Puritan heritage...
When I was a kid, watching re-runs of "The Three Stooges", "Batman" and "Tom & Jerry" was considered to be "too violent" for children to watch since they could act out certain behaviors on the playground. Which did happen but my Dad told me that was happening long before TV ever came out.
The only violence I had as a teenager was when someone bashed my head into a sign and fought back. As an adult I have gotten a few fist fights because someone tried to intimidate me with the threat of violence and they were surprised when I fought back in response.
Should I blame the TV shows that I watched, or the country music and talk shows I was forced to listened to as my dad's truck only got two radio stations, in my youth. The Atari 2600 video game console and video arcades in my teenage years? Or should I blame Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 that I play as an adult?
I think the blame still lies with the parents for the home environment they build for the children. My parents were abusive towards each other and alcohol played a big part. My older brother became a drug addict for most of his life. I ended up rejecting all that to become a Christian and living a clean life.
Seems like the responsibility of raising children is everyone's except the parents these days.
There really *are* more and more studies that show this statistical correlation. Studies where the control group plays a nonviolent game and the experimental group plays a violent one... and then, afterwards, are the various experiments. One involves the subjects leaving the way they came, and seeing a person in pain. The response times to help the person vary dramatically between these otherwise peer groups.
There's not much question that seeing violent images desensitises you to violent images anymore (whether these are lasting is up for debate).
One reason why this isn't taken seriously is because they've been decrying video games since Pac-Man- and earlier studies, IIRC, didn't show much correlation.
The important thing to get out of this is not a bunch of freedom-trashing legislation though: a movie about WWII would cause the same kind of desensitisation. Many things would. Scientists haven't tested for it (and lacking video, the effect wouldn't be as strong probably), but don't you think they could link antisocial / violent behavior to the "wrong" kind of books? Using this logic, why stop at video games?
What we are seeing isn't scientists making interesting notes about how sights, sounds, and thoughts condition us to accept more things *like* those- we're seeing a pack of lawyers circling like sharks to try to attack a group of newly "liable" "perpetrators"- and if they beath the hell out of the first amendment doing so, oh well.
Like all good things done to destroy your rights, this one will be "for the good of the children".
If you back this, just remember it in a few years when they prove the same thing about adults (easy, since conditioning works just as well for both), living with a "more violent than average family" (which will be half of families), or... well... political disagreement.
You either have free speech or you don't. Protecting free speech doesn't mean being able to say that purple is my favorite color: it means allowing speech that everyone disagrees with and may, in fact, be harmful.
Similarly, gun nuts say "guns don't kill people, people kill people" and fans of violent movies deny their role.
Are Americans HAPPY with the level of violence in their society, or perhaps accepting of it because it is a necessary trade-off for some other desirable aspect of their culture? Because it's undeniable that compared to other civilized first world countries, the level of violence in America is very high. Yet every interest group insists that their pet recreation has nothing to do with it. If videogames don't contribute to violent behaviour, what IS causing America's disproportionately high levels of violence?
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
True. Anyone who has read "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" knows all about suggestability and the Werther's effect. The basic concept -- which works for TV, games, books, anything -- is that the more closely someone can relate to what they see, the more likely they are to mimick that behavior. So a little yellow pac man eating ghosts isn't going to influence anyone to eat ghosts, but a bunch of bunch of Burger King ads featuring black males in their 20s and 30s suddenly makes their sales demographic skew toward black males in their 20s and 30s.
This is why when my daughter sees grandparents in a commercial advertising a drug, she doesn't care. But when she sees an ad featuring 3 9-year-old girls fawning over their cool Bratz journal, she suddenly wants one. Her Amazon wish list is almost a perfect mirror of every ad that has appeared on Nickelodeon in the past 6 months. That's not by mistake. When someone targets your demographic, you can be influenced.
Of course, some people are immune to this stuff. Any free-thinking person who is remotely self-aware can sense when their buttons are getting pressed. But it gets harder to sense manipulation when it's not deliberate. I think games are art. As such, they often do nothing more than hold a mirror up to society, possibly to provide a jarring wake-up call. Or possibly just to be jarring. :) But in any case, as they become hyper-realistic, we get pulled in and influenced. For example, I love Vampire: Bloodlines. My wife and kids have called me a vampire for years -- I love the movies, I love being awake at night and sleeping at day, I think the culture is sexy. When I'm in playing that game, nothing breaks the illusion that I'm in that game world. It feels comfortable. The problem? It completely objectifies women, something I do not get in my real-world life. But there, in the game, it's quite nice. How much carries over into my real-life thinking? Enough that I have to check myself. I don't think the game developers intended for that to happen, it just did.
You can take a jab at me and say that I must have a weak mind if I let that affect me. But I don't mind, it IS in fact a defect that I can be so suggestable. And that's the point. These studies are not about strong-willed Slashdotters who have their shit together. These studies are of the huge number of weak-minded people who have no idea that they are internalizing what they see. Those people are a problem, and there are a lot of them.
My wife is a shrink. About half of her clients' problems are simply that they have surrounded themselves with negative influences for so long that they're stewing in it, and can't see what it's doing. For the other half of her clients, she uses these techniques on THEM. In other words, if a 30-something mom is scared of wide open spaces, my wife will show the her videos of 30-something women enjoying the outdoors. For many people, this stuff seeps into the psyche and changes thinking.
In the end, the point I would make is twofold. First, it is nice to see some Slashdotters understanding this finally. Three years ago when this stuff would come up here, it was always 100% rejected as baloney. Second, while our environment influences us, and what we fill our minds with influences us, it is only the extremely violence-prone who are so susceptible to this that they cross a line. So I do not want to be penalized for their mistakes. I don't know how you work that out, but there must be a way. For example, instead of banning something, make it available only to adults.
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Actually I had the urge to commit violence and did it. But not by playing a game. I just read a book. In fact I duplicated various human sacrifices mentioned in the Bible. Actually I was playing the game, "The true Bible," and got it from there.
*Not this is not really true but what if someone said that.
** This game does not exist but if it did then it would contain more violence than most movies. If, "The Passion of the Christ," the game came out, that depicts torture, though it was for "good" reasons. Would playing that be a factor? Is it because it is real? Because it is religious or Christian? What about a game where Christians fought back against ancient Romans in the 100's AD? You try to kill as many Roman guards to allow you religion, Christianity, to flourish.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
My 11-year olds saw at least one R-rated movie years back. "Waiting for Guffman" was rated R (thanks to the totally surreal fundie/Catholic world of the MPAA's ratings board) but I thought it was watchable for them. Tonight we've got a copy of "The Big Night" from Netflix, and it also has an R, probably for language. I have no trouble letting them see that.
The limits on games right now are advisory, and stores sell according to them basically in order to keep their reputations. That's the way I want it. The power in this situation is with the parents if they will only exercise it. That's as much as we can really hope for.
(In general I think tons of social problems in the US today come down to economic pressures that force both parents to work without giving us as much flexibility as we need to raise families. Nothing against women working, it's not a gender thing -- but kids need adults in their lives, and it's just plain a bad economic situation when there's this much pressure drawing the attention of adults away. Personally, as someone who's benefitted from it, I think flex time is a much more effective solution to a variety of social ills than most of the "scary problem!" legislation that gets suggested.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
A new study was released yesterday by Tulane Medical which tracked video game users over a 8 year period testing how much the video games they play affect their tendency toward violence. The study found that among those who played games 8% went on to have some form of violence conviction while only 6% of the non-gamers did.
Correllation does not prove causality. Consider, for example the following hypothetical statistics:
Now we conduct an omnipitant study of 1 million people. Results show:
Now a study committed by mere mortals that looks only at the numbers and doesn't look deeper would show:
Both of these studys show a strong correlation between playing violent games and committing crimes. But in reality, the violent games have actually eliminated 60,000 violent crimes and the availibility of violent games have reduced the amount of violence by 30%.
There are many other reasons for violent crime. There is a statistical indication that the drug war may have doubled violent crime (not even counting the crimes perpetrated by the government) just as prohibition did. There is considerable violence against racial and sexual minorities. The poor are increasingly desparate in our rich get richer, poor get poorer economy.
Someone was pointing out to me, that in an area of the city where I live, that there has been a substantial outbreak of armed robbery. This followed a recent crackdown on dope dealing. Possible cause: the remaining dope dealers have decided that it is safer to commit armed robbery and split than to wait around long enough for both drug buyters and police to find them.
Or, if the group that had NO previous history of violence had a rate of engaging in future violent behaviour higher than the control group, then that would be meaningful.
The most interesting thing to know would be how they selected the two groups. If there was any self selection involved, it's just as likely that those with a latent tendancy towards violence will tend to self-select to play video games at a slightly higher rate than those without the tendancy. Do you have a link to the study?
Other factors could also come into play. For example, kids with less parental interaction will be more likely to sit in their room playing video games. It could just as easily be the parental interaction that matters.
Given that it's an 8 year study, I imagine that the two groups were, in fact, self selected.
Nope, he's right and you're wrong. The point which he describes is not the average, but the median. As IQ is normally distributed (well, it's designed to be), it's symmetric about 100, so that its median and average (mean) are the same.
IQ tests are normalized based on scads and scads of results for lots and lots of people. A test taker is given a score of 100 because half of the people who took it in the calibration group scored higher, and half lower.
So, while the mean isn't necessarily the median, it sometimes is, and you won't always score cheap points by saying it isn't.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In every generation, we have some idiots running around trying to blame some aspect of youth culture for the fact that teenaged boys are, on average, more violent than grownups.
The fact that violent crimes, and even violent crimes by young people have steadily declined as games have become both more violent and more realistic proves that any possible pro-violence effect of games is statistically negligible relative to other social and cultural factors.
The possibility that violent videogames actually decrease real world violence cannot be excluded, and is consistent with the data (although one can think of many other explanations--perhaps the decrease in violence is due to violent movies, rather than violent games, or to easier availability of pornography, or liberalized abortion laws).
Experimental studies that attempt to correlate "violent behavior" with gameplaying (or violent TV, for that matter) are pretty much crap. I've read a number of these studies, and they either confuse aggression with serious violence (a boy pushing or hitting another kid is not the same as a serious attempt to kill or maim) or fail to properly control for overall excitement (there would have to be a control stimulus that is equally exciting, confirmed by heart rate measurements--a sports match, perhaps).
Studies that track kids and try to relate their violent behavior with their taste in media are also pretty worthless, because they are not randomized (that is, they don't pick a bunch of kids at random and force them to play games several hours a day whether they want to or not). As a result, you can't distinguish between the hypothesis that kids with a propensity for violence like violent entertainment and the hypothesis that violent entertainment causes real violence.
National Public Radio (NPR) interview between a female broadcaster and US Marine Corps General Reinwald who was about to sponsor a Boy Scout Troop visiting his military installation: ... are you?
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: So, General Reinwald, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?
GENERAL REINWALD: We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery, and shooting.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?
GENERAL REINWALD: I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised on the rifle range.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?
GENERAL REINWALD: I don't see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: But you're equipping them to become violent killers.
GENERAL REINWALD: Well, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one,
Broadcast media slams games. They have since they first began to show up. They do it now. They always will.
Their newsrooms hype every study purporting to show a connection between violence and games (while simultaneously burying any making the same connection between violence and TV). Ditto between anything else bad and games. (Low test scores, low income, alcoholism, etc.)
Their made-for-TV movies have main plots or subplots slamming games. Their sitcoms have episodes on games. Their commedians make cracks about games.
They did it to RPGs and the did it to video games. They do similar things to home computers, computer programming, and a number of internet activities (blogs, news outlets, mailing lists, online entertainments, file swapping, social contact facilitating 'ware of every sort, etc.).
Why do they do it?
Because it's their COMPETITION!
Video games and RPGs compete for eyeball time against their shows. This costs them advertising revenue. Online entertainment ditto. Social networking also takes time away from viewing, AND may lead to other non-TV-watching activities far beyond the time spend in front of a screen.
Network news outlets and news-related blogs scoop theirs regularly and expose their errors and malfesance. This reduces both their audience-related revenue and their effectiveness as a political tool.
TV networks are part of media conglomerates. So online "content" production/distribution tools (in addition to the "piracy" issue) pose a threat to their own offline operations.
And so on.
So when you hear them claim things are bad you need to consider the source, and dig down to the underlying meat, to discover whether there's anything behind the hype - or whether it's just something that either matches their current templates for an eyeball-attractor or promotes their own interests by slamming their opposition.
Which is, of course, what we're doing here. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I simply can't believe that we are still having the debate of whether or not video games influence child behavior. If a child plays video games for 2+ hours a day OF COURSE it influences their behavior. Children are like sponges; they soak up whatever they experience; our brains are designed to do this as we are growing up.
/. crowd vastly overestimates the number of gaming minors who have the technical savy to find the image, butn it and mod their playstation or whatever console to play it. 25% at most. So the law would not be completely effective, but what law is?
The real question is to what lengths should we go to shield children from things which would influence their behavior negatively. Personally I have no problem with an enforced ratings system.
The two counterarguments to this are:
a) Kids will burn copies anyway and play it.
Response: Yes, some, but I think the
b) This should be the job of the parent.
Response: Perhaps, but the reality is we aren't living in a world where there is a parent watching their child 24/7. Many more families these days either have only one working parent or two parents working fulltime. This just isn't realistic to demand that parents monitor their kids activities 24/7 (not to mention how terrible of a parenting method that would be). Besides, mandatory ratings actually encourage the parent to get involved; if the child wants a game rated M or whatever he/she can attempt to convince the parent he/she is mature enough to handle it. The choice now rests on the parent.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Your second sentence makes no sense so we'll just ignore it.
Since you are having trouble reading let me break this down for you. Some kids see things in a video game and don't understand that they are just playing a game, and think that they may repeat these actions in real life. Hence, not being able to seperate reality from fantasy. Get it?
Leave the sane ones among us to reflect to some extent on whether it is a good idea to have our children spending hours a week engaging in ever more realistic bloodshed.
But you did hit the nail on the head here. Parents, who are the ones really responsible for raising a child, should monitor thier children's activities. They are responsible for the child's upbringing, and should make good decisions for their child based on that fact.
I just don't like congress getting involved in these types of issues.
From my own personal experiences I have played these types of video games since I was a kid, and even watched violent movies. I turned into a normal adult, and I don't have any violence issues whatsoever. Hey, maybe I'm just the exception. I only speak from my experiences.
It's the battle of the minds, and everyone's unarmed.
Is it really so surprising that violent people have usually played violent video games? That's like saying "The vast majority of people who play games that display females in a sexual manner are young men that go on to have sexual relations with women. Therefore, those games must make most men straight and interested in sex."
Does anyone else see the problem with this logic?
On a more personal note, I usually avoid FPS-style games (I find them way too boring), but found GTA a lot of fun. The few times I've played the game, I went around killing as many pedestrians as possible and taking their stuff... so I suspect that puts me squarely in the category of people that is supposedly made violent by video games. Interestingly enough, even though the games that I have played have probably desensitized me to animated blood and gore, I'm extremely squeamish in real life. I actually switched over from biology to computer science this past January in part to get away from dissection... I just can't handle cutting apart a living (or recently-living) thing, even if that thing is just a crab or worm or something. Hell, I even feel bad flushing an amoeba down the drain because I'm afraid it will suffer.
I also can't stand hurting people. A few years back, I took kendo lessons for a few months and found that despite all the anime/movies/games I'd been exposed to where sword fighting was glorified, the whole idea of running at a guy and hitting him with a big stick really wasn't easy for me. There were other reasons why I quit, but that was part of it.
"A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name" - Evan Esar (1899-1995)
Do you think the interactivity of game violence makes it different than violence on television, which is passive?
Of course, as you actually grow neural pathways called dendrites that enable you to perform more easily the physical acts of violence.
Um...I'm not a neurologist, but doesn't that have to do with muscle memory for things like learning to ride a bike? Or, for example, learning how to move your mouth to make certain syllables? I mean, even if you did play a game long enough for your brain to be hard-wired like this, it seems like those pathways would dead-end if there wasn't a controller in your hand.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.