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?'"

Comments

Better quote from the article

[faloi]

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

Wait, come again?

[Thansal]

The media DOESN'T like talking about violence in video games? What news sources do they use?

Real life has no reset button or savegames

[El_Muerte_TDS]

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.

Or Pac-Man.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Computer games don't affect kids. I mean if Pac-man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

I'd post more, but I've gotta go to a rave tonight.

Re:Or Pac-Man.

[HTH NE1]

"Computer games don't affect kids. I mean if Pac-man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

I'd post more, but I've gotta go to a rave tonight. Just don't go around trying to eat the cops afterward.

happens to me all the time

[acvh]

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.

Re:happens to me all the time

[the dark hero]

Sometimes i see a reticle that turns green or red depending on who i'm looking at.

Re:happens to me all the time

[Reziac]

I don't "act out" any of the behaviours learned in DOOM (tho I sometimes have fun dreams set in a DOOM environment). But I have noticed that playing DOOM (which I still do), and becoming GOOD at it, also made me a much better driver, because it made me more aware of ALL the moving and hazardous objects that my vehicle might intersect. And I've always been good at maps and navigation, but DOOM improved my ability to peg my location on and keep track of the map in my head.

On the other end of things, even speaking as a hunter, I fail to see how killing hellspawn on the screen equates to killing anything in real life. (Roast pinkies... eugh!!)

Tho if your workplace is invaded by hellspawn from that hole in the basement, I'm your man :)

Re:happens to me all the time

[Solra Bizna]

I've been known to walk at a ~30 degree angle for extra speed.

-:sigma.SB

Re:happens to me all the time

[Brian Gordon]

I actually walked around the perimeter of a room once rather than going straight across, and about halfway around I realized that I was checking corners for enemies :)

Fucking hell.

[Pojut]

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?'"

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.

Media's reluctance

[aztektum]

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.

Re:Media's reluctance

[Control Group]

Absolutely we'd like to know about it. But what do you do? Give your child a list of words never to say? Not let him play with other kids whose families have different policies on games and movies their kids can play and watch?

Frankly, yes, that's exactly what you do. While I'd be - to some extent - offended if some parents down the street stopped letting their son play with mine because they know I take my son shooting, I can't help but respect their commitment to raising their child the way they believe to be right.

Look at it this way: over the course of a normal life, every person is going to have to make decisions about the sorts of people he or she is going to associate with; that's one of the responsibilities of being an adult. When you have a young child, you have to assume those responsibilities for your child until he's old enough to shoulder them himself. No, of course it's neither pleasant nor ideal; neither is the rest of life.

And in the particular instance of swearing, a list of things he's not allowed to say isn't such a bad idea. After all, there's nothing inherently immoral about swearing, it's the use of obscenity in an inappropriate context that's the problem. There's a difference between me saying typing "fuck" on slashdot and me saying "fuck" in a job interview. Regardless of whether your son does swear, as long as he knows you won't tolerate it, and he'll get in trouble if you find out about it, I think you're doing your job well. That's the lesson he needs to learn, after all.

Obsession

[Sefert]

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.

Nethack

[Kaenneth]

I've had many (nighttime) dreams set in video games, but the weirdest by far were the Nethack dreams.

Re:Nethack

[CronoCloud]

n@n ?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Maybe because they've lost?

[MikeRT]

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.

Re:Maybe because they've lost?

[brkello]

This is such a confusing comment. I agree with you on the video game part of your post...but the rest comes off as "bat shit loco" to me. You are basically blaming gun control on women. This is obviously something you care about since the majority of your post focused on that rather than video games. Were you rejected by some girl who thought you were too masculine and now have become bitter?

The whole stereotype of masculinity is a joke anyways. Are you more of a man because you go out blow the crap out of a deer with a shot gun? Are you more of a man because you get in to fights in bars when you are drunk? If women are afraid of a guy like that I say good for them. That has more to do with stupidity than masculinity. There are plenty of male administrators that freak out about stupid things as well. And quite frankly, it seems the lower the IQ of the girl the more likely she is going to be attracted to the "masculine" type. Broad generalization? Of course, but no more than you were doing.

Quite frankly, I trust myself fine with a gun. It's the rest of the world out there having guns that scares the crap out of me.

Games in my head

[hansamurai]

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!

I have occasional Gaming / Real World mix-ups!

[malsdavis]

"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!

The standard denial

[p4rri11iz3r]

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.

Re:Who buys the games?

[malsdavis]

It's not good to blame the audience for problems. Much better to blame someone else, in this case Video Games, but it could just as well be anything from usual list of bogeymen: Drugs, Rap Music, Paedophiles, Terrorists, Communists, etc.

The items on the list have one thing in common: mass-media's main audience (middle-aged, middle-income parents of middle-sized families) don't tend to like or identify with any of these so they act as good objects of blame as there is minimal likelihood of alienating viewers. We live in a "Someone must be to blame for everything" culture but nobody wants to hear that it's them who are to blame for anything.

Chatterbox

[HTH NE1]

"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."

For those who don't want to RTFA before posting...

[Lijemo]

1. He does not claim that playing violent video-games make people violent.
2. He does not claim that violent video games should be banned
3. He acknowledges that there is a witch-hunt mentality about violent video games, and condemns this.
4. He plays violent video-games himself.

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?