Slashdot Mirror
The Most Violent Video Games of All Time
adeelarshad82 writes "Switzerland and Australia already feel that violent video games are an issue, and in June the US Supreme Court will also take matters in its own hands. Revisiting some of the most violent video games made over the last couple of decades shows exactly why this is such a huge concern." Warning: this slideshow contains imaginary violence.
Count of flying meat pieces usually seems pathetically low when compared to this game:
http://icculus.org/jumpnbump/
Pretty soon, we'll be seeing stuff like "most violent blogs of all time" and "webcomics are destroying our youth". Just as soon as the mainstream media catches up with this decade.
Really, a submission every time anyone posts anything about violent video games and their alleged influence on kids? Mod submission redundant.
Remember everybody, anyone who suggests that playing violent video games 18 hours a day everyday might have any negative consequences what so ever is obviously a deluded Christian fanatic who just wants to censor everything. Censorship is evil!
Also please be sure to remember that talk radio and Sarah Palin are so evilly powerful that they single-handedly caused the shootings in Arizona even though the shooter didn't even listen to talk radio! (it was the evil permeating waves). Finally, remember that if any school child even hears the word "God" used in anything other than a derogatory manner or even sees a Bible that isn't being desecrated, that school child will forever mentally scarred beyond comprehension. Censorship is good!
No, I don't take all of the preceding comments seriously, but Slashdot is strewn with +5 insightful mods that do state all of those positions seriously... and sometimes in the same post.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Violent video games make ME uncomfortable. Therefore, nobody should be allowed to make or play them.
Most laws that forbid civil liberties are based on this thought process, though they all have completely different ostensible justifications.
I want a mod of Half Life where instead of killing zombies, you are curing them and sending them to safe zones. Then Mercy Hospital would make a lot more sense.
Video games are among the best ways yet invented for keeping children from using the television to watch the news, an action which exposes them to a seamy world of corruption, pestilence, brutal exploitation, slavery, lust, violence, and savage, inevitable, death.
The idyllic gameworld, on the other hand, offers a few PG-13 "situations", some morally unambiguous violence, and a world were death is a temporary setback.
Video games are protecting the children!
Violent video games make ME uncomfortable. Therefore, nobody should be allowed to make or play them
I don't like people who talk about their religion to me. My solution? No, I don't want to ban religion. I just avoid it. Don't go to church, avoid people who talk about religion.
Even though thousands of years of history prove that religion motivates people to perform the most atrocious violence, I'm not proposing to ban religion.
Therefore I cannot understand why people want to ban games without even presenting credible evidence that games cause any harm.
I don't think any list of "Most Violent Video Games" would be complete without Time Killers. Who needs solid game play or nice graphics when you can just up the ante on blood and gore with the ability to dismember your opponent?
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
Personally, I'd rather people with issues do their beating, raping and killing in video games rather than in real life.
-- $G
Pacman has had no influence or side effects on people whatsoever. If it did, then people playing it in the 80s would now be moving around in black rooms, listening to monotonous electronic music, swallowing white pills, wouldn't they?
The uncensored release of Duke Nukem Forever, here in Australia, I'm convinced is a plot from the censorship lobby. Once it's been out for a week, there'll be a media shitstorm stirred up by the likes of Michael Arkins saying "this is what we protect you from, it's regrettable this one made it past our screening, but surely you can see we must outright ban such vulgarity!".
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
While the points you make are true of many of the knee-jerk left-leaning individuals here (but not necessarily true of the more level headed ones--yes, they're out there), your post reminded me of something else that's mostly unrelated. So, here's my wholly tangential thought:
Going back to the summary (which is light on details--and the slideshow is kind of silly), there's a huge double standard both in the media and our government. I'm talking about the double standard that exists between the treatment of violence in video games (think of the children!) versus the violence in what are often critically acclaimed movies. Of course, this is largely because our representatives have strong ties to Hollywood and the video game industry hasn't a very powerful lobby in comparison (if at all?). There are undoubtedly forces that see video games as a danger to their entertainment income, and with random shootings every couple of years, it's easy to spin video games as the cause of such violence. Many movies are just as brutal as video games, and many others even more so, but since the mainstream press is often owned by the same conglomerates as own the major studios (hi, MPAA!), it's easy to see why they play softball with their kindred.
Never mind that the individuals who committed these acts are often very disturbed, disgruntled individuals who in some cases (think of the Arizona shooter) had a history of being disruptive with behavior that made at least one professor uneasy. But, hey, let's blame the video game industry. They aren't funneling enough money into the back pockets of our politicians! Shame on them.
He who has no
Actually, the 9th and 10th Amendments make it pretty darn clear that it was to be taken as a closed document even if the copious notes and essays from the founding period did not (which they do). The Founders very explicitly and directly wanted to create a limited government of expressly delegated powers, one with a more powerful central government than under the Articles of Confederation, true, but strictly limited in nature nevertheless. Many people said so publicly and no one said otherwise--- not in the decisions at the Con Con, not in the public debates leading up to ratification, not in the ratifying conventions, and not in the ratifying instruments accepted by the states--- no one said, "Hey this is a living document and we'll figure it out as we go." Madison, in the Federalist Papers, directly spells out the consequences of the Federal government overstepping its delegated authority with the states in control of the militia. If they believed in a 'living document,' why write the Constitution anyway, when they could have just expanded the government by ignoring the limits under the Articles?
As to the idea that this prevents the government from tackling future circumstances, that is an empty argument. The idea was that it was not the Federal government's job to innovate. The states are in a position to handle many issues on their own, each to its liking (within Constitutional limits on their own authority) and many states do have specific laws on video games. We have amended the US Constitution quite a few times where the states felt that it fell short of what was needed.
The PP is correct. The job of a judge is to enforce the law (starting with the Supreme Law of the Land first and foremost). Nothing more and nothing less. "Congress shall make no law..." is pretty clear.
I have never understood people that believe they must impose there beliefs and supposed morals on others.
Largely because they, themselves, gained their belief system by having it imposed on them, often with cruelty, and despite their innate belief that what they were being taught was wrong. If they don't impose their belief on others, then they have to admit that what was done to them was wrong, and then they have to deal with all that pain.
Spirituality is not the problem. Belief in a God who wants us to follow a path ("Torah") as part of our relationship with What Is, is not the problem. Religion often is. Religion is the belief in men who somehow know more about what God wants than you do or what He can communicate with you directly. Religion, at its foundation, is therefore idolatry and forbidden by the cardinal rule of Torah.
But then the spoiled rotten "what about me?" generation might actually have to...oh I don't know...RAISE THEIR OWN DAMNED KIDS instead of handing them over to mommy government! Gasp! they might actually have to get involved and shit instead of just plopping them in front of electronic babysitters! The horror!
Sadly I wish that was a fricking joke, but it ain't, as I have seen waaaaaay too many of my boys little school chums being raised by electronic babysitters. No books in the home, no real meaningful interaction, just plop them in front of (insert DVD, X360,PC,etc) and let it "keep them out of my hair".
When my sister was struck down by MS and her husband decided that "taking care of a sick wife and two kids ain't for me" and skipped town I took it upon myself to be the best damned parent I could be despite deciding years ago not to have kids, and by God that is what I did, even when my back was so messed up from a car wreck they had to climb on a table just to get a hug or picked up.
I didn't care about them playing violent games because I sat down and educated them by showing how what they saw was created on screen**, how scripting created the illusion of AI, how DOOM wads (dating myself here) could be edited to stick pictures of them in the game. I also didn't just stick them in front of a damned screen, even though many nights the pain in my back was terrible. I sat there and actually engaged their growing minds by reading Asimov to them (just like mom did to me when I was little) or watching Nova with them and teaching them how to research answers on the net when I didn't know the answer to one of their questions.
TLDR? PARENTING IS HARD! And if you aren't willing to step up to the plate then don't fricking have kids! they ain't dolls, or little vanities for your ego, they are little human beings that need plenty of love and attention if they are gonna have a decent shot at a future. Now the oldest is started his first year of premed I'm proud to say, and the youngest still hasn't decided whether he wants to become a chef or do graphic arts. It has been damned hard but worth every second.
**-This had a funny and unintended "side effect" whereas my boys have a unique method of "cursing" at a game, such as "Who made this thing? Look at all the tearing! What is this 1997? And what idiot wrote the AI routines for this thing? DUCK YOU STUPID ENEMY!!!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
My favorite video game back in the day was Galaga, which came out in 1981. I still play it via MAME and whenever I run across the original game or the anniversary re-release. Every level is a fucking massacre. You kill at least 40 aliens and potentially more: if you're really good at killing aliens especially quickly, the game slips in some extras to satisfy your lust for xenocide. Every fourth level, in fact, is a "challenging stage" in which the aliens are completely defenseless and you get bonus points for killing them to the last man. I'm not an especially good player, but I can reliably get to at least the 25th level, which takes about fifteen minutes and during which I must kill at least 1,000 aliens. Nor is Galaga an extreme case. By the late 80's and early 90's, there was a whole slew of Japanese shoot-em-up scrollers where the screen was positively jammed with enemies that could only be overcome by acquiring more and more powerful weapons, next to which Galaga is like the most boring of UN peacekeeping missions.
The body count in hours of gameplay with the current first-person shooters doesn't even merit comparison with three minutes of gameplay in any number of arcade classics from twenty or thirty years ago. What has changed is that the mayhem is more realistic -- and then only if you accept a rather loose reading of "realistic" that actually means "resembling the comic-book violence of action movies".
To make matters worse, the violent crime rate has been mostly declining during all this time, during which ownership of computers and game consoles has gone from a relatively small market to being nearly universal, especially in the age groups that are most likely to be involved in violent crime. If one was compelled to draw a causal connection between violent video games and real-world violence, one would have to conclude that they are actually reducing the level of real-world violence. There is actually some evidence to that effect -- but the balance of the actual scientific data, as opposed to the hyperventilation of people like Jack Thompson, strongly suggests that if there is any connection between video games and real violence, it is too insignificant to be measured even with relatively large samples.
At the end of the day, we'd probably hear less of this hysterical crap if y'all would just stay of those nice people's lawns. Now, if you'll pardon me, I have a sudden urge to fire up MAME and take another pass at getting to the 30th level in Galaga.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Now lets put those next to the most violent films of the same period and see who comes off looking worse. Even just put them against the Saw films. 'Torture porn' I believe they call them...says it all really.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Actually, most laws that forbid civil liberties are based on third person effects. For example: *I* haven't been too adversely affected by violent media, but other less educated and less mature people are. Why else is there an epidemic in violence?
There isn't.
Football Odds
Of course there isn't if you look at the actual figures, but who wants to do a silly thing like that?
No, we need to use gut feelings and media outrage, that way we *know* there's an epidemic of violence and society is collapsing right in front of us, without needing silly little things like evidence.
DUH!
I wish I wasn't becoming quite so misanthropic...
Remember kids: cite your sources. Or at the very least, If you're going to lift a line from somebody, put quotes around it so you don't look like a fool when somebody calls you on it like I'm about to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Brigstocke#Pac-Man_joke
Almost all video games are extremely violent.
Complete Hog Wash. I mean unless you consider DDR and Rock Band to violent games, but I think that would be quite a stretch. There are plenty of other non-violent games as well, and many that are violent but not to the extreme.