Two Studies Suggesting a Link Between Violent Video Games, Real-Life Behavior Have Been Retracted (qz.com)

Keith Collins reports via Quartz: In the first three months of 2017, academic journals retracted two papers that suggested a link between violent video games and real-life behavior. The first, entitled "Boom, Headshot!" was published in the Journal of Communication Research in 2012 and, after years of controversy, retracted last January. That study looked at the "effect of video game play and controller type on firing aim and accuracy," and found that playing first-person shooter games can train a player to become a better marksman in real life. Patrick Markey, a psychology professor at Villanova University, found some inconsistencies in the data published in the study. In January 2015, he and a colleague alerted Ohio State University, where the authors of the paper conducted the research. The lead author of the study, psychology professor Brad Bushman, emailed an official at OSU a month later, suggesting the allegations were part of a smear campaign against him and his co-author, according to Retraction Watch. Last January, the Journal of Communication Research retracted the paper. Bushman had agreed to the retraction, and began an attempt to re-do the original study with a larger sample size. A paper published in Gifted Child Quarterly in 2016, authored by Bushman and three others, caught the attention of Joseph Hilgard, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. The paper had studied the "effects of violent media on verbal task performance in gifted and general cohort children," and found that when children watched a violent cartoon for 12 minutes, their verbal skills dropped substantially for a temporary period. What surprised Hilgard most, according to an interview with Retraction Watch, was the sheer size of the effect. Hilgard said that OSU, Bushman, and others he spoke with about the study were helpful and forthcoming, but could not provide information on the study's data collection process. The author who collected the data, it turned out, lived in Turkey and fell out of contact following the recent coup attempt. Last week, Gifted Child Quarterly retracted the paper.

Comments

I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Qbertino]

Link or not, I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death. Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce. Battlefield 1 was the pinnacle: Celebrating the massakre that WW1 war as something enjoyable left an awkward taste behind. Yes, the GFX were aweseome and I'm sure the leveldesign and the gameplay were top notch. ... But why again do we have to simulate and fetishize real war as close as possible?

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad. I don't know how that turned out though.

I do get Unreal Tournament CTF, Tribes CTF, Xonotic CTF and Quake 3 Arena CTF. Bouncing around through space with teleporters, strange gaming levels and respawning instantly once your fragged and shooting bizar weapons that don't exist in the real world is all-out fun. And the direkt link to violence I don't see in both cases. ... I do get stress and anxiety issues when playing these games for an extended period of time though.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Dunbal]

I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death.

And why the hell would you just single out video games. Been to the movies in the past century? How about television? Death is part of our culture, rightly or wrongly.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Maritz]

But why again do we have to simulate and fetishize real war as close as possible?

There's a market out there. Some of the games are realistic. Some are not. Both exist, which invalidates your false premise here.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go play Spec Ops: The Line. The entire game is a criticism of glorification of war and the people who play games that do so.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[jellomizer]

Well for teens and preteen they are strong and smart enough to survive without their help there is an urge to prove one self. War/survival fantasy is very compelling to play out as it puts you in the ultimate test.
Now this urge will get kids in trouble in real life putting themselves in dangerous situations, willing to fight people at a drop of a hat or performing other deviant behavior. Kids causing trouble has been going on for much longer than they were humans.
Social norms now say we shouldn't be in that situation all the time. So kids will escape into a world where they can feel powerful in their fantasy.
So for things like...
Video Games for this generation
Watching violent TV shows for the previous generations.
Comic Books for the generation before that.

Popular "Wholsome" active which are popular with older kids like sports, camping, etc... put the kid in a controlled challenge where they can be tested. But these kids are no less trouble makers than the ones playing games.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you rather people play fake wargames on a computer, or real wargames where actual people die?

I think you would choose the former. But the latter is all too real unfortunately. Video games don't contribute to actual violence because we don't need any enhancement in that area. Anyway the reality is actual violence has been trending downward for centuries when you look at the long term and not cherry pick one or two instances.

Finally your assertion that video games are too one-dimensional may be true in some instances, but would you want to play a WW2 combat game in which also included ugliness like the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, etc? I have read enough about both to understand them, I don't need to play them in a combat simulation.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad.

Did everyone in the store applaud and give the dad 100$? Was his name Albert Einstein by any chance?

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[AmiMoJo]

The difference between games and movies is that AAA movies are usually at least somewhat responsible about portraying war as a horrible thing where everyone suffers. Games have started to get better about this in the last few years, although they often just throw in some disturbing imagery for the sake of being more "gritty".

For example, good movies make you care about the characters, and care when they get injured or die. In games, death is usually reduced to a score count and temporary set-back as you respawn.

I'm not saying games are all terrible or any nonsense like that, just that there is a difference between playing a game about WW1 and watching a movie about it.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[CrimsonAvenger]

For example, good movies make you care about the characters, and care when they get injured or die.

Note that the characters you refer to above are the "good guys" in the movies.

In games, death is usually reduced to a score count

Note that those are the "bad guys"....

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Nidi62]

Link or not, I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death. Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce. Battlefield 1 was the pinnacle: Celebrating the massakre that WW1 war as something enjoyable left an awkward taste behind.

The problem is BF1, which I enjoy playing, doesn't even show the horrors of that war. I was really disappointed that the single player missions did not have a single instance of actual trench warfare. No "over the top" type charge where you are literally walking through a storm of bullets, seeing people all around you just drop dead, trekking over a pockmarked and muddy landscape littered with dismembered and decaying corpses. No setting in a dugout weathering an artillery bombardment and subsequent gas attack, having to defend your trench half blind and choking from the gas. Their only attempt was that prologue where you are intended to die, and every time you do you jump to a new soldier. For a game about a war that saw millions of combatants and millions of deaths, you spend a surprising amount of the single player campaign on your own. They missed a really big chance to show just how horrible WWI really was.

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[nitehawk214]

Playing paintball is a more realistic war simulation than Battlefield 1.

Maybe it's the anti-gaming people that are the ones that need to get out of their basements.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Nidi62]

Go play Spec Ops: The Line. The entire game is a criticism of glorification of war and the people who play games that do so.

The entire game is literally a Middle East-set Apocalypse Now, which is itself an adaptation of Heart of Darkness. Those stories aren't about war, they're about the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying games are all terrible or any nonsense like that

DRINK!

When AmiMojo makes a bunch of generalizations and stereotypes against others, and then claim he's not being prejudiced and bigoted like some racist saying "I'm not a racist but", take a drink.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Movies celebrate violence. Games usually allow you to make your own choices (shooters like Call of Duty are an exception, but they are target specifically at people who only want to shoot everything that moves.

Heck, even "the most violent game ever", aka. Postal 2, has an achievement for completing the game without killing anyone.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[goose-incarnated]

For example, good movies make you care about the characters, and care when they get injured or die.

Really? How many movies made you care about the enemy bodycount? I can't think of many (none come to mind, but there *must* have been a few).

I'm not really surprised you choose the Jack Thompson side of any issue, but still ... surely you must put at least some thought into your words?

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Besides being good fun, paintball also teaches you how easy it is to get hurt in a firefight. Think you're under good cover with a buddy having your back, and still get hit in the head, shoulder or ankle. Now think what that would be like if those were real bullets...

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a kid(I'm 49) I use to play with GI Joe dolls and army men. In fact I still have my original GI Joe toys packed away somewhere at my parents house. There were no video game systems then yet we still played war. The bad guys were Nazis and my friends and I got to be heroes. I use to build tanks and airplanes out of Lego and play space battles and crazy adventures where things would "blow up". As a father I use to take my boys out twice a month and go play military simulations using Airsoft guns before I became disabled. In fact playing Airsoft is whole lot closer to real then any computer game or movie. Airsoft battles can be very intense when the BBs start flying in all directions and people are yelling.

It's very normal for a boys to do such things and a few girls as well. It is exciting and thrilling and we get to be heroes and kill the bad guys. I see nothing wrong with how I played as a boy nor do I have a problem with it now as a father and a former Airsoft player.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[dfm3]

And why the hell would you just single out video games.

Probably because they were posting to a /. discussion about... video games?

I do agree that our popular media tend to take death more lightly than they should at times (images of 90's action movies in which gun-wielding heroes mow down streams of bad guys come to mind) but I can say that I've seen proportionally more movies than video games that treat death as a serious subject with a broad range of implications for the surviving characters.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[nedlohs]

No. https://www.dailydot.com/layer...

I wouldn't call him "smart" though.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[ckatko]

You don't get it mostly because you're an idiot. :P

You know what men like? COMPETITION. You know what those games represent? COMPETITION. They have "hunting". They have gathering resources.

Quake 3 isn't about killing people. It's about winning a game. (Notice I said "Game" and not "Video game".) An abstract game where people don't actually die. It's NO different than playing tag. No different than playing cops and robbers. The robbers "compete" to FLEE, and cops "compete" to CATCH.

When someone in Quake 3 dies, there is no family crying. There is no funeral. There is no sadness. You just respawn.

Men naturally (that is BIOLOGICALLY) create hierarchical systems, and then compete within those systems for the top. Men compete in chess. Men compete in drag racing. Men compete in soccer. Men. Compete. It's a biological need. And only in the last couple decades where we've forgotten 95% of "what it means to be a man" is this a remotely novel concept.

Now, contrast this with war and, accidentally, some modern games. Google the death scenes in Dead Space. They're horrific. I can't play those games without intentionally desensitizing myself--and I don't want to. They're graphic. They're horrible. I don't want to watch my guy, screaming and crying out for help, as his spine is ripped out from his living body by a monster. We're heading fast for the uncanny valley and past it, where we're no longer shooting at 2-D sprite monsters going "ugh." every time they get hit, and heading for realistic looking pain and suffering. When you can actually empathize with simulated pain and suffering, that's no longer a abstracted "game" like cops-and-robbers. It's a simulation. And we SHOULD be super-careful about letting our kids play that.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[conquistadorst]

Link or not, I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death. Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce. Battlefield 1 was the pinnacle: Celebrating the massakre that WW1 war as something enjoyable left an awkward taste behind. Yes, the GFX were aweseome and I'm sure the leveldesign and the gameplay were top notch. ... But why again do we have to simulate and fetishize real war as close as possible?

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad. I don't know how that turned out though.

I do get Unreal Tournament CTF, Tribes CTF, Xonotic CTF and Quake 3 Arena CTF. Bouncing around through space with teleporters, strange gaming levels and respawning instantly once your fragged and shooting bizar weapons that don't exist in the real world is all-out fun. And the direkt link to violence I don't see in both cases. ... I do get stress and anxiety issues when playing these games for an extended period of time though.

Very noble argument of you however I'm shocked at your blindness to our basic human nature. We are a violent species. It's hard to undo millions (or billions, depending on how you want to look at it) of years of evolution. No matter how much nurturing we do to overcome our nature, it comes as prepackaged as a built-in feature. We all have our genetic variations, and certainly some people are more violent than others. Regardless, it's better to be aware, accept, and control it than to deny its existence.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Wootery]

Those stories aren't about war

Of course they are. Don't be silly.

they're about the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us.

Yup. And war.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if we are going to talk "good guys" and "bad guys" in the movies... In general when the "good guy" gets shot, "it is just a flesh wound" and he keeps on (perhaps with a limp or a sore arm). When the normal "bad guy" gets hit, he is dead. Except the "chief bad guy". That guy takes several hits, seems dead, then gets up and takes another shot at the good guy. I guess the moral is to not be a henchmen.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[AmiMoJo]

How did "care about the characters" become "care about the enemy body count" in your mind?

I'm not on that idiot Thompson's side of this. You apparently missed the part of my post where I said "I'm not saying games are all terrible or any nonsense like that", in anticipation of your assumption.

I think you were triggered and didn't read my post properly.

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot Shots Part Deaux made me care about the body count....by literally having a body count on screen.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[goose-incarnated]

How did "care about the characters" become "care about the enemy body count" in your mind?

When did the enemy in movies become something other than a character?

I'm not on that idiot Thompson's side of this. You apparently missed the part of my post where I said "I'm not saying games are all terrible or any nonsense like that", in anticipation of your assumption.

I think you were triggered and didn't read my post properly.

Anytime your ideology shows or is predicted you bring out the "triggered" phrase. It's getting old. You're wearing it out, like you wore out "misogynist" to refer to people who don't care about diversity politics, and "racism" to refer to people who want to decline foreign visitors.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[AmiMoJo]

When did the enemy in movies become something other than a character?

Have you actually seen many war movies?

The enemies usually don't get a name, a personality, any lines... You might get one or two who have some kind of 2D, paper-thin personality, just so that the heroes have someone to give their struggle context and meaning. The vast bulk of them are just a faceless hoard, sometimes literally as these days there isn't much point putting a proper face texture on a CGI soldier who ends up being 3 pixels high.

It's getting old.

I agree, I'm actually really tired of people just assuming I think things that I have never said or never expressed agreement with, usually because they didn't bother to properly read my post or are just ranting at some fantasy SJW.

For example...

You're wearing it out, like you wore out "misogynist" to refer to people who don't care about diversity politics, and "racism" to refer to people who want to decline foreign visitors.

Both things I never did, you imagined them. The first one doesn't even make sense, as actually hating women is quite different to being indifferent about "diversity politics". The second one I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to, e.g. the situation in the UK has been badly managed and caused some people problems, and doesn't automatically mean that they are racists.

See? You have some strange ideas about me and don't bother to check if they are true or carefully read what I posted to confirm your assumptions, you just see the name "amimojo" and go off on a rant. Please stop, your comments can be insightful at times and we could have an interesting discussion if you could just get past this.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Men naturally (that is BIOLOGICALLY) create hierarchical systems, and then compete within those systems for the top. Men compete in chess. Men compete in drag racing. Men compete in soccer. Men. Compete. It's a biological need. And only in the last couple decades where we've forgotten 95% of "what it means to be a man" is this a remotely novel concept.

In the pack descriptions of male mentalities, there are those who want followers, those who want leaders, those who want to be left alone, and those who can fill any of the other three roles.

Followers are most common, wannabe leaders are second most common, loners are more common in technological fields than in the general populace, and universalists are extremely rare.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the point is that everyone has different tastes and preferences, for games and movies both. You can try to adjust your tastes and preferences, for yourself and your kids, but please don't try to adjust my preferences. I prefer not bouncing around space with teleporters, I prefer my games to be more like simulations. That's just me.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[meta-monkey]

How many movies made you care about the enemy bodycount?

Maybe John Wick? I remember that being a selling point. Great movie, too. Haven't seen the sequel yet.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[meta-monkey]

Do you understand the difference between an object narrative and a meta narrative?

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Those stories aren't about war, they're about the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us.

Yes, but adaptations can add themes to varying effect. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to set a story about "the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us" in a war.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[T.E.D.]

For example, good movies make you care about the characters, and care when they get injured or die.

For the "good guys" perhaps. How many of the dudes who got their brains clawed out in Logan did you care about? Or the guys who died in Mad Max: Fury Road? How about all those Death Stars in the various Star Wars flicks? They all had a small planet's worth of people on them when they were destroyed. John Wick, Deadpool... I think I just went through most of IMDB's current top 10 action movies.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[yendor]

Have you seen these?
"This War of Mine"
"Beholder"
"Papers, Please"
"Valiant Hearts"
etc etc

A lot of people like the war games in game and real life. Paintball and laser shooting games being a good example. There's a lot of them just like there is a massive group that like football (european and egg-hand-ball type) who play the repeated EA releases.
Playing realistic war is about as old as war itself and has too many explanations to be worth testing. Most people like realism because they can suspend belief.
Veterans I've spoken with play wargames to unwind and deal with real life experiences that no-one really understand. I have never been big on the shooters myself but some of my sons enjoy some which always seems to relate to the immersive group experience just like raiding in WoW or a standard tabletop game of Risk.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, I'm actually really tired of people just assuming I think things that I have never said or never expressed agreement with, usually because they didn't bother to properly read my post or are just ranting at some fantasy SJW.

DRINK! Whene AmiMojo complains about other people beating up fantasy strawman impression of him when he himself has been beating up fantasy strawman impression of others (in this case, video games), take a drink

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Link or not, I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death. Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce.

So opinions are easy, don't like it - don't play. Men are the physical protectors of the tribe, always have been. Playing war-like, highly competitive games is part of the genetic inclination being boys. In any case it is a fact of nature.

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories.

I love the way that father mixed Hamas in there with Israeli veterans. As if the two are even comparable.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[ronaldbeal]

John Wick kill Count graphic: http://imgur.com/gallery/xAzze...

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. The foundations of our culture, like Homer's Iliad and Vergil's Aeneid, are kumbaya cuddleboxes that preach a long-haired hippie gospel of making love instead of war.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[JustNiz]

I totally agree with you.
It seems to be that at least 90% of all AAA video games are just small variations on moving round a map, using weapons to kill opponents.

I personally don't believe that there are significant negative psychological effects, I'm just depressed that there isn't more creativity or choice in the entire gaming industry than just repeatedly banging out the same formulaic crap with different graphics. It seems almost as as bad as Hollywood and their use of about 4 templates for literally every movie plot line.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Video games are misogynerd filth and must be shamed.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually seen many war movies?

The enemies usually don't get a name, a personality, any lines... You might get one or two who have some kind of 2D, paper-thin personality, just so that the heroes have someone to give their struggle context and meaning. The vast bulk of them are just a faceless hoard, sometimes literally as these days there isn't much point putting a proper face texture on a CGI soldier who ends up being 3 pixels high.

Do you realize you just described pretty much every call of duty game and war game? Weren't you talking about movies being different from games? Odd how their descriptions can parallel each other like that.

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the cut of your jib.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Feyshtey]

Have you actually seen many war movies? The enemies usually don't get a name, a personality, any lines... You might get one or two who have some kind of 2D, paper-thin personality, just so that the heroes have someone to give their struggle context and meaning. The vast bulk of them are just a faceless hoard, sometimes literally as these days there isn't much point putting a proper face texture on a CGI soldier who ends up being 3 pixels high.

That's precisely the point people are trying to make. How is that different than a computer game? In the movie the "bad guy's" backstory isn't fleshed out, and you feel no sympathy for the fact that he has a wife and child back home in Kiev or wherever. You don't care about his demise because you have no association with him at all. He's just part of the vague and largely undefined "bad". In a computer game the "bad guy" is the guy trying to kill you, and you him. He's a CGI character often only a few pixels high that you're lobbing artillery rounds at from 300 yards. He's a nameless, faceless target. While in a computer game you might want him dead because it up's your game score, it's not unlike the gratuitous deaths of dozens or hundreds of "bad guys" in movies to up their ratings and box office sales because the viewer feels a connection to the "good guy" who's overcome his adversaries.

But you don't see any Hollywood elitist deuchebags campaigning against violence in film, do you? You instead see hypocritical shitbrains that will lecture you on how the Second Amendment doesn't mean what you think it means, that no one (except them) have any need for firearms of any kind, and then tell you that the movies they themselves massacre dozens of bad guys with said firearms in are entirely disassociated with any kind of real world violence and it's purely entertainment.

The hypocrisy is the point.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Nidi62]

Those stories aren't about war, they're about the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us.

Yes, but adaptations can add themes to varying effect. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to set a story about "the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us" in a war.

That's true, but let's go back to the source material. Heart of Darkness takes place not during war, but during European colonization and exploitation of Africa (which was certainly violent and had plenty of wars-and the boat is attacked in Heart of Darkness). It attempts to show what can happen to people when societal norms are stripped away, where a person has absolute freedom and control over life and death of others. No societal pressure to conform to any sort of moral view, no one to reproach you or question your actions. It just so happens that today, the only way you can really get in a situation like that is through war, so that is the medium you have to use to tell the story.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not quite exactly about command, putting on displays is how females are attracted in lots of species, and we've spent 10,000 years coming up with proxies for showing prowess and success and wealth and triumph and ideal mate signaling.

Video games don't usually put you in packs - even in a team scenario where there's only one powerup, gamers are quick to give it where the team benefits most. Deference is usually to Optimization, not a person. Designers will deliberately avoid situations that incentivize "NO I'LL BE IN CHARGE" because then you just get shouty teenagers and people quitting games.

But you can still see alpha/etc behavior in lobbies, clans, guilds etc.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Feyshtey]

I wish I had all my GI Joe action figures still. They'd be worth a lot. But alas, we blew them all to hell on a regular basis with the Blackcats, Ladyfingers and bottle rockets we bought at the nearest convenience store with our allowance.

By today's standards I'd be assumed to have grown up to be a crack-addled homicidal maniac.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad. I don't know how that turned out though.

If you don't know how it turned out, then why would you think dear ol' dad was so smart?

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Oligonicella]

but I can say that I've seen proportionally more movies...

Of course you have. It would be excruciating to run through a game more than one time having to invest emotionally in all the characters. Total defeat of the escapism that a game is at its core.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[admin7087]

Well, to be fair the games you mention aren't realistic war simulators at all, the only halfway realistic FPS-style simulator is ArmA. However, I generally agree, even ArmA is not realistic. In reality people are screaming like hell when they're hit, the guts of civilian casualties are splattered around or buried under buildings, almost everything is done with airstrikes from a safe location, and otherwise you're sitting around doing nothing or being occupied with chickenshit maintenance tasks 95% of the time. At least that's what I gather from the documentaries I've seen. But at least ArmA 3 get gets some realism points from me - I can't play it because I'm too afraid of getting shot.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Nidi62]

How many movies made you care about the enemy bodycount?

Maybe John Wick? I remember that being a selling point. Great movie, too. Haven't seen the sequel yet.

Shoot 'em Up. Largest body count since Saving Private Ryan, but so over the top it's actually pretty good. 4 words: sky diving gun fight. Also, you'll never look at carrots the same way ever again, and Paul Giamotti makes a pretty good evil assassin.

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's precisely the point people are trying to make. How is that different than a computer game? In the movie the "bad guy's" backstory isn't fleshed out, and you feel no sympathy for the fact that he has a wife and child back home in Kiev or wherever.

That depends on the movie. See for example, Gettysburg or MASH.

But you don't see any Hollywood elitist deuchebags campaigning against violence in film, do you?

I have. Or heard. Even of films they were in. And they even parodied it, in Tropic Thunder and Inglorious Basterds. Maybe you just don't see headlines about it?

 

You instead see hypocritical shitbrains that will lecture you on how the Second Amendment doesn't mean what you think it means, that no one (except them) have any need for firearms of any kind, and then tell you that the movies they themselves massacre dozens of bad guys with said firearms in are entirely disassociated with any kind of real world violence and it's purely entertainment.

Actors, like writers, often do have to invoke the rule that they don't support what the characters they portray happen to do.

The hypocrisy is the point.

You're not very convincing when you get the facts...Incomplete.

Do look up Francois Truffaut. You just seem to be on a grandstanding tirade, rather than looking into the depth of the discussion.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[MrSavage]

"Celebrating the massakre that WW1 war as something enjoyable left an awkward taste behind. Yes, the GFX were aweseome and I'm sure the leveldesign and the gameplay were top notch." So from this quote we can assume that you haven't even played BF1. Your comment seems quite similar to the studies that were pulled, in that there is not enough quality data collection.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[allcoolnameswheretak]

. As a father I use to take my boys out twice a month and go play military simulations using Airsoft guns before I became disabled.

Sorry to hear that bro. All the best wishes. Be strong.

Also, I agree with your point of view.
I've played violent video games, starting with the classic Doom, since I was a young teenager, and I haven't turned out a crazy, violent maniac. Quite the contrary. I catch insects and arachnids I find at home and bring them outside instead of crushing them.

Having said that, I wouldn't let my young kids play violent videogames until they reach a certain age (13+). And I do think that if you have a certain predisposition towards violent behavior, playing violent games (and watching violent movies or consuming any kind of violent media, for that matter) might have the potential to get you worked up and anxious to behave violently.

You wouldn't want to give a box of matches to a pyromaniac either.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a cheap cop out to me. Where are these kids going to get the money to visit those places? This kind of parenting damages trust.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[aurispector]

I'd like to point out that in actual real-world wars you have no fucking idea who you just killed, other than it was somebody who was trying to kill you.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not saying movies are ideal, just that they are slightly better than most games at this point.

I say that because I like games and want to see them improve. Good story telling makes good games.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

why again do we have to simulate and fetishize real war as close as possible?

Eye on the TV
'cause tragedy thrills me
Whatever flavour
It happens to be like;
Killed by the husband
Drowned by the ocean
Shot by his own son
She used the poison in his tea
And kissed him goodbye
That's my kind of story
It's no fun 'til someone dies

Don't look at me like
I am a monster
Frown out your one face
But with the other
Stare like a junkie
Into the TV
Stare like a zombie
While the mother
Holds her child
Watches him die
Hands to the sky crying
Why, oh why?
'cause I need to watch things die
From a distance

Vicariously I, live while the whole world dies
You all need it too, don't lie

Why can't we just admit it?
Why can't we just admit it?

We won't give pause until the blood is flowing
Neither the brave nor bold
The writers of stories sold
We won't give pause until the blood is flowing

I need to watch things die
From a good safe distance

Vicariously I, live while the whole world dies
You all feel the same so
Why can't we just admit it?

Blood like rain come down
Drawn on grave and ground

Part vampire
Part warrior
Carnivore and voyeur
Stare at the transmittal
Sing to the death rattle

La, la, la, la, la, la, la-lie

Credulous at best, your desire to believe in angels in the hearts of men.
Pull your head on out your hippy haze and give a listen.
Shouldn't have to say it all again.
The universe is hostile. so Impersonal. devour to survive.
So it is. So it's always been.

We all feed on tragedy
It's like blood to a vampire

Vicariously I, live while the whole world dies
Much better you than I

--Vicarious, Maynard James Keenan

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Link or not, I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death. Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce. Battlefield 1 was the pinnacle: Celebrating the massakre that WW1 war as something enjoyable left an awkward taste behind. Yes, the GFX were aweseome and I'm sure the leveldesign and the gameplay were top notch. ... But why again do we have to simulate and fetishize real war as close as possible?

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad. I don't know how that turned out though.

I do get Unreal Tournament CTF, Tribes CTF, Xonotic CTF and Quake 3 Arena CTF. Bouncing around through space with teleporters, strange gaming levels and respawning instantly once your fragged and shooting bizar weapons that don't exist in the real world is all-out fun. And the direkt link to violence I don't see in both cases. ... I do get stress and anxiety issues when playing these games for an extended period of time though.

So an overgeneralizing wanker doesn't get why other people's taste don't match their own--big fat hairy deal.

That's like trying to explain why some people like natto, gin & tonics, tonic water or craft beer--you like you like, you don't you don't.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad. I don't know how that turned out though.

They got arrested at their next holiday as a supporters of state and non-state terrorism variably depending of the country they visited. I'm really, really sure of it.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[EndlessNameless]

This man needs positive moderation.

Competition and the desire to prove oneself are two of the defining characteristics of young adulthood. From puberty until mid-to-late 20s, those drives pop up in all aspects of life. This is true for both men and women, although their outlets vary.

Men tend to be drawn toward violent entertainment because physical prowess has always been respected, and most violent work is perceived as masculine. There may be exceptions, but they are few and far between.

Violence has been a part of nature and human culture so ages, and some video games play into those tendencies.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Sorry - are you trying to contradict the AC you replied to or not? Because the game can tackle both of those things, but it read like you were trying to disagree.

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but AmiMoJo said good movies.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Scorch_Mechanic]

I like about Battlefield 1 because it's at least as much about the horrors of the first world war as it is about infantry and vehicle combat.

BF1 includes a mechanic where the player can initiate a bayonet charge, assuming they have a weapon with a bayonet attached. The player can sprint at faster-than-full speed for about thirty meters before losing his steam (and being penalized with much slower movement for a short period). If during that charge he makes physical contact with an enemy player, the enemy player is impaled and instantly killed in a way that cannot be reversed by the medic class. But during that charge, the player character is screaming and by golly some of these screams are as much fear as they are a battle cry. The whole experience of a successful bayonet charge is brutal and horrifyingly personal, for both players. It's an adrenaline rush that comes from a mixture of horror at the gruesome, but desirable results.

Melee takedowns, with non-bayonet weapons, are equally brutal. Knife takedowns usually involve a literal hug with the left arm and a plunging blade in the right fist. Club takedowns are blows to the shin and then chin, or simply a bash across the back of the head. Club takedowns on prone enemies are particularly awful: The enemy is hooked onto his back with one swing, and then gets a (visibly horrified) face full of mace. Or simply a boot on the neck. Sword and hatchet takedowns are strangely the least personal. Just double-handed swings... to the shoulderblades. Or the neck.

The recently released DLC is all about the French (who for some reason weren't included in the base game because ???). There's an "Operation" (a long-form game taking place across two maps between attackers and defenders) called Devil's Anvil, which is set in Verdun. The first map is surrounded by a raging forest fire set by the artillery barrage in the late evening and early twilight. As the game progresses, it gets dimmer and darker, and periodically the wind changes and the whole battlefield is cloaked in smoke from the fire, reducing visibility to a few meters at best. As the attackers get nearer to the final objective, the music swells, the low brasses drone stranger, and the sun sets beyond the hillside, dunking the battlefield into shadow, backlit by the raging forest fire. It's hard, grinding combat up a hillside into fortifications, and the body count is always high. The second map of Devil's Anvil is the partially shattered open Fort de Vaux. Close combat in a confusion of corridors is bad already, but the sound design is such that if you're not in combat, you're hearing the sounds of combat, but twisted and altered by the concrete tunnels around you.

BF1 isn't anywhere near a realistic simulation of WWI, but it certainly captures a smidgen of the horrors and lunar landscapes of that war. Oh, and the gameplay is different because of the lower tech base too. Sure there are machineguns, but weapons that take a recognizable magazine are rare. Many are reloaded individually or with stripper clips, have low rates of fire, poor accuracy, slow muzzle velocities, strange visual impediments, or simply smaller ammo capacities. It's a substantially different game from "modern" or even WWII shooters.

I'm probably doing a pretty bad job of explaining why I like BF1, but I've written a bunch already and this point it feels like an enthusiast ramble so I'm going to stop now. For the record, I also enjoy the more arcade-y combat of UT, Tribes, and TF2. Certainly they're much closer to games of real skill than the massive grindfest clusterfucks that show up in the 64 player games of Operations that I also enjoy. It's just a matter of which kind of gameplay I'm looking for at any given time.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a man in my 50's, had a teenager punch me in the jaw expecting me to go down like in a video game. I took the hit, looked hard at him and said, "Not twice son." The look on his face was, as they say, priceless. Life is not a video game kids. You can get seriously harmed/dead by doing what you do in a game in real life.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[nintendoeats]

I think that, in the case of Spec Ops, it is also about war. The fact that you spend 98% of the game killing American soldiers is not about the depths of human cruelty. As much as the inspiration is apparent, Spec Ops strays quite far from Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[AHuxley]

The US mil looked at that from everything they learned from how weapons got used and who did what in ww1,2, Korea and Vietnam.
How to move from a draft system to a way of pre sorting professional soldiers who would always obey orders.
GPU and CPU work also cost a lot in the 1980's To surround a tank crew with "West Germany" in real time, moving 3d was not going to be something an average person at home could do.
People at home got good physics in games but very simple line art over a war zone.
As the GPU and CPU got much better, everyone can now enjoy deeper plots and very detailed art.
Entire generations now grow up with drone like games. In the 1960 and 1970's such reactions would have to be tested for and learned much later given every early TV like guidance attempts.
re "fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce."
In the past different political groups, cults, faiths would gain power all over the world in cities and towns.
Now the West has elections and democracy.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[beastofburdon]

Dude, I can drink most people I know under the table, but I don't want to die tonight.

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[nitehawk214]

Though it does teach you things like:
I can dodge bullets?
No, Neo, when they are at long range, you won't have to. Their shots will not have enough energy left and bounce harmless off of you.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[beastofburdon]

What was that. Something just flew by. Oh, it was the goalpost!

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[syntotic]

OK, I will narrate my anecdote here again. I was very much into Doom II or III, which I won without saving file nor deaths. Then one night I saw a guy coming at me and making gestures... I did not think it, I thought assault, jumped, run against him, made a break and straight into a hotel lobby to shout we were being assaulted. No one replied nor helped. When I saw my companion was not coming in, I peeked outside and saw the guys running away. I thought the guy was kidnapped (maybe he was...), but some instants later he came in and asked me: didnt you see the gun? What gun? That guy did not expect my reaction, much less the run-toward-him tactic. I could have lost a PDA and some new stuff I had just purchased, and the guy his dinosauric weight, I mean, laptop, but I was so on my toes and reflexes from playing Doom it just did not happen. If I had managed to steer my companion to the other side of the street as I wanted while walking I would have picked up the taxi cab plates they escaped in, besides. So now I just keep saying: videogames are what we do NOT want to live, that is why they are so entertaining. You do learn from videogames, but they simply do not provide the impulse (pulsion) to turn them into real life. We can safely say those who do get the impulse will get it even from literature and we can call them psychotic, even if you can apply in real life principles learnt in games, even in games such as Chess. I think those studies pulled out must have realized that no matter what methodology you follow, the generalized link is not there, and examples will always be the sporadic psychopath who just happened to have enough mental acumen to play videogames: totally uncorrelated.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[silentcoder]

Violent media is not, however, "violence". There is a difference between "depiction of violence" and "violence".

There is little doubt that experiencing or witnessing acts of violence can engender future violent behaviour - that this is traumatic, but the claim that the same trauma can be engendered by fictionalized depictions of violence is dubious at best.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Maritz]

Who here is saying otherwise? This is about video games. Not actually violent, by definition.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

You are stupid and if you don't believe it it's because you are stupid.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Narcocide]

Furthermore, such depictions of violence may actually be a safer - even necessary - outlet for such emotions.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[jellomizer]

Yea these primal instinctive survival urges are completely taught.
We are violent animals. We had just tamed ourselves to function in society better but when push comes to shove we can be just as violent as any of the bad guys out there.

A good way to vent

[Anonymous Coward]

I can in all certainty say that living out those dreams on-line was one of the few things that kept me from living them out in real life. The stress and bullying were severe for several years, including two suspensions for attempting to stand up for myself (oddly zero tolerance was not applied to my tormentors however).

Violent videogames are cathartic.

Re: A good way to vent

[epyT-R]

Interesting. So if those border people as you call them decide to bring guns to school and 'cleanse' it of those "tormentors," would you also consider it hygiene?

Looking at the wrong thing

[Anonymous Coward]

There actually is a link between violence and games. However, it is nothing to do with violent content at all. The link is caused by competition. I've seen people get angry, aggressive, and even turning to rape threats, death threats, and even actual acts of violence over competitive games. What do the most toxic, hostile, and disgusting online gaming communities have in common? They're all PvP or competition focused. Any game that has competition and keeps score will result in people having an irrational fantasy of going to the big games, having 10,000 subs on Twitch, and having his own personal concubine cosplaying as his waifu.

This fantasy results in a mindset where any trip, obstacle, or mistake is seen as a personal attack on them, and people who are better than them are seen as threats to their delusion. If you want to find a link between violence and gaming, look no further than games that offer competition that keeps track of your entire play.

Any community that keeps score will invariably turn to shit.

Re:Looking at the wrong thing

[Anonymous Coward]

There actually is a link between violence and games. However, it is nothing to do with violent content at all. The link is caused by competition. I've seen people get angry, aggressive, and even turning to rape threats, death threats, and even actual acts of violence over competitive games.

Same can be said about sports, religion and driving. Your point is?

Re: Looking at the wrong thing

[nitehawk214]

I would pay to see people losing control at a Chess match.

So what are you saying? Stop keeping score, bring our participation trophies for all?

I find your competition = violence theory just as stupid as anything Jack Thompson has said.

Re: Looking at the wrong thing

[ausekilis]

AC does have a bit of a point, but it's not necessarily the score-keeping that's the problem.

If anything, this "everybody gets a ribbon" bullshit is training people to always expect to 'win' or get something out of the competition. When that expectation is broken, they act out. Combine that with the constant praise for mediocrity ("Look at how fast he's eating that sand!" "well, my kid ate 2 bottles of glue...") and we have a people that treat that one unique thing they have way too seriously. I've seen grown adults lose their shit over kickball. A friendly game, no money on the line, no penalties or rewards of any kind, and you have a grown-ass-man yelling at his adult team for missing a catch or throwing to the wrong person.

Sure, it's not overt "i'ma kill everybody" violence, but it is still unnecessarily hostile.

Re:Looking at the wrong thing

[epyT-R]

You're equating words with action, which is a common result of political indoctrination these days. Your generalizations and stereotyping are also incorrect. The stats are what keep the peace. They provide a quantifiable record of performance across different metrics so that player skill can be compared objectively. Only insecure sore losers create drama over that.

The communities of competitive games that purposely don't keep score end up with the weakest players. The better ones move on to others which allow them to differentiate their skills.

Re:Looking at the wrong thing

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get violent in sports, you get massive fines and maybe disqualified from tournaments for long periods of time. You get violent on the road, you get jail time, fines, and you lose your license. If you start hurling viable threats at people in a game you get no punishment* whatsoever.

*Banning and suspensions are about as punishing as being made to stand in the corner.

The worst video game imaginable

[Chrisq]

The worst video game imaginable has nothing on the Qur'an when it comes to causing violent behaviour

Re:The worst video game imaginable

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the book of Mohammad the Liar and you are driven to kill someone, you were already evil to begin with.

oh hell yeah

[FudRucker]

i love to play GTA 5 on my PS3, but i know if i tried to do that sort of thing in the real world i would be either killed by the police or put in prison for the rest of my life, it is just an amusing game for entertainment and stress relief (i get to do stuff in that game i could never get away with in the real world)

i get killed by the Liberty City Police a lot in the game but at least i get to re-spawn, the real world dont work like that

Re:oh hell yeah

[timftbf]

i love to play GTA 5 on my PS3, but i know if i tried to do that sort of thing in the real world i would be either killed by the police or put in prison for the rest of my life, it is just an amusing game for entertainment and stress relief (i get to do stuff in that game i could never get away with in the real world)

If fear of being caught and the idea that you wouldn't get away with it are what stops you stealing cars, mowing down pedestrians and beating up hookers, we have a problem.

Doing those things because you know they aren't real, there are no real consequences, and you wouldn't *want* to treat actual people in the same way, that seems more like reasonable escapism.

Re:oh hell yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

If fear of being caught and the idea that you wouldn't get away with it are what stops you stealing cars, mowing down pedestrians and beating up hookers, we have a problem.

Please stop putting words in the OP's mouth. You're acting like a fool.

Re: oh hell yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying our jail, police, and judicial system are broken? ;)

xD

Re:oh hell yeah

[timftbf]

Not seriously suggesting that the OP is some kind of psychopath, but it's kind of interesting that the thought process goes to "I'd get shot or arrested if I did that in real life", not "I wouldn't ever *want* to do that in real life".

Re: oh hell yeah

[timftbf]

Hehe - no, that we need them because we have problems (hopefully not /. posters).

Maybe I'm naive, but I still like to start from the position that the vast majority of people don't cause harm to others because they don't want to harm others, rather than out of fear of punishment. Obviously we need a certain amount of fear of punishment to dissuade those who don't fit that model.

Re:oh hell yeah

[FudRucker]

it is NOT "the fear of being caught" it is because those things are WRONG and i have empathy for humanity so i dont do things things because it is just FUCKING WRONG to do thing

OT: Gifted Child Quarterly???

[AntronArgaiv]

Sounds like something Lisa Simpson would subscribe to... :-)

Study complete

[Zero__Kelvin]

There are millions of people playing these games, but not going around committing actual violent acts. No causation; Study complete.

One of these things is not like the other

[Anonymous Coward]

" That study looked at the "effect of video game play and controller type on firing aim and accuracy," and found that playing first-person shooter games can train a player to become a better marksman in real life."

Real life: Front sight, rear sight, extreme depth of view such that front sight, rear sight, and target can't not all be in focus at the same time. Recoil. Bullet drop. Time of flight. Crosswind. Lying in a wet ditch. Gun strap chafes. Hot brass everywhere. Dumb brass on the air.

Tom Clancy's Bad Rainbow Battlefield XIV: Green reticle in perfect focus against a target in perfect focus. No front sight, rear sight parallax. Comfy chair.

"I put the front sight over the target and shoot! Why don't I hit?"
"What about your rear sight?"
"Rear sight? There wasn't any rear sight in the game! Stealth nerf!"

Re: One of these things is not like the other

[Anonymous Coward]

I hunt and target shoot, especially long distance. I also play video games. Video game controllers are no where near capable of teaching someone how to shoot. What was said above is true. In addition, breathing, heartbeat, noise, trigger pull, and the anticipation all affect your shot.

And...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see what is the problem in improving one's markmanship. It's a very useful skill.

Male hero fantasies

[sjbe]

I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death.

Probably true. I find it particularly curious that violence in movies and games is more acceptable than sexuality. Decapitate someone in a movie and you might get a PG-13 rating. Show a breast and you go straight to rated R. Very odd.

Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce.

Because males tend to fantasize about being tough and dangerous and are willing to pay to indulge those fantasies. Jerry Seinfeld said it best that all men secretly regard themselves as sort of low level super heroes. This combined with hormones and physiology and societal expectations you get a tendency to glorify violence. Boys learn to play "war" from a very early age and at least in the US we have a gun culture that makes a fetish out of the idea of shooting the "bad guys". Whether you think all this is good or bad I leave up to you.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

Decapitate someone in a movie and you might get a PG-13 rating. Show a breast and you go straight to rated R. Very odd.

Not at all. If you kill somebody in a movie everybody knows it's not real. A breast, on the other hand, is quite real. See the difference?

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

Still makes no sense.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[nedlohs]

Probably true. I find it particularly curious that violence in movies and games is more acceptable than sexuality. Decapitate someone in a movie and you might get a PG-13 rating. Show a breast and you go straight to rated R. Very odd.

I don't think that's universal. Different societies have probably developed different views...

But sexuality being considered worse for children to view than violence makes some sense. Violence is outside of the everyday experience for most people, while sex isn't.

That makes violence more comfortable for parents - they can after all just say it's just fantasy in the real world you will be hurt or dead on the receiving end and in prison on the handing out end. Whereas, sex is uncomfortable to talk about for many people (the very people movie ratings are made for). Possibly because they don't want their child doing it now but do in fact want their child to do it later - so they don't want to call it "bad" but also don't want to call it "awesome".

Most people are never going to find themselves using their very particular set of skills to hunt down and murder the kidnappers of their child. Most people will engage in sexual activity at some point in their lives. One is clearly fantasy (especially to the target of movie ratings), one is reality and thus,more difficult to deal with.

At least that's the armchair analysis I pulled out of me ass...

Re:Male hero fantasies

[mjr167]

Boobs are food and nice comfy pillows when you feel like snuggling with your Mommy. We don't get R ratings for showing oranges and pillows.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you said is correct. But it still makes no sense. I would argue that it only happens in the US (and yes, I understand the rating system being discussed is the US one). But would you see something similar happening in most of Europe? No, of course not. They, in general, don't have some crazy puritanical sense that the body is bad and should be hidden. Now go someplace like Singapore and it might get rated harsher than the US. No boobs allowed at all on TV or even HBO in hotels.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people will engage in sexual activity at some point in their lives.

You must be new here.

Re: Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of how I feel about weed. I don't think it's bad but I don't want to glorify it either because I have children. Tough choices to be made.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

Decapitate someone in a movie and you might get a PG-13 rating. Show a breast and you go straight to rated R. Very odd.

Just One of the Guys, rated PG-13, has boobs. Very odd.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Feyshtey]

No. I don't.

Kill someone in a movie and the hero is applauded. Show a boob and it's assumed that a boob is a dirty thing that should be hidden, and that you should feel shame at enjoying the sight of.

One teaches that killing the "bad guy" is good. The other teaches that the human body and the entirely natural and necessary function of its parts is bad.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Feyshtey]

So on the one hand you are normalizing violence beginning at a young age. It's just something that everyone should expect and accept. On the other hand you're teaching kids that sexuality is shameful , and hide it from them until they are older and need to start figuring it out without any context or guidance.

How is it logical to give a pass to violence with kids by saying it's "outside the normal experience" while also saying it's perfectly acceptable in society to glorify it, and telling kids at the same time that sexuality which is nearly universally something that will be part of their "normal experience" is something that they should feel ashamed of?

People seem to think it makes perfect sense to glorify the thing that we do not want people to engage in, while demonizing the thing we know they will engage in as an entirely natural and healthy part of human existence.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[nedlohs]

I made no claim about it being "ok" or "logical". Just that there's a potential world view in which it is internally consistent.

I also made no mention of sexuality being "something that they should feel ashamed of". There are many things that make me uncomfortable about which I feel no shame.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

More left wing hypocritical generalizing and stereotyping.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

Violence is a lot easier to understand than sex.

Consider a 3-year-old. If she sees someone hitting, or shooting, or throwing another person over their shoulder - she knows they're trying to hurt each other. "Hurt" is within her comprehension. She may not understand why they're doing it, but it's within the bounds of conversations you can have with your toddler.

But if she sees someone performing cunnilingus - how do you explain that to her?

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

The "normalizing" aka "cultivation theory" is an unproven argument. There isn't a scientific basis to say that exposure to certain attitudes or ideologies is enough in itself to make a person subscribe to those attitudes or ideologies.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Namarrgon]

That explanation seems kind of tortuous. There's lots of things kids can't do when they're young, like driving cars, but nobody bats an eye talking about those, so that can't be the reason sex is treated so differently. And violence is a significantly bigger factor in kids' lives than in most adults - any parent knows kids that have to be taught to restrain their impulses and not hurt others. Providing counter- examples on the screen where violence is rewarded instead makes little sense outside of male fantasies.

I think it far more likely that the Western attitude towards sex and nudity is largely a cultural artefact from leftover religious ideals, such as Puritanism - the bible teaches shame in nakedness right from the beginning. I've also heard it suggested that this itself may be seen as a reaction against Roman excesses. But many non-Western cultures have pretty different views about sex and nakedness, some being very open about it - though Westerners often view those cultures as "primitive" as a result.

Re: Male hero fantasies

[Anonymous Coward]

As an addict, it is bad. It certainly isn't evil, but there are few benefits outside of medical treatments.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[beastofburdon]

A breast, on the other hand, is quite real.

In Hollywood? You truly are delusional.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever wrestle with your friends as a kid after watching WWF? Perhaps you were one of the kids who took up Karate lessons after seeing Karate Kid in the cinemas in the 80's? Or maybe you remember one of your friends shadow-boxing and doing high-kicks in the air, talking about how cool Jean-Claude van Damme was in Bloodsport?

Violence inspires violence, period. Whether the person watching is on the edge of losing control and will use violence against other people, is a different question.

Not realistic at all

[sjbe]

The difference between games and movies is that AAA movies are usually at least somewhat responsible about portraying war as a horrible thing where everyone suffers.

Oh that's just nonsense as a general proposition. Sure some movies do but far more often they out and out glorify the violence. There are plenty of movies where the violence is the main attraction and they don't make any effort to make it seem horrible. Heck most of the Marvel movies make it a good approximation of bloodless.

Re:Not realistic at all

[Anonymous Coward]

And in Edge of Tomorrow it kept the audience all-out cheering.

Apparently seeing Tom Cruise get destroyed in various ways was a real treat for the whole theater.

Re:Not realistic at all

[AmiMoJo]

In Avengers, the bad guys had names. That already puts them away above the average FPS goon.

Compare a game like Call of Duty to a film like Saving Private Ryan. In COD, they literally have a scene where you have to press X to care. That's the depth of the emotional involvement you get with a bunch of largely anonymous team members, and even they aren't around for much of the game.

Ryan has a number of characters who get significant development on screen. They have personalities that aren't just "generic military bad-ass". And all the action is carefully framed to select exactly what the viewer sees and experiences, in a way that is difficult to do in games where the player has some freedom. That's why many modern games force you down a virtual corridor to get to the next cut scene or set-piece.

Again, to be clear, I'm not saying this makes games "bad" and certainly not harmful, it's just that as an art form, as a story telling medium they aren't quite as developed as movies yet. There are unique challenges and the tech is evolving rapidly (VR throws up lots of new ones), so that is expected. It's an exciting time, actually.

Re:Not realistic at all

[Oligonicella]

Probably because they *aren't* a story telling medium so much as simple escapism. Nor do they need to be more so to accomplish this goal.

Re:Not realistic at all

[Anonymous Coward]

For your next trick, you're going to compare Hardcore Henry to the Hotline Miami series. Go.

Re:Not realistic at all

[Anonymous Coward]

In Avengers, the bad guys had names.

You must have watched a different Avengers movie than the rest of us did. In both Avengers movies, there were plenty of faceless nameless goons for the good guys to fight. First had a fleet of aliens, the second had an army of robots. Then there are the unspoken casualties in the background (SHIELD agents supporting the Avengers, civilians caught up in the chaos)

as an art form, as a story telling medium they aren't quite as developed as movies yet.

The evidence does not support your claim. As an art form, video games is bigger than just FPS shooters.

Don't just look at the CODs. Look at the Dear Esthers, the Stanley Parables, the Unfinished Swans, Spec Ops the lines, or pretty much anything from Japan with visual novel elements.

Then you might look at things video games can do that film really can't: the Minecrafts that lets players create the narrative themselves; the Pokemon Gos that lets people walk out and interact with their world, not just be a silent observer.

Video game industry is now bigger than Hollywood. There are way more games out there for you to just pick one game from one type and draw conclusions about the entire art form.

Also remember Sturgeon's law. I'm sure there are lots of bad games out there. Just as how not every film out there is a Saving Private Ryan (how many Oscars did it win again?). How about we compare the parody adult film Saving Ryan's Privates instead? I bet if such a film existed, it wouldn't hold a a candle to, say, Leisure Suite Larry in developing its characters or evoking emotions from the viewer/player.

We could have a more interesting conversation, but you have to get past your prejudices and myopic views first.

Re:Not realistic at all

[EndlessNameless]

In Avengers, the bad guys had names. That already puts them away above the average FPS goon.

It doesn't matter. You can give the goon a name, but he's still nothing more than an obstacle.

If you want the enemies to have character and meaningful interaction, you're looking for adventure games and RPGs.

I mean, think about it: you're talking about a FPS... did you forget what the "S" stands for? The entire genre revolves around shooting things.

There are certainly action movies that have a similar feel to FPS games, e.g., Commando and Rambo II, but they have fallen out of favor with the public. This may be due, in part, to an overlapping audience that is more satisfied by playing FPSes.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be like you, young and ignorant. If I couldn't understand it then it wasn't true, and anyone who tried to make me understand was stupid, and I responded with hostility because I perceived them as an enemy. You'll change when you get older.

Boom, Headshot

[nitehawk214]

Please, please tell someone took FPSDave seriously.

i'll say it

[Anonymous Coward]

if not for the violent video game i can kill shit i'd prolly have killed half this damn retarded world

It was a weak argument

[Anonymous Coward]

How many who commit violent acts even play video games? Or you could argue that acting out media characters could poise a similar connection to real world. Such as copy cat's do with copying acts of violence they see on the news. A demented act to acquire fame and notability. I am more concerned about people playing too much video games and not enough real social interaction. But that argument comes with anything people do in excess that causes them to be reclusive and not socially adaptable.

Re: Even Vulcans aren't immune!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've lost more common duty officers to 3d chess than to any other duty tour in STO!
It's a fight in a bloody box, is what it is!

Re: Violence inspires violence

[fluffernutter]

As a kid I hated kids like that and stayed away from them. After I saw karate kid I did the same thing I always did. I didn't find wrestling interesting.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[fluffernutter]

The scary part is that people have those 'emotions' in the first place. That is a serious issue.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[fluffernutter]

This is the reason why we will never be able to live in a utopia. A utopia cannot exist while some people want more or better than others and are willing to fight for it.

Practice makes people more proficient, news at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they were properly done (which seems pretty questionable) both of these studies seem to have nothing to do with the subject at hand, all things considered do video games increase violent tendencies in a population? In the first case simply having a capability does not equate to violence, otherwise we'd have to lock up every soldier when they left the military. The second study if true does have some possible implications, but was there a control such as a comparable cheery cartoon (which also have been shown to impact intelligence). Given that there are around a billion gamers worldwide and worldwide violent crime rates seem to be going down there is quite a bit of evidence that video games don't contribute to overall increases in violence.

There's a link

[Anonymous Coward]

I play Stardew Valley all the time and now I'm planting a garden. Coincidence? I think not.

whatever happened to:

[Thud457]

Jack Thompson says : "buy me BONESTORM or GO TO HELL!"

Violence vs sexuality

[sjbe]

But sexuality being considered worse for children to view than violence makes some sense. Violence is outside of the everyday experience for most people, while sex isn't.

Sex is outside the every day experience of most people, particularly for children. If sex is not outside the daily experience of a child then that is a problem. Anyway the point is that repressing sexuality and glorifying violence results in some very weird social dynamics, many of them bad.

That makes violence more comfortable for parents - they can after all just say it's just fantasy in the real world you will be hurt or dead on the receiving end and in prison on the handing out end. Whereas, sex is uncomfortable to talk about for many people

Sex is only uncomfortable to talk about because they are told not to talk about it. There are plenty of places in the world that are much more sexually liberated than the US. Most sexual repression is religious in origin. Frankly if you aren't comfortable about having The Talk with your kids then you probably shouldn't have kids because you aren't mature enough yet. Most images and representations of sex are also "just fantasy" as you put it.

Most people are never going to find themselves using their very particular set of skills to hunt down and murder the kidnappers of their child. Most people will engage in sexual activity at some point in their lives.

I defy you to find a movie or TV show or video game that shows a realistic portrayal of sexual activity in a non-ironic way. Young girls in particular get a very conflicted set of messages about sexuality. And if you think there is no violence in our country I refer you to the number of homicides and violent assaults that occur annually. You don't have to be a special forces soldier for violence to enter your life.

Re:Violence vs sexuality

[nedlohs]

Sex is outside the everyday experience of most people, particularly for children. If sex is not outside the daily experience of a child then that is a problem. Anyway the point is that repressing sexuality and glorifying violence results in some very weird social dynamics, many of them bad.

You may not have noticed but "want their child to do it later" isn't talking about the present.

That is not the point, you said you found it curious and odd not that you found it "bad". I only presented some reasons I consider plausible as to why it is like that not reasons for why that is good or bad. I don't have to think something is good to try to explain it.

Sex is only uncomfortable to talk about because they are told not to talk about it. There are plenty of places in the world that are much more sexually liberated than the US. Most sexual repression is religious in origin. Frankly if you aren't comfortable about having The Talk with your kids then you probably shouldn't have kids because you aren't mature enough yet. Most images and representations of sex are also "just fantasy" as you put it.

The reasons for it being uncomfortable is completely irrelevant to the simple fact that it is. We know it is because of the very thing being discussed - movie ratings consider sex worse than violence. Again whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is completely irrelevant to trying to understand why that is the case.

People who probably shouldn't have kids do have kids. And surely if they aren't mature enough to yet then they are precisely the group that cares about movie ratings since they need others to guide their decisions. Again it doesn't matter that they shouldn't have kids, the simple fact is that they do.

I defy you to find a movie or TV show or video game that shows a realistic portrayal of sexual activity in a non-ironic way. Young girls in particular get a very conflicted set of messages about sexuality. And if you think there is no violence in our country I refer you to the number of homicides and violent assaults that occur annually. You don't have to be a special forces soldier for violence to enter your life.

And they don't realistically portray violence either. Realism wasn't the point. Fantasy was being used not to describe the lack of realism in the movie but that such violence is unlikely to occur in the lives of the people who care about the ratings.

Most people have never been shot and have never shot someone. Most people have had some sort of sexual activity. For children replace "have" with "will". Or do you seriously think there are more homicides and violent assaults annually then there are sexual encounters?

I have *never* been involved in an incident of violence in the US. I've never hit anyone. I've never used a weapon against someone. No one has ever hit me. No one has ever used a weapon against me. I have caused two pregnancies while in the US. Every person I know has engaged in more sexual activity than they have violence. Yes, there are people who grow up in say a violent street gang or the military will see more violence than typical. But the typical is what matters for movie ratings.

Re:Violence vs sexuality

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex is only uncomfortable to talk about because they are told not to talk about it. There are plenty of places in the world that are much more sexually liberated than the US. Most sexual repression is religious in origin. Frankly if you aren't comfortable about having The Talk with your kids then you probably shouldn't have kids because you aren't mature enough yet. Most images and representations of sex are also "just fantasy" as you put it.

The talking about it being uncomfortable is only because people often think of it as a "all or nothing" type of thing. Either you have to describe it in explicit detail or you'd need to not mention it. Actually, even your own answer in this case assumes people will describe much in detail the first time a kid asks about it if they're "enlightened" enough.

It's not, though. Almost never appropriate to do that, as that's too much information too fast, and serves to only confuse them.

Three year old asks: "Where do babies come from?" Answer: "Mommy's tummy."
Five year old asks: "How does a baby know who to look like?" -- Answer: "Grown-ups have stuff for telling babies how to grow. Mom has half, dad has half. Babies only grow when both halves come together."

Most kids are only curious about the specific questions they have about this -- just answer that specific question in enough detail to sate their curiosity. Once they're ready to know more, they will ask you additional questions.

Re:I guess the science wasn't settled

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but you can't call out Progressive hypocrisy like that and get away with it. In addition to your -1 moderation, expect a gay dance party outside your house in a few days.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it scary? It is the reason you exist at all today after all. Get involved in wildlife, see mother nature in action if you want to see some truly horrific things. Humans are just better at it because we've figured out how to control the world around us to do our bidding.

Studies are bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

If you count both first person shooters and games such as master of orion 2, I have killed BILLIONS of people. BILLIONS. I have splattered heads apart with shotgun blasts in Fallout 3. In Moo2, I've used bio-weapons to wipe planetary populations clean.

In real life, if I find a stink bug in my house I just pick it up and toss it out the door. (they fly away).

Re: Violence inspires violence

[moeinvt]

Maybe YOUR vision of utopia includes some forceful redistribution of wealth to ensure equality of outcomes and zero marginal benefit for extra work. That's MY vision of a dystopian hell & I would put up a fight before being dragged into it.

In my utopia, the more & better go to those who are talented, hard working and innovative, force is only used in response to force, and you & your egalitarian friends would be free to organize yourselves into your own utopian mini-society according to whatever principles you choose, without any outside interference.

A*Holes aplenty

[phorm]

If there's any link, I would say that an off-the-rocker a-hole in real-life is probably not going to be pleasantly adjusted and friendly in-game. I've played with some people who - between trolling and tantrums - I'm pretty sure should be on some form of medication or therapy IRL.

Lost me at....

[Anonymous Coward]

"That study looked at the "effect of video game play and controller type on firing aim and accuracy," and found that playing first-person shooter games can train a player to become a better marksman in real life"

Yeah, right, because using a mouse and keyboard or controller has even a remote semblance of the skills needed to be a real marksman.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh oh, he ended his declaration with "period", so it must be true!

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you fit well into trash cans, though.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to turn around the Titanic. Like the above posters have stated. This is how we have been living for so long, it's not going to change over night. Hopefully as generations go by it gets better and better. That's all we can hope for. Just like we want our children to have it better than we did. Or atleast hope so atleast.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never been angry before in your life. That must be nice. Do you feel happiness? Fear, excitement, anxiety?

The rest of us experience the full range of emotions since we are, in fact, human.

And somewhere, Jack Thompson is crying

[sconeu]

Or at least screaming "Fake News"

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh oh, he ended his declaration with "period", so it must be true!

Not it's juts over.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Feyshtey]

No, we wont ever live in a utopia because a utopia is a fantasy. You're not going to find a single topic on which all people globally agree and you never will. That being the case, one group will always be telling others how things should be, and the others will resist the demanded change. This is not wrong, its not associated purely with wealth or religion or anything else. It's not even associated with "better", because "better" is usually subjective.

Plenty more where that came from

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty more errors where that came from. Here's a particularly egregious example of a study where every single statistic appears to be wrong, yet there has been no action taken on it:
https://www.pubpeer.com/public...

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Oligonicella]

As with every utopian dream, this involves fundamentally changing human nature.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe YOUR vision of utopia includes some forceful redistribution of wealth to ensure equality of outcomes and zero marginal benefit for extra work. That's MY vision of a dystopian hell & I would put up a fight before being dragged into it.

In my utopia, the more & better go to those who are talented, hard working and innovative, force is only used in response to force, and you & your egalitarian friends would be free to organize yourselves into your own utopian mini-society according to whatever principles you choose, without any outside interference.

In my utopia, abundance is such that more and better is a local choice.
The robots will make you 1, 10, or 100 chocolate sundaes if you really want them.
Everybody gets what they want, insofar as that is possible within our understanding of the laws of physics.
Innovations are shared because that's how everyone defines themselves, by what they were able to give to the world that nobody else could.

Some games have suicide buttons...

[Anonymous Coward]

...do they cause an increase in suicides?

If they are capable of causing sexism/violence, then surely they should be causing suicide as well.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you people are the scary ones, the ones who walk around never having had a violent urge, the ones who haven't built up a resistance to and understanding of them. You're one bad day from having violent urges you are wholly and completely unprepared to deal with.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[fluffernutter]

I would be happy creating the best things I can for the sake of creating them. Why else would anyone else want to create things? The people who are needed to clean the toilets can get extra goodies, maybe I will clean toilets part time as part of my duty to society, but if I could create things for the sake of creating without worrying about a paycheck then I could do my best work.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[fluffernutter]

Just because it is a fantasy doesn't mean that we can't measure our own society against that fantasy and gauge whether we are getting better as a species by monitoring our proximity to it.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[fluffernutter]

We should divide the world into two halves. On one half can be the competitive people and they can have their gladiator wars for big big prizes and slaughter each other. The other half can give up their right to everything for a reasonable risk/reward path and actually be encouraged to spend time creating things that help others.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[epyT-R]

No. Those movies and playacting provided an outlet for human nature, some of which is violent. Better than to bottle it up and unleash it in hs or as an adult.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[epyT-R]

Obviously, you have not thought through the implications. Who are you to define what defines others?

Re:I guess the science wasn't settled

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, buddy.

There is a segment of dumbass liberals that seriously believed this, but most didn't. Just like there's a segment of dumbass conservatives that believe climate change isn't real.

Idiots on either end of the spectrum don't define everybody else.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Sasayaki]

It's not scary at all and is in fact completely understandable.

Basically until World War I, for the vast majority of people, you either killed or you died. Even during the 1600's, arguably the beginning of "civilization" as something where violence was not commonplace, people still fought highly ritualized duels, countries still invaded other countries for the express purpose of taking their shit, people took and kept slaves, nations conquered and plundered and stole and all manner of violent actions. The only way, at the time, to stop your shit from being taken, to stop yourself being conquered and enslaved, was through violence.

If you were strong, you survived. If you were weak, or chose to be weak, you died. Those kinds of instincts were bred into us over tens of thousands of years of evolution, ruthlessly and yet apathetically selecting the strongest, most violent, people to carry on their genes. The guy who got to fuck all the women was the guy who could club all the other men on the head the best. Violence, and willingness to use it, until recently, was strongly evolutionarily selected for.

It was really only World War I and II that changed that. We got so fucking good at killing that we decided: hey, maybe lets try another way. Instead of having violence be the domain of all, where our nations raise vast armies of conscripts, let's instead have small, professional armies well supported with things like tanks, aircraft, machine guns, artillery, night vision, etc. They actually work better.

As a consequence of this, the vast majority of our citizens are now peaceful, but our armies are, in terms of overall ability to project force, more powerful than ever. The Roman Legions at their absolute height would get massacred by even the US Coast Guard, let alone the full might of the US Military. It would be a laughable massacre where I would fully expect 0 casualties from the US forces (excluding illnesses, accidents, etc) and 100% casualties from the Roman legions, assuming they fought to the last.

This is a change that's taken place over less than 100 years. That is a tiny blink in an evolutionary time period. We haven't changed and won't change for thousands of years because there's no evolutionary pressure on us to do so.

But, you know, I figure I should end on a slightly more upbeat note.

As much as "to the victor go the spoils" applies... no man rules alone.

A single man, no matter how powerful, no matter how violent or manly or tough, is defeated by many smaller, weaker people. Refer, again, to my example of the modern US Coast Guard versus the ENTIRE Roman Legion.

A single man cannot build an Apache gunship--and that gunship will fuck anyone. A single man cannot build a tank. A single man cannot build the complex logistical network to fuel an aircraft carrier, let alone maintain it, supply it with aircraft, sail it, coordinate strike missions, and generally put warheads on foreheads. A carrier-based strike mission to drop a single 500lb bomb requires the combined efforts of literally hundreds of thousands of people, probably millions. Just to deliver one bomb.

But, like I said, nothing can stand against it.

So. In the small picture, individual might makes right, but in the much larger broader sense, victory belongs to the cooperators.

As long as those cooperators put their collective talents towards fucking shit up.

children of privileged

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad. I don't know how that turned out though.

Smart, no. privileged yes.

Just imagine if all those people living in war zones could visit places where the person down the road a couple of blocks wasn't trying to kill them just as easily!

Unfair to make this a retraction story.

[Anonymous Coward]

The story here isn't the retraction. Forget about that, if you can.

The story is the Turkish crackdown nabbed somebody. Which is a story everybody knows.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[fluffernutter]

So what you are saying is that we have historical reasons for these traits, but you excuse people for still exhibiting them even though by your admittance they don't have a use any more. I would prefer to believe that people are capable of growing into having traits that reflect our current situation, while you almost tend to make it sound like they only just came out of caves and are victims of primal instinct.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Narcocide]

I agree with you there. But I can only fix so many things at once, see?

Re: Even Vulcans aren't immune!

[nitehawk214]

They should have let the wookie win.

Re:I guess the science wasn't settled

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and when it comes to intimidation of "wrong thinkers" using violence or a dance party outside one's home, it's almost always carried out by liberals that exist on the far end of their spectrum as you say. I'm fucking sick of them. It's why we now have Trump. If they don't stop then a sizable population is going to viciously turn on them. I hope not but that's my fear.

Re: Violence inspires violence

[Feyshtey]

Measure ourselves by whose idea of what "utopia" means?