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Columbine Student on VG Violence
Sophia wrote in to mention some discussion of Video Game Violence on 1up.com this week. Brooks Brown had the experience of attending Columbine High School around the time of the now infamous shooting incident. Via his blog, Brown goes into a detailed discussion of Why Violence in Gaming is a Good Thing. From the article: "GTA isn't about fucking hookers or killing cops. It's a story of a guy who got screwed trying to get back on top. It is, by nature, a story game. Postal 2 may let you kill anyone you want in bloody and disgusting ways - but that's not what it is about either. It is, by nature, a tech demo in the abilities of programmers and AI. it is WE - the gamers - who change what the game is about and determine what happens. It is the person playing who determines what the game contains." Jane Pinckard has a quick reaction to his post. More commentary on this subject is available via John Davison's Blog, who met Brown at a taping of a news program which was ostensibly to be about gaming in general. Instead he was ambushed about violence in games and ended up walking out.
In the days after the Littleton, Colorado massacre, the country went on a panicked hunt the oddballs in High School, a profoundly ignorant and unthinking response to a tragedy that left geeks, nerds, non-conformists and the alienated in an even worse situation than before. Stories all over the country embarked on witchunts that amounted to little more than Geek Profiling. All weekend, after Friday's column here, these voiceless kids -- invisible in media and on TV talk shows and powerless in their own schools -- have been e-mailing me with stories of what has happened to them in the past few days. Here are some of those stories in their own words, with gratitude and admiration for their courage in sending them. The big story out of Littleton isn't about violence on the Internet, or whether or not video games are turning out kids into killers. It's about the fact that for some of the best, brightest and most interesting kids, high school is a nightmare of exclusion, cruelty, warped values and anger.
The big story never seemed to quite make it to the front pages or the TV talk shows. It wasn't whether the Net is a place for hate-mongers and bomb-makers, or whether video games are turning your kids into killers. It was the spotlight the Littleton, Colorado killings has put on the fact that for so many individualistic, intelligent, and vulnerable kids, high school is a Hellmouth of exclusion, cruelty, loneliness, inverted values and rage.
From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Todd Solondz's "Welcome To The Dollhouse," and a string of comically-bitter teen movies from Hollywood, pop culture has been trying to get this message out for years. For many kids - often the best and brightest -- school is a nightmare.
People who are different are reviled as geeks, nerds, dorks. The lucky ones are excluded, the unfortunates are harassed, humiliated, sometimes assaulted literally as well as socially. Odd values - unthinking school spirit, proms, jocks - are exalted, while the best values - free thinking, non-conformity, curiousity - are ridiculed. Maybe the one positive legacy the Trenchcoat Mafia left was to ensure that this message got heard, by a society that seems desperate not to hear it.
Minutes after the "Kids That Kill" column was posted on Slashdot Friday, and all through the weekend, I got a steady stream of e-mail from middle and high school kids all over the country -- especially from self-described oddballs. They were in trouble, or saw themselves that way to one degree or another in the hysteria sweeping the country after the shootings in Colorado.
Many of these kids saw themselves as targets of a new hunt for oddballs -- suspects in a bizarre, systematic search for the strange and the alienated. Suddenly, in this tyranny of the normal, to be different wasn't just to feel unhappy, it was to be dangerous.
Schools all over the country openly embraced Geek Profiling. One group calling itself the National School Safety Center issued a checklist of "dangerous signs" to watch for in kids: it included mood swings, a fondness for violent TV or video games, cursing, depression, anti-social behavior and attitudes. (I don't know about you, but I bat a thousand).
The panic was fueled by a ceaseless bombardment of powerful, televised images of mourning and grief in Colorado, images that stir the emotions and demand some sort of response, even when it isn't clear what the problem is.
The reliably blockheaded media response didn't help either. "Sixty Minutes" devoted a whole hour to a broadcast on screen violence and its impact on the young, heavily promoted by this tease: "Are video games turning your kids into killers?" The already embattled loners were besieged.
"This is not a rational world. Can anybody help?" asked Jamie, head of an intense Dungeons and Dragons club in Minnesota, whose private school guidance counselor gave him a choice: give up the game or face counseling, possibly suspension. Suzanne Angelica (her online handle) was told to go home and leave her b
Uhh, I'm pretty sure it was pretty much a 'kill everything that moves, and even if it doesn't move, kill it anyway just to be sure' kind of game. It was innovative in the ways you could kill people though. Very creative.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.....
The real danger is with racing games. Try racing an Audi S4 around in Project Gotham all day, then hopping into a real S4 to go to the grocery store. Dangerous stuff.
If I'm not mistaken, all forms of drugs were legal up until around the turn of the century. People used to be able to medicate themselves as they chose. But after society perceived that drugs were causing harm to the youth, there was a big push for leglislation.
If the political push continues against violence in video games (and I think it will), it will be interesting to see if this "war on game violence" plays out the same way. That would mean either some kind of certification to use games or perhaps some biometric age device hooked up to game players. I don't believe games harm anyone, btw, but in politics perception is everything.
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I have often thought that people who were likely to commit murder were attracted to violent video games, and NOT that violent video games created murderers. Perhaps we should find out what percentage of violent video game players DO NOT commit violent crimes... probably in the high 90 percentage count. Also, perhaps we should find out how many people who commit violent crimes didn't even play violent video games. For those who believe in the Bible... Cain slew Abel... and that was before violent video games, movies, or anything else of that nature.
If video games caused violence, we'd have terrible world wide child violence and regular school shootings by now. We don't. I belive this is all about children with psychological issues that, of course, may be influenced by video games, but so would they be by movies, TV and news by this theory.
I believe a video game simulation is nothing compared to how convincing real events illustrating the true nature of gruesome human behavior, and we're basically fed with this daily through television. People call watching it educating.
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I've always thought that if a kid can't tell the difference between a video game and the real world, and thinks it's okay to shoot people like in a video game, his parents need to step in very quickly and get him help and stop him from playing those games. I've been playing computer games from a young age, and I've never had the urge to actually take out a gun and shoot someone.
His observations on how it's not the game itself, but what you bring to the game, is right on the money.
As an example, how many people have played Civilization III?
So... what's it about?
Is it about a brave tribe of people who are struggling to establish a civilization under your benevolent leadership, and advance their learning and culture while they peacefully expand, only to be constantly attacked by less enlightened and/or more warlike cultures?
Or is it about a tribe of people who have fallen under your evil domination, who you will then guide forward through the ages in an orgy of conquest, until you stand astride the Earth as its sole Overlord?
Or is it just a bunch of pixels being moved around by the in-game AI, and you're a video gamer with a few hours to kill, amusing yourself by trying to defeat the AI opponents in the game?
It can be any one of those things, depending upon the imagination of the player.
From Brown's blog:
For those of you who don't know me - i went to columbine, i was friends with both killers and the killed, had reported the killers to the police, the cops did nothing, etc.
From Davison's blog:
Today I got a note from Brooks Brown, who if you can cast your mind back all the way to 1999 was the Columbine student who warned police deputies that Eric Harris was building pipe bombs and had threatened to kill him. "I was that guy on the show with you," he said. "Wondered a few things - first, wanted to say nice job, and it was fucked up what they did. They actually edited the show's content so my points weren't let in."
I'm not sure if that necessarily makes him an expert, but it's enough to make me interested in his thoughts on the topic.
"If we don't take action, we end up at the mercy of unscrupulous media outlets in control of the message. They do exactly what the games they deplore do: make viewers watch by titilating them with sensationalistic violence. The difference is, games are entertainment; the news is not supposed to be."
If you leave your kid all day around games/movies/music/newspaper/TV, and you don't spend the time educating him, telling him about right or wrong, loving him, that sort of "old fashioned" stuff, well, maybe he will grow up with a skewed view of life.
The thing is that parents (even bad ones) are voters, so it's hard from the policital point of view to say "hey, you're bad parents! you're to blame!". It's much "safer" to blame "those darn videogames and rock music!" because videogames and songs don't vote!
Anyway, maybe we as a society should start paying a bit more atention to parenting. After all, to put it in Scott Adam's words, we need a license to drive/fish/whatever but to be a parent we only need a couple of organs. And maybe between all the people that have those organs there are some who can't take care of themselves, let alone a child...
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Why can't interviewees in that position think quickly enough to state on camera that they were obviously invited onto the show under false pretenses and then ask why their audience should expect to have the truth told to them when they obviously didn't tell the truth to get the interviewee onto the show?
I like to think it's a lot higher than 90%.
E.g., World Of Warcraft currently has some 2 million subscribers. If a whole 10% of them were that influenceable, you'd have some 200,000 people running around with swords trying to slash their class mates.
In reality, we have, what? Maybe 10-20 people who were anywhere near (debatably) influenced by games, out of maybe that many millions of gamers. We're not even talking one percent, we're talking maybe 1 in a million.
And were games the real reason there? Or is it just another scapegoat? We have people who got bullied _daily_, and eventually one of them breaks under stress and goes homicidal. Happens every day among non-gamers too. E.g., since "Postal 2" is mentioned, the term "to go postal" has to do with, you know, post office employees and pre-dates video games.
But games make an easy scapegoat and a very visible straw man. Blaming everything on one simple bogeyman (games, jews in 1930's Germany, world conspiracies, etc) is _easy_. It lets one ignore the more complex _real_ problems.
We're all suddenly no longer to blame for failed parenting, the massive cultural failure in which being smart in school is _uncool_, for the social factors involved, etc. Nosiree, bob, it's the games that are to blame.
I find it sad.
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"GTA isn't about fucking hookers or killing cops. It's a story of a guy who got screwed trying to get back on top."
So it's about a guy who got screwed and is trying to get back on top... On top of what again? The criminal world? By enacting all sorts of violent mischief? Who just happens to fuck hookers and kill cops along the way?
Now don't get me wrong, I love videogames, but the line this guy is trying to rationalize is so thin as not to even exist. It's as if the author is trying to explain away the fact that the game is putting you in direct control of a quasi-gansta whose missions are to almost exclusively commit acts of violence against rivals and society at large. I mean, let's not sugar coat this here. You can't divorse the two concepts, as well as the fact that it becomes more than "just a story" when you have user interaction. You're programming your brain with tactics, responces and behaviors in order to operate in that environment. I'll be the first to say most pleas of Videogame violence is way too overrated, but I'll also be up there in saying that it's not as harmless as some of the developers would have you believe. For most well adjusted people, it probably IS harmeless. But for a developing child? You have to be fucking kidding me. There's a reason sesame street exists and it's to program kids. Or, conversly, you can program them with GTA. Both purposely or inadvertantly will do the same thing, and to try and totally absolve yourself of the potential impact you're making on anybody playing is rationalist idiocy.
And yes, the parents have the biggest role in that development. But I wish these devs would call their games for what they are instead of trying to hide behind this conjured BS.
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It's the fact that mankind has an inborn propensity for violence. The problem isn't violent video games, but that we haven't addressed the fundamentally violent nature of mankind.
Lenin and Hitler killed millions before the first video game had been invented; our violent nature is as old as recorded history.
Instead of blaming a scapegoat (video games), parents would be better off recognizing this fundamental trait (propensity for violence) of human nature and teaching their children to overcome it. After all, keeping the kids away from violent video games won't keep the bullies from bullying, nor will it keep them from getting angry... The ability to take revenge isn't limited to those who have played violent video games.
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His main point seems to be that modern games give people the freedom to do whatever they want, and it is the gamers that choose to cause violence. This is of course, bullshit.
Of the three games he focuses on, I have only played GTA, but while that games does allow you to do many things, the majority of the things it lets you do are violent. Where is the option to bring peace between the clans through negotiation? Where is the option to join the police, and help deal with the clan warfare through proper authorities? Going further, where is the option to help out the poor and homeless at the soup kitchen? Where is the option to move out to the suburbs, and get a real job, have some kids? Where is the option to travel to other countries, learn new languages, trek across the Andes?
While its true that fucking a hooker, then killing her to get the money back is not part of the main game of GTA3, and was only discovered by some sicko, there is no option to give her some of the hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars that you end up with up with to sponsor her through college.
I like GTA, and I don't think that violent video-games necessarily cause people to be violent, however it is very naïve to say that games like GTA are completely neutral, and it is games that make them violent
I understand the empathy for the victim-villians of the piece, but I wonder just how many of the geeks who identified with the Columbine shooters would be willing to treat the 9/11 perps with the same consideration. I heard a lot of introspection about bullying and alienation in high schools after the Columbine massacre: if anyone dares put any historical or political context around 9/11, they are shouted down.
It seems to me that America tends to kill people. And that's probably why there's a high crime rate- people will usually prefer to do criminal acts to try to avoid dying.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"And it totally misses the point. Even if games don't "force" people do to anything, they can still be dangerous if they encourage certain behavior, or make certain behavior seem better than it actually is.
Games provide an outlet where there are no consequences; as such they can reveal underlying desires or curiosity in people. I've found the games people play and how they play them is more a reflection of the player, and not so much influenced by the game.
For example in GTA getting enjoyment from going around and shooting people randomly is more driven by some feelings already existing in the player. Doing so makes the game harder, as you keep having cops show up to stop you. You have the freedom to do so, but it's up to the player to decide whether it's fun or not.
Games may give you a non-violent choice, but they make the violent choice more fun! Who doesn't want to have fun?
Once again the "fun" lays in the hands of the player. RPGs often give you the choice between good and evil paths. I have more fun following the noble path. While somebody else may have more fun slaughtering the serfs in the fields and taking their possessions. The game hasn't changed, the player has.
Many stealth-action games let you bust in and kill everybody, but you also have the option to sneak in and accomplish your mission. Some people enjoy the gunfight, other people enjoy the tension of stealth.
I'm really surprised at people who try to make the sale of games to minors an issue of free speech. Restricting the sale of cigarettes and booze and porn to minors is not a violation of free speech, and neither is restricting the sale of computer games.
I agree. Restriction of games is not the same as banning. It just gives parents a tool to help parent their children.
And, like the tobacco industry or the auto industry, they'll keep claiming that "there's no evidence our product kills people" because they don't want to know.
The problem with your analogy is that the auto or tobacco industry issues are based in basic science. The impact of games is much more difficult to quantify, since it is only part of a number of psychological influences.
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Computer games are just the latest incarnation of the human desire to _play_ at violence. It's fine to play cops and robbers so long as you know when you're the bad guys.
Your point about "The killers at Columbine weren't geeks, nerds, goths, dorks, weirdos, metalheads, skaters, or punks." is true. But I don't buy your conclusion. The groups you point to have found outlets for their frustrations. "I'm a homicidal maniac," says Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family Movie, explaining why she apparently didn't dress up for Halloween. "They look like everybody else."
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I didn't experience quite the hell spoken of here in High School. I got my dose of it starting in Kindergarden.
It starts pretty simply. Some kids are bigger that others, and they discover they can use this to get what they want. Honest children who understand that violence is wrong, or at least that their parents don't want them to be violent, get beat up by the kids that don't.
Elementary School was stacked against me the moment I entered it. I was smarter than most, deeper thinking, moral, criticizing of others (best way to piss people off), and utterly different. I was the only kid in my school with utterly curly hair, and I was also something of a crybaby. You couldn't have done a better job of setting me up for trouble if you had designed me with torment in mind.
In any case, my only friends were outcasts like myself. The worst part about it is the downward spiral it leads you into. No one includes you in the games, or the sports. So, you begin to detest the activities you're excluded from. Finally, you end up being skilless and unathletic not because you never wanted to exercise or play with a ball, but because no one would let you.
Because you can't play basketball or tag properly, you get made fun of more and excluded more. So, you get worse at the game, and then get made fun of even more. A vicious cycle if ever there was any.
After fourth grade, I was pulled out of public school and homeschooled by my parents, something I fully intend on doing with my own children whenever I have any. My friends at college may sometimes use me as an example of how homeschooling leads to being anti-social, but that's hardly true. My older sister was homeschooled as long as I was, but wasn't ostracized the way I was. Social butterfly is a phrase that comes to mind for her. What made me anti-social was my experience with the society of my own kind giving me an obvious "you're not welcome here".
I was homeschooled through high school, though I took a couple science and language courses at the local public High School because having dangerous chemicals around the house wasn't my parents idea of safety.
I was probably spared much of the hell that permeated the air around me because I had been out of the system for so long. My actual interest in learning and talent for it got me on the good side of every teacher I took a class from, which probably played a large factor in the relatively light attacks made against me.
Perhaps the reality simply was that I was being excluded, but I didn't notice because I had already been actively excluding myself from the public school system anyway.
In that regard I was an anomaly. I had no interest in being a part of the system, and that cut off most anything they could do to me, aside from hurl random insults. Without interest in the system, excluding me was worthless (and trying to include me would have been a victory for outcasts everywhere), and with a home base of supportive friends also set apart from the system, ostracizing me simply maintained my disinterest without hurting me.
Without a typical social life, I spent most of my time reaching out to my outcast friends. However, after all of elementary school and middle school to screw them up, the kinds of problems they had weren't curable by the reappearance of a fellow outcast.
One by one, I watched and reached and cried as I saw all of my outcast friends descend into depths of darkness that many of them remain in to this day, even after years of graduating.
When Columbine happened, my mother said, "Where were their parents?" My parents watched me play video games, plenty of violent ones at that. They also watched my sister who'd never taken a single karate lesson best me despite the fact I had a black belt because I was utterly against actually hurting anyone. They knew what was up.
Both the government and its extremities and parents these days are concerned with finding a scapegoat for their failures, and not fixing themselves. How else
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
... the caretaker had a dog.
Kids picked on that dog for months, while the caretakers weren't watching.
One day the dog, up until that time friendly and well-behaved, went psycho, and started randomly baring its teeth and snarling, even attacking the kids.
Its behaviour had changed suddenly and instantly.
I've seen the same thing happen with school kids.
Humans are pack animals - we have a psychologically profound requirement for love from our own pack.
Constant harrasment from our peers deeply violates our psyches, and makes young humans with still-forming minds, extremely unhealthy.
I guess all here already know all of this.
Its deeply shameful and absurd that so many teachers lack this basic knowledge.
Those stories from those kids are terrifying.
... the point is, I never, *EVER* saw any trouble or hostility from the "mainstream" once I reached high school. The worst I got was a bit of teasing every now and then, and even that was pretty tame and only during the first two years. We have a term here - "Year 9s are animals." It's kinda expected. After that, any distance from them was mostly because I just didn't "get" their interests - which at the time mostly seemed to involve getting so drunk they threw up. Yay. Not.
I was a geek in high school. I'm sure many here were. Y'know what? Any isolation I felt - and yes, there was quite a bit in the first few years - was largely my own fault. I had people try really hard to be nice, to include me, etc and I just didn't know how to respond. I mostly got confused, or thought they were trying to tease / mock me. In my defense, that's because that used to be a problem, but I think mostly because of my lack of social skills rather than any geekyness. I was one of those people who wakes up one day and says "huh. People. Who would'a thought."
One I learned some utterly minimal social skills, things improved a lot. This frequently meant walking home talking about coding / maths with a couple of friends, though that's not all I did. Anyway
Having come from that, and reading stories like this, is terrifying. I've never heard of anything even remotely like this here (Western Australia). It makes me even more frightened that before about the increasing American media influence and cultural influence* here - because it makes me even more inclined to believe the place, collectively, is insane, though obviously most of it's citizens are just fine.
Pass the cluebat.
* Yes, I know I'm responding to an American article on a website largely full of Americans. I wouldn't call either of these the mainstream American, though.