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The 64% Violent Pacman
DreamWinkle writes "During the recent Senate hearings on video game violence, one expert claimed that the ESRB underrated violent games. They went on to say that Pacman was 64% violent. To some, this means you shouldn't play Pacman; to others, it highlights what's wrong with Senate hearings. Whether a game is violent or not depends on how you classify violence, and the ESRB has the job of doing just that. They're not regulated by the government, they let the game makers recommend their own ratings, and don't play every game they rate. Is the ESRB to be trusted?"
Saying Packman is "64% violet" is like saying the meaning of life is "42".
I'll say Pac-Man's violent. Have you ever seen what he does to those poor ghosts? Eats 'em and leaves nothing but the eyes. Gruesome stuff, man.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Of course it's violent. Power pellets have feelings too!
"...US Government declares eating violent."
If they're using int for that number, I suspect that games like GTA come in with a rather nice ranking, somewhere around -17%...
What happened to the other 44%? Is that just the start and hi-score screens?
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
It's two to the power of the number of ghosts the Senator snagged before losing his last life.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Baseball -- People whack the heck out of an innocent little ball with a large wooden club.
Football -- People kick the heck out of an innocent ball.
American Football -- Two teams blitz, bomb, and violently tackle each other.
Hockey -- Nuff said.
Basketball -- People bounce an innocent ball repeatedly against a hard floor.
Pong Pong -- People whack a very small ball back and forth.
Golf -- People whack a very small ball, often wounding it and/or sending it into water/sand.
They all sound unacceptable violent to me...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I really want to know the procedure used to put a number to Pacman's "violence." Mario is probably up in the 80% region.
He jumps on creatures to kill them.
Kicks most likely endangered turtles
Throws fire at living creatures
In Mario 64, he punches and kicks poor, innocent animals and bombs
- Incites random attacks on royalty.
- Kill moles and attempts to block their homes.
- Chases and attacks monkies.
Your ad here.
Actually, I thought he was 100% yellow.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The remaining 36% percent has been determined to consist of:
15.08% squeely beeps
18.00% necrophagy
27.71% drugs
24.02% gender ambiguity
10.62% spin-offs
4.08% blue period
0.57% unknown... scratch that... tar
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You mean, sort of like a..... big brother?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
basically the game consists of pac
slaughtering ghosts, dots, and bigger dots.
Ghosts are also hunting pac when he isn't
hunting them.
30% of the screen isn't available to the characters
because of the way the maze is designed. This leaves 70%
as the max violence percentage.
However, in the post 9-11 world, pac killing ghosts has been
reclassified as doing Gods work, and is seen as promoting
freedom and democracy while killing evildoers.
Integrating over time, we can see that only 64% of the game is
actually violent, and 6% of the time pac is doing gods work.
It's a sad day that the King of American Macho Violence, Duke Nukem, is cast from this throne to be replaced by a pill-popping, ghost-seeing Japanese pizza missing a quarter-slice. Only if Duke Nukem Forever was released would things turn around for our beloved hero.
...Then Pacman is a particuarly horrbile game and I'm quite conent with it being targeted like this. Pacman encourages lots of destructive behavior, such as:
Running around in a dark room with a blacklight taking pills and mumbling "waka waka"
Taking a couple of larger, different pills, so powerful that you begin to eat people alive, yet inexplicably spit the eyes back out
Celebrating the deaths of those around you by listening to electronic music, presumably still under the effects of the pills.
It's pretty clear that Pacman could lead this entire country, nay the entire world, to extensive drug use, poor taste in music, and cannibalism unless we legislate against it.
At least thats how most game stores see it when they make a sale, especially when a 9 year old boy comes up with three twenty dollar bills.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
That they're about 87% retarded?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Maybe Pac-Man isn't really harming the ghosts. He's not eating the Ghosts, they live on. He's eating their clothing. The so called ghosts simply return home and don another sheet when Pac-Man catches them.
Maybe Pac-Man is really just a creature that enjoys the taste of clothing worn by a dark skinned creature. Eating the clothing seems to be enjoyable to Pac-Man, but receiving a whip crack to the ass from the mystical material transports Pac-Man back to his starting position.
How do we know the Ghosts don't enjoy chasing Pac-Man! They get to smack him on the rear if they catch him, but if he catches them they have to go home naked. It could all be in fun and jest, and us dolts of the human race have misinterpreted the entire ritual!
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
It has to be said:
"Video games don't affect kids. I mean if Pac-man affected us as kids,
we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching magic pills and
listenining to repetitive electronic music."
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
If Pacman's ghosts were replaced by rolling boulders, it would have nearly no violence. Discuss.
And if GTA's prostitutes were replaced by rolling boulders...
If you take the binary of the original arcade pac-man and disassemble it, you will find that 64% of the assembly instructions contain the so called "violent bit".
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
"Ghosts are, by definition, already dead.
Can you really commit violence against them?"
If puppets can have sex, then ghosts can be victims. God bless this country.
you mean, parents have responsibilities? Surely not!
It's up to the congress to legislate our childs upbringing.
It's only through laws that we can teach our children what they need to learn.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
It's the square of ate.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
We, the People for the Protection of Pellets have struck the first blow. Now our oppressor, who calls himself Pacman will feel the wraith of the government. No longer will our pellets be required to get help from ghosts to stop the evil yellow menace from attacking them. No longer will we have to worry about the "Power Pellet" who have betrayed us. All we ask is freedom for our white brethren!
DEATH TO THE HUNGRY ONE!
I happen to know a lot about Senate hearings. They are a series of connected tubes, and when you get 3 or 4 violent video games moving through these tubes, they get clogged up. Just last week, my staff sent me a Senate Hearing, and it took a whole day to get there.
Lots of people think of the cherries. In fact, 90% of the internet is directly related to people's thinking about cherries, or lack thereof.
kick ass! I can't wait to be a responsible parent.
Wife: Honey do the dishes.
Me: Are you kidding? I'm only 2/3 of the way through Jumior's christmas parent. WHAT KIND OF A MOTHER ARE YOU?!?!?
Wife: (sobbing)
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
Pac-Man's mouth is his only weapon, and it alternates between 25% open and 0% open, for an average of 12.5% open-mouthed violence.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Personally,
I think the real game to watch out for is Whack-a-mole. Do you know that the object of that game is to kill as many moles as possible in a single minute. I've seen death rates in the hundreds-per-minute category. I'm no statistician, but by this kind of formula, I'd have to say that Whack-a-mole is at least 257.2% violent. I've also seen the affect it has on the children who play it. How many time have you returned home after a long day at the office to see your children slaughtering moles in the front yard by the thousands? The ghost eating is bad enough, but what about the poor moles?
I'd much prefer that they play games in which they kill realistic looking mothers and children at the park half-a-dozen-per-minute than see them perform animatronic-rodent genocide.
Pac-Man is a metaphor. The Pac-Man, see, he's a thief. He's going around a warehouse stealing things. Things worth ten points each. The ghosts, see, they're the cops. They're trying to catch Pac-Man, and if they catch him three times, he goes to the joint for life, game over, man. So what does Pac-Man do? He kills the cops. The game REWARDS you for killing cops. That's just sick, man. 64% is way off the mark.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
On the way home, I realized I was wrong. It's the square of "dot ate". I can't believe nobody caught me!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
64% move on to more violent games like centipede.
Don't you EVER call pacman VIOLENT OR I'LL DEVOUR YOU IN ONE BITE!!! Except the eyes. Those are for later.