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Violence in Games, Once Again, Not That Compelling
One of the great arguments of the digital age has been over the effects of video games on aggression — especially if you have ever heard the name Jack Thompson. A recent study suggest the counterpoint once again, that violent video games really don't have that much impact. "The authors performed six studies in total, but they were in broad agreement, so we'll only discuss the more compelling ones here. For the experimental portion, these involved playing an essentially identical game with different degrees of violent content. One group of participants was randomly assigned to play the game House of the Dead 3 on the different extremes of its gore settings, while a second was split between those who played the normal version of Half-Life 2, and a those who played a modified version that turned the adventure into an elaborate game of tag. In both cases, the primary influences on enjoyment were the sense of competence and satisfaction, along with the immersive nature of the game. Generally, females rated immersion as more important, while males went for competence (and consistently rated their own expertise very highly). Violence didn't register when it came to enjoyment, even for those with pre-existing violent tendencies."
"Generally, females rated immersion as more important, while males went for competence (and consistently rated their own expertise very highly)."
There's a joke about sex in there somewhere, I'm quite sure of it.
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals played video games?!?!
ITS FOR THE CHILDREN!
I'm sorry, the correct answer was NAGGERS.
I hear what you're saying but I think they are looking at gender roles in games. Physical gender, and mental makeup are two separate things that should be addressed separately.
For the purpose of understanding gaming, understanding the physical gender is less important than understanding the mental states a particular player will gravitate towards.
Separate the terms masculine and feminine from men and women.
In World of Warcraft, both masculine and feminine players trend in the direction of an eventual end-game raiding PvE experience, while only typically masculine players trend towards PvP. A mixture of players trend towards goofing around in the game and not aiming towards the competitive raiding or PvP environment.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Well, Im a fairly keen player of Team Fortress 2 (an HL2 mod) and not one for violence in games. All of the quake based games are the properly violent ones, and even then, they aren't really what you'd call violence in comparison to many films today. So lets take the properly violent games, for example, Mortal Combat. If you aren't familiar with the game (even with its extremely catchy theme tune from the original) then it bassically consists of smashing as many virtual bones as possible in your opponent through means of some extremely reddiculous kung-fu style moves and then "finnishing them" by some extremely gruesome means involving the map. For example one map involves kicking them off the side of a rock a couple of hundred feet and them landing speared on rock. And despite its rating, its clearly aimed at rowdy 8-12 year old boys, AND their parents are happy to buy it for them. Now please explain to me what makes games such as HL2 (which is actually one of the more inteligent and thoughtful games currently out) are a disaster for children to have?
Come on, folks, admit it. You only believe this study because it concludes what you want to conclude. If it concluded the opposite thing, you'd all be selectively trotting out that good old line, "correlation doesn't imply causation," and holding it up to standards that you won't hold this one up to. (Because, after all, what kind of evidence does imply causation? Don't all experiments, because of their own nature, demonstrate nothing more than correlation?)
Are you adequate?
Controversy and the games industry go hand-in hand like Ico and Yorda, if you'll forgive the incredibly nerdy analogy. And like Yorda, the controversy tends to stay focused for an average of about eight nanoseconds before getting bored and drifting off to do something else. But when it does get focused it can get very exasperating, such as when youthful paragons of self-control are called nasty names and decide that murder would be the wittiest comeback, and then is found to have stood next to a videogame sometime in the past. Then the media generally start drooling the usual uninformed questions as to whether wholesome, boyish pretend violence has any correlation with the real world. Short answer: No. Long answer: No, and go fuck yourselves, you ignorant, scaremongering cockbags. [Text in review: No, and I consider your argument misinformed.]
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From the summary, this study does nothing to address the general issues of violence in games. From my understanding, the issue has never been that video games make children enjoy violence. The issue is that violence in games desensitize children to violent acts as an acceptable form of conflict resolution. Most people don't play violent games simply because they are violent. This study seems pretty worthless to me.
Well, let's see, what other kinds of video games are there...
The Sims. Which made me believe that everyone has a diamond floating over their head that indicates how happy they are with life. Watch for red diamonds on bridge overpasses.
SimCity. Which firmly convinced me that every city will be attacked by Godzilla at least once should they decide to fight pollution by using nuclear power. Also, hurricane Katrina was due to someone misclicking the interface. Also, New Orleans could have been saved if they had built more FDs and PDs near the water front.
Doom. It taught me that green and red glowing tiles are bad to walk on. For this reason, there are some dance floors I will never go on. Also, if you kill someone, their corpse will disappear within a few minutes. This is why murder is so popular.
Leisure Suit Larry. Well, where do I start... Changing your gender is a simple matter of having sex with a dozen women and then stepping into a machine that makes a funny noise. Also, changing sex invariably makes you better looking. ...
But of course violence in video games is different... It's a unique case. All that other stuff you learn in video games (wouldn't it be nice if everyone you killed dropped gold and treasure?) doesn't stick. Nope. Only violence. Because it's special. Well, if you find someone arguing this position, shoot them in the head. And remember, it takes at least three shots to kill them. And they rarely drop anything useful.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Why is this tagged Republicans?
If you think it's only the Republicans censoring things, do us all a favor and quit voting.
continued success of splatter films and torture porn
How many millions of people saw Saw? How many thousands of them proceeded to chain people up in dirty bathrooms with nothing but a rusty hacksaw blade? Hundreds? Tens? Can you even show a 0.01% correlation?
The funny thing about "correlation is not causation" is that "causation requires correlation". If you claim that X causes Y and you have millions of X and not one single Y, you're going to have some explaining to do.
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals played video games?!?!
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals drank milk?!?!
While we're at it:
How do you explain the fact that the Columbine kids along with multiple other child criminals breathed air?!?!
THAT'S IT! If you cut off all children's access to air you'll completely end school shootings!
FINALLY a workable solution!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
These studies do not say that the violence does not effect a player's aggression level. They had a completely different focus! The results show that the enjoyment of the players was not impacted by the violence level in the game!!! So, a good game is enjoyable no matter how much violence it contains. Why, then, do certain game publishers keep pushing the limits of violent content?
Keep passing the open windows...
are human beings:
1. vessels of purity which are corrupted?
2. vessels of filth which are tamed?
i think a lot of people think children are corrupted by something in their development, and that something can be videogames. i haven't the faintest idea where these people come from, why they believe this, or why so many do think this way. i think it stems from an inability to accept something about their own human nature (which is not just bad, its good, bad, and ugly)
however, there are two good arguments against this "vessels of purity being corrupted" view of human nature and childhood development:
1. look at the behavior of humans during say, the time of the roman empire. violent and bloody and brutal. not many videogames, nevermind movies, or even books, or much of any media outside of a few rooms of scribes and wandering minstrels. flute music makes people axe murderers maybe?
2. look at the behavior of a group of toddlers for five minutes, many years away from playing their first game of gta. its not love and happiness, its hitting and punching and crying and screaming. its pretty much humanity without the frontal lobe. which, developmentally, is exactly what a toddler is. we're all pretty much a few neurons away from feces flinging monkeys with a superego grafted onto our foreheads
it all goes to show, if anyone has any problems with violence, its organic, its not something that is taught. nature versus nurture is a huge fountain of debate in human psychology, but when it comes to violence, to me at least, its pretty obvious that nature holds the balance of responsibility
of course, this doesn't stop unsavory people from trying "the devil made me do it" defense. its a just a same so many well-meaning but clueless people buy this defense
if you play 5 years of ultraviolent videogames every day, and you are psychologically normal, you have exactly 0% more chance of commiting a violent act in real life. meanwhile, if you are psychologically damaged in a certain way, and you never see a violent videogame in your life, you will still probably commit a transgressive act in your life. the presence, or lack thereof, of violent media, for either person, makes no difference at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I contend that video games do not cause violence.
Hearing Jack Thompson talk about video games on the other hand... THAT pisses most everyone off.
Can we have a study where one group plays violent video games and the other drives in rush hour traffic?
Then we can compare which group has an elevated level of aggression and which one wants to kill all humans.
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Just to emphasize, in the US from 1995 to 2007:
- the US Population increased 14% (263 Million to 301 Million)
- video game sales increased 560% (3.2 Billion to 17.9 Billion)
Yet during this same time, violent crimes committed by those under the age of 18 decreased by 50% (2169 vs 1063)
I realize this does not control for any other factors that could also account for a decrease in violence. Also, correlation... causation... yada yada.
300 Million people, 72 Million under 18 (24% *1), lets say only 24 Million of them are of age to consider (12-18) of which 97% (*2) play video games, leaving us with 23 Million teens. That means that 0.000046% of video game playing teens commit a violent crime.
That is a lower incidence rate than Bi-polar disorder and Schizophrenia. Pure conjecture here, but, perhaps there is something wrong with these teens before they even start playing video games?
*1:http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
*2:http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2008/09/new_research_nearly_all_kids_p.html
...or at least crankiness. I know that I have gotten snippy with people during or immediately after playing a particularly challenging game, especially if I didn't do well. I have witnessed other members of my family doing the same thing. One of my daughters was getting frustrated with playing Wii sports and every time she made a bad move, she would yell at her sisters, who were just sitting there, not doing anything.
This is not even just a video game thing. I have seen fights break out at basketball games, even Church games! I have seen fans throw bottles, bricks and worse at football games.
It is not just a video game issue. It is games in general which seem to raise emotions high and can end in violence.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The problem with violent films and video games is that they do not contain real violence but a 'pornographic' imitation. In real violence the player would be bruised, mutilated or even killed and would see the ghastly effect that weapons have on the human body and people he / she cares about. I used to be in the British Army and I can promise you that real violence is deeply horrifying and frightening. It always involves the soldier / player getting injured in some way and is a great inoculation against violent urges and dreams. Even in a pub brawl you'll get hurt even if you 'win' often with broken knuckles or fingers and a lot of facial bruising. I vividly remember an SAS instructor in personal combat explaining that hand-to-hand fighting without a weapon seldom made sense particularly when you had more than one opponent or they were armed. His three steps in that case were:
1) Talk
2) Run
3) Faint
Video Games and Films sell fantasy violence just as advertising sells fantasy romance and glamour. We know that Advertising works highly effectively to sell products and alter behaviour. It works on all of us, however little we care to acknowledge it. Adolescent males often have brains that are tortured by testosterone and fantasies of masculine power, significance and violence. Violent Games indulge those fantasies which is why they are so successful and in many cases it is very likely they have the same 'advertising' effect and lower the social taboos against violence or aggressive behaviour. I have young children and even though I run a software company (not games), I keep them well away from violent games and films and spend as much time as possible trying to make sure they get exposure to outdoor sport, real contact with friends and doses of high-culture.
Guns cause video games?!?!
Ah, crap... I screwed up again!