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The State of Play - Violence and Videogames
mozen writes "The BBC has an article up discussing the effects of videogames on the mind and how the media are reluctant to talk more openly about violent games. From the article: 'People who've grown up with Mario see him keeping pace, running and jumping along the building tops that streak by on a train journey. At best, it's a pleasant daydream — a happy reminder of a pastime you enjoy, and at worst, it's a mild distraction. Until, that is, you swap the games around. What if my screen dreams aren't of something so patently harmless as Puzzle Quest? What if they're of the stealth kills in Manhunt?'"
Games are under such sustained, and unfounded, attack because of the violence that they portray - still dramatically less gruesome that what is commonplace in film and TV
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
The media DOESN'T like talking about violence in video games? What news sources do they use?
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
I'm not going to each pills, while running from ghosts, and listening to repetitive music.
I'm not planning to perform a stealth kill in real life. I can't reset the real world or restore a save game.
Of course, that is what a rational person would do. But irrational people are... well, irrational.
I'd post more, but I've gotta go to a rave tonight.
my first memory of this phenomenon is after playing Lode Runner on the C64 for hours, then trying to read a book. the letters would drop off the end of the line as I read.
when I played Katamari for too long I would see everything in terms of "can I roll it up", which could be dangerous when driving.
I still find myself strafing around corners in office building, entering elevators backwards, and being very aware that landing a plane is just a controlled crash.
None of that, however, has made me more likely to shoot someone when the elevator door opens or run my car over a pedestrian to hit my 10m goal.
Then that means you daydream about that time you actually got the red kill. Big deal. You aren't daydreaming about murdering someone and then attempting to cover your tracks, worried if you will be found out, living with the guilt.
You are daydreaming about pressing fucking buttons. If you get those two confused, you belong in a VERY padded cell.
Living With a Nerd
The parents? Do these parents let their kids watch 'R' rated movies, and yet have the audacity to complain when their kids start punching kittens? Too bad the media enjoys pinning child social problems on anything but the parents...
Hopefully because they realize it's bullshit to blame videogames for idiots who act badly. I watched Zappa on Crossfire (via YouTube) yesterday and it was the same argument ~20 years ago, except about rock music.
If you don't like the content DON'T FUCKING BUY IT.
No sig for you!!
It's a funny thing, obsession. Sure, I've had some delicious fantasies of siting down that scope after too much Battlefield 2. And frankly, I'm ok with that. This article really is indirectly talking about the obsessive nature of humans to do too much of what we like. There's been tons of articles floating around the net about 'internet addiction', and I'm sure everyone reading this article knows at least someone that does something way too much. Personally, I think this modern day tendency to associate the activity with the addiction is irritating. People don't have MSN Messenger addiction, or video game addiction. They've just got a problem with balancing their life. And perhaps they need therapy to make that happen, but don't label the symptom as the problem.
People don't understand that there will be people that always exist that have less than family-friendly daydreams. Its obvious in the books we read, the movies we watch, the games we play, and the music we listen to. Socially unacceptable behavior isn't always that uncommon of a desire or fantasy. Sometimes that "unacceptability" of the act may make it that much more desired. I think sometimes the only reason we have whatever balance we've achieved is that those desires that are repressed are allowed out in the various media outlets we have. So, if thats the case as to why they're playing Manhunt, then it shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. If they have some sort of fascination with killing, I have no problem with them getting their fix from a game. I doubt the game will make them more likely to act out. If anything, the game makes them less likely to act out.
Also, every person who many daydream about stealth killing isn't necessarily fascinated with death. Sometimes its the actual gameplay, technique, skill, and challenge the game offers or requires that makes the game so engaging. Therefore its those characteristics the player is attracted to, not the death.
I've had many (nighttime) dreams set in video games, but the weirdest by far were the Nethack dreams.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
After years of holding the industry back, video gamers are now old enough to be working professionals. Most of us who were in our late preteen and early teen years when Mortal Kombat was making so much controversy can now vote, pull down a serious income and are in short, starting to come to power. We make up the largest demographic of video gamers and it's a little hard to say that video games are primarily for children when most of the people who play them are at least 17 or 18 now.
I look at this, the victories on beating gun control and the increasing legal protection of self-defense as a bit of a reprieve for sanity and to some extent, masculinity in America. The fact is that a lot of women, especially (essentially primarily) middle and upper class women are scared shitless today of anything that reeks of traditional male ideas or interests. You see it everywhere from mostly female schools going batshit loco over a 6 year old **drawing a picture of a gun** to the attacks on violent video games (which are mostly enjoyed by men).
Now I'm not saying that women in general are like this. Most of the working class ones I've known are not like this, and I do know a a fair number of middle class women who aren't. However, a lot of the middle and upper class ones do find a serious problem with anything remotely dangerous or genuinely masculine. Anyone who has worked in a typical corporate environment should have met quite a few of those by now.
In some areas, I think we're seeing a return of sanity. There used to be a time where blaming violent games on every crime involving some punk was reasonable. Today it isn't. There used to be a time when saying stuff like "I wouldn't trust myself with a gun, so I wouldn't trust a stranger with one" sounded reasonable. With some of the stranger, more violent crimes and general shift in attitudes, now you need to explain why you aren't dangerous if you are so unbalanced that holding a gun would make you scared.
I'll remain a little positive until proven wrong about where things are going.
That was supposed to be "mostly female-administered schools" not "mostly female schools."
When I used to play World of Warcraft, I would go to sleep at night with my priest or rogue's actions running through my brain. I would constantly see myself playing, doing basically the same thing over and over, either running around or doing the typical battle moves that I would use against every enemy. This bothered me incredibly as I wasn't really sleeping, I was more in between and it was stopping me from falling asleep.
Something similar happened the night before I got married. I had been playing Meteos (a puzzle game for the DS) for a couple of hours to help calm me, and by the time I did go to bed, I was playing the game in my head. Along with the emotions of the coming day hitting me, I had such a hard time falling asleep. I got about as much sleep that night as the next night.
And I've also played Puzzle Quest in my head. I hate puzzle games!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I can't imagine how much more "damaging" video games are with fake blood and real-time rendered graphics are compared to the public executions and coliseum games of centuries past (or not even past, in some places).
Eternity is a time bomb.
OK, correct me if I'm wrong... I have read tonnes of info (even here on slashdot) about idiots, and I put that politely, trying to find links between media viewed/played violence and children/adults. What research is finding that your own upbringing/life experiences/brain injuries has more to do with altered behaviour than playing a fracking computer game. I've personally played tonnes of 'violent' video games, I mean, gruesome violent blow-off-limbs games, spray walls with blood, or nuke a city. But I'm a normal, average guy who knows the difference between right and wrong - which has to do with 99.99% of our life interactions.
Anyways, suffer a brain injury, life altering actions (post-stress injuries), horrible childhoods, and your ability to judge what is morally right and wrong can/will be altered. But this is all CDF and has been rebuffed time and time and time again. Didn't the TV industry go through some fear-mongering years ago from simliar non-fact-based groups? Seems like another 'attention sponge' needs a little squeeze.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
"I know that, if I've spent an entire weekend playing Halo and you stick me behind a crowd of slow-moving tourists, there's a split second when I wish I had my pistol "
Personally, I find after a weekend that features gaming heavily that when I'm waiting at the bus stop on Monday morning I sometimes find myself trying to press my brain's "z" button to toggle telescopic zoom, hoping I'll spot the bus coming down the long, straight road.
I'm not just daydreaming, for a split second I really think that some sort of inbuilt binoculars will activate and its actually a real disappointment when I realise I don't have such capabilities.
I guess it's a good thing I'm not usually holding an M-16 when waiting at the bus stop!
Just as the article says, everyone here will give the standard denial out of fear of giving the opposition new ammo.
But they do make a point. I've experienced a similar phenomenom. After playing hours of Tetris, I've found myself almost unwillingly thinking about moves, combos etc... even after I'd moved on. There was a pop-cap game where you shoot off fireworks that did the same thing, making me constantly think of new combos and such. We can deny the affects all we like, but anything that is repetitive will eventually get under your skin when over-exposed. The moment of truth comes in how we allow this to affect our behaviour. Most people are able to shake these affects and move on with their life, but a few can become consumed by it. These are the people who become your psychopaths and mass-murderers. Every person feels that urge every now and again to just go off. Whether you're sitting in traffic, in line at the bank, or doing some other tedious and/or annoying task, the urges exist. Those of us who are civilized and possess the ability to think rationally can get past these moments without incident, but again, there are always the few who can't.
This is why violent videogames are important. They help us to see what lies within us, and what the consequences of giving into can lead to. Games like Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto are great not because of their gameplay, but because they allow us to do that which we suppress in ourselves. It allows us to act out our most deviant and perverse fantasies without fear of repercussions. Nobody in their right mind will admit to it (which begs the question if I'm in my right mind), but we all have these fantasies at one point or another.
In a way, video games do affect me, just not in the way the "analysts" think. I'd say I'm far less likely to go on a killing spree or whatever after playing GTA. Why? Because I realize that driving my car into a "Pay n' Spray" will not help me one iota in a full on man-hunt involving the FBI and the National Guard. It reinforces that there is nothing great or glorious about killing someone in whatever gruesome manner the developer has cooked up. But most importantly, it helps me realize just how dark and terrible these urges are, and reinforces in me the need to suppress them.
So mod me into oblivion for speaking the truth if you must (It's the slashdot way, afterall), afterall, we wouldn't want our opponents to know this.
"Now I'm seriously serious!" - Serious Sam
"Okay, and speaking of impossible, Jane from Cedar Grove is on the line, and she wants to talk about how difficult it is being a parent today. Hello Jane."
"Hi Lazlow, I love the show, I'm a first time caller. I wanted to say something about these videogames, they are warping our kids minds. My sons dog, Bugle, got hit by a truck, and he says, 'Mummy, mummy, where's the reset button?' Kids these days, they think life is a game. Well it's not a game Lazlow. It is very, very serious. I let my kid play video games, and now, he runs around the house looking for gold coins. This is teaching our children to go chase money. My eldest has been playing this new videogame, called Pogo the Monkey."
"Yeah, I've heard of that one."
"The shop teacher called me today, and Sam made a home-made banana cannon in shop class, and was lobbing them across the street at a fast-food restaurant. And it's all because of videogames. Lazlow, life does not have a reset button."
"Right, but this show does."
[dial tone]
"I love that button."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I know I'm certainly violating forum etiquette by not reading the article, but in not doing so, I'll make a point.
I had to listen to what was probably this story on the radio while driving to work this morning. Every two-three months, someone manages to get a press release out saying violence in video games is harming society, and all the major media outlets pick it up. It typically happens during slow news weeks, when they run out of mine collapses, celebrity snafus, and infrastructure meltdowns.
I don't care if the latest study says that video games will make kids 20% more likely to do some specific unspeakable act. For one thing, few kids have done said unspeakable act in the past, so 20% doesn't add much. The fact is, there are people out there who are lost, careless, abused, depressed, or whatever makes them finally snap. Sure, you may stop 14 year old little ilovegta1993 from stealing a car, but he'll just go and do whatever violent act that piques their interest, be it drawn from the news, school, maybe even from a book.
I didn't read the article because it's surely published by an individual or entity who, for whatever reason, dislikes violent games, and take advantage of a societal flaw where hearing something over and over causes people with no stake in the issue to believe it, and vote/sign petitions in their favor. Step by step, they pass bits and pieces of their agenda into law, ultimately making the nation 0.00001% safer at the cost of our freedom.
I wish someone would do a study on the negative effects of an excessively sheltered childhood, because you know how messed up these activists' kids must be. I'd spam the link to that one all over the internet.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
He does say that doing something over and over again-- whether it's a video game move or a cross-stitch pattern-- clearly affects the way we think. He acknowledges that this does NOT have to affect how we behave, and usually doesn't. But these things DO have a cognitive effect. His argument is that if we can only ever talk about this effect-or-lack-there-of in the context of condemning or defending violent video games, we are not going to be able to explore what is really happening.
His point is that the cognitive effects-- positive, negative, and/or neutral-- are worth exploring, and cannot be explored when every exploration begins with an agenda of "for" or "against", setting out to prove that games are/are not harmful. Is this really such an outlandish suggestion?
I'm sitting here right now, with my Nintendo DS and Final Fantasy 3, ordering my little pixellated minions to mow down everything in sight using a variety of weapons and offensive magic. And I've been doing this since I was 10.
Now if we can't find more productive things to be outraged about than violence in video games, I'm going to have to start throwing silence spells around.
[twitch twitch]
Not that I agree with the "violent games = bad" extremists, but ... there's a certain degree of disassociation there that may in fact show that fake blood and real-time rendered graphics are more damaging than public executions.
We often see complaints that the growing distance between the combatants in real wars are making them more and more like video games, and therefore more likely to actually encourage those with empire building tendencies to go to war. After all, the theory goes, if you can't see your enemy bleeding all over the floor and he's merely a dot on the video screen then it becomes that much easier to kill him.
Similarly, we could posit that - for those of a certain state of mind - the fake violence is sufficiently close to real to encourage them to try it out in actuality, but sufficiently far from real to disassociate them from the consequences of that action. Compare this to someone who has seen, first hand, real people getting killed in the street - will they be more, or less, inclined to go on a killing rampage?
What about the 6-year-old boy who was suspended because a teacher witnessed him kissing a classmate on the cheek?
Like when that character in F.E.A.R is chewing on people? Same with Doom 3.
I'll agree with that to an extent, the part where my opinion diverges is where the crowds *want* to the see the blood, *want* to watch someone die. They want the real thing.
The other part is warfare, you brought up the military, which is irrelevant when we're talking about violence on the street and in schools. There is no separation or abstraction, is a kid at a school pulls a gun or a knife or a shiv and kills another student or teacher or goes on a rampage, they are *there* they are living it, breathing it, seeing the blood on the floor.
Eternity is a time bomb.
"If you don't like the content DON'T FUCKING BUY IT."
Yeah! Stop using GPL code! Now what were we talking about again?
There's a lot of humor in video games. Does that cause humor in the streets?
for every complex problem , there is a solution that is simple , neat , and wrong.
I think your summary is spot on except that the "he" is a "she" ;-)
What if they're of the stealth kills in Manhunt?
You haven't played Silent Hill before bedtime, have you?
lol
This was a great article, and it reminded me of a blog I did after uncontrollably waking up at 3AM to listen to one specific song. I've been studying game addiction for the past 3 years, and Margaret is right on target. We need way more sophistication in these debates on "addiction," and "violence." It's silly to see that games like Quake are censored from CBS' coverage of the World Series of Video Games, meanwhile on TV, 24 lets Jack Bauer mow down Chinese, Russian and Unspecified Middle Easterners.
When you think about it, willy nilly comparing games to different stereotypes shows a clear disregard to the health of people who play games. Take obesity - when researchers simply ask whether games make people obese, they're not trying to help gamers. They're trying to confirm societal fears, especially among parents who'd rather not blame themselves for feeding little Billy hot pockets for the past 8 years. They're also, dangerously imho, overlooking the fact that some gamers go with far too little food - they get so wrapped up in raiding to raid the fridge. Unfourtunately, a lot of the "obesity and games," "addiction and games," research is very cheap to do, and we definitely haven't seen the last of it.
Oops :)
"Just as the article says, everyone here will give the standard denial out of fear of giving the opposition new ammo."
Unless it improves hand eye coordination for wanna-be surgeons.
There was a time when Dungeons & Dragons supposedly turned teenagers into satan worshipping killers. ...
Heavy Metal music turned teenagers into satan worshipping fashion victims.
And pornography, it was said, turned men into rapists.
I remember that after a marathon session of playing Vice City, when I went out into the real world again I found myself thinking "If I did a flying dropkick, that bloke's Kawasaki would be mine!" every time a motorbike went past. And I don't even know how to ride a motorbike.
You must think in Russian.
Once when I was in junior high school, this happened to me, except it wasn't with a game, it was with code. VB6 code, mind you.
I had spent several days straight in school to make sense out of VB-macros in the Office Suite. I could not see anything other than code when I closed my eyes that night. It was scary - for real. I have only had about five nightmares in my life (I'm 18 at the moment), and I count this incident as one of them[1].
I finally managed to get to sleep at around 04:30 and got a few hours of sleep. The next day, I deleted the office documents I had been working on.
The Moral: Stay away from Visual Basic. Forever.
[1] Yes, I know I wasn't technically asleep, so it's not really a nightmare. But it was scarier than my real nightmares...
Man, you must be a psych major, whatever level.
I ran a study once that definitely showed a strong correlation and seemed to imply that people with this predisposition towards violence could be triggered by anything. If wasn't a video game today, it will be someone who looks at them funny tomorrow, etc.
It definitely warranted further in depth study. Unfortunately, circumstances prevented that.
But kudos for an excellent observation and phrasing it correctly.
Hey man, please do not presume to speak for me, or for others for that matter. Not that the popularity of GTA is in dispute... but you can't assume everyone, even among a crowd of gamers, has your mindset.
I personally find the notion of actually enjoying acting out fantasies of mean-spirited criminal brutality to be quite repugnant and disturbing. I haven't the slightest desire to play such role, even in a game. It's depressing that so many people actually derive pleasure from twisted, perverse crap like GTA.
And then I wonder how much in the minority am I? Am I just weird or something? Aren't there other gamers out there who despise this genre as well?
Privacy Statement: We value your privacy! It is very valuable. That's why we try to sell it whenever we can.
Made me laugh out loud.
It also makes me wonder, why wasn't that fucking piece of shit negro murderer sent to the electric chair?
Glass
I love how everyone is quick to point out violence *could* be caused by violent video games, but nobody sees the other side, perhaps people who are already fucked up in the head just simply play violent video games along side the rest of us sane people. Video games are an interesting portal to play something you are not. I'm not a violent killer, I don't steal cars... it's not me, but I still find the games compelling because they have 3 distinct attractive features. 1) Graphics, i'm motivated by graphics, it's an interesting topic and all the most violent games tend to have the most innovative breakthroughs in graphics (Crysis 2 Engine / Unreal / Etc...) 2) Excitment factor. It's far more exciting to play the hero capping off 100's of enemies to save the day, or to play the bad guy and see if you can get away with it, it's like an interactive action flick, where you get to shape the outcome. 3) Mental agility, and hand eye coordination. Ever ponder why America's Army was even invented? It was made BY the US Military (well not by them, but under thier guidance & supervision by a contracted development company) to train like a simulator. While far from realistic, the games tend to fine tune hand-eye co-ordination, thinking on your feet, and being creative with the tools provided. As well, it let's people fammiliarize themselves with some of the aspects of the US army, like rank/operations etc... Although it's a crude aproximation, it does help with Hand Eye Coordination & Fast thinking. (By the way, Playing hardcore FPS games is a great way to learn to type fast... cuz if you don't, you're a sitting duck) Anyway, back to my point, there's lots of appeal for violent video games to the sane market, perhaps all this corelation that people love to point out in the media to insane lunatics that shoot up thier school or kill thier parents is just coincidence? Or at least, a large portion of it could be. So the guy that shoots his classmates plays counterstrike? Well so does the doctor who saves lives every day, so does the vet, and so does the librarian. I don't believe that games MAKE insane people, but they could trigger already fucked up people to act. Although in those cases, it's not really the game at fault... it's a messed up person. My 2cents...
I don't have an account yet, but I hope the name won't affect the comment. I think the only correlations that can be made are those that fit within the fact that both violent and individuals who are more orriented to pacificism can both be drawn to violent videogames, whatever the reason. Violent individuals are just more LIKELY to enjoy them more. I wouldn't even classify this as fantasizing. That would imply that I daydream about killing people I know while I play these games, I merely enjoy dealing ELECTRONIC death to ELECTRONIC individuals because the gaming world is NOT the real world we live in. Its perfectly ok to bombard a planet of 6billion+ in Master of Orion 3. In halflife I can beat my allies with a crowbar. Its the representation of a different world wherein people themselves become their avatar specifically for THAT ELECTRONIC world. I have not seen any evidence that would suggest I am more violent for committing the atrocities that I have in games.