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Violence in Videogames with VG Cats
me at werk writes "Following up on Tim Buckley's interview, CBS News' GameCore has posted the interview with Scott Ramsoomair of VG Cats. From the article: "Psychos will always be psychos; they don't need video games to help them. Though this one time my brother punched me in the arm when I beat him in Mario Kart. Does that count?""
It's good to see Gamespeak hearing from all sides. We need this kind of dialog. It'd be nice, though, to hear someone answer one of his more pressing questions with a "I don't know." I'm hoping for something more from Bungie later in the week. But so far, I've been disappointed with the gaming response on Gamespeak.
So let's get two things out of the way: it's clear that it is not just games that causes violence, it is games + X, where X = unstable childhood, major psychological problems, etc. Secondly, I think everyone would agree that in most cases, if the person didn't use a game as inspiration, they would've used rock n' roll, or Catcher in the Rye, or Pulp Fiction.
But nevertheless, we need more intellgent responses than talking about brothers losing in Mario Kart and the differences between guns and controllers. Not only that, but the game industry should be as troubled as anyone that many of the last decade's most heinous tragedies have had some kind of connection to video games, even if it is as tenuous and silly as the 9-11 to Flight Simulator connection.
The most recent 60 Minutes had a segment on video game violence, and specifically the police shootings associated with GTA. When the show compared the walkthrough of the shooter in the police department with one of the missions in GTA, it was eerily similar. If I were the brother of the slain cop, I would've sued Rockstar as well.
In the Gamespeak article, Ramsoomair, who probably planned his answer overnight, speaks to the causality of video games by responding, "this one time my brother punched me in the arm when I beat him in Mario Kart." Other defenders of video game violence often cite that people have played Pac-Man, but no one is running around gobbling yellow dots.
But it is physically impossible to shoot people with bananas and pick up large blocks and eat powerpellets and fruit in a black maze with neon walls because they don't exist. There is a chasm between the fiction of games like Mario and Zelda with reality. That chasm disappears in GTA. There are police stations. There are real cops. There is such a thing as shotgun, and people do die in both reality and in the game when you point it at people and shoot them. There's a reason why the US Army uses video simulations, like Full Spectrum Warrior for example, to train its troops: it works.
Jack Thompson is an ambulence chasing idiot. But the responses on our side have been as equally unintellegent and insensitive. Billion dollar companies, like EA and Take 2, must be overjoyed to have so many advocates like Ramsoomair working for them for free (EA especially likes unpaid work).
We need to think about this more. We need to start answering these interviews with "I don't know"s. We need to be more sensitive to the victims of crimes that are associated with video games, especially when the relationship between the video game and the violence is so brutally direct, as in the 2003 police shooting. If we'd done this earlier, if we'd developed a more intelligent response than screaming the first amendment and making games like Manhunt, maybe there wouldn't be a place for assholes like Thompson. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."
I'm reminded of one of Chris Rock's comedy routines where he talks about a guy who lives with a woman who smokes crack. He says, "If you don't smoke crack, YOU WILL." citing the inevitability of people influencing each other, one way or the other.
I tend to agree. People who argue against violence in games and the media influencing people only look at the issue from a shallow, instant-cause-and-effect-or-else-nothing perspective. Yes, if you watch someone shoot someone on TV, that doesn't mean that you will go out and shoot someone. Nor does it mean that if you see someone purchasing a big Dodge pickup truck, you are going to head out later that day and buy yourself a big Dodge pickup truck.
HOWEVER, to deny that these images do not transmit subtle (or not-so-subtle) messages which ultimately, either consciously or subconsciously affect our perspective, is naive and foolish.
They do, otherwise commercials would be useless. Just like advertising seeks to change peoples' perspectives on products and services, games, television and other media also alter what people think of things. In commercials, you only see the positive side of consumption; in television and video games, you also tend to only see one, seemingly clinical and detached version of violence -- which inevitably will serve to convince people in minute segments, that such violence isn't as abhorrent as society's moral structure may dictate.
Ask yourself, if a video game where one goes on a killing spree in a police precint can be defended by the status quo as being innocuous, would they feel the same way about a game where you play the Germans exterminating jews in WWII? They're both morally reprehensible, but you can bet that many more people would argue such imagery would be deterimental towards peoples' moral judgement. What's the difference? The difference depends upon who you offend and how, but in essence the same argument applies to all media and to deny that it only applies in select areas is ridiculous.
If you read at the bottom, there's a note from the guy who's done all 3 interviews; this is a testbed for future expansion upon the topic, so he used a standard set of questions for all the interviews so as to try and avoid injecting personal bias, or going off on tangents with any particular person. And in all 3 cases, the answers are all a matter of subjective opinion (even if Thompson wants everyone to believe its a fact).
Its an interesting approach to seeing the views of both sides of the community on game-related violence. Webcomic authors are usually some of the more in-touch people with the pulse of serious gamers (at least, authors like those @ PA, CAD, VGCats, etc). So they're generally well respected voices in the gamer community, and have a little more clout I'd say than Joe Gamer pulled off the street.
Of course it helps that he chose two webcomics (that are both hilarious of course) that are on the more violent/weird side of things, while being drawn by normal, non-homicidal people. They're a perfect contrast to Jack Thompson, and a perfect example of why he's a nutcase.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Number of copies of GTA San Andreas sold in 2004: 5.1 Million
Number of incidence of violence related to GTA: umm... let's say there were as many as 100.
That's 0.001%. No stastician would say that there could be ANY correlation with a number like that.