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."

Comments

Which came first?

[ExPacis]

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.

Re:Which came first?

[Enoxice]

He's not trying to prove that video games don't cause violence. The question he is answering is "What Came First, the Violence or the Videogame?". And he's answered it well.

Re:Which came first?

[hackwrench]

"On September 13th, a 25-year-old man walked into Dawson College in Montreal and went on a shooting spree that took at least one life"

"Back in 1989 another 25-year-old, Marc Lepine, killed 14 people in a similar incident at another Montreal college."

"Charles Whitman killed 16 people and wounded 31 at the University of Texas in 1966"

Since videogames are cheaper than a college education, they are more prevalent. Therefore there seems to be more of a link between college education and violence. Ban all colleges!

And the resemblance of Columbine High School to a college is even more proof. Quick! Someone do a study! Think of the children!

Re:Which came first?

[yams69]

Another good point that should always appear in these "debates":

What are these murderers using to kill people: the game consoles themselves, or guns/knives/etc.? Lotsa folks have these weapons in their houses, but manage not to kill people...same goes for games. Frame it in this way, and the NRA is suddenly on your side! In fact....

"Games don't kill people...psychotic sociopaths kill people."

"If games are outlawed, only outlaws will have games."

etc.

Re:Which came first?

[Anonymous Coward]

what bothers most politicians is the... unscheduled violence.

Look at it this way... for many thousands of years, if a human had aggression, he would go pick up a rock/spear/knife/sword, wander over to the other side of the mountain, and knock someone's head in.

For about the last two hundred years or so, it's been steadily LESS acceptable to get in a physical fight with someone in the Western hemisphere. Especially one that results in grevious harm to the other person. We have become cultures of Law, not cultures of Honor (which is why samurai and gangsters are so cool: but that's another rant)

Where did those thousands of years of conditioning go? For the most part, people sublimate those desires to punch someone's face in: athletics, videogames, watching TV, banging around with power tools, etc. But there are going to be some people, as we engineer violence OUT of society, while keeping competativeness IN, who don't quite get it.

Human Beings have a LONG history of violent acts against other human beings. Instead of trying to find a factor that CAUSES violence (or trying to figure out if videogames do or don't), let's look at what factors REDUCE violence (and trying to figure out if videogames do or don't).

Re:Which came first?

[MynockGuano]

Greetings! Stay awhile, and listen!

Re:Which came first?

[NelRo]

Hey yali,

I respect your perspective, but I want to clarify my point in the article. The appropriate mirror argument is not are games fun, but: Do videogames CAUSE fun in society? Without video games would people just float about without even the knowledge of fun? To continue with the mirror: people had an impulse to find fun before video games, and use the games as an outlet for an impulse that exists on its own. The games reflect a need, a history and a social awareness of fun. The game developers do not invent fun, but comment on and draw from an existing continuum of fun. A person who buys a game does not suddenly discover that there is such a thing as fun (except maybe with Dig Dug in 1982 ;-)... they bought the game specifically to serve the impulse that already existed.

Taking this back to violence, the point is: Some critics are, in fact, trying to argue that video games spur people to act out violence because the games confuse the players as to the consequences. The "proof" as presented is a tangential link that cannot be shown to be causal. Killer owned game, game is violent, game encouraged killer... without game, we will all be a little bit safer. That is the idea behind the legislation to tone down or regulate game violence.

wtf?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

I'm relatively sure the crusades came before pac-man. . . So my guess is the violence, just a hunch though.

Re:wtf?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'm relatively sure the crusades came before pac-man. . . So my guess is the violence, just a hunch though.

Yeah, they intentionally phrased the question so as to mislead you. The crusades were started by people influenced by the graphically violent board game chess, which has since become a video game. It is games in general that are the root of all violent behavior, not just video games.

Re:wtf?

[voice_of_all_reason]

I remember when I was like 4 or 5, going to my dad's office for the first time. He sat me down on his lap, booted up his copy of Windows 2.0, and then said "watch this..."

From the first time I saw the rook piece fuckin' swallow the queen whole in Battle Chess, I knew computers were going someplace.

Re:wtf?

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

"the last time I held a loaded AK a little cross hairs didn't appear in my vision and I couldn't do a headshot at 100 yards just by tapping a mouse button."

Maybe you need the latest patch?

Wii brings in a new angle

[UbuntuDupe]

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.

Re:Wii brings in a new angle

[tarun713]

That sort of motion has been going on for ages though - look at first person shooters in the arcade - time crisis, house of the dead, things like that. Of course, this does make it far more mainstream.

Re:ummmm

[neonprimetime]

Arrrrr! Sorry maties, but the answers was A)

Correct me if I'm mistaken but...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Correct me if I'm mistaken but...

[nEoN nOoDlE]

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.

Ummm... when did parents ever take any interest in disciplining children? Parents have never known "the right way" of raising kids for them not to be violent sociopaths, and that's why there have been 20 year old violent sociopaths throughout history. In the past, it was just considered good parenting to discipline your kids by hitting them when they display bad or violent tendencies.

Oh man,

[voice_of_all_reason]

What was the name of that video game Hitler used to play?

Re:Oh man,

[Zardus]

I think it was called Daikatana.

Oblig Simpsons:

[Volante3192]

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.

Re:Mirror Neurons

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So, if studies consistently showed a mirror neuron response while playing shooters, would we not be obliged to take violent games off the shelf...?

No, we wouldn't. It undermines several principals of our government. The first is liberty. You might note boxing is not illegal. Watching boxing is a lot more likely to stimulate that part of the brain than video games are. Participating in boxing has been statistically shown to correlate with violent crime and sexual assault. It doesn't matter. We have free will and are responsible for what we do. Does red meat increase testosterone and increase the likelihood of violence? If so should we ban it? Meat in general? All sports? Walking into high oxygen areas in lower altitudes? Not taking hormone suppressants and sedatives to keep us passive and nonviolent?

It is not the government's job to take measures to force individuals to not take any action that might increase their chances of commiting crimes by running their lives for them. Arguably it is the job of parents to do that for their children, but never the government.

It's called personal responsibility.

wait wait wait hold on there back up

[mgabrys_sf]

Are you insinuating that World War II was more than just a game?

I thought it was a "genre".

Wow.

See: Dave Grossman / On Killing

[SuurMyy]

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.

Re:See: Dave Grossman / On Killing

[Darth]

I got no reference on this, but I think that I've heard somewhere that FPS and similar games are actually used in training soldiers. First comes to mind the game... was it called U.S. Army that was made by the army ?

The military in the United States uses first person shooters to teach small unit tactics, leadership, and teamwork skills. The goal is for the team to assess the situation, make the right tactical decisions, and then execute the plan in a coordinated fashion. The part where they shoot people is incidental to the purpose of the training.

Re:See: Dave Grossman / On Killing

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

Okay, I think you're a little confused. Video games are effective means to operant conditioning. They do not, however, condition people to kill. Conditioning is reflexive reaction and unless you're playing the video game with a gun, it is not going to make you more willing to kill. The army and police forces do use FPS game sin training, but mostly to develop teamwork and tactics (and because it is fun). The army does use psychology to make people more willing to kill others, but this is not operant conditioning. They do this by breaking down a person's emotional base and self confidence. In this way they overcome personal beliefs that killing is wrong and individual decision making is important and instead teach soldiers to believe obeying orders is more important and killing is not even considered in terms of right and wrong for the most part.

The general idea is that a human ape actually is more or less genetically programmed not to kill its species.

This also, is misguided. Man has been killing man for a long time and our "genetic programming" is made up of three, very recognizable parts. The first part is pain/pleasure/instinct/hardwired reactions. The second is emotional responses. The third is rational thought. A blend of these three parts results in our actions. The emotion called anger is the genetic program to destroy a threat and is usually why we kill. Anger can be invoked by fear and they are closely related. In a given situation we might be pumped full of adrenaline by a fight or flight reaction and then kill something that threatens us. Military training is designed to make this behavior controlled and predictably directed.

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.

Sort of. The thing is, there are lots of human shaped targets on a battlefield. They need to be trained to shoot the right ones at the right time. Have you seen the pop-up man targets? They spring up suddenly and they all used to have red stars on their helmets.

Now what does this have to do w/FPS ? Well, you repeat, repeat, repeat shooting at human-shaped figures.

Here's where we disagree. You don't want people conditioned to make a mouse clicking gesture when someone pops up in front of them. You want them to aim their rifle. The FPS programs are used more to train higher functions and learn tactics and teamwork. Not to condition a response to sit perfectly still except for twitching your mouse hand.

Games certainly can be useful, but they don't make you a better shot and are not a primary method for overcoming the aversion to killing. I suspect most "experts" who claim otherwise don't really know what they are talking about.

Answer: Violence Came First

[ewhac]

It should be obvious to anyone not pushing a socio-political agenda that aggression and violence are innate human traits.

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:

There are several types of spaceships containing dangerous cargoes of pesticides, DNA experiments, artificial flavorings, TV commercials and so on. They should be stopped before they reach a civilized area of the universe and endanger the populace. [ ... ]

[Author's note: The game player may relate to the ships and missiles of TARGET as objects personally imagined by him. The above scenario is provided for those with an aversion to the destructive type games who may otherwise mistake the robot spaceships as earthly in origin. Aggression, still being a common human trait in 1977, is better exercised with a zero-sum game than spent on the physical real world. Besides--it's fun.]

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:

1. In the release folder, run the program solace.exe. You will be presented with a very unhelpful command prompt window.
2. From the File menu, select "Load Program..."
3. Select "targ.ent" and click OK.
4. In the command prompt window, enter the command:
   EX 0
   and press Enter. You must enter the command in upper case.
5. The game will launch. Follow the on-screen instructions. (You can steer the missiles in flight with the aiming keys, crucial for getting high-value combo shots.)

sheltered

[Heppelld0]

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.

Re:BREAKING NEWS:

[jizziknight]

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!

Re:Um, what about television?

[PFI_Optix]

Supposedly, what makes video games worse is that you actually choose to engage in the act, even if the "act" is simply pushing a button. TV is passive; games are active.

Of course, the whole point of tfa is exactly what i've been saying for years: violent kids are going to play violent games. They're going to watch violent movies and listen to violent music and probably hang out with violent friends. They're making such choices because they appeal to them.

Chess ruined me

[Hoi Polloi]

After playing a marathon chess session I found myself unable to control the urge to kill people "en passant".

Re:Chess ruined me

[Richard Steiner]

"It's the game's fault. I'm just a pawn..."

Aggressive society

[7Prime]

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.

Re:Mirror Neurons

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Should it be legal to drive a tank? After all, it is the pesronal responsibility of the person driving the tank to not..you know.. kill everyone. Yet we restrict access to tanks, because letting an individual own a tank is just not in the publics best interest.

There is a guy here in town that owns a tank. He needs permission to take it on public roads, because of the potential damage to public property, but her does own one and drive it on his own land.

We let government regulate someones actions for the greater good. Freedom certainly has limits, and it is up to the government to set those limits.

Actually, we theoretically allow the government to arbitrate certain freedoms and situations where one person's freedoms come in conflict with others. For example, your freedom to fire a cannon, is restricted by the damage it causes to the property of physical persons of others. So long as you're firing it on private property and not damaging anything belonging to another, or hurting anyone the government has no legal or ethical right to restrict you. Realistically, the government has become corrupt and exceeded their authority by claiming additional power for a few individuals who would be our rulers.

The problem is determining what is truly in the best interest of a society is REALLY hard.

No it isn't. The US was founded on the principal that consolidated decision making is dangerous, because overriding the decisions of individuals easily leads to abuse and power corrupts. Thus, the government must demonstrate not only a majority opinion, but an overriding public interest in some action that does not conflict with a predefined set of rights and which is within certain areas the government is allowed to regulate. Take the issue of video games. Will playing a video game result in a person becoming a murderer? Can you prove that with reasonable scientific certainty? If so then, with two thirds or representatives voting you can overturn the freedom of speech that allows people to distribute said video game. Otherwise, the government has no business and the choice should be left to the individual (or individual's parents) to decide.

Those are the types of questions we face, and we (as a world community) will be struggling with them for as long as we exist.

Certainly individuals should be considering these issues, but until there is a real, provable consensus and a clear mandate from the people, governments should not.

I'm sorry, but you're totally wrong

[paladinwannabe2]

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.

Quick question.

[thewils]

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.

Nice targeted advertising

[Senobyzal]

I found it entertaining that the ad on the right side of the Slashdot page for this story was for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.

It's probably just a bot, but maybe somebody at /. has a sense of humor...