Slashdot Mirror
The Impact of Violent Gaming
An anonymous reader writes "IGN has an article up looking at the impact of violent videogames. It discusses some of the rationale on the gaming industry side for having violent images in their games, and the reactions from politics and lawmakers to these games." From the article: "Despite the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression, lawmakers still have a difficult time convincing the courts that they should be removed from children's hands. One of the reasons for this is that most of the work done is correlational studies which look for a link between two factors. That is, if we see an increase in violent videogame play, is there also an increase in violent behavior?"
Correlation does not imply causation
correlation implied causation. Yet it does not. So how can one say that people that play violent video games aren't simply more violent, or aggression prone, to begin with? Or is that simple definition detrimental to the cause of those trying to rid our society of violent games?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am tired of hearing about video games leading to violence. Whatever happened to taking responsibility for your own decisions?
Perhaps violent people spend their time playing violent video games, rather than wandering the streets and beating people up. Using another correlation fallacy, it would explain the all-time lows in violent crimes.
Where? Where is that evidence? I've seen no such thing.
That is, if we see an increase in violent videogame play, is there also an increase in violent behavior?
Oh for fuck's sake.... people, IGN is trolling. My dog knows the difference between play-fighting and real fighting. Let's give our kids a little credit, shall we?
"Somebody think of the children..." Seldom is it mentioned that the children seem a lot smarter than the adults in this area.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
i think it is impossible to restrict access to those games. and as soon it is forbidden even more kids will want just that game.
Despite the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression, lawmakers still have a difficult time convincing the courts that they should be removed from children's hands.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the court. The first amendment is there and videogames are protected by it. That's where the court's reasoning begins and ends. No matter what anyone thinks on violent video games, the letter and spirit of the law forbid any legal action against them.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I predict that 90% of the comments will be against this article. And come from teen thru 20s males. People who are still children themselves and have not seen the principle of cause and effect at work with their offspring.
I come here for the love
I'm all for taking violence out of video games. There's no reason games can't be modified to have non-violent outcomes. But then Jack Thompson would whine that realistic consequences aren't being depicted which will train cold blooded killers.
Think of Super Mario jumped on mushrooms and they turned into happy angels instead of dead pancakes? Or in Unreal Tournament you fire paintballs, or tickle people at close range? Or in Mortal Kombat you have a tickle fight, and instead of ripping out a heart, you read the woozy opponent a bedside story. I think it would sell just as well. A game doesn't have to be violent, it can be funny and still be as fun.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Did it ever occur to you that, yes, maybe you did miss a memo? I mean, why would you just assume that because you haven't heard of something it couldn't be true?
I'm not saying it is true, I'm just saying that's a very stupid argument.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
in World of WarCraft for around 10 hours a week. Oddly I have never had the desire to harm the small people of the world. Strange?
Methinks some people are just screwed up in the head to begin with and games had little or no impact on the outcome.
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
>> Despite the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression...
Care to provide some references? I understood that most studies found exactly the opposite.
I know a child psychologist working in this field. His research is pointing to something interesting, yet not earthshattering: children who play violent games outside the pervue of their parents *do* show a propensity for violent behavior. The flipside is that kids playing violent games *with* their parent's cursory involvement *do not*. This guy was ready to throw the book at games altogether, so the studies he's running came as quite the surprise, naturally.
But as far as banning them goes, it's a moot point: We have freedom of speech in this country, the games are rated, and they are rated so that the most impressionable individuals (children) aren't supposed to play them. Even if video games are violent, lawmakers should not ban them. Having occasionally harmful material fall into impressionable hands is the price you pay for freedom of expression and such. I don't think that video games don't lead to violence. Can you tell me that there hasn't been any kid who played a game, saw something violent, and started going around pretending he's in the game? Ever see kids pretend that they're video game characters at recess? Are you going to tell me that not one little kid pretended he was in the game and then really punched someone? I do think that the level of violence they lead to is nothing compared to what a violent homelife or neighborhood could bring on, but let's argue based on reality (the right to freedom of expression), people, not what you want reality to be.
Playing Madden 06 for 72 hours straight will NOT make me into a pro football player.
I thought we'd done this to death in the 80s and 90s, and before that for TV, rock and roll, erotic literature, porn, sugary foods, soft drugs, etc etc, ad nauseum.
Yes, I dare say that some people, if exposed to violent games (or films, or books, etc) will go off and do stupid, stupid things. Chances are, though, that these people would have done stupid things even without the exposure. Plenty of people who have never played a game exhibit agressive behaviour.
What I don't understand is why each generation seems to be so afraid of what the younger generation is into. All we're seeing is the same arguments that were made about rock and roll in the fifties, or violent films in the late 70s and early 80s.
I'm not exactly old, but I'm not really young any more either (I'm 31), but I hope to God I'm not so fucking stupid and scared when I do become "old". (Although given I have a house, mortgage, car, daughter, etc, I think by most reasonable definitions I already am)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's not violent games that lead me to violence.
It's being assaulted with the same hyped-up news "story" about video game violence on every slow news day for 20 years that makes me want to hit somebody.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
"Correlation does not imply causation"
The logical fallacy is the slashdot belief that this applies in all cases.
Anyway as I've stated previously, these stories will not go away because it is a fact that the environment affects you. The question that remains unanswered is, In what way? Predisposition may be a factor, but that doesn't mean that all cases of violence have it as their cause.
According the the Bureau of Justice Statistics, with the exception of drug-related incidents, crime rates have been on a steady decline for the last decade or more.
Games (and other forms of entertainment) depicting violence have been on the rise. So how can anyone claim there is some correllation?
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
What most people seem to forget is that it's not the link between _causing_ violence, but perhaps more important, becoming _desensitized_ to violence.
I'm less concerned about kids going out and attacking someone after playing these games, than looking on unfeelingly while someone else does. That affects their personal social interactions, and over time, can impact society as a whole.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Richard Gallagher: Playing videogames with aggressive content does have an effect on children, teens, and adults. In children and teens, several results are associated with exposure to aggressive videogames. First, youth experience an increase in arousal that suggests an increase in tension that may contribute to aggressive behavior. Second, youth engage in more aggressive thinking about others and changes their attitudes toward people as they emerge from play more likely to believe that others are interested in harming them. Third, play diminishes the level of empathy that kids have for other people. Fourth, play has an effect on the amount of aggressive behavior demonstrated in verbal aggression, teasing, and some physical aggression by increasing the frequency of these actions. There is significantly more impact on aggressive attitudes than on behavior. Finally, playing and viewing does desensitize people to aggressive images and the impact of aggression on others. After play and viewing, children are much less distressed by images of characters being hurt or killed, and, given their reduced empathy, more likely to engage in aggressive behavior against others. The level of effect is considered small to moderate. So, in each of these areas playing and viewing results in increases that are at higher to moderately higher levels than playing or viewing games with other content.
Nice, huh? Just assert your face off and never look back. Gallagher takes it as axiomatic that aggressive competition and 'arousal' (WTF?) are a) bad and b) directed in a negative way. He also seems to think that children do not know the difference between a video game and reality. Guess what? I am an unbelievable calculated killing machine in GTA, but in real life... eh, not so much. I am not a child but Gallagher includes 'adults' in the first sentence of the interview as he sets up his rolodex talkingpoints.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I'll kill the next guy who says violent video games lead to violence!
I find it very interesting how much value Slashdotter's place on science and established scientific thinking when it comes to ID and Evolution debates, but when it applies to video gaming you're so willing to suspend it. Classical Conditioning is basic psychology, folks. Pavlov demonstrated this. Frankly, this tells me one simple truth and that is it's all nice to talk about "open-mindedness" until someone attacks something we hold dear. Then we're ready to suspend our intellect and just enjoy ourselves and expect to do so with impunity. To think that someone could immerse themselves in violence and come away unaffected is idiocy. I'm not saying we should shit-can video games. I'm not saying, "GASP! Something needs to be done!" I'm saying, "To think that someone could immerse themselves in violence and come away unaffected is idiocy."
between computer games and movies, tv shows, albums etc. Is it because people associate computer games with children that there seems to be more of an outcry about it? There was a lot of crap in the press about the GTA game with a bit of hidden sex in it - I've never heard a similar thing about DVD extras containing sex/related stuff. Perhaps this problem will go away as games continue to become more mainstream and/or attract an older audience.
If anything, pop culture violence is a necessary outlet for males to vent their genetic behaviour without resorting to physical violence. The small percentage of males and females who resort to violent assault are headcases that most likely would lash out violently even in a culture without violent games or pop culture.
Perhaps the strongest evidence as to how deeply entrenched our pop culture is in male, violent posturing are the recent movies with hot chicks weilding death. Rather than growing to embrace female attributes more akin to reconciliation (at least if you go with the matriarchial model of the bonobos) we as a culture are promoting females as violent posturing caricatures of the male psyche.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Like the developers of the new 24 game that gave the cars chasing you three times the speed and mass your car has. And who somehow decided that when you're crawling around in ducts trying to be quiet about it, that sometimes left means right and vice versa on your movement stick.
Those little glitches last night made me want to pimpslap a developer, so I guess maybe the critics are right and I should just give in and go get a Mac 10 or something.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
The military uses video games to train soldiers, flight simulators have been around for a very long time to train pilots. Obviously these types of technology have an impact on a person's behavior and the video games do too. What are we training are children to do, blow people away?
That said, there is a much bigger problem at work here and that is the glorification of violence: on television, in movies, in comics and by our political leadership.
As an example, I read comic books when I was a child, when, I suppose the previous generation would have already thought they were quite violent. Superman, batman and spiderman were always engaged in violent struggles against "evil-doers". After not reading them for about 20 years, I recently thumbed through a few at our local bookstore. I was appalled by what I saw. They are full of blood and guts and so many people getting killed in each issue, especially in batman, and these are our mainstream comics, and the video games are much worse (or perhaps I am just getting older...).
As one other example, one of my favorite TV characters used to be MacGyver. A hero who was noted for, among other things, his strict stance against guns and against killing people, even "evil-doers". I think the popularity of characters like him would be much lower now (of course, even back in the 80s we did have the opposite extreme in characters like Rambo).
Ultimately I believe this glorification of violence will make our world a much more brutal place to live .
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
the Food and Drug Administration reports that small amounts of saliva, swallowed over an extended period of time, MAY cause cancer - or even death.
[courtesy of George Carlin]
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
But really, what was the high point for the American Child Psychology establishment? It was the early 1950's Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Deliquency hearings, that managed to completely ruin (in a financial sense) and censor American comics. American comics have never recovered despite the best efforts of people like Alan Moore.
Think about how great it must feel if you are a sick and evil minded child psychologist, living with the haunting fear that somewhere, somehow, some child might be having fun, to crush an entire emerging industry. They are just trying to recapture their glory days of being able to destroy a popular, vibrant subculture with a word. Their patron saint, Dr. Frederick Wertham, smiles up at them from Hell every time they manage to get one of these pieces of legislation passed.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Does violence in media (Television, Movies, Radio, Video Games, etc) cause an increase in violent behavior?
Well... I don't know how games affect people but I have never seen Super Mario players jump up and down like crazy, bang their heads on bricks, eat magic mushrooms, explore the local sewer system and grow a belly and a moustache just because of their hobby. I am not that convinced there are more plumbers amongst Super Mario players than in the rest of society either.
"If you can't live without me, why aren't you already dead?"
is that the execrabilious corepirate nazi softwar gangster felons are STILL running US DOWn using whoreabully scriptdead hypenosys?
what a surprise? like corn passing through a bird's butt?
all they want is... everything. at what cost to US? not a pretty picture at all. quite infactdead from our viewpoint.
for many of US, the only way out is up.
don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.
'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.
some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.
it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.
concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.
'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
What the hell you guys are talking about when it comes to correlation and the fallacies of logic, but I'm going to get a machine gun and shoot some Counter-Terrorists in Counter-Strike:Source, oh boy! No time to read when there's gunfire to be played with!
If kids are exposed to violent images, even at a moderate level (say 1-hour a day, which is way less than I used to play games), then these images will slowly be imprinted upon them (try and remember a screenshot of GTA, half-life, or some other game you have not played in a couple of years... easy huh?). Anyone who suggests that this will have no lasting effect upon kids is deluding themselves.
As Jesus said, 'the eyes are the lamp of the soul', don't feed your soul junk...
The problem we have here is the basic premise that the baseline, the "normal" person they define for the control group, is the ridiculous fantasy of a peaceful human being. Humans are social in nature and tend towards cooperation, but we are at heart competitive and cooperate out of a desire for personal gain. This is by no means a bad thing. Indeed, modern society has gotten to where it is because, due to abundance of basic survival resources and lack of natural dangers, "personal gain" can be something as simple as getting a warm fuzzy feeling from helping out a stranger. But when you get right down to it, when you strip away the thin veneer of civilization, we are simply savages living in upholstered caves. The handwringers don't realize this. They have an unrealistic view of humanity based upon idealism that totally ignores our status, which is nothing more than smartest animal on the planet. Violent games appeal to our very basic organic drive to survive. For some people, for any of a number of possible reasons, this drive overwhelms their sense of civilization and leads them to commit violent acts. These people's increased enjoyment of violent video games could, at the very most, be considered a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Single source story, with some quotes from other studies. Terrible.
What's the other side? Is there another side? What do other psychologists say? What does anyone from any of the states that passed the laws say? What do kids say? What do adults who play games say? Is there anyone who disagrees with you? Is there anyone who disagrees with them.
Also, Jesus, could you ask more leading questions? You asked the question about video games relieving stress twice and you never should have asked it once. You never ask questions that specific, because they're too likely to give you a biased answer. A more general question (Have any behavioral studies been conducted about positive effect of gaming? What positive effects are reported by gamers?) would give you a better response.
What a fricking joke.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Government cannot make people be moral, tolerant, peaceful or anything else. You cannot force someone to be what they don't want to be, you can only put reasonable consequences for destructive behavior in place. All of this is a distraction from the fact that parents are often refusing to be parents by destroying games, music, movies, books, etc. that they genuinely feel are harmful to their kids. It's their home, but for some reason they can bring themselves to toss GTA in the trash or snap that rap CD in half.
Parents can control their kids' behavior. All they have to do is say no to going over to a friend's home if his or her parents don't enforce any rules. But that would require parents to be mean spirited and punish their kids if they disobey them. You're a parent first, maybe a friend second.
If more parents would put their parenting before their personal happiness and fulfillment, this wouldn't be an issue. Ever notice that it's rarely the working class that bitches about this? It's always the middle and upper class. I'd love to see someone say to one of these shrill Tipper Gore types, that maybe if he/she didn't work 80 hours a week to get that new beamer, they'd have time to know what their kids are doing and buying. The most detatched parents I've ever seen are not the working class ones, but the middle and upper class ones that pursue a career, not to provide for their family, but to buy nice things and be happy (often as a woman) through their career, not as a good parent who raises good kids.
[+] violence, games, dupe (tagging beta)
Is Slashdot predicting the future now or is dupe going to be a tag for every post?
I like muppets.
But at least he can spell and punctuate.
Justin, 35.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
but violent videogames ARE a problem. I sell video games for a living and every day some negligent parent buys Grand Theft Auto for their child. The problem with Grand Theft Auto is that it's a mature satire and kids don't get the joke. Grand Theft Auto is, in my opinion, one of the few videogames that reach an artistic status, but this is precisely why it's so dangerous for kids to play.
I think the best example of why kids shouldn't play mature video games is Marilyn Manson. Manson is very intelligent and mature and his music reflects that. It questions society and morals in ways that children cannot possibly understand, but it communicates these ideas within a medium which directly appeals to them. I'll admit it, when I was a teenager I fell for the Manson phase, and ironically enough I thought I was more mature than my peers. Now that I'm older I still listen to Marilyn Manson but it no longer affects what I wear, do, or believe. Children are impressionable, even teenagers.
I'm not saying that legislation and lawsuits are the answer - freedom of speech is more important. But the fact that gamers outright deny that Grand Theft Auto, Killer7, and others are harmful to children is just as irresponsible as illegal censoring. Unlike me, there are a lot of video game clerks that don't care to go out of their way and explain to parents the drug use, sex, violence, and general debauchery that some of these videogames either promote or seem to promote under the guise of satire.
I dont usually post here but I RTFA and I think there's a valid point to all of this that's being drowned out by it's doom-and-gloom delivery style.
Forget about the legislation and Jack Thompson-esq nonsense for a bit. The result of the studies seems to conclude that non-violent people, and adults moreso than children, become more jaded and oblvious to violence. If you need proof simply scoll back a few days for the headlines about the US Military's increasing use of video games to train soldiers for the *express purpose of making them more confident at pulling the trigger when the real thing hit*.
The proof exists. There is a direct correllation between simulating the experience of being a pilot and flying an aircraft, and there are direct correllations between fps's and shooting things, although on a much smaller scale.
Of course we don't play doom and go on shooting sprees, there's nowhere near the level of relation there. I'm not defending the article, especially the way it's written. I just want to point out that there are psychological links present, and the same level of parental supervision should apply as with movies.
The line has to be drawn somewhere. We have movies featuring violent rapes/massacres etc, some very real (faces of death, etc). At what point will a game seriously cross the line of simulating an experience people have deep-rooted moral objections to (and I mean exponentially more offensive than the hot coffee mod). It's a matter of time until that happens, and when it does I think opinions on this topic are going to come to a very explosive head..
But a 12 Year old can still join Golden Gloves Boxing.
...Im not violent, never had an assult charge and have only been in 2 fights as an adult, both while being attacked by some crackhead mugger.
A 16 Year old can join the Armed Forces.
Kids can play Paintball or Good old fashioned War games.....
And lastly they can play violent video games.....
I did all of the above
But dont forget its ONLY the Video Games, not shit poor inner city schools or anything with guns and teachers who dont do anythign about it.....
Yeah lawmakers dont have their head in the right place........riiiiigggghhhhttt....
Why do video games and tv/movies get the blame so much when they are quite clearly labled for violence and it is a crime to sell them to underaged kids. The parents who buy the games for the kids and the odd dodgy games store that will sell them to the children shoudl be the focus not the games manufactures. I would also love to see this research as I can prove the following with corilational evidence.
Guns dont kill people, the majority of fire arms deaths are actually cause by the bullit. Ban Ammo!
Bread has been consummed by 99.9% of all perpirators of crimes within 24 hours of the crime
The increase in video game play is linked to the increase in violence
The increase in video game play is linked to the increase natural desasters
The increase in video game play is linked to childrens IQ increasing
and so on.
sorry about the spelling, must be the PS2
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
There are more general things that have been linked to violence. I've heard that US soldiers in WWII sometimes had a hard time looking at the enemy and pulling the trigger, but there was much less of this inhibition in Vietnam. There was also the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and this was before there were any video games at all. One risk factor is witnessing violence; for example, a boy who sees his father hitting his mother is more likely to hit his wife when he grows up. Could violent video games have a similar effect - making violence seem more normal and acceptable? I don't know. The study did say that when parents were involved, kids were less likely to become violent. Perhaps another issue is the need for role models to show kids how to resolve conflicts.
Myth 5. Correlational studies are irrelevant.
Facts: The overly simplistic mantra, "Correlation is not causation," is useful when teaching introductory students the risks in too-readily drawing causal conclusions from a simple empirical correlation between two measured variables. However, correlational studies are routinely used in modern science to test theories that are inherently causal. Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy). Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification. They allow examination of serious acts of aggression that would be unethical to study in experimental contexts. They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.
Lets see now.. They're playing violent videogames, being in the age they are they'll be trying to mimick the things seen in "reality" (c'mon, have you guys never played knights or cowboy/indian?) and if "reality" happens to be mega violent I can see a problem rising. I know! We need someone to tell these kids that they're not supposed to be doing whatever mischief they're planning! And I'm sure people who come up with such brilliant ideas know exactly what to do: a new institution is needed which will do more study on the subject in order to come up with longer termed solutions, Mr. $local_goverment please invest in the future of our children NOW!
But... Wasn't that suppose to be the parents job in the first place?
I can assert with equal authority that almost all video games do nothing wrong to children. I've been playing them with my boy over my home network since he was old enough to hold a mouse. We've had a great deal of fun over the years and he hasn't been changed in any way, except he's not scared of monsters and he knows more about computers now than his grandparents ever will.
I wouldn't play something like GTA with him because it introduces questions I can't easily explain, like "why are you kicking the prone policeman until he coughs up his money and weapons?". But simple fighting games like Unreal Tournament, Warcraft III, and Diablo are lots of fun and introduce about as many moral conflicts as playing Space Invaders did for us. That is to say, none at all.
There was a very good Calvin strip about this one. Calvin is sitting in front of the TV for four panels and says:
... Well, that's hard to prove."
1st panel:
"Graphic violence in the media."
2nd panel:
"Does it glamorize violence? Sure.
Does it desensitize us to violence? Of course.
Does it help up us tolerate violence? You bet.
Does it stunt our empathy for our fellow human beings? Heck yes."
3rd panel:
"Does it CAUSE violence?
4th panel:
(smiling) "The trick is to ask the right question."
Personally I believe that adults should be able to make their own decisions about what the do and see (like reading Calvin & Hobbes instead of watching the news). I feel much more peaceful and at ease after some good fragging.
Kids is an altogether different story though.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again:
If video games influence our behaviour, then all those years of playing PacMan would have us running around in darkened rooms listening to repetitive music munching on pills...
It would've never occurred to me that people that take an active role in their childrens life lead to better adjusted children!
Also, can anyone tell me why eating high calorie food day in and day out for my entire life without excercise is making me gain weight?
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Video games can come later. First we must tackle the same problems in the real world.
For example, there is a game played in the real world called "American Football". This game involves teams of highly-trained thugs engaging in brutal pitched battles for the amusement of crowds. So violent is this game that players wear extensive body armour, and injuries are still common. But it's not just about violence: apparently this game also celebrates the sexual objectification of women, through a convention known as "cheerleading". Cheerleading involves scantily-clad females dancing for the pleasure of the crowd and combatants. In a further blow to any hope society had of promoting sexual equality, it is worth noting that the lucrative player positions are reserved for men only, with women being relegated to the sidelines.
What message does this hideous "game" send to American children? That men should be violent thugs, and women should be sexual objects. And yet this "game" is so entrenched in U.S. culture that major matches are considered events of national importance, and children with an unhealthy interest in this miasma of sex and violence are actually encouraged to train to participate!
This is an absolute disgrace. It is clearly a greater threat to society than mere videogames, for a child trained in the use of violence by the evil men known as "football coaches" has actually both learned to apply violence with his bare hands, and also has acquired a greater level of physical strength which will help him rape cheerleaders and murder spectators with much greater ease. In comparison to this, a videogamer has merely put on weight and learned to push buttons with his thumbs, which is clearly harmless by comparison with the horrors of football.
Furthermore, it is fundamentally discriminatory. Videogames are equally accessible to every human, of whatever creed or race. Even people with disabilities are able to excel at videogames. Whereas "sport" is devoted to a postively Nazi-like celebration of "the strong", and frequently encourages the exclusion and ridiculing of the weak or disabled.
Why is this abomination not only permitted to continue, but forced on kids in schools and paid for with public money? Please, won't somebody think of the children?
Before someone says, "Ted Nugent, is that you?" please just hear me out for a second.
First, I don't think that any kid is confused about whether the portrayal of a giant-bodied, over-muscled avatar with an oddly small head, swinging a sparkly, glowing, acid-dripping battle axe the size of a Vespa scooter at an imaginary hominid foe with a boar's head or a stormtrooper's outfit is real or not. No more than kids 50 years ago were confused about whether the Lone Ranger perhaps lived down the street, or whether wearing green tights (a la Erol Flynn) and climbing trees with a sword and a bow was a particularly good idea. Most kids have way more common sense than all of that, then and now. But if playing a game or watching a movie in any way wires up a few synapses in a violence-desensitizing way (I'll buy that there might be a little to that), it's not like that's fundamentally new, even if it's more intense in a realistic-ish FPS.
But what allows a kid to properly evaluate what they're seeing is a reality baseline and a sense of consequence. Some decades back, most families were far, far more connected to daily life and death. It was called "keeping chickens" or "hunting rabbits" or "not spending $2000 at the vet every time Rover gets sick." When a kid has personally had a hand in delivering meat to the family's dinner table, some pretty primitive stuff kicks in. Specifically, one's own mortality, frailty, and an awareness of the finality of lethal acts are cemented early and hard. That makes life more precious, and makes maliciously using a gun or other weapon something to think about, rather than to do with all the impulse one would use when thumbing a game controller's "shoot" button.
A rural kid that's cut a goat's throat or gutted a deer for the meat locker is intimate with the reality of a large mammal (just like himself) never taking another breath, and growing cold right before his eyes. That same kid - a hundred years ago - could read something like Rudyard Kipling or Robert Loius Stevenson and (quaint as it seems now) actually feel some dread at the thought of a pirate (in print, no less - no slow, 3D pan shots) about to cut someone's throat. That meant something.
I can honestly say that those kids I know, brought up hunting and fishing (which includes killing, cleaning, preparing, and eating what they kill) are more thoughtful about violence, un-obsessed with goofing with guns, and tend to think about a lot of things (like fatty meat at the grocery store) with more perspective than most angsty, disconnected, suburbanite emo-cases that know where their neighbor's dad keeps a gen-u-wine katana.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If only there was a rating system, so that parents could easily gauge what was appropriate to their children. Of course, that would require stores only sell age appropriate titles to kids directly.
Damn that record indus.. oh, wait? We are talking about games? They already have those.
On a serious note, the military use of games people keep bringing up is about training people to work as a team, not overcoming hesitation to kill people. I would be more concerned with people training children to use guns (hunting, target practice, paintball) than games.
I mean, it'd be ideal if we can actually find a direct cause, but let's take things one step at a time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
As a father with an eight year old son who playes video games, I feel that it is the parent's responsibility to monitor and limit which games their children play. Each game has an ESRB rating, and the Internet provides a multitude of resources for parents to review a game before purchasing, and with rentals parents can preview the game before purchasing for their young child.
I don't think games with violent content should not be produced. After all I have GTA3, Doom3, HALO, HALO2, etc for the XBOX, but my son does not have acces to those games. I believe the responsibility lies on the parents to make sure that children only play age appropriate games.
Almost every aspect of today's society, tv, radio, movies, games, internet, etc, have violent content (or content that is not appropriate for young audiences (take the news for instance)). It is the parent's job to ensure that their children are raise appropriately and not to depend on the "village" to teach children right an wrong.
The reason why people scream "correlation does not imply causation!" over and over is because people seem to fail to understand what it means. No, they are not saying that it disproves causation. What they ARE saying is that you can't cite a correlation and then act on it like it is the result of causation, which is exactly lawmakers are trying to do. There are all sorts of correlations in this world, but you would be a fool to act on them without proof of causation.
One correlation is that the more melanin (the pigment that gives you dark skin) an American has, the more likely they are to be convicted for a violent act. You are a fucking idiot if you propose giving people with high melanin levels a drug to help bring their melanin levels down as a method of drastically reducing crime.
This foolish line of thinking is exactly what lawmakers are using. First, they are talking about a correlation without any understanding of how strong the correlation is. There might very well be a correlation between being blond haired and having higher test scores. However, if your average test score is 0.01% higher, it isn't worth looking into any further. Second, they are utterly failing to realize that even if there is a strong correlation, even if it is a significant difference (which has not been shown by the way), that STILL doesn't mean there is a causal effect at work. It could very well be that pressing buttons, sitting for long periods of time, or simply playing any game increases aggression. Has anyone bothered to see if the violence of the video game has anything to do with higher levels of aggression, or if it is simply that the violent video games they tried are more competitive then the non-violent games they tried.
I am sure UT2004 leaves me feeling more aggressive then Barney Math Fun Time, but it isn't because of a few pixels of gore. It is because in one game I am competing and the other I am being put to sleep with basic math problems.
The logic fallacies that these studies have are not minor little loop holes. They are great big gaping chasms. Further, I imagine that the people leading these studies realize the massive fallacies in their studies, but they are money pandering shit heads with an agenda who will do anything for a buck. Show me REAL science that proves a causal link, then we can start talking about "saving the children" for "pandering to suburban mom" vote. Until then, this is all political smoke and mirrors being put on by politicians too stupid to understand basic science, or politicians who are pandering for votes through intellectual dishonest. Either way, it makes me sick.
I can't speak for anyone else, but when playing violent games such as Battle Field 2 SF, tere is an adrenaline rush that makes one more aggressive, specially playing for a couple of hours. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and kill someone. You learn to channel the agressiveness like most people do.
So how can one say that people that play violent video games aren't simply more violent, or aggression prone, to begin with?
Of course, the problem with identifying causality is in the case of vicious circles, where A causes B which causes A.
Frankly, there is too much noise in this case to be able to isolate the impact of videogames. This noise can be identified as:
* Intrafamiliar violence
* Lack of moral education
* Economical stress in the parents
* School problems, bullying
* Depression
Media (including videogames) violence can trigger a problem, but since there are many factors to consider, it's practically impossible to isolate the relation between videogames and violence. So we're stuck with a "reasonable doubt" and I'm afraid we will never be able to find out the truth.
"You will learn about responsibility when you have children. I don't need a study to tell me that violent videogames are bad for chidren"
What are you basing your opinion on?
Or right, nothing. Very responsible that...
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
...get rid of violent people.
Care to provide some references?
Me, myself, and I.
I played Doom, listened to NIN and vulgar heavy metal music, violent movies, porn, and violent hentai as a young child. (for your reference this was 1993). I was a Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat junkie when I was younger than that... Heck... I even played Time Killers. I read violent and dirty comics.
I was a bad kid.
I also read books like Clockwork orange and James Clavell's "dirty" books (well his is more educational about eastern cultures but it opened my eyes to how much I ever been repressed).
Have I ever killed someone? Nope.
Have I ever hit a girl? Nope.
Have I even punched someone other than a freind (and he was asking for it since we were both drunk at the time and was asking me to hit him)?
Have I ever killed an animal other than bugs? Nope.
Frankly, I'm the most well adjusted 20 something I know and most likley more responsible than those kids who didn't play video games when there were a kid.
To tell you the truth all my other friends got or made someone pregnant right out of highschool. I was too busy being a looser video game freak that I ended up being successful in life as a computer repair person.
Everyone else I know in the industry and is my age pretty much had the same experience.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
but violent video games keep me from being violent. Whenever I get frustrated with people at work, or traffic, or just general high stress times, I can take my frustrations out on virtual people, or demons, or robots, or little mushroom headed guys (or a good old fashion punching bag) instead of having someone push me over the edge to the point where I get so angry that I couldn't control myself and might take my anger out on them...
Sadly, the legislators who propose such idiotic laws are not students of history. Regardless of the increase in violent video games, increase in sexual material, etc etc... the statistics will show otherwise.
:)
Violence, in the last 50 years, has been on a downward decline per capita. Don't believe me? Go look it up -- the Bureau of Justice (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/) has detailed information on this. Sexual crime is up a bit over the last 50 years, but this is due to the internet making it easier for people to be preyed on, and improved tracking due to investigative techniques to catch these guys.
I will not argue the fact that violent video games give children a tendency to be more violent. This is where PARENTING comes in. I have an aunt who instead of really raising her children, plops them in front of TV or Playstation, lets them do whatever and buys them all the video games where people are beating the living shit out of each other -- all in high graphic detail.
I know I couldn't fix her lack of parenting skills, so I spilled water on their Playstation (quite purposely) and it died. I bought them a Gamecube with some Mario games -- what a difference it makes. At least they are playing the games I grew up on, in some form at least. They may not be as graphically appealing, but they are fun and meant for kids. Even big kids, like me. Mario Party kicks some serious ass
I still don't see much point in legislating against this -- essentially you are legislating so that people like my aunt don't have to do their jobs as parents. As the old saying goes, "It takes a village." And it's true... and will become more prevalent as kids get more unruly, and the typical diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is prescribed by overeager doctors. I think drugging up your kids won't work forever... at some point you have to let them free in the real world, and that takes you to raise them well, your family to help and support, and the ability to see ALL choices (good and bad) and make rationale decisions on their own.
Nobody's going to learn anything if you just suppress what is available anyway. At 10 years old, I had Playboys in my hands -- I don't think that was legal either, but it still wasn't very difficult to get my hands on. The same applies here.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
...the record reduction in violent crime we've seen beginning in the 1990s was probably due to the reduction in violent videogames.
Oh, wait...
You need a study for that?
I'm a middle age man, and even I think these studies are nothing but bullshit. Boys tend to be aggressive, and it is boys who mostly play violent videogames. It's also mostly boys who play football, snap each other with towels, and pound each other on the limbs and body in sport and game. This is not fucking abnormal behaviour, it's how we are wired from birth.
It isn't evil, it is a natural part of the world that God created. Predators violently attack and eat other creatures. All the really succesfull species (humans and several insect species) go to war. Just like power by itself isn't evil, it is what you use it for that determines if violence is evil or not.
That is why they keep failing to pass laws. They try to show that the games make you think violent thoughts, or make you a tiny bit violent, as if that should be enough to pass the laws. But those points are IRRELEVANT.
Another word for violent thoughts after playing a violent game is MEMORIES. There is nothing wrong with violent thoughts - it is not illegal and should not be illegal. If we outlawed violent thoughts, it would mean outlawing every soldier, cop, body contact sport, and many other good things about our society.
As for violent actions they claim occur -they are always small and legal. Frankly, it does not matter if someone, after playing the games, is likely to violently pull their toys away from other kids instead of politely doing it.
The real test is simple: Do normal, average kids/adults that play the game become more likely to commit crimes? And the answer is a resounding NO, THEY DON'T. There has been a huge drop in crime since the introduction of violent games, not an increase. (Note that drop is almost certainly a direct result of legallizing abortions - it prevents unwanted children from being born to people that don't want them and usually don't have the mental or phsyical resources to properly raise them).
Everything else doesn't matter. The studies they make up are not relevant to the issue. It just is a smoke screen to hide the fact that the anti-violence people have some twisted, false ideas about human psychology. Mind control is almost impossible and even influencing the human mind is extremely dificult, no mere video game will do it unless the person is either already evil or the rest of the real world heavily supports the mind control attempt.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
>the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression
:-)
Oh yeah. Au contraire, my dear.
I'm currently VERY ANGRY because I COULD NOT log on to Steam for a round of Counter-Strike
Any 5th grader with the basic understanding of statistics should know that all these studies are flawed. Like everyone else has been repeatedly saying, a positive relation does not always imply the two are related. Just because the sale of assault weapons is up, and murder by assault weapons is up doesn't mean they are related. Oh wait, yeah it does. Maybe that's what these old farts should be spending their time on. Not Mappy Land vs. Street Fighter
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
The increase in video game play is linked to the increase in violence
;o)
The increase in video game play is linked to the increase natural desasters
The increase in video game play is linked to childrens IQ increasing
So what you're trying to say here is that video games cause children to grow up to be evil masterminds with darstardly plots to destroy civilisation using the latest disaster causing superweapon?
Damn, I should have played more console games as a kid...
Don't take the above poster too seriously. He doesn't.
I dont really think that the increase in violence in our society has anything to do with us glorifying it. I think it has everything to do with the information age, and by that I include television and other forms of media that even today are increasing their immersion into our society. The wealth of information that is at our finger tips from the internet to the news has caused a desire for realism that just started emerging over the past few decades.
It is our constant need for realism in our media and more specifically in our entertainment that is causing this violence. And it isnt because we like violence, it is because the world is violent. To accurately depict reality, many forms of media must be VERY violent. We no longer accept propoganda filled films that paint war as a heroic endeavor where the heroes never die and there are no blood and guts in the attractive hero's hair at the end of a battle.
The Vietnam War was the first time that our society really started to remember how "graphic" the world really is. America is so sheltered from the violence that is known in other parts of the world that we forget how wonderful it is that we can go to work every day without worrying about stepping on a land mine. Sure we have our own crime, but I doubt many people living in some African countries would give up the opportunity to trade places with us.
Even during the Vietnam War, we were still reluctant to accept the world for what it really is. It took a long time for our media to accuratly depict the world around us. But today we expect realistic movies and games. Sure there can be demons and angels and monsters, but the movie must be believable once you accept that these things exist in the scope of that particular movie.
Sure there are movies like "Kill Bill" that push the edge as far as gore and violence go, but there are always areas of media that push the envelope. Movies are effected by our culture as much if not more than movies effect us. Like you said in your post, movies like "Rambo" were at the extreme in the 80s. But now that all movies are at least as realistically depicted as Rambo, movies must go a little farther to be extreme enough for a certain audience.
Violence is not a good thing, but it should not be avoided. America is still too isolated from the world; our media is one of the few outlets that show us the things that many conservative people dont want us to see. I am not liberal by any means, but I also do not think we should shield ourself from reality just because it makes us feel better. I dont think we should ever stop trying to shock the public with images from media such as war movies. Maybe we will finally stop thinking issues like abortion are such a big deal when there are countries out there committing genocide.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
or maybe it is all that heavy metal music... wait.. no... it must be the violence in cartoons.... or perhaps it's the video games?!?!
Stupid parents will be stupid parents. If the game is illegal for children, stupid parent's kids will play it anyway. If it is illegal for anyone, banned, and all the violent game coders are sentenced to death, stupid parent kids will be playing with their dad's 9mm automatic left in plain view and smoking cigarettes (or something better).
When was it that kids' decisions about what to play, where to go (real and virtual world), what to eat, etc. overrulled their parent's decisions??
Why is that supervising what your kids do on the computer is "intrusion", while not knowing where they are in the 'material' world is "negligence"??
Is parenthood obsolete in the information age?
A (real) parent knows what's appropriate for each of her/his children - not all children are alike, not all families are alike. Violent scenes may be bad to one child but not to another, independently of gender or age, even under the same roof ("bad" here is bad dreams, distress; NOT instant serial killer formation).
Parents who rely on "politics and lawmakers" to take even these small decisions about their children's formation are Doomed anyway.
I almost didn't need to read the article to know what it was going to say. Let's think for a moment. If I'm a conservative Republican that wants to push my agenda on keeping kids "safe" from violent video games what should I do? Well I own IGN, a very well known site for gaming info. I'll just make someone there write an article about how violent video games are bad. Yes, that will look credible.
I sense Rupert Murdoch muking around with IGN as he is known to do with Fox.
"With all of the uproar surrounding the Columbine shootings and other similar tragedies..."
I'm so sick of hearing this shit. The initiating kid was fucked in the head and on medication. Unfortunately, the medication wasn't the correct one and caused his severe depression / violent outburst. Playing Quake and watching Pulp Fiction didn't inspire him go to out, buy the Anarachist's Cookbook and make 40 lb propane bombs. Games and movies didn't drive him to go on a suicidal rampage. It was the fucking medication, the irresponsible doctor who didn't listen to him and his family when they complained about the effects of the medication and most of all, his own lack of self-judgement. I, for one, would like to personally welcome our censoring overlords, who provide a method and modus for what seems to be an utter lack of humanity's accountability.
As for me, I'm on my way to out and stomp on some turtles and mushrooms. For some reason, I just have this compulsion to do it while wearing a red shirt and overalls...
Correlation does not imply causation in most circumstances. Perhaps playing video games with violence will, in fact, set off some of the more unstable individuals to do something truely terrible... but then that might only occur if they play the game at the wrong/right time as opposed to watching a violent movie, playing cops'n'robbers' or any other number of things that might upset somebody in an unstable mental state.
are human beings empty vessels of purity that are corrupted by their environment? or are human beings violent pits of rage and sexual perversion that are tamed by their society? i side with the latter. as proof i present to you your average 3 year old toddler
case closed
therefore, what function does violence/ sex in media serve? i assert to you that these things serve as catharsis. that is, everyone accumulates mental garbage: antisocial aggressive feelings and antisocial sexual feelings, and needs to "take out the trash". without any media: violent videogames, pornography, etc., these feelings will get expressed in real life, on real people. therefore, in a society with unlimited access to ultraviolence and hard core pornography, i posit a decrease in physical violent behavior and inappropriate sexual behavior in real life, because these feelings that would otherwise get expressed on real people get expressed on keyboards harmlessly
you heard me correctly: to make society safer from rape and violence, i am saying we should increase access to utrlaviolent and hardcore sexual media. i really believe that
a counterexample to what i am saying is something like dylan klebold's obsession with "doom". i say nonsense. if someone is obsessed with violence, that comes first, and obsession with a violent videogame is merely another symptom of an underlying cause, not a cause itself. i assert to you that 99.99% of people can be exposed to the most hardcore violent and sexual content for hours and hours at a time, for weeks at end, and still tell the difference between reality and fantasy without the slightest hiccup. i've played doom myself in the mid '90s for hours a day for months at a time, and i'm a rabid supporter of gun control, for whatever worth that example is
as for the remaining 0.01%, i assert to you that these people are unhinged in and of themselves, and even if you can prove that a violent videogame is what "set them off" i say that if no violent videogame ever existed, something else would have "set them off." if you stand on a precipice of mental stability, it doesn't take much to push you off, and whatever slight nudge does push you off is not the real cause of your problems. being on a precipice is the root cause of your problems
whether you agree with me or not, i assert the following: we were raping and pillaging before we could even write, how many tens of thousands of years ago. so the nonsense that something invented only decades ago could somehow increase the human capacity for violence or inappropriate sexual behavior to me is pure nonsense, and speaks to me of severe historical myopia
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You will learn about responsibility when you have children. I don't need a study to tell me that violent videogames are bad for chidren.
Listen to this. Video games are not bad for children. Neither is porn.
Millions of kids (including myself) played violent video games in the early 90's and aquired porn mags.
I'm not saying you should openly give these things to your kids, but obviously it won't kill them if they ecounter them.
You know is bad for them...
Abusive parents.
Neglegent parents.
Abusive relatives.
Parents who do drugs.
Violent poor neighborhoods.
Drugs.
Teenage pregancy.
Parents who claim their care, but don't know shit about parenting and don't really give a damn if their kids live or die.
Just because you have a kid, doesn't mean you know what is best for them. So stop telling people that, because anyone drunkard lowlife can get another lowlife pregnant.
It takes a good person with love in his heart and a desire to do good for their children. Frankly, you don't even have to be the kids natural born parents.
A loving caring person who adopts a kid is far better than a person who forces a kid into the world because of their ignorace or desire to live vicariously through some experiment they think will bring happiness in their lives... Lets not talk about the unwanted pregrancy types.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
This is because video game legislation annoys people who aren't old enough to vote yet, while TV legislation would annoy most of the population. These people don't really care about kids, they care about looking good, getting votes, and trying to scare people into their political camp.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Is the experience of many violent games a contributing factor to violence in later years? Does it predispose a person to violence? Does it make a person more tolerant of violence? More apathetic regarding violence? more accepting of violence?
Does it contribute to the idea that violent solutions are more acceptable and viable than other solutions. Does it promote a violent sense of politics?
Does it contribute to an ability to confront and handle violence, and the artifacts of violence, such as guns, weapons, and social consequences of violence? Does it create an independent citizen, bane of ditators everywhere?
Do these factor effect people equally? Or does it "merely enhance" these bad characteristics in people who are already predisposed to them because of other factors, social, enviromental, and genetic? Does it only enhance the "bad seeds?
I imagine that it has each of the above effects, and many more, depending on the particular individual, and the factors that they find themselves in as they grow and develop. It is a specific application of the "nature vs nuture" debate, as applied to a specific element in the experience of the person as they grow up. Of course, other things, such as television, also apply. The fact of whole generations growing up in an environment where nuclear weapons are the rage (1950s and 60s, etc) is likely enough to throw a wrench in the works.
This actually can be traced back to WWI, which has been said to have had an incredible traumatic effect on the culture. The innocent sense of civilization they had before the war was fairly well shattered with the death of millions of men in modern warfare, each side proudly proclaiming "God is with us". The cascading effects and reactions to this have been with us ever since.
People are still acting this out in the games they play, with the echoes of other wars. But without resolving the actual source of the issue, they might only unknowingly reinforce the very elements that they say they object to.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The reason I'm skeptical about "scientific evidence" that violent games makes kids and adults violent, is it runs completely counter to my personal experience.
I grew up playing video games, starting with the 2600 and a TRS-80 and going through Doom, Wolfenstein, and all the other favored punching bags of the "games cause violence!" people. I enjoy GTA, I bought all three PS2 GTA games and play them regularly. I also enjoy the Splinter Cell series, sneaking around and murdering people. I love Burnout, driving dangerously and causing accidents.
So, why haven't I conditioned myself? Why am I still a pacifist liberal vegetarian, who doesn't even like competitive online games, and hasn't lost his temper in years? Why don't I own a gun? Why am I a careful driver who doesn't tailgate? Why do stories of American torture greatly upset me?
I'm sure there are plenty of other Slashdot readers in the same situation. We've dosed ourselves on so much video game violence we're practically lab rats for the cause, yet it hasn't affected us. So it's clear to us that there has to be more to the issue than "video games -> violence".
Perhaps only some people are affected by video game violence. In which case, sucks for them, but I'll keep playing games. More plausibly, perhaps the causality is backwards--perhaps people who are violent by nature are more likely to find violent games appealing, and fail to remain detached from them, and get affected. In which case, again, let's work out how to identify and help those people.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'll one-up you on that, how about it reads the latest investigative reports on political lobbying, or my old accounting textbook. Of course the outcome would still be the same (opponent's head explodes).
I guess you are right. I never played videogames or look at porn or smoked a doobie or jerked off when I was a kid, and I am soooo out of touch.
My point is YOU are out of touch. You have no idea what it is like to be a parent until you have kids. Period. Go fuck yourself if you think you do cause you don't.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
The thought of voilence video games having an impact on someone seemed quite evident with the story slashdot did a little while ago in wish a soldier said something similar to "It's just like halo" when talking about being in the military....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Instead of banning violent video games they should ban bad parenting.
I have been playing video games for about 23 years now. As most of you know 99% of games involve violence. Weather its slicing someone's head off GTA style, or eating a ghost in Pac-Man.
As a child my parents taught me the difference between right & wrong, and real & fake. I can pick up my controller and go on a mass killing spree, but I dont go jump on the subway and start laying waste to my fellow commuters.
Video games dont make people violent. Lack of propper parental supervision causes a kid to be "bad".
I am an adult, and if I want to play violent games, who the hell has the right to tell me I cant? I was not aware we turned into a Dictatorship.
The effect of violent games *gasp* varies depending on the individual.
If you have a person prone to violence who lacks the ability to consider consequences (a lot of teenage boys fall in this category), it stands to reason that you can see an increase in violent behavior when they are regularly exposed to violent games, movies, music, literature, et cetera. One just needs to be impressionable and have a tendency toward the behavior being presented.
The vast majority of adults and a lot of kids are perfectly capable of distinguishing between reality and fantasy and keeping them seperate. They understand that what they hear, see, and do in a fantasy world is not always acceptable in the real world. But we *must* admit that there are some people who do not do this, and they are the reason so many studies find a link between violent media and violent behavior. If 10% of the subjects showed an increase in violent behavior, the study is published as demonstrating a link between the games and the behavior.
You, me, our friends, maybe even everyone we know may not have a problem with this. But that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people who either lack the education, upbringing or the mental capacity to differentiate the two worlds.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Epidemology and statistical inference is a bugger of a subject. It's half way between an art and a science. Most /.ers won't appreciate some of the nuances and how far you can go with inference rather than deduction.
To help, here are Sir Austin's set of rules (copied from NumberWatch).
start quote:
Assessment of causality.
Assessment of the relationship between and exposure and a particular outcome is made on the balance of all the available evidence. Sir Austin Bradford-Hill proposed several considerations to be taken into account, which have been widely used and adapted. Some key considerations follow.
Strength of the association
Strong associations are more likely to be causal than weak ones. Weak associations are more likely to be explained by undetected biases.
Consistency of the association
An association is more likely to be causal when a number of similar results emerge from different studies done in different populations
Temporality
For an exposure to cause an outcome, it must precede the effect.
Plausibility
Is there a biologically plausible mechanism by which the exposure could cause the outcome? The existence of a plausible mechanism may strengthen the evidence for causality
Biological gradient
The observation that an increasing dose of an exposure increases the risk of an outcome strengthens the evidence for causality.
Coherence
Coherence implies that the association does not conflict with current knowledge about the outcome.
Experimental evidence
Experimental studies in which changing the level of an exposure is found to change the risk of an outcome provide strong evidence for causality.
end quote
And this ought to get modded informative!
10 million people play MMORPGS. How many have been killed as a result? Like three?
j OaRhgLejX/yvXN3/censorship.htmlj 6_AXNLe0h/yvXN3/halo2.html0 OaRhNLx0X/yvXN3/wowworld.html
How many people play videogames total? How many of them become killers?
Only when those numbers become even noticably close you can say that this correlation does, indeed, imply casuation. (not completely true, but truer than current arguments)
How is this level of violence any different from any age in history? Name one where gladiatorial matches, swordfighting, kids joining the military, kids playing cowboys and indians, or something else didn't happen.
Over one million warriors are battling it out in multiplay on the X-Box Live servers as we speak. That's more than five times the number of armed troops doing battle in Iraq. Which is resulting in more deaths?
Some related links (pretty funny):
https://beijing999.com/do/Qaak/tooLZjAiaDg33tv9ag
https://beijing999.com/do/Q_aZ/ootLZ0Ria5N99tv9ag
https://beijing999.com/do/zaak/ootLZjRi_5g93tG9_N
Sorry, they are through a proxy (only way I can get to them right now)
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
First a disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of "violent" games. I love first-person shooters like Call of Duty 2, my current time waster.
There is a reason why we use simulations - because they allow us to simulate things that happen in real life so as to experience or predict what would happen in real life without the risks or costs.
If exposure to violence has an effect on us psychologically, then it is logical to expect that the more realistic a violent simulation the more true-to-life the psychological effect should be.
The question therefore becomes, how realistic a simulation of violence are the games under discussion.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Do we have more violent computer games than 20 years ago? Yes.
Do we have a higher crime rate than 20 years ago? Yes.
Does this mean there has to be a correlation between them? No.
It COULD be. But the causal dependency is missing.
By simply labeling one factor as the culprit, you ignore all the others that sociologists and related scientists field as possible reasons for the increasing violence.
General dissatisfaction and frustration, because of unemployment, low wages and the ever growing gap between rich and poor (and fewer and fewer people standing between those extremes) is only one of them. But conveniently, also the one that's always overlooked whenever the question comes "Why do our kids get so violent now?" Then we pull games, movies or simply "the internet" as a whole out of the hat, label it the culprit and go back to sleep.
It's convenient. But convenient answers are rarely right.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Movies are rated by age, some games are legally, others are voluntarily. The easy solution is to put an age classification on all games. Then if some parent bitches about a game turning their little Johny into a psycho, prosecute them for letting little Johny play an adult game! If the kid bought it himself, prosecute the idiot that sold it to him.
I am an adult gamer and I get pissed off with hearing people just wanting to score political points by jumping on the "violent games are bad bandwagon". I would be happy if games were rated.
Personally, I don't think games induce violence as much as they inspire violence. Which is to say that, although the type of violent acts may very easily be copied from populair entertainment, I highly doubt if the amount of violence can be traced back to the amount of violent entertainment which is consumed.
When I decide to go on a murderous rampage to kill random people after having played a game of Carmageddon, it is obvious that my violence is inspired by the violence which is so abundant in that game. What is not obvious is that I wouldn't have found another way to express my violent needs for lack of creative inspiration. People have been torturing, maiming and killing each other for a little while longer than high-tech-taintment has existed.
I find increasing overpopulation to be a much more likely source of violence than increasingly violent entertainment. But, after all, a correlation does not necessarily indicate a causal relation. Such relations are difficult to prove without a rigidly set up experiment.
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
I rarely watch TV, but as I watched last night, I was amazed at that every show after 9pm, and most before, feature violence (more often than not killing vs. a good beating!).
Through conventional media, we are bathed in violence whether real in the news, or fictional.
How people, and the media in particular, can point the finger at gaming as a particularly bad influence without looking at themselves is hypocritical beyond belief.
Look at the prime time schedule of most networks and the vast majority of programming revolves around violence in one form or other.
That been said, there are numerous drivers out there who I would have loved to lob a fireball at after a good session of WoW!
... there can be only one!
Amen brother!!! The "good old days" had it's offernings of violent entertainment. Look at the cartoons. Tom and Jerry, Popeye, and others. Then you had the all time fav The Three Stooges. PLUS boys have always played violent pretend (analogue?) games in real life like War, Cops n' Robbers, and many others. Video games are no different. Why is it people love to blame the entertainment industry for the results of poor parenting?
My point is YOU are out of touch. You have no idea what it is like to be a parent until you have kids. Period. Go fuck yourself if you think you do cause you don't.
Did you not just read what I said?
Having a kid does not automatically make you a good parent!
I guess you are right. I never played videogames or look at porn or smoked a doobie or jerked off when I was a kid, and I am soooo out of touch.
Well, you are going to be in one hellava a shock when your kids do. And there is nothing... I repeat nothing you can do to prevent them from doing so if they want to.
Do you feel that lack of power? That is the sound of your kids growing up and leaving your house and then doing all the things you didn't let them do when they were in your ivory tower of a house. Heck, they might even do it because of resentment of what you wouldn't let them do.
No amount of punishment or force will make them be the person you want them to be.
Me bitter? Nah. Just realistic. Secondly, how do you know I'm not a parent? It wouldn't be something I would dick wave on a public forum like some badge of courage. It would be something I'd keep between me and my family.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
This would all be very compelling if Milgram hadn't demonstrated how different people's bahavior can be in different contexts. If "when authority requests" is a context in which most people do terrible things, that doesn't mean that most people are sociopaths when they are not given such orders. (although it has informed how people view obedience since then) Similarly, "when you're playing a game" is an alternate context in which different rules apply. It's not relevant in this case to observe that you _should_ not compromise your morals in a real situation, but that it's ok to do whatever you feel like in a game situation. It's only relevant that people DO do that.
So, tell me, all you correlaters out there, where is the study where a group of children is given either a violent game or a friendly game for a fixed period of time each day, and required to play it during that time, and required not to play any video games outside of that time, and then after some fixed amount of time (however long people supposedly have to play violent games in order for the effects to be significant), they are released, and then the researchers conducting the study follow up every 6 months to compare delinquency rates or SAT scores or whatever?
Oh, wait, nobody has done a study that doesn't have self-selecting samples, and nobody claims any conclusion any stronger than observed correlation. Could it be that the same parents that use mass media like TV and video games to absolve themselves of some or all parental responsibility tend to raise sociopaths, and those children tend to play huge amounts of video games?
Nahhhh, let's ban something.
I'm with you for almost exactly the same reasons, but I add Veggie Tales to the do not watch list.
They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.
They *can* allow for controls. I haven't seen a study proving something useful to legislators that, which even attempts a remotely useful control.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
well, it is probably safe to assume that "violent" video games had nothing to do with the recent Hutu vs Tutsi bloodrage, the implosion of Yugoslavia, the rise (and fall and...rise again?) of the Taliban, OBL/AZ vs whatever the hell they're pissed off about today, etc.
There are far larger factors that lead to violence (drugs, money, job, economy) that are out of anyone's day-to-day control, really.
The thing is, society will always have a scapegoat. First books corrupted children, then it was rock and roll, then violent movies, and now it's video games. Every single time that people complained about all of these things, they used the same arguments. And yet all of these activities are now normal forms of entertainment. This will indeed stop after a while. Until there's a more viable choice for a scapegoat, that is.
Your statement makes no sense logically. The fact that these activities are now normal does not demonstrate whether or not these activities promote violence. What you should have offered as evidence would be something like stats comparing teenage violence in the 50s to today. However the stats show the opposite, more violence, so the evidence does not support your conclusion.
US Army psychological warfare researchers showed Nazi propoganda films to combat vets and found that they were more open to Nazi ideas.
When I was in ROTC they showed us a Marine Corp training film that was unedited color footage of the Marine's assault on the island of Tarawa. I think some of the scenes in the opening of Saving Private Ryan were inspired by this film. The instructor told us that the purpose was desensitisation.
Movies do not make someone go out and commit a particular act but they do increase or decrease the propensity to commit the act. Games most likely have a similar affect.
There are already laws/measures and rating systems to prevent kids from purchasing these types of games. The issue is not to stop producing the games it is to make it more restrictive to purchase. For example an under 17 kid has a better chance of purchasing an MA 17+ game than he would at purchasing liquor/alcohol. (This is all relative of course to areas and education/skills of individuals at the register.) I think distinguishing the MA rated games from the rest is important. Just as the soda/beverage aisle is normally not the same as the chilled alcohol section. The XXX videos are in a different section than the general/family videos (assuming the rental store carries more than just that type of video.) At Fry's / Sam Goodies / etc.. that sell DVDs they may have the 18+ hentai videos near the anime, but they are all together and not mixed in, as well as they all have a black plastic divider covering the front displays and are heavily marked about their content. The retail game outlets need to take a clue or have a law force some policy at the presentation layer to the general consumer. You would never see an anome "Sakara Chan's Nine Tentacles of bondaged pleasure 9" appear in a [insert retailer] ad, so games rated for the adult (MA/AO) market shouldn't be allowed in ads. Retailers and Rental distribution need to be given some policy on presentation. The development of gaming needs no boundaries. ~J
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
The shotgun basically "frames" their mind in a certain perspective. This is not equally true of kitchen knives and the like, because most instances of interaction with the kitchen knife involve chopping food (if anything, it frames you to be hungry).
The consequence is then justifying banning games but not banning other violence-encouraging stimuli like action movies, the military, and so forth.
If they're worried about videogames causing violence, maybe they should look to the violence that resulted when the British Government interfered with the private lives of American Colonists. That was pretty violent.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
>> I was a bad kid.
No you weren't. You read some books that only moralistic bible-bashers find offensive and you explicitly weren't aggressive to people or animals.
lawmakers still have a difficult time convincing the courts that they should be removed from children's hands.
Who's fault is that really? Parents or government?
(The answer should be OBVIOUS)
Correlation does not imply causation
Correlation might not imply causation, but it does hint that further investigation is warranted.
Regardless, there's a much larger logical problem. Somebody please explain to me how children can learn good lessons about sharing and friendship from educational shows or software, and somehow fail to learn the bad ones.
violence in any sort of media, like in pro wrestling, does send subtle messages to people of all ages... it could never be the sole cause of acts of violence, but it is one factor that contributes to the problem... but is the amount of influence it exudes enough to justify taking action? if so, how much action?
One version of Mortal Kombat had a friendship option as well as fatality and animality. http://mkk.mortalkombatonline.com/games/mk3/
Colosse.
...is that there really are people out there to whom the happiness of others is the most painful but (unfortunately) non-lethal torture in existence.
Take Jack Thompson (or the RIAA/MPAA, Microsoft, telcos, our bought and sold "representatives" in Congre$$, etc). They don't care about the real or theoretical damage to people or society. They don't care about the costs something might impose on us as a country. They don't care about any real injustices or genuine problems at all really.
What it boils down to is that one of us will play GTA (for example) after work or school and be moderately happy and entertained. And it infuriates them, that somebody ISN'T miserable for a short span of time. That's what every ridiculous action in the world is always about. Pundits like the dismiss rich vs poor arguments as some stupid overhyped class warfare but the truth is that oftentimes your status is defined more by what others don't have than what you possess.
Past a certain point, simple greed actually transforms into something else far more sinister and inhuman. The airline CEO taking a $300 million parachute after slashing 1000s of jobs? It's naive to believe he wanted another yacht; it was entirely about depriving those other people of their livelihood. Relatively speaking, the millionaire in backwater China is richer than the billionaire at a Forbes 100 conference.
Good luck raising children.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Think of Super Mario jumped on mushrooms and they turned into happy angels instead of dead pancakes? Or in Unreal Tournament you fire paintballs, or tickle people at close range? Or in Mortal Kombat you have a tickle fight, and instead of ripping out a heart, you read the woozy opponent a bedside story. I think it would sell just as well. A game doesn't have to be violent, it can be funny and still be as fun.
I would NOT buy any of the dumbed down versions you mention. The whole reason people play Mortal Kombat is..... (drum roll) THE VIOLENCE. You take that out and all you have is another version of Street Fighter. And if you think jumping on mushrooms and squashing them is violent, you really gotta get out of the house more often, or just turn on the local news.
People of age should be able to enjoy violence in their games. Hell look at Hollywood... Are we going to take all the violence out of movies? That would kill off most action & horror movies, just as removing violence from games would kill off ALOT of generes and is just plain unfair to us Adults who choose to play the games.
If you look at the crime rates in america, one would surmise that the study is bullshit simply because there are much more violent games out today than there were 20 years ago, yet the crime rate has since '91 been pretty steadily fropping, as computers and therefore violent computer games become more and more accessable to the public. The opposite correlation is present from the correlation they show. And oddly enough, I haven't heard of a rash of geek spree killers occuring
OK, so as to how someone would know you are not a parent - your infantile approach, lack of understanding of basic courtesy, and viewpoint about children all betray the fact that you are still a teenager, or at least never progressed beyond thinking like one.
Grow up, stop listening to your crappy rebellious music, go to college, get a job/education, and maybe people will stop assuming you are an idiot. Oh, and start picking up on sarcasm, you look less stupid that way.
FACT: I enjoy violent video games.
FACT: I'm a pacifist.
Did I just blow your mind?
-ds
Man, I'd hate to have you as a parent, you're prob one those guys that won't let their kids play cops and robbers. I feel sorry for the culture shock your kids are going to get when they goto public schools... oh, you're going to homeschool? Well, I reeeally feel sorry for your kids when they have to move out of the house.. Oh, they're never going to leave the house? Ah, well, prob best for everyone.
Listen, I was raised by parents like you. Let tell you something, you can't keep them clueless forever, it will only hurt them more later.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Violent video games make you violent....looking at porn eventually turns you into a rapist...drinking an occasional drink means you'll become an alcoholic....smoke a little weed once and you'll become a crack addict down the road who steals and kills to keep his habit going. Oh and let's not forget that good food is like an addictive drug, webcomics are like drugs, television is like a drug, the internet is like a drug. Everything that's fun is bad and addictive. Be good little worker drones, obey the elite, and eliminate all that is fun and enjoyable from your lives...it's for your own good and the good of society you know.
It's not the video game company's job to sensor what games it comes out with. It's the parents' job to teach their kids the difference between video games and real life, and maybe wait til they're a lil older than 3 to give them the controls to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For anyone with any intelligence, violent video games bring a certain release to the end of a hard day. If we can't take our anger out on pixels, where will we turn?
=*^.^*=
If I hear one more person tell me the video games I play make me violent, I'm going to punch my dog.
Violent video games can affect people's state of mind, and its important to make sure those who play them know that what happens in the video games, stays there. Just because its ok to shoot someone with a shotgun 40 times in let's say Halo 2, doesn't mean you can do the same thing to your neighbor.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
There has never been any violent acts in a video game the images are computer generated, no one lives, or dies...
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Why the focus on games? Why can't they study if there is a positive correlation of gun ownership and violence? Martial arts and violence may be possible....just maybe. I bet you can even find a positive correlation between Greenpeace and violence.
So games have violence, big deal, it's virtual. There are many more imminent real world examples to address. Is it really the governments' job to parent children? If so, they have many more laws to pass and better get busy...
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
Here's a proposal that will never go anywhere: violent games should only be available to children under 13.
My kids would eat candy bars,drink soda all day and still be shitting in a diaper if I let them. Have some kids and you will understand. BTW when they leave for college I am going to sell the house and get a one-bedroom condo so they don't come back.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
If the Game industry (or the movie industry) can prove that repeatidely viewing an image does not affect behaviour than the advertising industry will be shown to be a rort. Companies like Coca-Cola that spend millions on repeating images to affect behaviour of consumers (adverts in other words) will have to ask if they've been defrauded by advertising salespeople.
In all these discussions and studies of the effects of violence studies, one thing that I haven't found yet is this: ... say English football games ... professional "American football", "European/World football", Rugby, Basketball and Baseball games, High School basketball/football(both styles) games. Music concerts, etc. If violent behavior really is correlated to violent video games, I would expect an undeniably higher frequency of both occurrence and intensity at First Person Shooter LAN parties. IF such studies show no statistically significant tendency towards more violence at "LAN Parties", or even a tendency for reduced violence, all the rest of these studies seem at best a waste of good research money, and at worst, studies with a preconcieved bias that will always point to the desired conclusions, either through tainted methodology or falsification of the results to make them fit.
Wher are the "LAN parties" that end up in increased acts of violence? IF there is true correlation between palying violent first person shooter games, I personally would expect to see/hear media reports of at least one major altercation at any such event involving say 50 or more individuals.
So, as the arousal effect is greatest immediately after playing the game, isn't it reasonable to expect causality to show itself in violent behavior errupting with undenialable frequency after these lan parties? The larger the venue, the greater the outbreak? It should be so strong as to be predictable.
Another thing that bothers me is the imprecise statement of conclusion by the expets. Quote from the article: "... given their reduced empathy, more likely to engage in aggressive behavior against others." Now, by "given" is he stating factually that the agressive behavior IS happening? Or is he concluding that the "reduced empathy" makes it more likely, but there is no hard evidence? Did these "reduced empathy" subjects actually go out and act more violently and/or less caringly than the "control" group? Was the "reduced empathy" subjects' behavoir ACTUALLY more violent or less caring than before? This is the kind of evidence that seems to be lacking. Because one feels "violently predesposed", if I can use that term, does not mean at all that one will act that way. I would submit that if violent video games cause these "impared states", it is a blessing in disguise, for in my opinion, it is not the person who feels no tendency towards violence and lack of empathy who is most moral, but the one who does feel these exact things and has schooled themself to deny those feelings.
In any case, I am most interested in seeing any and all evidence of violent behavior after/during a LAN party, and comparing it to any other social gathering
I haven't googled it, I'm just basing it off the news headlines ever since Dan Rather did his famous moral outrage broadcast about Doom I. With all the medai hype, surely these concerned lawmakers would very publicly point to any such studies or events?
With the realism in today's games, people are really getting shell-shocked.
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
I love you too, Dad.
Hey, you're supposed to be in school you little bastard! Wait till I get home!
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Whenever this subject surfaces, everyone is focused on whether or not the video games create violent people. But I think a much more plausible scenario is that people who are already predisposed to violence are drawn to play violent video games.
Think about it: someone who enjoys beating other people up will probably get a kick out of snapping necks in Splinter Cell and running over prostitutes in GTA. People who are already violent probably very much enjoy playing violent video games. Of course, they would be just as violent even without the video games, but the correlation is there.
However, there are many many more people who are NOT predisposed to violence who also enjoy playing violent video games (present company included), which is why the issue is complicated. But I think the majority of people who decry video games because they are "turning society more violent" are looking at the issue backwards. Violent video games don't create violent people; violent people are drawn to violent video games.
Violence has existed in human society since the dawn of time, without the help of video games. Hell, even Shakespeare wrote bloody plays about war, rape, and murder. He even included an all-out gang war in Romeo & Juliet. Let's blame him for our society's ills.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
These studies are very reliable indicators of whether the researchers are of the computer gaming generation or not. Whether a study indicates that violent computer games are bad is very closely correlated with whether the researcher plays violent computer games. It does not tell you much about the children studied though.
You can be sure that the control group in this study was sitting still doing nothing. Well, with some confidence I predict that violent tendencies and heart rate are closely correlated, as are violent tendencies and adrenaline. Send the children out to play dodgeball, with a control group consisting of children sitting in a room doing nothing, and you will find that dodgeball leads to increased acts of aggression. I am sure you will find correlations between playing on the jungle gym and aggression, playing on a waterslide and aggression, playing anything that raises the heartrate and adrenaline and aggression, so long as your control group is sitting still in a room doing nothing.
What this is about is hatred of the male. This is oppression of the new generation's expression of traditional male culture. There is no science here, only cultural warfare masquerading as it.
Bob: (advances menacingly)
Me: No, seriously, put it down.
Bob: (draw nearer) Me: BOB! STOPPIT!
Bob: (impacts me over the head with a controller) WHACK!
Me: OW!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
What you should have offered as evidence would be something like stats comparing teenage violence in the 50s to today. However the stats show the opposite, more violence, so the evidence does not support your conclusion.
No, actually violence among adolescents has decreased significantly based on DoJ statistics. See the fisrt graph here which at least goes back to the early 70's. Haven't found anything going back to the 50's yet. Where do you get the idea teenage violence was lower in the 50's?
Slashdot is a waste of time, the signal-to-noise ratio is just too low.
Slashdot. News for turds. Stuff that doesn't matter.
P.S. If you actually believe what you wrote then you believe that images have no affect on an organism that gets the majority of it's input from images.
http://www.gamerevolution.com/oldsite/articles/vio lence/violence.htm
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
Nintendo does it well, they are not bent on this darkside thing like the others and make fun games. Men who are not insecure can play a little kid looking game and have more fun. (since people identify with cartoons more--according some other slashdot posted 'study')
Japanese kids see a lot more and they don't have the mess we do. Canadian adults have more guns and they don't have the mess we do.
Something is wrong with americans. They want us to be consumer drones that don't question or protest and work over 40 hours a week, and the downside is they are more suggestible to things like violent video games and tv.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Right on! Gimme more o' that Blasted Vulcan Logic any day! Live long and prosper, man!
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
It is therefore obvious that there is not a 100% causal link between violent video games and immediate violent behavior. We as a slashdot readership seem generally capable of distinguishing between appropriate game behavior and appropriate real life behavior.
That's hardly the point, though. The concern behind all of this is that there may be people who *are* predisposed to being manipulated by video games, just by how their brains are wired, their psychological development and past, their baggage. What if 1 in 10000 people are, for whatever reason, unable to manage distinctions between immersive violent games and real life? What if it is just 1 in 100000, or 1 in 1 million?
The counter is that, 'Well, these people have violent tendencies anyway.' Maybe true. But rather than just being the fistfighting schoolyard bully, maybe they're impressed with how cool an automatic shotgun can be, or the idea of using a chainsaw is really 'sweet'. At the very least, if someone is susceptible to the suggestions of video games applying to real life, it can't be good for everyone else to have that individual be introduced to new, exciting, varied methods of killing and maiming other people.
If you're 'normal' with games, congratulations, you are in the large majority. I'm not worried about the large majority. I'm worried about the very very small minority who may be influenceable to doing very tragic things.
Do I believe video games are a problem for the vast majority of people? I don't doubt they have effects, but I strongly believe almost everyone can cope with them. Do I think universal legislation is the answer? Not really, the challenge is identifying that very small minority *before* they do something catastrophic, and that's a big challenge. Do I have a solution? No. Do we need one? Yes.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
And the whole point of the statement "correlation does not imply causality" is that people are taking demonstration of an observed correlation as proof of a cause-effect relationship which (we would contend) isn't adequately demonstrated. It's complicated by the fact that there are certain interests at work here - people who want to change things not because of the results of a study, but for some other reason, and are more than happy to (mis)use whatever study they can get in any way that helps their cause. When the results of a study are taken out of context and selectively re-worded the effect changes.
I think it's possible that violent gaming could encourage violent behavior. But I'm not convinced that this has been adequately demonstrated, and as a side note I fail to see why games are being selectively targeted.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
The problem with the entire thesis that correlates violence with rap and video games and movies is that the violent crime rate per capita in the US has been steady for many years, and then began trending down radically after 1993, until 2004 represented the lowest recorded level.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm
Check it out. If, in fact, violence in media is trending up, or steady since 1993, then there is a *negative* correlation society-wide.
Thinking outside my Head
Close but no cigar. People who are attracted to violence are attracted to violent videogames. There's the link.
Hundreds of millions of people play video games each year, and maybe 10 a year go nuts. Now if you want to have a look at something interesting -- investigate the link between Prozac, Zoloft and Luvox and a psychosis known as "mania":
According to the manufacturer, Solvay, 4% of children and youth taking Luvox developed mania during short-term controlled clinical trials. Mania is a psychosis which can produce bizarre, grandiose, highly elaborated destructive plans, including mass murder. Interestingly, in a recent controlled clinical trial, Prozac produced mania in the same age group at a rate of 6%. These are very high rates for drug-induced mania--much higher than those produced in adults. Yet the risk will be even higher during long-term clinical use where medical supervision, as in the case of Harris, is much more lax than in controlled clinical trials. These drugs also produce irritability, aggression or hostility, alienation, agitation, and loss of empathy.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I believe that violent games do one thing as well. They make kids numb to REAL violence.
Please, somebody shoot these bastards who want to take games away from me. Or are you going to use this as an example? Fuck you, do you hear me, FUCK YOU. Here in america, it is Majority > minority, and the people who have violent tendencies and play violent games, are less than a minority. Millions of people play these games, and not any of them are violent because of video games. Criminals, use video games as an excuse, because they think you are dumb enough to believe them. And yet you do (believe them). I have an idea for us all, why don't take our political agenda, shove it in a closet for a few hours, and during these hours, actually play these games. As soon as you do this, you will see how fun these games actually are, and are not just murder simulators. Sometimes people forget this one simple fact: everybody is people. Remember, gamers are people to. They are not violent sex crazed wackos with nothing better to do than play violent video games and like it. The companies that make these games are people as well. They have feelings, morals, and respect for others. People do not just pick up a game, to go and simulate the mutilation of some poor defenseless animal, or maim some pedestrians by running them over with a race car. Games are just that, games. Games are made with fairness and "fun" in mind. Have you ever played halo 2? It's a dang fun game! The first game was pure genius, with several aspects that were increidbly fun. To combat spawn camping (killing the player the moment he is alive again) the game designers gave the players a spawn weapon, that was very difficult to learn, and required skill to use. But this weapon was very powerful. The pistol, the most useful weapon in the game, fired 9 shots, and the shots took time to reach the target, so you must lead. The vehicle driving system in halo was pure genius. If you play on the computer, it was almost like you were guiding the vehicle. The game also has a stat system, and the game's physics, respawn system, and death system are all intelligent. The game compares how good you are in the game, if you are driving a warthog really really well, you are less likely to flip over. If you ramp that warthog off a tank, you might go under it, flpping the vehicle and it's occupants, or ramp over it, landing upside down or wheels down, depending on this skill system. The game determines if you are a better player than that tank driver, and if you are, you can flip it. If not, you will land upside down and be subject to enemy gunfire. Want to know something? I'm anti violence. But I think guns in video games are just plain cool. Hypocrisy huh? Not really. Video games have hurt nothing and no one. They are highly advanced versions of arcade games, like Pong and the 2d games you used to play. Video games hurt no one, and it IS fun to do stuff you would normally not do in real life, in the game. The same goes for drama TV shows, and movies. I was in class last year, our teacher made us watch the Romeo and Juliet movie, based somewhere I cannot remember. It had leo nardo de caprio in it, and at the scene where romeo cries out in sadness because juliet is dead, the whole class laughed! I suggest this discussion be brought up in 50 years or so, when we have total immersion reality gaming. Then, it might be considerate to moderate the content of those games. Until then, stop trying, because you are just pissing A LOT of poeple off. MAybe they are against this now, because they see this happening in the future. It's a game dood, get over it!
Well, causation is not the proper word.
Is the experience of many violent games a contributing factor to violence in later years? Does it predispose a person to violence? Does it make a person more tolerant of violence? More apathetic regarding violence? more accepting of violence?
Actually, "causation" is the proper word. If playing a video game or watching pro football increases the probability that somebody will engage in violence, then that is causation. Absolute certainty is not required.
On the other hand, if violent people happen to enjoy violent videogames and sports, but don't show any increase in their already-high probability of engaging in violence after enjoying these entertainments, then that is correlation without causality
These arguments seem kind of stupid in the light of the fact that the incidence of violence has been steadily decreasing as videogames have gotten more realistically violent, and decreasing particularly sharply in precisely the age group that most plays videogames. So on the level of society, there is a negative correlation between violent games and real-world violence.
So while we can't say for sure whether or not video games actually increase propensity for violence, what we can say is that any such effect--if it exists at all--must be small relative to other social, cultural, and demographic factors that impact violent behavior.
The only real study I've read - study that didn't start with a conclusion and work backwards - Showed the opposite to what the nanny brigade talls us is true. People who carry out violent acts in a video game are less likely to do it in reality as they work out their aggression on screen.
I know putting a lot of bullets in things on screen after work makes me feel better.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. Douglas Adams
War, bombs, exploding cars, roadside explosives, suicide bombers, beheadings, kidnappings, and invasion.... DON'T contribute to violent behavior?
Ban the video games, you'd better ban the news too.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
"What you should have offered as evidence would be something like stats comparing teenage violence in the 50s to today. However the stats show the opposite, more violence, so the evidence does not support your conclusion."
No, actually violence among adolescents has decreased significantly based on DoJ statistics. See the fisrt graph here which at least goes back to the early 70's. Haven't found anything going back to the 50's yet. Where do you get the idea teenage violence was lower in the 50's?
The 70s is not a good data point. That it well within the timeframe where movies, TV, music, etc, and the violence depicted within, became more of a factor. Hence the reference to the 50s where things were more sanitized, viewing hours were fewer, etc.
Note that I'm not saying we should return to sanitized media, just that more violent media may very well have an impact. The military certainly thinks so and leverages that for training purposes.
Just today, I led a group of people to kill another group. Some fought back and both sides experienced casualties. But I had planned for this and made sure they were outnumbered. I didn't stop with killing those who fought back, I also killed the innocents. And I still didn't stop there. I also destroyed their houses and places of work, flattening every structure in sight.
Do you think this could be related to the Warcraft III map I played the night before?
I just played a viciously competitive round of Desert Combat. I have nary a killing spree nerve left in me. ;)
I dont have a problem with violence and computer games... I have a problem with not playing computer games, and violence.
Well, apart from that half of them are selling their underwear to perverted salarymen, and the other half have locked themselves in their rooms and won't come out...
We geeks idealise Japan, but the place has some serious problems of its own.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I am sure UT2004 leaves me feeling more aggressive then Barney Math Fun Time
A bold statement. I think most adults would be more aggressive after prolonged exposure to Barney.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.