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Hillary, GTA, and High School Football
The LA Times is running a really worthwhile story discussing the recent attack on video games in congress. It talks about GTA, the decline in youth violence, and mentions that football actually encourages real aggression, causes real injuries, and is treated totally differently. It's worth a read. Unfortunately I'm fairly certain that very few U.S. Senators are listening over the sound of hype.
Hillary is doing what do-gooders always do. She's saying: "I'm smart enough to handle this and you're not." (Paraphrase of Penn Jillette)
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
I was wondering this same thing. Could this be a conceivable conclusion? Could it be possible that kids these days are actually getting their adrenaline fix from these games instead of causing real-life crimes (or vandalism)?
When I was a kid the games were much mellower, and less realistic, and I was a hoodlum. I could speculate that if I had these games I would have caused much less trouble when I was a kid.
If the allegations of football and videogames as stated above are true, that would explain a lot about my high school football team. The spoiled brats had all of the video game systems that their parents could buy them, and a 0-10 record on the field...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
football actually encourages real aggression
well, duh
Of course, I admit that there's one charge against video games that is a slam dunk. Kids don't get physical exercise when they play a video game, and indeed the rise in obesity among younger people is a serious issue. But, of course, you don't get exercise from doing homework either.
heh, sure, those kids are really spending all that time doing homework and not nearly as much as becoming more aggressive playing after-school sports or killing, fucking, and carjacking!
Down with homework and more carjacking! Oh wait.
The most amazing thing about this is that Hillary can get so many people up-in-arms and pissed off about a stupid fucking video game and no one else can mobilize parents to "protect their children" from real harms that go virtually unnoticed in the political arena.
Someone really needs to link serious environmental issues to religion-based morality. Maybe then people will get mobilized. Afterall, it seems to be quite the rage recently...
I've read so many stories on the (unjustified) outcry over GTA:SA. What I haven't read are any stories asking the readers to Write their public officials in an effort to stop this political witch-hunt.
The GTA brouhaha to me is about video games coming of age. They're no longer just about kids and teenagers, but for adults of all ages...it's a $25 billion business, and bigger than the movie industry...and it's just beginning. Sure, more grown-up ratings might shrink the market a bit, but the industry needs to be more creative about expanding the market. Besides figuring how to handle Easter Eggs, and adult content within games, the industry also needs to figure out how to meet the time constraints that adults have in playing games. Yet, most games are in a time warp, with limited ability to save, locked levels (you gotta earn it mentality!). It takes 2-3 hours to see a movie on a DVD and at least 20 hours to play a game. As a decades long gamer, I know it's there's fundamental difference between the two forms, and a totally different experience, but... If I'm springing close to $50 for a game (vs. say $20-25 for a movie DVD), and I don't feel like investing the 50 plus hours to play/replay segments to earn the right to see all the levels, and understand the story, I should be able to have an "auto-play" or "fast-forward to the next level" feature. This could significantly expand the market for games of all types, as more grown-ups can fit a game into their lives in terms of time. More here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/05/on_playing_pcco.htm l
Mrs. Clinton is attempting to put herself in a position to be the democratic candidate for the 2008 Presidential election. This has nothing to do with GTA and everything to do with her attempting to strengthen how she is percieved with respect to traditional family values. I am not a fan of Bush and consider much of what he does to be fascist, but Hilary makes Bush look like a libertarian.
Ahhh fun times!
Here's a nice article, neatly summarised by its headline -- "There's Sex In My Violence!
What's this lame soft-core porn doing in my ultraviolent "Grand Theft Auto"?".
This reminds me of one of my first experience of US TV. I was watching "The Godfather" on TBS, in the middle of the day. When Santino beat the living Bejeesus out of his sister's husband on the street, they showed every frame of the violence. 5 minutes later, they pixelated the 3.5 seconds of nude breast (the only nudity in the entire film) in Michael's wedding night scene.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I think Taco failed to read into the author's sarcasm regarding football, but that's ok.
The author of the article seems to have taken some of their ideas from the recent Discover Magazine article titled Your Brain on Video Games. A very interesting read, a lot of which I agree with.
I'm a parent, a geek, and a former athelete (yes, it's possible). Our children (ages 8-15 now) have their homework time and we (they?) split their entertainment up between going outside to play, video games, nonsensical tv, and educational tv (of course, with a few random things thrown in to boot). On top of that, we ask that they play one sport of their choosing, and one instrument of their choosing. The mention of football in the description is a bit misleading. Some of the good things football teaches are
- How to work with other people
- How to get along with people you may not like
- Discipline and focus, with regard to achieving a goal
- Planning and stragety
- Competitiveness, which certainly can help later in life if applied correctly
Other things are learned by playing instruments such as math (in different bases), appreciation for different cultures, etc... but that's a bit off topic here.Video games can actually teach children as well. However, when they start to focus all of their freetime on video games, rather than other forms of entertainment, I think they're mission out on quite a bit. Everything in moderation.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
The bigger problem is, I believe, that they don't hear anything but the hype. Most politicians don't troll Slashdot or gaming sites. They have enough to do with meetings, looking at bills, more meetings, campaigning, photo ops, and the rest.
I wrote a small piece on this not too long ago that talked about this issue. It's not just that Senator Clinton is believing the hype - that's all she's probably hearing! Who in the gaming community is really going to her and the other politicians who discuss the issue?
Where's the Hollywood style lobbyists from the gaming industry? Isn't this what the ESRB and other gaming organizations should be doing - going to politicians and explaining how an R rating is the same as an M rating, how they're working with stores to keep M rated games out of the hands of minors (and if they aren't, then they damn well better be before Washington does it for them), why the "Hot Coffee" mod was never meant to be played and discovered by people voluntarily choosing to play the nude scene (and if they are minors, do you really think they can't get nude people easier than installing a mod in a $50 PC game?).
Yeah, I'm pissed at Ms. Clinton and Thomson and all of the ilk who "don't get it" - but I don't entirely blame them, because odds are there are few people who have really taken the time to explain it to all of them. (Well, except for Thomson - in my opinion, he's just a money grubbing lawyer now using nudity-in-games claims to line his pocket).
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Worse if the game actually were as characterized, it wouldn't sell as many copies: way too difficult, not entertaining enough.
But the description sounds really good. "Training the wage slaves of the information age"
To be fair, there was a backlash for the violence in the game. And honestly, I don't think kids should be playing it. I am by no means conservative, but I think the game is just in bad taste for impressionable youth. But whatever. The game was given a rating, I don't think it should be outlawed.
What pisses me off is that all the recent uproar is because there was sex in there. You can beat a cop to death, but for Jebus' sake don't show animated boobs! Oh the humanity! Violence is OK, but sex, something natural and essential to our very existence of the human race, is taboo. Superbowl? OK. Boob at the Superbowl? Congressional hearings. Unjustified War? Hmm, OK. The F word is uttered in public? the decline of our moral civilization.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If you're Karl Rove, planning the 2008 election, you want to go after Hillary on her ethics and her family values. You want to neutralize her female base by making her appear to not care about family and good parenting. This is a calculated move by Hillary to move to the *right* on this issue, not the left. It doesn't matter who she blames, it matters that she's in the papers sticking up for some kind of "family value."
(I blogged about this here.)
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
I'm fairly certain that very few US Senators are listening over the sound of hype.
You have a niave view of Senators. They understand the silliness and meaningless of what they are saying, probably better than most people around here. What you fail to understand is that media events like this are all about getting face time on TV. Free face time on TV is more highly prized than nearly anything else. The explicit lyrics crusade of the 80s, the assault weapons crusade of the 90s, the current video game violence crusade, all were merely PR stunts that accomplished very little.
In football "real aggression" is taught. It's also taught that for aggression to be usefull, it needs to be controlled and directed and timely.
Hitting after the whistle incurs a penalty. Hitting the wrong way incurs a penalty. Hitting the wrong guy let's someone gain yards or score. Going outside the boundaries hurts not only you, but your team.
Yes, football is a very aggressive game. But at the end of the game, you're going to go party, and often with members of the other team (unless they're your arch-rivals but even at the end of the season you'll be laughing with those guys over the last game).
All of which are valuable real life lessons. There's a place and a time in real life for aggressive action (not necessarily physical, but sometimes), but if it's not controlled, you'll quickly find yourself on the wrong end of the moral (and often legal) line.
Mostly what football teaches, though, is that you can push past whatever limitations you percieve given the dedication and time.
I'm not sure that GTA has similarly positive lessons to be learned from it. GTA has the advantage that the aggression is pretend, but has, from what I've seen, no corresponding lessons about control and responsibility to teach.
Is he joking? I mean, does he seriously believe what he wrote there? For one thing, if scores have gone up at all it's because the standard has been lowered over the years. For another, kids in the US, as a whole, are far from "all right" these days. If you don't see that, you're not taking an honest look at the state of today's younger generation.
...because what I've gotten from talking to my parents, grandparents, etc. is that it's ALWAYS been like this. Welcome to old age.
Is this based on anything but a gut-level, kids-these-days, knee-jerk reaction? Just wondering.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
People who use the crazy straw man arguments of Ayn Rand tend to be the type of people who want an excuse to feel good about doing nothing. Her philiosophy is the ultimate sop for the supremely egotistical. It's a short sighted kind of selfishness, though, the same kind of selfishness that leads to things like procrastination. "If it feels good now, do it! " is not a great philosophy.
Sure, in the end everything we do, we do for selfish reasons, but I like helping people. Not because I like them to bow or scrape, not because I feel better than them, but because I feel like I am building a world where people help each other, a world where, if the situation were reversed I would be helped. I also feel good about not having desperate miserable people around me.
The irony is that Ayn Rand's philosophy is, " To hell with everybody, as long as you're feeling virtuous about it. And I'll tell you how to feel virtuous about ANY damn thing you want to feel virtuous about, as long as it isn't helping someone else! Remember: Helping is Hurting, Charity is Theft, a Hand Up is a Slap in the Face, Sharing is Selfish, Only Egotism is True Loving Compassion."
Ayn Rand and people like her who consider any kind of charity or compassion as selfish egotism are the laziest type of self involved, egotistical, idiots. I will defend their right to spout their crazy nonsense, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I have to say it isn't B.S.
You don't want to help others? Fine. Don't, see if I care, but if you are going to mock me for caring and for acting out of compassion and assign to me the basest of motives, I am for sure going to point out how selfish, egotistical, and short sighted you are. There are plenty of good reasons for wanting to help others that don't revolve around being a self important prick.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Did you just ask, with a straight face, why Slashdot posters aren't even-handed with their dealings of members of both political parties, and both genders?
Well, I'll assume you're in earnest and answer.
1. Democrats are better than Republicans by the slimmest of margins. Actually, most of us really adore Democrats but since we know they're just as slimey and two-faced as Republicans, we pretend not to. But we vote for them anyway, despite all of our talk of voting for Libertarians, who more closely resemble Republicans than Democrats. When you boil it all down, we didn't get up on time on election day to make it to the polls.
2. Women are weird creatures who don't think we're funny and who can't appreciate the subtle humor necessary to doggedly recite tired lines from British pop-culture trash from the 1970's. Since they shun us at social gatherings (like family reunions and GenCon), we harbor unspoken misogynistic tendancies that manifest at odd times. For as much as we hate George W. Bush, at least nobody of his gender has ever rolled their eyes when we quoted Jabberwocky!
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Lt. Col Dave Grossman "On Killing" - great book.
Don't forget the other part. Getting back from WW2 took a nice slow ship in the company of your comrades, where you had plenty of time to talk through a lot of what you had seen and done, and generally had an opportunity to "come down" from battlefield conditions.
Whereas in Vietnam, you could be in the bush on Sunday, and back home a civillian on Monday. No chance to adapt to the new surroundings, no suport network, and just to rub salt in the wound, a rather unsympathetic populace.
I don't think you can hang Mai Lai on traning tactics though. A better source of blame is an unprofessional (in the literal sense) and undertrained soldiery who got all the technical training but little of the ethics and ethos.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
On the other hand, if you said that Iraq was in violation of its UN mandated disarmament requirements, that Iraq was supporting terrorists, and that Iraq posed a threat to our national security, those were not lies because they are all true.
Are you aware that the United States is in violation of UN mandate?
Are you aware that the United States has recently supported (perhaps currently supporting) terrorists?
Did you know that to some degree, every nation on the face of the earth is a threat to every other nation's national security?
Isn't amaizing how pointless and misleading true statments can be?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...