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The Social Impact of Gaming
"The Bart, The" writes "The Economist weekly is carrying a well considered special report on the current debate regarding morality and gaming." From the article: "Like rock and roll in the 1950s, games have been accepted by the young and largely rejected by the old. Once the young are old, and the old are dead, games will be regarded as just another medium and the debate will have moved on. Critics of gaming do not just have the facts against them; they have history against them, too."
End of discussion.
"Filthy" novels, pre-code movies, comic books, Rock 'n' Roll, TV, video games... It's just a long line of easy "moral" targets for politicians to act like they're solving something instead of dealing with the actual problems.
And it works, generation after generation.
Heh! The media has finally given me a name: "Digital Native". I kind of like it. Lot better than "Baby Boomer" or "Gen X'er", especially since I was kind of between the two.
John
The correlation that the "think of the children" groups talk about is that...it just runs the opposite way.
...games don't have that same rebelious feeling about them that rock music has. You can devote your life to rock and roll and there is a glamour to it. The same cannot be said for video games.
John Carmack will never, ever be regaurded the same way that John Lennon is.
Games, while becoming more acceptable socially, are never going to be regaurded as "cool" like rock.
You don't have to dislike games in order to be a critic of their impact on society :P. .. Kids to tend to stay in a lot more than they used to, and I blame it on TV and Games ... on visual media that requires their complete attention - unlike music, which you can listen to and do something else at the same time (though some may disagree)... :)
And I'm quite sure I'll be shouting at my kids with regards to playing too many computer games or the type of games that they pick to play. I personally blame it on the consumer. No one's forcing people to buy such games. What they do hush hush... well we used to watch porn in middle school - all hush hush so our parents wouldn't find out. All the same with mature rated games.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
I take it you don't live in Arkansas?
John
The advantage to gaming's participatory nature is that kids and parents can play games together. PLaying games with my stepsons has actually helped to make our bond stronger. It is, after all, something that you can do for either long or short periods of time, is fun, and is shared.
At the end of the day I think that that is gaming's greatest boon.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Im not sure that the older generation rejects gaming.....Its just that they dont feel the need to become involved - and dont want to spend the time and effort learning about such new fangled things, hence a lack of interest - not rejection
It's a problem that I think comes up every 20-40 years: something new that changes society, and those too old to "get it".
10 years ago listening to rap music and heavy metal would get you into jail because you'd go kill people. Crime rates drop.
20 years ago playing Dungeons and Dragons would turn you into a Satan worshipper, you'd kill your parents and commit suicide. Amazingly, 99.9% of all players survived, and those who did kill themselves were in the statistical group who would have anyway.
20 years before, watching Elvis dance would turn you into a sexual deviant. Somehow, those same parents who watched Elvis's hips were able to complain about Britney Spears and her kinderslut outfits.
Reading comic books would turn you into a criminal, since it was the preferred activity of juvenile delinquents. (Or, at least the three that were studied.)
20 years before, and listening to rock and roll in general would cause kids to become pregnant just by being in the room, boys would go on rape sprees, and society would enter total decay.
20 years before that, and Glenn Miller was dangerous.
Keep going back, and every era will have something new that the older generation didn't get. The question with gaming is:
Will it follow the model of comic books, where a heavy handed fist comes down to regulate it into "kid safe"-ness, until decades later where it starts to spring again (mainly thanks to an underground movement and the explosion of interest in manga and anime)? Or will it follow rock and roll, and already be so entrenched that the Jack Thompsons and Hilary Clintons and Leibermans of the world will rage, and ten years later people will wonder what the big deal about was?
My bet is on the latter - but only if people take the time to educate each other on it. I've sat down with people who came to my office to ask me about the whole Grand Theft Auto games (they know I used to run a web site, now turned into a wiki), and I've explained the rating system, the arguments, what "Hot Coffee" is all about. And 99% of the time, they go "Oh, ok, that makes sense." The 1% of the time they're just looking to steal some of my Triscuits.
Write to your congressman. We should, in the same fashion as those who set up a web site to protest the broadcast flag, set up a similiar Political Action Committee who's whole goal is to educate politicians on the issue and send them notices when they go for "hearings" and "new laws".
If we don't, then I can see an age where the gaming industry is regulated like the comic book industry was. And that would be a huge blow to what could be a fascinating new artistic medium.
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
These kids now have an alternate form of entertainment and something to do with their free time other than join a gang or wander the streets causing or looking for trouble.
Another aspect is that some games can serve as a stress release valve for people. If I'm feeling really stressed out to the point that I almost want to choke someone I can pop in my copy of GTA and take it out some virtual people or property. I honestly believe that I've become a less violent person after playing through the GTA games because I had a virtual world where I could release my anger and agression that wouldn't result in any harm to real people.
For every stupid person who comits a crime and blames GTA or some video game, just think of how many crimes that same video game might have prevented.
Games waste time. Games are fun.
When you get to the point in your life where your time is more valuable than the entertainment/social value you get from the game, you stop playing. That's why young people play games and old people do not: the older you get the less time you have to waste.
However, a number of the same folks who listened to the Beatles in the '60s railed against Marilyn Manson in the '90s. Games as a medium may be more accepted in the future, but, if history is any indication, scapegoating will never die.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress. Peter the Hermit, A.D. 1274
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. -- Socrates
Some things never change...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"How about watching "Bowling for Columbine" and think about it for a little while?"
I watched it, and then I thought how stupid Michael Moore was for naming his movie after an alleged event that did not happen (that the boys bowled before the event happened).
That and the fact that the boys wanted to blow up the school with explosives, but Moore chose to focus upon the impact of guns in our society. Had he focused on what actually impacted the two boys into their violent behavior - being picked on for years by their peers - and not on their love of games like Doom, he would've had a decent movie. Instead, he used the tragedy as a platform to rail against guns, the NRA, and Heston.
Video games did not cause Adolph Hitler nor the followers of the Nazi Party. Video games did not create Stalin. And video games did not cause the Trail of Tears. Some people are good, some people are bad. Blaming video games for criminal behavior is the new version of blaming inexcusable human behavior on Satan instead of fessing up to personal responsibility.
The two boys were ultimately responsible for their actions, but it was how they were treated by their peers that influenced them, not video games. Guns were the tools of choice they used for their terror. Although homemade explosives could've been far more effective a tool than their firearms.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Nope, sorry, doesn't work like that. The hippies haven't made dope legal. The punks haven't reduced the state's stranglehold.
What gets made law is whatever benefits the lawmakers financially or increases their power. Politicians at that level have no ideals beyond selfishness, nor can they achieve that level without ridding themselves of such ideals.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
What do you mean Gaming isn't benificial? Have you looked at a video game's complexity today as compared to a game like monopoly?
Modern video games require the player to learn highly complex control sets, multi button combo commands, mission prioritization, teamwork (sometimes), and all sorts of other things that are applicable to the real world. (ever need to learn how to use a new peice of software in a few days for a job? Video games make that easier because you're used to learning new complex systems)
Furthermore, we have multiple studies proving that video games increases visual accuity, reaction time and hand eye coordination.
Just because spending hours killing aliens in a video game isn't constructive, doesn't mean that the skills you learn to do it cannot be used elsewhere in a constructive manner.
As a society, we will accept anything that we consider not detrimental to society at large. If video games make people happy, it's benificial to the society, is it not? Video games also provide many people, myself included with much needed outlets for destructive energy.
When given the choice between fantasy violence and real violence, perhaps not everyone will choose the fantasy, but it's better to have the option there for those who, without the option of fantasy violence, would opt for the real thing.
Prior to that, it was jazz music, extra-marital sex, alcohol, and so on.
Now it's rap, games, and homosexuality. It's the same story over and over and over again. Trust me, your kids and grandkids aren't likely to see what the big deal is.
That's not to say there's a unidirectional element here. Things can happen to turn a society more conservative (usually some calamity). The depression, Second World War, and Cold Wor accomplished an interesting trifecta of pushing back on the more liberal attitudes that had started to emerge about sex, women, alcohol/drugs, and culture in the 20s in North America. 9/11 effectively brought religion back into the field, reversing a rather secular trend.
In the early 70s you had women wearing jeans studying engineering in Afghanistan. The country became ravaged by war and poverty, and...well...you know how that turned out.
I'm using very recent examples here, you can study this stuff WAY back.
I think the overal direction is that when society feels threatened, less will be tolerated, and there will be more conservative pressures. When the society thrives and is prosperous, though, it becomes more liberal.
Your second question; will society accept things that are not beneficial because youth do? Part of that depends on what you consider "not beneficial" (ie. harmful). If you still hold that rock is harmful, then the answer is yes.
If you have (sorry to say it) less of an agenda to push, then the answer is no, not really. Drugs never became culturally acceptable just because the youth accepted them. Drugs can be harmful, and so were rejected. Some drugs that were not so obviously detrimental (ie. marijuana) are still the subject of debate.
You'd never know it to look at them, but people can be remarkably sane, given enough opportunity.
The opinion above is fiction. Any similarity to real opinions, including facts and logic, is purely coincidental.
I find it amusing that you would take issue with the title of the film in this conversation, when the issue of the kids bowling was specifically chosen to ridicule the placing of blame at the feet of videogame and music companies. IIRC the narration was something like "People had been blaming DOOM and Marylin Manson for the killings, so why not bowling?" Whether or not they bowled is not important to the message of the film, or that scene. I also wonder where you were during the extended period of the movie where he discredited the idea that more guns means more violence, or during the scene where he discussed high school alienation with Matt Stone (a columbine graduate). This sounds like a comment from someone who didn't see the movie, and just assumed it was a standard rant against guns.
I came here for a good argument
You're overly cycnical. We will always have the worst government that we accept. The hippies accepted dope, but they also accepted a governement that made dope illegal. Anything annoying that our government gets away with, they manage because it's Not Evil Enough(TM) for people to really care.
We no longer accept a government that descriminates based on skin color, for example. We didn't round up all the muslims in America and stick them concentration camps for the duration of the War on Terror, an action which clear would have been acceptable a few generations ago.
All of the Evil our govewrnment routinely avoids isn't exactly newsworthy, but you don't have to look back very far to see the government doing things they'd never even try today. And not because the poloticians have suddenly grown ideals beyond selfishness, but becuase the line they don't dare cross has moved. And that line moves because a new generation, with a different sense of acceptability, has taken over.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Michael Moore was actually only bringing up the video game angle to dismiss it, and the people who use it as a boogeyman, and actually is more on the side of most of the people who post here....slightly offtopic, but he was trying to understand a bigger problem here in America, and he seemed to realize that all the boogeymen(video games, rock, drugs, etc) were getting in the way of our understanding of why we feel the need to shoot each other so often. I guess people think it's bad to think about these things, but unless they will weigh in substantially and not quibble about small details(ignore the big question and focus on bowling? WTF?) they should all just STFU. At least someone is discussing it. And yes, I realize that was a runon sentence, no grammar nazis, please.