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What Came First, the Violence or the Videogame?
An anonymous reader writes "Another wave of video-game-violence panic is upon us. The pressed suits who read the pop news on television are wagging their so-called neutral fingers at an industry they have never understood. Planet Xbox 360 considers the many games they have played and the real-life murderers they have known in their own lives, and how little the talking heads know about either."
Before videogames, there was violence.
In the 60's, they blamed it on the rock 'n' roll.
In the 50's, they blamed it on Elvis' hips.
As far back as history records, there has been violence. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is just grabbing for straws that aren't there.
I choose B) Videogames, final answer!
i support the right to offend.
I'm relatively sure the crusades came before pac-man. . . So my guess is the violence, just a hunch though.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
I suspect that the Wii is likely to re-invigorate the controversy of video games. For example, in Red Steel, instead of just pushing buttons and killing fake people, you are moving your full upper body, which if intense enough, will get your heart pumping and feel more "real". You're then going through the actual motions. While I wouldn't agree with the complaints of people like Jack Thompson, I can see why it would worry them more.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
(see subject)...I believe the violence would have come first... Yarr
Ever since someone pressed forward, down, forward + low punch and did Sub Zero's fatality in Mortal Kombat 1, people have been playing video games on todays violence. Then gas was dumped on the with GTA and all its little buddies coming out after it. And its a convenient thought that someone who plays those games commits violent crimes.
But here is the reality of the situation. Fucked up crimes were happening before video games. They are going to happen with video games. And guess what? They are going to happen (god forbid) after video games.
I'm pretty sure kids ran around shooting each other before Doom arrived on the scene. In fact, I believe the oldest known video game, Space War, was preceeded by millenia of violence, much of it perpetrated by persons under the age of 25.
Violence is a part of human nature. The only reasons you hear so much about the kids who kill other kids is a) the news media is pretty much 24/7 and spends a lot of that time twiddling its thumbs, and so it jumps on a story like Columbine; and b) because there are MORE OF US so it's more likely to happen.
It's not the fault of the video games. It's the fault of negligent parents and a society that doesn't seem to take any interest in disciplining children anymore.
What was the name of that video game Hitler used to play?
Meyers: I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing... There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented.
Kent: I see. Fascinating.
Meyers: Yeah, and know something, Karl? The Crusades, for instance. Tremendous violence, many people killed, the darned thing went on for thirty years.
Kent: And this was before cartoons were invented?
Meyers: That's right, Kent.
I don't care I'll eat them both
Mirror neurons are noticeably absent from the debate.
Have a look at an essay by V S Ramachandran a leading neuroscientist.
The mirror neuron, scientists tell us, takes things that we see others do and makes us feel like we're doing it ourselves. It's why we like watching things like TV and dancing. It's how we learn to imitate.
15 years ago, were graphics real enough to trigger a mirror neuron response in a human? Possibly -- I don't know. However, as we approach photorealism, isn't it time we studied this? See if a mirror neuron response is set up in a game-player? If so, then maybe the outraged parent mob are right -- maybe the computer games do train the behaviour.
Yes, there are further environmental triggers needed to cause the player to actually go out and kill someone -- a perfectly happy, balanced individual isn't going to pick up a gun just out of computer-learned habit -- but if we find that the behaviour is taught, then surely we are obliged to keep the games out of the hands of those who they may harm. Can we do a psychological assessment of every single consumer who wants to buy a PS3? No -- that would be thouroughly impractical.
So, if studies consistently showed a mirror neuron response while playing shooters, would we not be obliged to take violent games off the shelf...?
HAL
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Hi, you must be new here.
The 'Bing Bang' was probably pretty violent from an energy standpoint.
...)
OH!!!!! You were referring to man and violence. Not the term violence and all things relative.
Though I hate referencing it, would the enticement of the apple by the snake, in the garden of eden be considered violent?? (if you believe in that sort of thing
Seriously, does this question really need to be asked?? For the earliest reference of man killing his own kind, I point you to the frozen traveler, Otzi the Iceman in the Italy-Austrian Alps, discovered in 91' (see wikipedia).
Dear God, that is a horrible joke!
And I laughed quite a bit, so take a bow.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
I can just imagine Haseem or Wahid blundering through the door after a hard day of killing infidels, hanging up his AK-47 on the coat rack, then somehow forcing himself to stay up and add a few character models to Barbie's Horse Adventures before finally hitting the sack.
What Came First, the Violence or the Videogame?
You win retard of the day for this gem.
You're newer. And I'm newer than you. Well, if you base it entirely on the ids...
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
Even if all forms of commuication, including various forms of art, were banned, there would still be indefensable acts of violence. In fact, there probably would be more, since being able to peacefully communicate ideas and use them to resolve conflict is part of what makes humans (as a whole) different from the rest of creation. To take that away would remove what may be the only thing keeping us from destroying ourselves.
Outside of some rapid mass evolution of the human race into a completely peaceful being, the only way to truly eliminate all but the most necessary forms of violence between people would be to ban humans. Obviously, I don't propose such a thing, but making violent video games illegal does no more to protect us from ourselves than does banning books or shuttering art museums--both of which contain more depictions of violence than video games could hope to boast in the next thousand years.
"osake no hou ga, biiru yori ii" to omotteiru.
Are you insinuating that World War II was more than just a game?
I thought it was a "genre".
Wow.
While I do somewhat sympathize w/the writer of the text, I think it's important to point out that some soldiers and security experts actually do think that playing FPS - type games does do one thing for you, which is called `operant conditioning'. That is the exact method that the armies have used to get the soldier to shoot at each other. Most untrained ppl actually DO NOT shoot at each other in the battle-field. I'm not going to elaborate on this for very long, but rather ask you to get the book that Grossmaan wrote - it's called `On Killing'.
The general idea is that a human ape actually is more or less genetically programmed not to kill its species. Pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger sounds easy enough, but most untrained ppl will miss at point-blank range or will just be unable to shoot at another person. The "fix" the armies came up w/was programming shooting at ppl-shaped targets. It's like in boxing, one does eventually get the punches and the slips programmed into the brain, and will react w/o a second thought. So, what one does to train soldiers to shoot at human shaped figures is to make them do that. Repeat, repeat, repeat shooting at a human-shaped silhoutte, and you end up w/soldiers that are programmed/conditioned to shoot at human-shaped figures in the battle-field. This works very, very well.
However, as it is psyhologically very damaging to kill one's own species, this type of training makes the psychological costs of going to war even more severe. The ppl who would normally be unable to kill will kill out of conditioned reactions and will many tymes be emotionally crippled for life for the things they have done.
Now what does this have to do w/FPS ? Well, you repeat, repeat, repeat shooting at human-shaped figures. You get the conditioning that is used for soldiers. Now I am not saying that this will make you necessarily more violent, but this will for sure make a person having done this much more efficient in killing others if this person happens to lose it and go on a rampage.
So, the truth of the matter to me appears to be that the games actually do help in making a shooting a lot more lethal in ways of enabling the shooter to actually shoot at ppl proper and keep on hitting the target w/ease because of having conditioned the appropriate responses out of hir system.
Make of it what you will, this is what some of the experts say.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
Unless the technology existed at the time, I suspect Caveman A throwing a rock at Caveman B came first.
Bin Laden is modding today. LOL.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
As a sporadic member of the video game industry, the issue of violence-in-video-games is not at all new or novel to us. Nor have we been deliberately ignoring it. Far from it. Game authors have been considering the issue for about as long as video games have existed.
In 1977, a man named Steve Dompier wrote a game for the Sol-20 Terminal Computer called TARGET. Ships flew across the screen, and it was your job to shoot them down. I'd like to share with you a thought from the game's author, printed in the manual. It seems that video game violence was on his mind as well:
The above quote serves as evidence that video game authors have been thinking about violence in games for thirty years, if not longer. So if you think some zeitgeist-chasing politician or religious extremist who just started shrieking about the issue last week has any deeper insights than we do... Well, then you may be interested in this bridge I have for sale.
Schwab
P.S: If you're interested in finding out what was so horrific about TARGET, download the Sol-20 emulator and try it yourself:
EX 0
and press Enter. You must enter the command in upper case.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
What Came First, the Violence or the Videogame?
Two words - "Space War".
The very first video game (yes, a full decade before "Pong") had, as its theme, a scifi twist on mankind's second oldest form of recreation - Killing one another for fun and profit, framed as a team sport.
Of course, once upon a time that served a purpose, since our oldest form of recreation tended to lead to overpopulation before the availability of effective birth control methods, but some of the more foolish packs of domesticated primates still haven't caught on to that concept yet.
people in modern times are so sheltered that they cant stand anything but normality. they are just looking for someone to blame for having the urge to go and stab someone.
the sad thing is, that some people get so wrapped up in the game that they cant seperate themselves from it. there was one guy in the local news who was playing a game while looking after his baby daughter. he ended up getting so annoyed with his daughter for disrupting his gaming that he put a pillow over her head and killed her. i understand that i may well be speaking to the wrong people about the lengths some go to have an uninterrupted gaming session, but i'd have thought a daughter came first!
on the other hand, gaming violence possibly de-sensetises people to the fact that "eurgh, thats someones arm", but its a moderation thing. if they weren't exposed to it at all, they wouldn't understand that its happening.
Than that makes me a noob too... Y'arrr.. if only ye scurvy dogs knew my true identity.
Now, I don't believe that video games "cause violence"(these two words, of course, being a very simplistic description of what is likely a very complex issue) any more than other media to any significant degree, but this article's arguments in favour of that point of view are hardly valid.
No sane person is arguing that all people who commit crimes must do so because of video games. Some people(some sane, some seemingly less so, as with the rest of us) are saying that some people commit crimes because of video games. However, the author expects us to deduce that video games cannot inspire killers because there were no video games to inspire the political violence of the Soviet regime.
No sane person is arguing that all people who play video games must thereafter commit crimes, or that this will be "widespread"(for a definition of "widespread" implying that the relation is obvious even in the absence of a thorough statistical inquiry). Some people are arguing that there might be a link(and yes - some people are arguing that there is a link - people are making unwarranted assumptions on both sides of the fence here). Yet, because Madden does not generally cause people to become football players - an assertion from the author, who seems to think that because there is an obvious influence one way(people who are interested in football, and thus likely to be or become football players, tend to buy Madden) there cannot be one in the other direction - the author expects us to deduce that video games cannot inspire people to commit crimes.
The author ridicules the very concept of being "desensitized" to something. This is hardly productive; is he arguing that people cannot be desensitized to violence? Has he never heard of, e.g., the psychological effects war can have on people? Actually, I suspect that he intends to imply that video games do not desensitize people to violence, not that people cannot be "desensitized" in general. However, his critique of psychology as a whole is simplistic: he will seemingly accept no study on this subject as valid except ones where the test subjects are encouraged to commit actual real-life murders. The fact that psychologists tend to use, and acknowledge as to a degree valid, less drastic forms of feedback warrants no more than a "Huh?" from him. (One wonders how the author arrived at the conclusion that video games do not cause violence.)
The human psyche is a very complex thing. That doesn't mean that we can't have opinions about it, and expectations as to how it will react in different situations - but it does mean that we shouldn't ridicule scientists who study possibilities that go contrary to our expectations. Extrapolating from anecdotes is not, as most any Slashdotter would know if this were to concern something else than video game violence, real science.
Wan't broadcast television putting violence on a screen in people's homes before video games existed? Most of what I see now, while channel surfing, indicates that there is still a large amount of violence on ordinary TV. Why doesn't TV count? What makes video games significantly worse than TV (if, video games are worse than TV)?
Arrr, I otta cut ye open by the gullet fer tryin' t' pass yersef off as sumone yer not, matey, but I drunk too much grog, and can't swing me sword straight. Still, I'll have none o' that on me ship. Walk the plank ye scurvy cur, or I'll let me first mate have 'is way wit ya, and believe me, mate, ye don't want none o' that! He's a mite queer, that one!
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
Shouldn't the question be whether or not things like TV, pornographic literature, and videogames actually cause an increase in the occurences of related behavior? Percent-wise I mean, not in gross numbers. It's moronic to ask which came first, violence CLEARLY existed before humans gave it the word (see: carnivorous dinosaurs for example).
There are no studies I am aware of which demonstrate a marked increase in violence due to any particular stimuli. I'm sure the Army has them though to refine their training techniques. Interestingly, AFAIK Basic Training does not include much Counter Strike. In fact, one could easily argue that the violent potential is already there in the human experience and playing violent games is just an expression of that in-built tendency.
What else can we ban because it is associated with violence? Will we ban religion? It clearly motivates more violence than all the copies of Donkey Kong, Defender, and Pac-Man ever written? Will we ban Tolkien because after reading it kids will want to play with swords? Will we ban Fox News because it makes me want to shoot the TV?
We cannot simply pose this as a chicken and egg question. We need to pin the censoring bastards down on facts. If the best facts they have are Ted Bundy crying about how porno made hium violent then maybe we can move on to relevant and important questions.
Developers, Developers, Develop--- Arrr, eye reckon eye've said too much...
you need to get laid.
Let me do a Google search on "violent sex" and see if that straightens me out.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
After playing a marathon chess session I found myself unable to control the urge to kill people "en passant".
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
So which came first, dirt or mud? You might as well ask, "Which came first, water or ice cubes?" It remains one of the mysteries of the universe.
Well, let's, for a moment, forget about extreme violent crime in today's world: war, murder, rape, etc. and step back and look at more pallatable problems: the aggression of youth in schools to each other. Now, I'm not talking about the rare cases like Columbine, but your everyday shoving, name calling, and overall, aggressive behavior. There is an extreme increase in the aggression in school kids today, but I'm not sure whether or not it's being fed by games, or whether the games are simply catering to the rising levels of aggression. I'm going to take a leap here and suggest that 20 years ago, in the days of Super Mario Bros., GTAIII would have bored the shit out of most kids. "Why do I have to go around beating people up? What's the point here?" I'm not saying that it wouldn't appeal to anyone, but the threshold of kids that would be fascinated by this kind of activity would have been a lot lower.
But America has changed a lot in the past decade, you can blame the terrorists, you can blame Bush, you can blame videogames, but whatever, the results are pretty damn clear: we're becoming a more and more aggressive culture day by day. The acceptability of actions that would have, just years ago been considered socially taboo, are now encouraged by our peers, our parents, our leaders, and everyone else.
Video games isn't a large problem in the grand scheme of things. It's no more a cause of violence than the movies kids watch every day, and it CERTAINLY doesn't encourage aggressive behavior any more than watching our leaders point to groups of people and encourage their slaughter. Let's face it, an SUV says, "I'm bigger than you, and I'll fuck you up", yeah yeah, I hear all the "but I want to protect my family" bullshit, but the statistics aren't there to back it up. Our culture is becoming mean. A society where you are either a bully, or you're going to get bullied.
Entertainment is a reflection of culture, and in turn, ligitimize and spread the ideals of that culture, making it it more potent. Do videogames promote violence, then? Sure, but really it's US that are promoting the violence. Game companies have no particular reason to promote violence unless it's what the people want.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I've gotten into Battlefield 1942 pretty late in the game, so to speak. It hasn't given me the urge to lay land mines around my neighborhood but a good session sure leaves me jittery from adreneline. The problem with video games isn't violence but high blood pressure and jaws sore from clenching them.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Man, when I was a kid, back before Pong had even shown up, I stabbed my step brother through the foot with a knife. Now, he'd just gone and shot me with an arrow, we figured we were even, bandaged up each other and went back to playing. And then along came Pong. We used the paddle controllers as bolos, we tried to strangle each other with the cables, we even tied up the dog and performed perverse experiments on her. Finally, Dad bought us an Atari and we resorted to running pixel blocks of color into each other, over and over again. Don't think we ever found all the keys in that game.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Looks like someone forgot pretty much every single cartoon ever made. Filled with violence and geared towards kids.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Looking through the chain, I'm older than the rest by id, and even then, it was a while before I stopped posting Anonymous Coward and signed up for an account. Of course, these days it seems like there's more of an incentive to either sign up or stop coming here sooner from the time of first arrival.
And after going back and forth from having the appearance of a choice to see tags and getting the message along the lines of "Tags are unavailable". I still don't see tags, despite the current state the appearance of being able to turn them on and off and my selecting on.
Whatever happened to that Jesus fellow?
I read and artical in a video game magazine that pitted the drop in violant acts to the growth of the gaming industry and there is an inverses relationship. In this poorly contrived comparision video games are curbing violance but there are more poorly contrived statitics that point to video games as the responsible factor for violance.
I guess my point is that its even silly to try to create a corrilation between the two.
IMHO, going home at night and headshotting a newb or 20 has kept me a calm and docial cube monkey for years now, thank the First Person Shooters for preventing me from going postal!
-- Disclaimer: I can't really back up anything I post on
First point: Youth violence and crime is at an all-time low.
Second point: Have you read much (non fiction) about life 50 years ago? Kids then were just as bad as they are now- probably worse, because you would get beat up more often. And heaven help you if you were black, Jewish, Italian, etc.
Third point: You are complaining that kids are ruder today than they were- and I'll agree with this. Americans have definitely gotten ruder as a society. However, I also think that we are much less tolerant of violence than we were, especially amoung children. I'd prefer to be made fun of verbally than get beat up.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
http://live.canoe.ca/TheShow/Archives/2006/09/14/1 839452.html
... how coincidental.
Denny Ledonne (developer) vs. some douchebag from the Sun
Definitely an entertaining watch, as Danny is logical, calm, collected, and RIGHT.
Captcha = "develops"
Steve Balmer's chair throwing comes from playing too much Donkey Kong?
In 1993 Doom was released. Since that date, violent crimes have been on a steady decline.
e .asp
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ojstatbb/ezashr/asp/profil
I'm not attributing it to gaming, but it makes you wonder...
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
How many people didn't go out and perform real-life violence today, because they found relief in a violent videogame?
I guess statistics are a bit hard to come by on that one.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
It's probably just a bot, but maybe somebody at /. has a sense of humor...
One of the keys to understanding the making of a violent criminal is the development of the cerebral cortex. This is the region of the brain that gives us control over our deeper animal instincts and through which we feel compassion and a sense of what is right and wrong. The development of this critical area of the brain is stunted when children do not feel safe. Children brought up in very violent and threatening environments can have this area so retarded that it barely exists at all, which creates a true sociopath with no remorse for actions and no concept of right or wrong.
Do kids in secure environments playing violent games injure their cerebral cortex development? It's worth looking into, but it seems like most kids who don't develop this region of the brain and become violent criminals are in REAL violent and dangerous situations on a regular basis (like growing up in projects around shooting and drug dealing and not knowing if you will have food or if you will be hurt or killed from day to day).
Do the kids playing games really feel they are not safe? I doubt it. Not in the way that damages the cerebral cortex to create violent sociopaths. I just don't think people bring this angle up because it is much more difficult to deal with violence created by being poor in the middle of a violent black market than it is to say some video games should be banned.
Clearly, the fighting, resistance, and near civil war atmosphere in Iraq is directly attributable to video games.
In order to have peace in the Middle East, ban XBOX, Wii, PC and Playstation sales in all Middle East countries.
You can still sell Apples, though, since they only have like, Six Games .
Yes, violence in media, especially in videogames is definitely more important than AIDS and cancer research.
I hope LIEberman loses.
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
This article displays next to a huge GTA ad for me..
violence stuff in tha head.
first there was violence stuff in tha head, woe, which we made to proceed to become virtually physical violence that then always destroyed the becoming of the people and the land - then we created the virtual video game console bearing virtual video game violence.
so what? first, there was the virtual stuff, then there was the virtual physical stuff, next then to it we put into their mouth and *shooot* stuff.
who cares, only dem hypocrites do.
dem who shoot everyday, spray the word and make you pay. dem who teach you the wrong way. dem tell you now that to stop upon virtual violence killing would be a good way? while dem keep you at killing you virtually physically every day? dem only afraid that we move upon them.
no way.
rebellion, fight dem hypocrates
kill dem virtual targets, kill dem physically offending targets in US i say.
The question is what came first of Violence or 7th Heaven.
I have to go with 7th Heaven, since watching just ONE episode of that makes want to go completely postal on the world.
I only know one murderer. She wanted to be committed to a mental institution but her family was too well-off
for the state to do that (and her family was not so well-off to be able to afford an inpatient situation in a mental hospital.) So, one night she went to a pawn shop, bought a handgun over the counter, took it to her boyfriend's house, when he answered the door, she shot him in the chest, and then went into the house, called the police and waited for them.
I never talke to her after that, but my understanding was she got 12 years. That was in 1993 or 1994. So anyway, I doubt she ever played a video game more violent than Ms. Pac Man. Interestingly, we mutually know a very famous *attempted* murderer: John Hinckley!
Now, I know a *lot* of gamers. Just not a lot of murderers. I've known a few suicides, but all of them were punk rock musicians, none of them would have been particularly into games of any sort. Come to think of it, of all the gamers I've known, I can't think of any one of them ever committing a crime more serious than smoking pot.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Doesn't matter which came first. The more relevant question is is there a vicious circle, or causal path, from game to real world violence. I don't know of any emperical evidence but from my own experince of receiving external stimuli (e.g. motion pictures, music, still images) I find it very easy to take seriously the hypothesis that stimuli, including video games does alter behavior, possibly as far as violence. Ever noticed how your driving habits change depending on the music you're listening to? The carpenters makes me want to torch everyone around me.
Didn't Cain kill Abel over a game of Pong or something? "I am not my brother's goalkeeper" sounds really familiar.
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
Most untrained ppl actually DO NOT shoot at each other in the battle-field
But some do, because that's the way they are wired.
I've got news for you... most people who play video games aren't all that likely to go and blow somebody away either.
In the movie "Inside Man", an 8-year-old boy carries with him a portable video game system. The "villian" in the movie plays the game briefly, and we see the game action on the screen. This clip of the scene is Spike Lee's over-the-top attempt to show us that video game violence has gone too far. Ironically, he fears someone may take his idea and run with it.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
I'm so sick of reading of videogame violence.. the whole thing makes me want to punch somebody
Kill your TV
I think I know this one! Ummm, Castle Wolfenstein? No, wait, Bionic Commando?? That thing at the end was Hitler, right?
It was picketed - some locals believed that we were glorifying and trivializing war. Petitions, banners, etc.
So this sort of thing has been going on for ages, long before PCs. But we all knew that, right?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
"Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."
-J Krishnamurti
which came first... the question is the relation between the two.
The joy of violence in games is no different than the joy of say, racism in a racist game. It is better to have it contained in a game, but it's not great to celebrate something if you supposedly find it an anti-value.
Violent media and "fun" are symptoms of violent culture... mere symptoms, but also quite related. I find the run to apologize and defend violence in games intellectually funny and telling. If you enjoy pretending to do something sick... that's a bit sick, yes we are all a bit sick in some way or other, but that's not a defense OF SICKNESS. It's more like... well, no one is perfect.
But defending violence is a bad idea... better to enjoy what you enjoy and when thinking about it... think about it realistically. Don't try to pretend a totally non-violent person loves violence because they enjoy a violent game that "doesn't count"... it counts... if someone wants to think of themselves as non-violent... they they won't enjoy violent fantasy.
the reason this is true, and important, is because the brain works on a metaphorical basis, a modelling basis, everything we know is a model for everything else we know. Spending time in violent games enhances and reinforces violent metaphors.
Do these metaphors matter? Uh, of course. We have WAR on Drugs and WAR on Poverty as "programs" in our political history because the people in charge think of everything in terms of WAR. Use of war like metaphors leads to a particular way of thinking about a problem. There are other ways to imagine solving the problems of drugs and poverty besides war, but those ways become cut off when we widely adopt a war metaphor.
So it is with games where we engage in problem solving... the puzzles in a "violent" game are really just abstractions... they are cast in a violent framework, and we apply violent solutions drawn from the violent metaphors use. This conditions us to use similar solutions. Note, I'm not saying it would make you violent in the real world, that the solution would be violent. The "violent" solution in the video game is also not REALLY violent, it seems violent, because of the metaphor. But so too we can use that metaphor then to think about real world problems... not that we would do violence, but we would use violence as the source metaphor and think of real world problems AS THOUGH they were part of a violent context... just as we use "War" to think of the situation of Poverty.
The more conscious you are about these sorts of thought processes, the more immune you are to serious mistakes of reason due to your conditioning (basically, by broadening your conditioning).
-pyrrho
Let's all remember that violent crime rates are still lower than they were in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. My theory is that violent video games have nothing to do with violent crime.
Source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm
...just like people have been saying every generation since Socrates (and probably before.)
Whatever.
The media, I believe, is the cause of violence because they are the ones that broadcast the shit in the first place. Second of all, the government don't really give a shit about our rights in the first place. This is just another excuse just to piss off the American public, and to spend our tax money on something so damn ridiculous as video game legislation. They did the same thing with the Patriot Act, and they are doing the same with the Net Neutrality Act. Something needs to be done about this very soon, or the government will find out what true violence really is because the American public will become so fed up with their shit, a riot of the masses might occur. I believe that most of these decisions should be up to the childrens' parents, not Hilary Clinton and her band of misfits. The parents are the only ones with that power to decide what their kids see, play, etc. So, if you see a parent buy their kid Halo or some other game with killing, to me, that is their business not the governments'. Nearly every video game have some violence in it. In conclusion, I ask all of you who read this to think about what I am saying. I am not asking you to rebel, or anything of that sort, but I am asking you to consider your options. "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people," Hugo Weaving, V, V for Vendetta.
well, that' how Jack Thompson explains it...
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I think the real question is why. Why violent videogames? Why does gaming have to include violence?
Obviously violence came first.
But the problem with violent video games isn't that they _cause_ violence, but rather over prolonged exposure, can accumulate desensitization to the horrors that real violence actually brings. This phenomenon is not exclusive to video games, of course. And they may or they may not demonstrate more violence as a result. It varies from individual to individual.
Of course, the converse is also true... prolonged exposure to an environment where people are very rarely physically violent, particularly during childhood, tends to produce relatively elevated antipathy towards violent behaviour in later years.
And of course, none of this can be measured absolutely anyways.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Anybody blaming violence on video games needs to watch Rebel Without A Cause. If there's a generation gap between the young video game playing people and the more seasoned folks, that movie should speak the language of the second group a bit better than video games.
If they still don't believe violence is in our nature, have them watch the discovery channel if they're more scientifically swayed or read Genesis if they're more religiously swayed. It's pretty evident though, any way you look at it.
If they bring up the whole "civilized world" thing, just quote Colonel William Ludlow at them: "Samuel, the word civilized has no place in any discussion of the affairs of this world."
I don't even play violent video games.
This is a perfect example of violence outside of video games. There are plenty of examples of video games outside of violence. As such, we can see that they can exist one without the other, and therefore are not directly caused by the other. However, your statements also make the underlying point that violence and hate can be propagated under the radar within the context of many enjoyable mediums, video games included.
That being said, there are several violent video games based on WWII, specifically the battle against the Nazi regime. These games are usually played from the Allied side, creating hero's in many of the people who play them. Our government took violent action, our video games relive that action. There were hero's in real life and there are hero's in the video games and by extension in the players. This is an example of violent video games being used as a method for teaching positive characteristics such as valiance and teamwork and standing up for what is right for mankind.
Violent video games can be used to teach hate, just like anything can be, but that does not make them inherently bad.
Long before video games, long before video, there was violence. Instinctive violence as cells compete for limited resources and room to procreate... evolving into creatures roaming the land and sea, hunting one another for food... evolving into humans.
Humans kill for food. They also kill for territory, although diplomacy slows that down a bit these days. They still occasionally kill for the right to procreate. Unlike other creatures though, humans kill for obsessions. Religion has been a prime motivator for many a war, and even today it remains one of the most inflammatory subjects there is.
Do video games breed violence? No more so than anything which humans can come to obsess over. How many deaths are caused by drug addiction, or jealousy, or simply the need to make one's self feel superior to others?
For every death caused by someone getting worked up over a game, there are probably hundreds of lives saved by people working out their frustrations on virtual victims instead of going postal in the real world.
if only i was witty enough to work video in as a reply... damn you jose cuervo!
There is no doubt that the goth culture is a self-depricating culture that celebrates death, mutilation, and general RAGE against the everyman.
By denying this fact, slashdot is showing whats known as LIBERALISM.
shoot the bomber! A 16mm movie with a crosshair and a fighter mockup was used to train pilots how to shoot down allied bombers! The pilots had to train shooting down allied bombers. While looking at the movie alone their pulse was normal. When trying to get the crosshair into shooting position their pulse was up to 200 and associated blood pressure! Conclusion: The very moment you take part in action, your brain will deeply ingrain the bahaviour you train. So you will not think but act when you encounter the same situation the next time! Only then it is real! How do you think do the armies of the world make neighborhood boys become murders like the US GIs in Iraq?? This is much better than dolls to pierce with bajonetts. Abrams tank crews require only 8 hours of training on the tanks because of video simulation instead of 100 without simulation! kubitus
Incidently, chess was invented by peaceloving Hinduists to sidestep the actual waging of a war. Whenever 2 people would be in disagreement, a game of "Shah" would decide the outcome of their conflict without having to resort to bloodshed.That's why the ancient games gave elephants and ships, strange movement rules and other weird characters in them.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Reading through the posts, I see a lot of weird arguments being modded up. We should take a step back and try to look at this whole issue objectively instead of automatically jumping on anyone who implies that there might be a connection between playing (certain) videogames and violence.
First, let's look at some of the arguments from "our side" and why they're wrong.
Frankly, I don't quite understand how people can argue that games don't affect people. Well, most of these people have of course no problem with the concept that games like "Brain Training" affect gamers positively, but they do have a problem with the concept that games could have a negative influence. I don't understand this.
Everything you do affects who you are. Games probably do that more than many other things because they can immediately reward you for actions you play out. Violent games reward you for violent actions. Your brain remembers that, whether you want it to or not. I do not know whether that effect is measurable, but I would not be surprised if it was.
Does that mean that we should outlaw violent games? Of course not. But we as gamers should have an interest in knowing what we're doing to ourselves if we play them - mindlessly repeating the same stupid arguments whenever somebody implies that this whole thing might be an issue at all is not helping you, it's not helping the games industry and it's not helping society as a whole. In addition to that, I think outlawing the sale of certain games to minors is perfectly acceptable.
Their parents can still get these games for their children, but at lest they'll have to make that decision (and don't bring up the "parents are always at fault" argument. I don't care. If games do make people violent, I want to force parents to at least think about this).
People don't kill people. People who play violent video games kill people.
Semi-serious:n dow ?
Mainstream media trying to block new entertainment avenues they don't control is nothing new. When you are hacking and slashing at stuff in GTA or WoW, your not watching ads, and that's bad for their business. Parents, make your children watch the damn ads !
Semi-funny:
how about games selectively driving us to violence instead of developping our urges to slash at salads, gobble up mushrooms, eat ghosts, get bored on deserted islands, use-starch-on-snake-then-use-snake-with-bow-on-wi
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
Now tell me that rock did not influence those people.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
All that theory is good and dandy when people are taking the right decisitions, when people are acting in the best interest of all around them.
In reality there are many people that have no concept of personal responsibility and for whom accountability for their action is a completely alien concept.
Well, soory to rain in your parade, but I don't want the antisocial tendencies of thos individuals reinforced unnecessarily, if that means restricting access to violent games, so be it.
I am not talking about banning, but age limits that are shut down in US courts so merrily are absolutely necessary.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.