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Fox News Brings Video Game Violence Debate To a New Low
Fox News took another shot at the video game violence debate earlier this week when they asked whether Bulletstorm, an upcoming M-rated shooter from Epic Games, is the worst game in the world. The article links violent games with an increase in rapes, and suggests there should be greater penalties for selling to minors. Gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun breaks down the problems with the article's sensationalist claims and highlights the disingenuous cherry-picking of quotes.
"Scott Steinberg, CEO of TechSavvy Global, and all-round industry guru, got in touch with me to show me the answers he submitted to Fox when they approached him for comment. The full answers are reproduced below, because what results is a fantastic interview on the subject of adult game content and regulation. Fox chose to use none of Steinberg’s comments in their final piece, opting instead for the more sensational claims of those with no expertise in the subject (neither of whom have found time to reply to our emails). But seeing these answers also provides further insight into how the mainstream media coverage of gaming stories works. Far from being a reporter ignorant of the subject and twisted by naive contributors, Fox correspondent John Brandon was equipped with a wealth of factual information and informed opinion before composing his frantic article."
I am glad Fox selectively chose to show one side of the issue. Rape should have no place in a video game.
Sounds great, where can I buy it.
Hint: There's no such things as bad publicity for computer games.
The FBI's stats actually show rape is down yet people dont take the time to verify things anymore. News reporters are meant to verify and inform not spread idle gossip and misinformation.
HOW DARE YOU question the the integrity of FOX NEWS and its "stories".
Fox NEWS clearly is suffering from dementia.
It's a disability you know.
Maybe Medicare could get them the pills they need.
correspondent must not mean journalist; what a cork soaker
The minors would affects the minds of minors if these kinds of games will be produced. It should be stopped immediately by the concerned authorities.
A newbie in this perplexed tech world
I mean, the game would affect the minds*
A newbie in this perplexed tech world
This is what you get for watching Faux News. Are you new to American news TV?
Dude, lay off the pot.
...never let the facts get in the way of a good story...
We have the same problem in the UK too. Do not trust the media is the only outcome we'll end up with. This is not good.
I found this one via the B3TA Newsletter. http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue465/
* HOW THE DAILY MAIL WORKS - Long, long blog entry, but interesting and quite damning. To put it bluntly, they make stories up. http://goo.gl/acMZq
Video games are a waste of time as far as NewsCorp is concerned. Every minute you spend actively engaged in a game is a minute you DON'T spend watching their (paid-for) movies, or (ad-filled) television prgrams, or (propaganda AND ad-filled) "news". If it's not good for Rupert Murdoch's bottom line, expect him to whip up FUD against it wherever possible!
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Well it is Fox News. They are not noted for accuracy, honesty or integrity. Sensationalism, selling adds and propaganda are their stock and trade.
Reallllly? Move to russia or china i think you will like it better there.
Yes.
The FBI's stats actually show rape is down yet people don't take the time to verify things anymore
When I was a kid, my mother went to a PTA meeting where the school director (a retired army colonel, BTW) presented police statistics showing a decrease in rape incidents. He interpreted this as an indicator of increased use of marijuana because, according to him, marijuana causes sexual impotence.
Conclusion: if video games cause rape that's good, because it will decrease drug use, same as piracy decreases global warming.
there's already a 1000 comments over on fox's website slamming the article. Though, I don't appear to be able to link to them. Stupid Ajaxy website breaking the Internet!
You'll have to click the comments icon.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
With the slander and bullshit they put out on an hourly basis, are any /.ers really surprised at this?
That's why it is the duty of those that are informed to educate those that are gullible and fall for crap like this.
Journalism is not about collecting facts and putting them on paper. It is about collecting a very large range of facts and opinions, selecting between them and constructing those chosen into a narrative for a particular purpose. Because there is selection and construction involved, different individuals will necessarily disagree on the result. Soulskill doesn't understand this basic fact. Instead, he thinks that because Fox selected some quotes and disregarded others, selected some opinions and disregarded others, they are necessarily wrong. Or at least that's the way he paints it.
Anything he disagrees with is "sensationalist" or "disingenuous" or "frantic". Anyone he agrees with is "and all-round industry guru" (full marks for grammar there), "fantastic" or "informed". When you first read it, it all sounds clear-cut; poke around under the surface and it is a pretty straight-forward example of using pejorative language to remove someone's credibility without actually engaging with them in debate.
Violence in video games is a topic on which a lot of people hold strong, opposing views. Research carried out frequently comes to contradictory conclusions, based mostly on where the money came from. So I think that best answer we can honestly give at the moment is, "We don't know." So actually engaging in debate would be more useful than this sort of biased name-calling.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
It's a well known fact that a Fox News agent raped and killed a girl in 1990. Which video games did he play?
The trouble with this piece is that it seems to expect better from Fox. Fox is rock bottom every time and so don't deserve any consideration. They are just crap. Period.
Fact is that both the FBI and Fox News are highly biased against rape.
It would be nice to see a more liberal perspective when discussing rape.
IMO /. falls into the same trap and seems unaware of it.
The truth isn't interesting for news agencies unless it can stir up quite a riot. THEN their name will be all over the media and they can expect lots of attention. And in these modern days; attention can mean income (think web advertising).
This is no different I think. If they told the whole truth people would have gone like "oh, so that's how it is" and moved on. Now look at yourself; "They're not telling the complete truth", with links to their website (and possible ad banners) and several hundreds if not thousands more hits for Fox. Mission accomplished!
Sometimes its best not to act if you think some news agency got their stories tied up, especially when dealing with attention seekers, which I think is a category Fox also falls into.
Best publicity this game could have ever gotten. Epic Games is probably secretly happy with the article.
We used to watch this every day after school back in the 60's. So did we run around gouging eyes, ripping out hair or the old favorite, whacking with a plank on the head? No. I remember my mom teaching us, "This just a comedy film, don't really do this to each other, or someone is going to get hurt."
I think violent crime is a sign of more deeper social problems, that are more difficult to address. It's just easier to blame it on video games as a scapegoat.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Fox News Brings Video Game Violence Debate To a New Low ... why?
and this is a shock to anyone
fox news isn't news, it's opinion pieces and bullshit, all you need to know about fox "news" is to see is Outfoxed : Rupert Murdochs War on journalism
Said and unnamed source familiar with the case.
Sometimes I see bad journalism shown on semi-sensationalist channels in my country, but every time I see a FOX news article like this, I think: "Damn, that crappy report last night was really good"
The florida supreme court found that news stations don't have to tell the truth so reporters aren't protected by the whistleblower laws.
So what, precisely, did Fox report that wasn't true?
Journalism is ... about ... putting ... very large ... individuals ... on ... Fox
Or at least ... the ... "sensationalist" or "disingenuous" or "frantic" ... "and all-round" ... "fantastic", ... and ... Using pejorative language to remove someone's credibility without actually engaging with them in debate.
IMHO, I agree with what you said RE: what passes as "journalism" today.
People ... opposing ... [r]esearch carried out ... biased name-calling.
I don't expect Fox News to be the number one source of gaming news, just like I don't expect Slashdot to be the number one source for politics.
Watching Fox News causes children to become stupid, misinformed, a***h****s
..it's one where you just punch Glenn Beck repeatedly in the face.
This is perhaps just another example of otherwise decent-minded little cogs caught in a malevolent machine built and serviced by engineers of evil who care nothing for the Common Good or ethics beyond how those can be exploited to benefit them. Perhaps John Brandon is really a nice thoughtful guy who really wouldn't have chosen such a slant to the article; just as likely or moreso is that he was being an obedient cog and protecting his career by writing the article with the bias his bosses wanted him to inject. Perhaps he was "just following orders'? Of course that makes it all the more sickening, because "just following orders" as an ethical defense means that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
Hierarchies pervert potentially decent people into doing bad things, because the not-so-decent people are the ones at the top of the hierarchy giving the orders and "making the tough decisions"... you know, the ones that are unethical. In the case of governments it's we the ignorant little cogs who often put them there, but in business and the military it's OTHER not-so-decent people grooming their successors and colleagues. /rant
My only question is how much does a publisher have to pay to get their game features/dissected by fox news? The media coverage is priceless and every kid going will now want that game. Intelligent parents will invariably go buy a copy for their 8-12 years olds so they can smack talk me when I got to play online after having put my own children to bed.
This is pretty crappy reporting and it's a cheap shot to blame video games for the decisions made by criminals and generally insane people.
It reminds me, though, of all the cries of outrage I read against Sarah Palin after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. Palin was outright blamed for causing the shooting by a lot of media outlets and blasted in an extraordinarily cheap shot by Keith Olbermann. I hope everyone who was sympathetic with that outrage can recognize his own hypocrisy if he isn't sympathetic with Fox's take in this article.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I wish they would apply the same distaste for violence to the sale of real guns and arms - that's what actually hurts people, not the boom and splat of video games.
No, bad parenting and lack of education on what is and is not acceptable in the real world would affect the minds of minors.
The day you accept that GAMES, a form of entertainment, determines one's role in life is the day that you've forsaken all since of decency.
I played the demo, it was an average shooter at best that tries WAY too hard. Between the Gears 3 beta key and the potential Streisand Effect from this kind of pub, this game could end up doing a LOT better than it should in the end.
Oh, and lol@anyone getting their panties in a bunch about anything Fox News says. Want to get upset at the guy on the street corner screaming about the end of the world? It's about the same thing.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this post.
Is it defending FOX by saying that they made no bold claims whatsoever and that an offhand comment is being blown out of proportion?
Or is it condemning FOX for clearly manipulating the viewers by making unsubstantiated implications to guide the reader's conclusion?
News at 11.
Why do the people on Fox look so plastic? Seriously, one guy looks like he has a rubber Devo wig on his head ("Bret" something?). And they all have way too much make-up on their mugs.
At least the Weekly World News never took itself seriously and never expected anyone to believe that Bat Boy was real.
After this amount of time it shouldn't surprise anyone that Fox News can't be arsed to come out with anything resembling news or information. Facts and accuracy be damned. Death panels? Sure. Obama is going to sneak into your house in the dead of night and smother your grandmother *personally.* Similarly, playing this game will turn your kids into serial killers. Never mind the research. What counts is eyeballs and page hits.
If Fox News said that the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning, I would have to check the astronomical tables to confirm.
Fox News is a fraud.
Anyone who still watches Fox is confirmed for stupid. I don't care if your IQ is 200. You still watch Fox? You take anything they say seriously? Then I have nothing to discuss with you. Ever.
Fox News wants you to believe in them. Fox News wants you to believe in Bat Boy.
--
BMO
Originally this game was going to be called "Mexico".
and isn't this the same OLD low?
Nothing new or "News" here.
FOXnews is doing the same bullshit they do every other day.
-- Sig under construction...
Hmm? Not sure how to take that.
If you mean the morality of it, I don't think you'll find many "liberal" perspectives that it's not so bad. In fact, just about the only ones who argue that there's any situation where the woman can't say no, are a subclass of the bible-thumping nutters, for whom God made the woman subordinate to their dick.
If you mean incidence or prevalence statistics, then opinions and political biases don't matter, only the numbers do. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, the incidence has declined from about 2.4 per 1000 people in 1980 to about 0.4 per 1000 people, i.e., about six times. I don't see how any political bias can change that, short of going out and raping someone to make up for the difference.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Everyone knows that the worst video game in the world is ET for the Atari 2600.
Why should the news outlets let the trusth stand in the way of sensationalism and greater profits that provides?
Amen
âoeThe increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,â she said.
Emphasis mine. See? They never said rape has actually gone up,
STOP RIGHT THERE. "The increase in rapes" is what makes their statement actually say that rape has gone up. Simple English, yo. They are discussing a supposed increase in rape, therefore they have directly implied (this is a case of implication, NOT inference) that rapes have increased.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...What does it say about what they do to the rest of the day's news?
Right or Left, reporters and anchor cherry pick facts, studies, and stories. I don't think there are any true journalists anymore, just willing propagandist tools. Might as well just get your news from Jon Stewart.
... how watching Fox News leaves viewers less informed.
Help me out, but why does a "news" outlet that was a cheerleader for invading Iraq -- which has resulted in real atrocities, such as an increase in rapes and murders of Iraqi civilians -- and has continually voiced a fanboy-like enthusiasm for torture, feel that it has any room or moral high ground to talk about objectionable content in a video game?
Anyone know of any good articles which disproves the link between voilence and videogames?
The fox article didn't even mention the word "parents" once. Spineless, brainless parents who don't do their jobs think little johnny is entitled to everything and anything. I'm just going to stop writing now...
There's something even more troubling about the quotes you just provided.
Expert says: “The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games.” ...[says] that sexual situations and acts in video games...have led to real-world sexual violence."
Fox News concludes: "Carol Lieberman
Worse yet, when the average uninformed reader reads "have led" first, it won't matter that the expert only says there's a potential link, not an absolute one. Hell, you probably could have written the story like this, and I bet it wouldn't make any difference to the average reader:
Carol Lieberman, a psychologist and book author, told FoxNews.com that sexual situations and acts in video games -- highlighted so well in Bulletstorm -- have led to real-world sexual violence. “Nothing gets me off better than listening to two hours of Glenn Beck on the radio,” she said.
That's misinformation at its finest.
from Trashdot for Libtards
Just watch this video of some talking heads debating sexuality in Mass Effect, not knowing what their talking about, and getting their asses handed to them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKzF173GqTU
Everybody knows facts have no bearing on their irrational opinions!
If you buy the nutty argument that Palin caused gun violence in AZ merely by speaking, video games must be to blame for someone else's actions - in the games people are actually practicing shooting others.
So much for self-responsibilty. Blame someone else.
We're talking about journalists here... to be fair Carol Lieberman was probably referring to the fact that as time goes on people get raped but they don't get unraped. Thus rapes increase over time...
It's easier to make sense of these political degenerates when you know they're lying and misleading from the start.
Do you know what I would like an update on Fox? If Sarah Palin's Alaska (the town she was a mayor of) still charges the victims of rape to process their kits, or why Alaska in general has twice the national average of rape with just a fraction of the arrests? Or why there is 180,000 unprocessed and improperly stored rape kits around this country? Or why in most cases of "Stranger Rape", many states police forces do not even process the kit until old fashioned police work finds a suspect. Seriously. The running of DNA against other cases and suspects is so rarely done. When New York passed the ten day processing law (it does have six month of wiggle room here and there, but really they are now the golden standard of DNA labs; above the FBI in many ways), the rape solving rate went up to 70%, and started linking the far more common than previously thought serial rapists.
Or the fact that the FBI still classifies rape as "Unwanted forced vaginal penetration by a penis." Forced sodemy, raped by objects, forced oral, female on male, and male on male are all not "rape" by the FBI.
Or the disgusting rape statistics of Texas and many other red states. Is it any surprise that they are trying to limit federal funding for abortions by defining the context of "Rape"? Makeing a "Gradient of rape"? How soon before they try to pass that across the board?
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
It's amazing how FOX has taken a 180 on violent video games. Back in 2005, going after violent video games was "against the free market" per FOX. Of course that was when Hillary Clinton was trying to get FEPA through. In 2006 violent video games were also great per FOX! Of course they were talking about Left Behind, and I guess a bullet in the head to a non-believer is fine and dandy (and even Christian like) per FOX. Oh and where does this doctor get her claims about the increase in rapes? According to the DOJ, the number of rapes have had a rapid decline since the early 90's. Maybe we should investigate Mario and Luigi to see if they had an impact on the high level of rapes back then? Mario did force himself down some tight holes after all.
They never said rape has actually gone up, they just make the reader think that but saying that it can cause them to go up. Not that it has or ever will.
If your reading it as a Lawyer, then I'd agree. If you're reading it as a person reading it like the rest of the readers reading it, you'd take it as a given assumption by the sentence that rape has increased. Anytime you say "the can be attributed in large part to the playing out of scenes in video games", it automatically denotes that happened, and this thing after it could possibly be the cause.
Now, if you rip it apart in a Lawyer'esque fashion then your right, the plantiff rests his case.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” she said.
That bit suggests that there has been an increase in the amount of rapes, some of which can be attributed to video games. Using your sentence:
"The increase in racism can be seen by some as a result of reading Fox News, especially in localized areas that national statistics wouldn't be able to pick up."
With that logic, more deaths are occuring yearly because people are growing in numbers....
That's really stretching it. Please stop. Thank you.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Fox News brings ALL debate to new lows, ALL the time.
While this is a good article and it was wrong of Fox News to sensationalize it, it still misses the point. Even the industry calls these types of games "Adult Games." Why are minors being allowed to purchase them? We have R and NC-17 movies that as a society we have agreed that minors should not be allowed to see. Why is it different with interactive media.
I'm not saying adults shouldn't be able to purchase games like this. Heck, even parents can purchase them and give them to their kids. But we have to be honest that the studies, show there is a correlation between violent media and increased aggression. Hopefully, most adults deal with that aggression in rational ways. However, the 12-17 YOs who are the real target of this genre don't have those coping mechanisms (they haven't finished forming in the brain).
Fox News shouldn't have done what they did, but at the same time, there are actual studies showing that violent media does affect children (same with pornography).
How many legally purchased firearms are used in violent crimes? Most American gun owners are law-abiding citizens who own them for various reasons; hunting, sport shooting, self-defense, nostalgia, law enforcement (backup / off-duty guns), etc.
The fact remains that most firearm-related violent crime is committed with stolen or black-market hardware. Even the shootings at Virginia Tech back in 2007 were committed with illegally purchased handguns, as the shooter had been adjudicated to mental health care (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html).
A nail gun, circular saw, or a hammer can be just as deadly as a gun, but we don't see regulation of their sales, do we? What about cars? A driver on a crowded highway or in a city with lots of pedestrian traffic can do immensely greater damage than a single shooter. What if it were a bus driver who went crazy and drove his passengers off a bridge, into a river or lake?
You ought to get that CNN gun control crap out of your head and check the real facts. Don't blame the tool, blame the person wielding it.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
So the mouthpiece of the party that opposes gun control and governmental regulation in general is advocating stricter imaginary-gun control?
Fox should only be allowed show re-runs of Mr Roger Neighborhood on the TV and News Networks then there would be no Violence in the whole world
"they asked whether Bulletstorm, an upcoming M-rated shooter from Epic Games, is the worst game in the world."
They obviously have never played the Leisure Suite Larry franchise.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Maybe if Fox news cares about the effects of violence, they should worry less about symbolic violence and more about the fact that they are consistent cheerleaders for the wars and military culture that results in things like limbs being blown off and people being burned to death in the real world.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Fox chose to use none of Steinberg’s comments in their final piece, opting instead for the more sensational claims
The problem is twofold:
1) The people doing this are lawyer-types. They lie-by-omission like lawyers, and they do so to advance a political agenda.
2) The people doing this are politician-types. They're OK with misleading the public, so long as it advances their personal agenda.
3) The politicians, who receive letters and votes from people too stupid to realize they're being mislead, are quite happy with this sort of thing. They, being in the business of making laws, tend to be lawyers too.
The western legal system is adversarial by design. The purpose of a trial isn't to get to the truth of what happened, it's to discredit the things the opponent says so only your arguments remain standing. There are rules that govern which arguments can stand, who plays first, and so on. When the buzzer rings, play stops, and score is announced based on which side played roughest.
In court, it's not necessarily a bad system. It's actually a pretty good system. The problem is that it bleeds over into the public sphere. Lawyers have no problem understanding the difference between "illegal" vs "unethical", but they've managed to snooker most of the public into thinking the two terms are the same thing. (This game is immoral - if it's not yet illegal, someone should pass a law / If the law says raping puppies is legal when the President does it, then you have to hand over Fido whenever the cops say so...)
This article about rape makes me feel like joining the ranks of the rapists. Where do you sign up for the sex offenders list?
And yet, the first, first person shooters were developed by the military to desensitize soldiers into having to shoot another human being.
The post also claims Fox is mainstream media. I don't believe that to be true at all. They may have a following, but mostly, they're redneck, science-denyin', anti-queer, don't-tax-me, Nazi-claimin' bags of big wind.
And now, I'll watch as my /. karma twitches.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
That's why it has a big M on the front of the box, telling parents not to buy it for their children and shops not to sell it.
Whatever happens when irresponsible people do irresponsible things, while being warned not to, is their own fault.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Now you know how every other ostracized group in this country feels. The news media will feed the uninformed disinformation until it becomes fact. Welcome to the world of the average gun owner, off roader, hunter, fisherman, farmer, and any I forgot.
The makers of bullet storm couldn't have PAID for better marketing. I imagine they're drinking champagne, toasting their good fortune right now. Furthermore, I looked at the demo and the game didn't strike me as being especially violent as FPSs go.
i guess all the fanatic crusaders and jihadis played a lot of games before raping women, and burning down villages. saladin's mom however was a republican.
"greater penalties for selling to minors."
I agree with this, if only because it'll (slightly, maybe, hopefully?) lessen the two year old idiots online.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Well, do you expect anything else from Fox? Remember, it's a propaganda machine. "News" in its name is like a porn star with the name "Polly Pure".
Perhaps, instead of worrying about teens playing video games, we should worry about those who watch FOX "News". I don't know about a link between video games and violence, but there is a link between watching Fox News and being stupid.
Your best "experts" on this matter work in the advertising/marketing department. They already know the power of propaganda. To put it simply, video games have the same effect as any other ad. And just look how easily the voters are swayed by the bullshit you people call "news". So, let's not pretend here.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Seriously, when are people going to stop being surprised at Fox doing stuff like this?
Fox News is a company whose purpose is to make money. Their way to make money is by selling viewers to advertisers (In this, they are no different from other TV networks or things like newspapers, websites etc). Advertisers like a predictable audience they can characterize as accurately as possible, so they can tailor their products and/or advertisements to cater to said audience.
Fox News is simply trying to ensure that a predictable segment of the population reliably tune in to their station. Since people like hearing other people say things they agree with, one way to do this is by telling that section of the population exactly what they want to hear. And that is what Fox does.
In this case, is an informed, nuanced piece about how video games do or do not influence young gamers' behavior going to appeal to Fox's target audience? No, it is not. Therefore, it's a simple piece about how some violent person played violent video-games, ergo violent video-games turn sweet little kids into serial killers. The people in Fox's target audience who see this will find themselves nodding along with the piece, ensuring they will tune in again next week, same time, same channel.
You could argue (justifiably, IMHO) about whether this model has undesirable social effects, and about news networks' responsibility etc, but this simply doesn't show up in Fox's equation. All they know is that by doing things this way, they can predict who's going to watch, and that is valuable to advertisers. There's no malice in that, it's just business (in their mind, of course)
Jeroen
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Fox News reporters can be seen by some as supporters of Al Qaeda, terrorism, and talking in a movie theatre," she said.
By the way....what relevance is it that she's a book author? I'm sure if she wrote a book relevant to video games, violence, or hell, even children, Fox News would have eaten that up and used it every way they could.
Surprised to see another random shot at Fox News! This story doesn't even come close to the "new low" brought forth by the other news networks regarding the shootings in AZ.
More one-sided political crap from /. and eventually am going to have to take it out of my RSS reader.
These cats need to try Postal 2. Speaking of cats, you can use them as silencers in Postal 2.
...crosshair shaped markers on maps do.
because they want it to be sensationalist. If bulletstorm weren't violent, it wouldn't really be much more than FPS mario brothers. As it stands it's a lighthearted Gears of War ripoff. I don't think this is a fox news article as much as compensated advertising.
a tabloid? Where is the line?
No one seems to pay any attention to the rating system anyway. If they do, some Mom that doesn't want to here their kid scream about it anymore just buys its for them. The enforcement of the rating system is what is broken, not the games themselves. What would you think about a store selling smokes and booze to minors? Having Mon go in and buy smokes and booze for their kids? Porn? I'm sure it happens, but one is taken more serious than the other. If its that big an issue, quit bitching about it and get serious about enforcement.
I'm old enough I don't care, I can buy whatever games I want!
If he lays off the pot, he's likely to start raping more frequently, since pot causes impotence, or so I heard
The lack of teaching personal responsibility, do whatever you please mentality, and blame everyone BUT yourself, being pushed everywhere is to blame for an increase in rapes, etc...
But broaching that subject is totally forbidden, so they aim a little lower.
Along the lines of this, are there any good enhanced interrogation simulators out there?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This article was reporting of straight facts. What is wrong with that? Since when does criticizing a culture of lies qualify as "blatant partisanship"?
More one-sided political crap from /. and eventually am going to have to take it out of my RSS reader.
Yeah, you would do better at a site where truth and honesty are scorned and conservative "values" are all that is allowed. Since you're anonymous, no one at /. will even know you're gone.
Read The Fox News Article
I am glad to see that /. has fallen into the tired 'look at how bad Fox News is' method of gaining interest in an article rather than letting the content speak for itself. If you read the actual Fox News article it is not the opinion of the article it is the opinion of an expert in the field that claims it is a problem, an opposing view is also expressed so the article takes no sides.
People should stop getting their nickers in a twist just because they have heard a view that is dissenting from whatever preconceived notion that they already may have had.
Maybe the worst game for 2011, but not the worst game ever.
Anyone ever heard of Custer's Revenge?
Just one example.
Hey, I was only kidding. You don't have to MOD me "Troll" . . . again . . . .
"Language such as "f**k," "sh*t," "p*ssy," and "c*ck" can be heard in dialogue."
So, like an average day at work then...
I played 1 violent game and now I just kill ever chance I get, it's totally the game makers fault, i have no freewill at all.
Scientifically, there are only three types of rapists:
1. The ones that watch fox news.
2. The ones that stopped watching fox news and now rape in their spare time
and
3. Those that never watched fox news. I can only think this type rapes from outrage after listening that fox news is saying.
Clearly. Fox news is very closely linked to the problem. Moreover, according to their statistics, as Glenn Beck has been going down in ratings, apparently rape is going up. Am I to assume that Glenn Beck was actually keeping rapists at home?
Fox
Underestimates
Common
Knowledge
In
Newreporting
Causing
Rich
Against
Poor
I was on the fence about this one, wanted to wait until I saw a few reviews or maybe the price to come down a bit.
I just finished the pre-order on steam.Thank you Fox News for the ringing endorsement.
Fox News is so far in to loony land that you can pretty much count on every thing that comes from them to be the exact, literal, polar opposite of the truth. They're like a cartoonish super villain, except sad and tragic instead of funny.
Fox new brings (_Topic_of_your_choice_) Debate to a new Low.
Summary: Fox News collected information from various experts and opinionists on the (_Topic_of_your_choice_) then choses to only air the information about (_Topic_of_your_choice_) from the opinionists who opinions on (_Topic_of_your_choice_) that closely match Fox News running narrative. Surprisingly all other research, studies and statistics were curtly summed up and presented as "... unsurprising theres are some studies 'out there' which can be contrived to present a different viewpoint ...". This is apparently done to maintain the "Fair and Balanced" integrity of Fox News.
Gone to my happy place.
Dammit, Ms Pacman was the epitome of violent, sexually-themed games, and I think my life sentence to Attica is proof of that. WHERE IS MY RECOGNITION??!
But the government is the problem, don't you know that? Spending money on solving rapes would require paying taxes.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
From TFA:
players are rewarded for shooting enemies in the private parts (such as the buttocks).
Phew! Good thing they exemplified, at first I was thinking "private parts" meant their motherboards.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
Sounds pretty mainstream to me.
Umm, John Stossel anyone?
Granted he is on FBN rather than than FNC, but its still a FOX property and he has repeatedly railed against anti-video game bans and related laws both on FBN and back in his ABC/20-20 days.
I have also heard Judge Andrew Napolitano express similar options on his show.
What I find quite humorous is that if I were to turn this story into my english professor and have him grade it (disregarding obvious plagarism) This would be nowhere near an "A" paper.
Where do these idiots "earn" their degrees from? I am using the term "earn" very loosely.
We're talking about journalists here... to be fair Carol Lieberman was probably referring to the fact that as time goes on people get raped but they don't get unraped. Thus rapes increase over time...
It's easier to make sense of these political degenerates when you know they're lying and misleading from the start.
So, her logic is:
1. Rapes happen. They did last year.
2. This game is coming out.
3. Fewer rapes happened this year. How do you explain that rapes happened this year?
4. It must be the game.
Wow. Just Wow.
FOX even got a court to say the media can legally distort or falsify the news.
LOL idiot!
Foxomatic
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...because they make them up.
There were several quests in WotLK that were sexual innuendo:
Blowing Hodir's Horn, Polishing the Helm, Mounting Hodir's Helm, Raising Hodir's Spear, Thrusting Hodir's Spear, and Going Bearback
And some would say they've stepped it up a notch in Cataclysm:
Camel Tow, A Case of Crabs, A Taste For Tail, Just the Tip, and Premature Explosionation
My point is that if you are old enough to get the joke it's not like they are corrupting you since you've already been corrupted. As for double standards how about the song 'Crank That' by Soulja Boy where there are various references to 'superman' and 'super soak' 'that ho'. I'll spare you what those mean, you can look that up yourself on Urban Dictionary, but this is (or was, it's about 2 years old) on the radio. There's no parental controls on the radio. No outrage because it isn't the corrupter of this current generation - video games.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
...right after "Fox News".
They have almost as much credibility as someone saying "I read it on the internet". Oh, wait...
What makes you think 12-17 year olds are the target of the action FPS genre? The average age of game-buyers is now over 30, and most of the people who play FPSes are in their 20s and 30s now.
... on BOTH sides (both media and game publishers).
Fox News is a propaganda mouth piece for war criminals and arms dealers disguised as politicians, routinely promotes actual violent warfare and hatred against other nations, yet they dare publish in a sensational way those "think of the children" articles about video game violence?
This is sickening. On other hand you try to scare people to death with "terrorists", fake missile threats and so on so that the audience feels foreign policy issues as fight-or-flee animal situations, and support extreme violence against the "terrorists". On another hand, violence is always taboo when mentioning or depicting it would not serve the propaganda interest - this is true of even mainstream french media for instance. Showing the mutilated corpses, widespread destruction and suffering of Iraq or Gaza isn't permitted because it's deemed offensive! But cheerleading for the bombs is patrotic.
I would like a law, similar to Libel or Slander laws, that enforced the publication of factual information in major news publications, to prevent this kind of blatantly incorrect information (like ignoring the fact that Rape has consistently *fallen* since the 70's) going out there.
I'm not sure how to prevent abuse of it - the best I can say is that it should be as difficult to get a conviction under that law as it is to get a libel/slander conviction, but yes, statements about "The increase in Rape" being published while ignoring that the crime has decreased over the years would fall afoul of it.
That's bad even for Fox.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Reporting ANYTHING Fox does or says is not news. It's just rehyping what should have died a long time ago.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
The post also claims Fox is mainstream media. I don't believe that to be true at all.
Neither do I. I don't believe they're media at all.
My sig can beat up your sig.
The raping must continue!
Why are minors being allowed to purchase them?
Because they don't hurt them. Even minors can tell the difference between fiction and reality. Imagine the state that the population would be in if normal people couldn't even differentiate between fiction and reality and if fiction truly could make people violent. There would be far, far more violence than there is now. Yet, there isn't. Only a small minority of the population is violent, and yet most people are subjected to violent media. Funny, that.
We have R and NC-17 movies that as a society we have agreed that minors should not be allowed to see.
As a society? Who is that? I disagree completely. Unless you have an actual reason to keep these things from them (and so far, no one does), then just let them watch/play the media.
But we have to be honest that the studies, show there is a correlation between violent media and increased aggression.
No, they absolutely do not. The closest I have ever seen a study get to correlating violence with violent media is correlating temporary violent thoughts with violent media. 99% of the time, those thoughts do not translate into actual physical violence except in the case of an already disturbed individual (I would guess).
However, the 12-17 YOs who are the real target of this genre don't have those coping mechanisms (they haven't finished forming in the brain).
Who are you even talking about? This is ridiculous. A majority of minors aren't even violent, yet many of them are subjected to violent media. Again, that's funny.
they haven't finished forming in the brain
Are you serious? They might be going through some changes, but they are not so idiotic as to not be able to differentiate between fiction and reality.
The statistics simply aren't on your side.
You say that even minors can tell the difference between fiction and reality. That's why it's impossible for children to believe in Santa Claus, right? Sure they grow out of it , but unless they aren't minors, then evidently it's possible for some minors to not be able to tell the difference. And it's not just children. Depending on where you stand on your belief in God, there are a lot of people who can or cannot tell the difference between fiction and reality. Or, leaving God out of it, even though crop circles have been debunked, many still believe in them and UFOs, etc.
As for Society agreeing that minors shouldn't watch/play these things. The fact that there is a rating system in the first place, seems to indicate that there is some sort of societal norm to base the rating on. Whether you agree with the rating or not, the group responsible for the rating has to make a determination based on some objective standard.
As for studies showing the link between watched violence and increased aggression, there are too many to count. Increased aggression, however, does not mean that one will go shoot everybody at school. Just like there is a correlation between being physically abused as a child and being an abuser as an adult. A correlation does not mean that one will become an abuser, just that there is a link between the two.
As for coping mechanisms and brain development, it is a medical fact that ones brain does not finish forming until one enters their 20s. A lot of developmental changes occur in the brain during the teen years and at least in tests on other mammals, the brain is very adaptable at that time (it is considered unethical to actually test on human beings). There are definite stages to growth and development of brain structures. For instance, teen males seem to be impulsive in many things. That is because the frontal lobes are still developing and it is there that compulsive behaviour is regulated. The frontal lobes don't reach maturity until around age 25. They also have a lot to do with
all you need to know about fox "news" is to see is Outfoxed : Rupert Murdochs War on journalism...
Irony alert.
What I find laughable about this whole thing is that FOX News is supposedly "conservative" (as defined by Americans), which means "get the government out of people's lives", hence their hatred for "Obama-care". So, wouldn't government controlling gaming content be the OPPOSITE of "getting out of people's lives"?
I love to play video games. America is all about pushing the boundaries, and unfortunately it is at our kids expense. I love the graphics, but not for the young at heart!
that could possibly represent a danger to anyone with an IQ under 12 and wrap anything that could harm anyone with cotton wool. Then we might be a little safer. It's a dangerous world after all.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Shootings and rapes? Sounds like the news on my local Fox channel, followed by COPS. They're probably worried that people will spend time shooting imaginary people instead of listening to reporters tell them about shootings of real people.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Games are violent, that is a fact. And to an alarming level of gore.
And why do people claim "freedom" so much? And freedom, to what?
To do imoral and also possibly illegal things?
Most here are very subjective; the fact that you are a young boy and
like games should not get in the way of you admitting that they
are filled with gore, extreme violence, and sometimes pornography.
The fact that there are concerned people out there, that care about
the education of young people is a good thing.
My comment is mostly in pictorial format: http://i51.tinypic.com/qyesld.png
Video games do not kill people. They do not rape people. There are no subliminal messages in them that are telling your children to run out and steal a car, or hold up a bank, or stick it in a woman in a back alley. Rape, murder, robbery, car jacking, all of this? All of these things have been going on since long before video games came in to existence and they will, without a doubt, exist long after video games go out of style whenever that is. Pointing a finger at an inanimate object and going, "Bad cartridge, bad!" is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
Rather than blaming something that isn't real, why not look at the people that are committing the crime? If they did it, it's 100% likely they were going to do it before they played the video game, and the fact that they played the video game has nothing to do with it. What are you going to do, pull out statistics, "One in every five rapists played this game." in a year or so? Yeah, well, what about the other four rapists that didn't play the game? And what about the tens of thousands of people that didn't run out and rape anybody after playing this game? Instead of putting the blame on something that isn't real, why not go out and blame what is, and point your self righteous fingers at the human beings that commit the crime.
And remember kids, guns don't kill people, people kill people.
This is why I don't surf mainstream news sites all the time. I don't know of a single one that can write a legit, no-bullshit article (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, etc., all included). They have gone from a restrained, news reporting profession to an opinionated suggestion service. BUT, I still hold some faith in Fox overall due to their ability to survive in the liberal controlled media scene.
The worst part about news companies is that fact that people defend them like they were relatives. I'm looking at this article and 90% of the comments aren't even about the actual article, reasoning or validity. They are about whether or not Fox news is a good source or not. Retards.
they are absolute idiots!! ;D
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Gotta love how "sexual innuendo in the names of kill streaks" turns in to "sexual situations and acts in video games".
I mean we all know how it works - kill 4 people and it's violence; kill 4 people and display "Gangbang" on the screen, and it is a graphic depiction of rape!