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Trump's Meeting With The Video Game Industry To Talk Gun Violence Could Get Ugly (washingtonpost.com)
Anonymous readers share a report: President Trump is set to pit the video game industry against some of its harshest critics at a White House meeting on Thursday that's designed to explore the link between violent games [Editor's note: the Washington Post article may be paywalled], guns and tragedies such as last month's shooting in Parkland, Fla. Following the attack at Marjory Stoneman High School, which left 17 students dead, Trump has said violent games are "shaping young people's thoughts." The president has proposed that "we have to do something about maybe what they're seeing and how they're seeing it." Trump has invited video game executives like Robert Altman, the CEO of ZeniMax, the parent company for games such as Fallout; Strauss Zelnick, the chief executive of Take Two Interactive, which is known for Grand Theft Auto, and Michael Gallagher, the leader of the Entertainment Software Association, a Washington-focused lobbying organization for the industry.
Three people familiar with the White House's planning, but not authorized to speak on the record, confirmed those invitees. A spokeswoman for the White House declined to share a full list of participants on Wednesday. ESA confirmed its attendance this week, but the others did not respond to questions. Opposite of them are expected to be some of the video-game industry's toughest critics, including Brent Bozell, the founder of the Parents Television Council, and Rep. Vicky Hartzler, a Republican from Missouri, the three people said. After another shooting -- the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. -- they each called on government to focus its attention on violent media rather than just pursuing new gun restrictions.
Three people familiar with the White House's planning, but not authorized to speak on the record, confirmed those invitees. A spokeswoman for the White House declined to share a full list of participants on Wednesday. ESA confirmed its attendance this week, but the others did not respond to questions. Opposite of them are expected to be some of the video-game industry's toughest critics, including Brent Bozell, the founder of the Parents Television Council, and Rep. Vicky Hartzler, a Republican from Missouri, the three people said. After another shooting -- the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. -- they each called on government to focus its attention on violent media rather than just pursuing new gun restrictions.
FFS, editors should really check that there are no âoes in the posts.
The meeting shouldn't be any more interesting than the Take Two Interactive and the Entertainment Software Association showing the studies that violent video games do not increase violence, and then everyone else sticking their thumbs up their asses. Then again I doubt it will go that way.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
that's designed to explore the link between violent games [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled],
The link between violent games may be paywalled?
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Thousands of game journalists have been proclaiming for years there is a link between sexism in games, and sexism in real life. They also constantly whined there were too many violent shooters and so on.
So why would you not expect any non-gamer to read what the game journalists wrote and take it to heart? Trump would seem to be well-aligned with what the press has been saying for years, that games are affecting behavior.
A little late to back out now fellows now that someone you hate has finally listened. Who did you think would listen to you, the game developers that actually have to make money from what they sell?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For someone who's looking to go room to room with a weapon some of the current FPS are pretty handy.
https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2016/05/6-military-video-games-used-to-train-troops-on-the-battlefield
It seems to me a significant portion of the video game industry is based in Japan, where guns kill between 10 and 20 people each year. Meanwhile in America, 500+ are killed by guns accidentally going off, 10000+ murdered with guns and 40000+ kill themselves with guns every year. Must be the video games they said. We need to do something about the video games to save our children.
Did anyone else see the news about the elephant in the classroom last week? It doesn't seem to have gotten the attention it deserves.
Like someone else said on the internet:
Real guns = Good
Fake guns = Bad
Games are indeed the problem. Every other country had to do the same in the past, and this is why right now on safer places - like Japan - we have finally ended all that video game nonsense.
Gotta go after that damn Dancing the kids like so much next....
The President thinks he's getting good visibility / PR with these free form live discussions where he can say whatever he wants (without following through on anything). I would expect the same with this one as was done with gun session and the dreamers sessions - and expect more of this. Echoing back to the Apprentice and him talking at the board room scenes....he probably really likes this - even if nothing gets done legislatively. He's getting back to being able to be on talk TV again.
Did "videogames and movies" -make- you guys all gun-nuts? strike-that, excuse me, weapon-enthusiasts?
A gamer from the EU
I don't think it's a bad thing that someone is talking about morals and video games.
It's apparently completely acceptable to a sizable chunk of society for kids to play video games where they kill people. What if someone made a video game that allowed you to simulate raping people? Imagine if you could buy an artificial vagina or human head that integrates with your gaming console so that you could rape it. Perhaps this will happen in a few years. This sort of thing is fundamentally bad.
Society is advancing in morals in some respects but declining in morals in others. For example, women have decided that it is time for men to rediscover respect for women - that can't be anything but good. I'm pretty sure Trump is not the right person to champion a moral issue. Whether allegations against him are true or false, he doesn't have any moral street cred with most of the country.
I think firearms will always be necessary and dangerous. If we don't cull the deer population, they will cull us on the roads. Some people legitimately need firearms for self-defense. Therefore, people should be allowed to have the freedom to possess firearms, and the second amendment is a good thing. The NRA, insomuch as it is an organization that teaches people how to use firearms safely and accurately, is a good thing. I challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to go see a Rifle Shooting merit badge class at a Boy Scout camp. Teaching these kids respect for firearms saves lives. Do people need magazines that allow them to shoot 15 rounds without reloading? Nope. Does any serious marksman use bump stocks? Nope. Bump stocks are an attempt to turn a rifle into a toy. To its credit, the NRA isn't defending bump stocks. I don't think semi-autos should be banned, but high capacity magazines turn these things into indiscriminate tools for butchering crowds of people. I hope we end up with a reasonable compromise that saves lives and allows sportsmen to continue to be sportsmen.
This is all just a classic misdirection technique. That campaign to call those kids who got shot up Crisis Actors in a False Flag operation was the same thing. The point is to steer the debate away from gun control and put the pro-gun control side on the defensive. Get them arguing about absurd things like violence in video games and conspiracy theories. Worked too. Even the left wing press picked up these stories and ran with them.
The funny thing is IIRC these techniques were invented by the Soviets. To be fair though it was Karl Rove that popularized their use in the Republican party.
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Does anyone know the best way to beat dead unicorns? Should I use a regular stick, something flexible like a flail, or resort to sharp implements?
Now, these discussions about violent video games ignore the one that's actually causing problems, known as "real life". In the current implementation, you force people to socialize with undesirable individuals, some of whom are violent, etc. It's almost as if they don't want to fix actual problems, and instead focus on virtual ones.
As for the games themselves... let me know if and when there's a large-scale emulation of Pacman (popping pills in dark mazes while fleeing from ghosts), Europa Universalis (especially conquering the world even more than the British Empire), Minecraft (magically creating fully-functional items from scrap) and so on. After all, if violent behaviour can be learned, so can anything else.
The games are sold worldwide. School shootings are only a occurrence in the US. <sarcasm>So, yeah, of course it's the games</sarcasm>
Video games have a long association with disease. We all remember the Pac Man Fever epidemic of the 1980s where thousands needlessly died, and congress stood by and did nothing!
... is a school satchel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rVKknah1Ws
In holland, they don't let people have guns, so bad man only had knives and failed to kill anyone.
People in holland play the same video games. The difference is, they don't let ordinary people have guns without a damn good reason. Even IF IT DID cause violence, you'd have to remove every cause of anger and violence to fix the problem... video games, even if they do cause violence, are not the one and only cause.
The fix is to remove guns from the populace. Not just under 21's, under 81s.
The NRA is the problem here, the money they launder distorts politics.
Look at the number of people who purchase and play games like Call of Duty, Fallout, or any other FPS game vs. the number of people who actually go out and murder people in real life. It's a fraction of a percent. It should be pretty fucking obvious that the "association" that is trying to be portrayed here is utter bullshit.
Mental illness and the ability to murder people is not created by playing fucking video games. And we literally have decades of evidence to validate that fact. This meeting with Trump is probably nothing more than window dressing.
At some point the release of so many squirrels into the wild has to have an environmental impact. http://www.guns.com/wp-content...
... don't knock Trump over and teabag him repeatedly, I am going to be very disappointed.
of TV and cinema violence. Or how other countries have video games but far fewer gun deaths.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
that allow violence, murder, maiming, torture, etc, nf TV and in cinema, but not nudity or sex. IOW, it's not OK to show a couple making love but it is OK to show a person killing another person.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
As an Old Right conservative, I naturally oppose government regulation of video games of any kind.
However, we are a culture of sorts, and cultural changes influence what businesses are willing to offer. In that context only, it might be useful to discuss this issue.
To my mind, the angle of approach should be the combination of gun violence and realistic looking scenarios. All video games are violent and war-like, but those that look most like movies or memories could have a conditioning effect, which our Army has capitalized by offering its own 3D first person shooter.
The effect of such games cannot be viewed outside the context of single-parent families, SSRI use, general lack of faith in society, and the failure of our civilization to have any kind of meaningful social order.
So, while every instinct I have has me wondering WTF Trump is thinking in this case, he might be kickstarting a very valid dialogue.
If realistic video games + gun violence + social disorder + medication + single parent homes = a fertile ground for school shooting, then we have a checklist to address, and one of the points can be how our culture rewards super-violent and realistic-looking video games.
Alternative Right.
USMC used doom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't believe it's a problem. I am saying, someone who is not a gamer could reasonably assume there was a link because that is what games journalism has been saying for years, by complaining about violent or sexist games.
They are only now reversing that stance since Trump agrees with what they have been saying. Too late, they already planted the seed and it is bearing fruit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He wants his subject matter back...
Voices From the Hellmouth
The Price of Being Different
Eric, Dylan, and Mary of Doom
Columbine Student on VG Violence
Seriously, no one on Slashdot already posting these? Yikes.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
It sure seems like the government wants to relive the 90s with discussions about limits on cryptography and violent video games. What is next, the vulgar lyrics in rap?
I guess this generation needs to relearn these lessons.
Time to offend someone
If he heard it on Fox News (and he did), then it must be true.
Research shows the driving games do not increase crazy driving on the streets. But a new Fast and Furious movie ? Increased insanity. The obvious difference is that the people with a game controller in their hand can work out their daydreams/media-sourced-brain-worms. I believe this directly compares to the studies showing gun games decrease the violence. < silly-ness ensues > So I think when there is another school shooting then the news media must release a gun game mod for the school in question and everyone who watched that news show must play the game so they can be the hero who came in and stopped the bad guys and they will have resolved the horror in their heads. < /silly-ness >
OK, we could not run such a program, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
the Japanese don't make or play FPSes much. The story goes that FPSes are "Holographic Murder Simulators" and the hyper realistic violence is the problem. Stuff like Nier Automata or Dark Souls, while violent, lacks the realism needed to train today's mass shooter. Or so the arguments go.
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According to the Representative, Second Amendment good, First bad...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
You cannot have a soldier freeze up in combat because of the sheer level of violence evolving around him.
We can have it, and we do have it. Nobody can predict how they will react in a real firefight. No amount of prep and training can ensure that you'll be able to function at all, or to what extent your normal behaviour will be degraded. True desensitisation only really happens after you've survived enough firefights to have real experience ... and even then, there have been plenty of combat veterans who lose it in later engagements.
Training does help, but it's not a panacea.
Thats why they train and train and train. So that muscle memory and detachment allow the combatant to remain engaged during the conflict.
That muscle memory and detachment is exactly what you don't get from video games. It doesn't do us a lot of good to have a squad of soldiers repeatedly making the WASD motion in the middle of a battle.
You also don't get the stress, which is a crucial part of basic infantry training as well as realistic field training exercises. Anyone can point and shoot a gun in a video game; being able to move, communicate, respond to commands, and actively seek out people who are trying to kill you in an insanely hectic and stressful environment ... that's a whole different world. You're not going to get that from video games until we perfect the Holodeck.
Funny how Japan spends almost twice as much per capita on games as the US doesn't seem to have any problem with mass shootings at all, isn't it? Once again, Republicans are deflecting from the most obvious contributing factor to gun violence: availability of guns!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Rapes go down when porn is readily available. Virtual violence might have some effect in satiating the need for real violence as well, but I don't know of any scientific evidence proving that.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!
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NEVER argue with an idiot, they will beat you though experience. Trumps policies are based entirely on what he saw on Fox last.
We'll get the video game industry trying its best to prove that no kid, ever was even slightly influenced to commit a crime from a game all about committing violent crimes. The opposition will claim it's such a pressing issue, we need to ignore such inconveniences as freedom of the press or speech and squash the legality of creating any game with violence or shooting in it.
99% of sane, normal citizens will carry on as usual -- buying the next GTA sequel by the millions of copies, etc.
With ALL of this stuff, the fact remains that people who aren't deeply troubled in life don't feel a need to go on killing sprees. I can play violent shooter games all day long (and when I was a bit younger, I did that some weekends at LAN gaming parties), and all it made any of us do is enjoy the camaraderie and share some fresh baked cookies and cola.
As was cautioned by the founders of America, freedom and safety butt heads if you try to legislate both at once. So yeah, we could take away all of the guns, or even just the most powerful ones, and it might be a band-aid -- dropping the murder rate a bit. But all of those people with mental instability or serious depression or anger issues haven't gone away. They're as dysfunctional as ever. You just made it harder for them to kill using that one option. They don't need a gun to rape a stranger or to harass somebody anonymously until life is unbearable for their target, or to hack into financial systems and steal others' identities, or any number of things they might do to "get back at society".
I'd rather have a little less of the safety obtained by limiting my freedoms, and try harder to address the ROOT CAUSES behind these problems.
I suppose that will be one objective of this meeting, to discuss how to prevent kids from playing games that are only suitable for adults. Regardless, it is a parenting issue. Online distributors should be expected to provide proper parental controls, but that should be where their responsibility ends.
Limiting people's rights to experience certain content will not begin to address the issue of proper parenting.
It is bad enough that self righteous zealots are turning free expression into a potential criminal offense punishable by jail time. The last thing I would give them is another tool, another pathway, to conduct their thought policing and moralizing using the color of law. It is always a slippery slope with these people who have no respect for free expression and wish to make every waking experience one that is politically correct. I would not accept my choice of entertainment to be limited by the threshold of what they find appropriately non violent.
GTA5 sold to kids in spite of its mature rating is an actual problem imho. I suspect this is a problem that just might solve itself in the long run, as the generations that include enough gamers keep growing up and getting kids and actually understand what ratings are for.
Something to consider in your anecdote: this may be about the parenting itself, not the consequences of it such as access to certain mature games.
I.e. parents who prefer letting "TV/gaming" to raise their children cause children to develop social issues. Parents such as yourself who actually pay attention to their children and raise them themselves reduce the chance their children develop similar social issues.
Essentially, I think you're attributing the fault to one of the symptoms of the actual problem rather than the problem itself.
Polyandry and polygamy also predate the Bible. There isn't just one workable societal structure. If you don't like gay marriage, don't have one.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I can't honestly say I'm surprised. Designers should never have made the holster for Master Chief's "Cranny Axe" weapon look so much like Trump's face.
No doubt they meant it as a compliment, but still...
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Having a 12 year old means I'm required to take him to every superhero action flick. I also watch much older action movies.
A modern superhero action flick like the PG-13 rated Wolverine movie (not the most recent R rated one) has so much violence in it that sometimes *I* want to cover my own eyes.
Older action flicks tended to often play down the violence, but you see boobs in them all the time.
I do have to wonder sometimes about how the evolution went to "less boobs, and lets have a guy with footlong knives shooting out of his hands rip someones limbs off".
It doesn't do us a lot of good to have a squad of soldiers repeatedly making the WASD motion in the middle of a battle.
Plus, yelling "your a fagot" when you get shot doesn't help much, and neither does tebagging downed enemies.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
makes about as much sense
I appreciated the irony that GTA5 had the part of a father so frustrated with his violent game obsessed teenage son that he smashes the tv in front of the kid. The cultural commentary alone made the game worthwhile for me.
I'll agree that as a gamer myself, I would be much more inclined to inform myself of the content of what my kids are playing. I'd also expect game platforms to provide proper parental controls.
As I've said all along this a fishing trip, an opportunity for the Republicans to try and put the squeeze on the gaming industry, we know the the NRA and gun manufacturers make significant contributions to political funds, Trump and the lads will be looking for similar financial contributions from the gaming industry. Obviously there is no real intent to change anything, just a few politicians who don't feel they are benefiting personally from the success of the gaming industry. Perhaps offering them a cut of all loot box sales will be enough for the whole thing to blow over.
The companies can tell Trump that his idea to have a rating system is brilliant, and they'll get right on that. Then, a week later they can tell him that they've implemented it and even labeled every game out there already, then Trump can brag about his amazing fix to this problem and how no one else could have gotten it done.
Start sinking $ into the school system. Pull kids from class that you think may be troubled, sit down with them, treat them fairly and with respect, give them their dignity back... calm them down. Give them opportunities, show them world is good again, give them some hope. These kids minds are malleable... therefor shootings, therefor an even better chance they can given some hope.
[($)]
Plus, yelling "your a fagot" when you get shot doesn't help much, and neither does tebagging downed enemies.
On the other hand, teabagging the jackass who fell asleep on watch is a time honoured tradition. So maybe the military isn't THAT much different than gaming ...
Lets face it, the problem here isn't guns, tv, games, music or movies. It's our failure to raise healthy children.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Like Norway?
Ken
Why didn't anyone lift a finger to prevent the Parkland shooter from legally buying a gun?
His school banned him - for cause - but the federal government paid the school to not arrest him.
His friends knew he was crazy.
His roommate knew he was crazy.
People called the FBI and warned them about him, using his full name.
The police visited him 30+ times.
He referred to himself as a 'school shooter'.
He posted on line he wanted to be a 'professional school shooter'.
And NONE of these things caused anyone to follow through and take a needed step to prevent him from legally buying a gun.
This story played out previously in a small church in Texas, in a movie theater in Aurora Colorado, Andy's a grocery store with Gabby Giffords.
We have laws that would have prevented these shooters from buying guns, but society seems reluctant to take that step that prevents the crazies from buying guns... background checks are great, but the community needs to make sure the crazies are in databases to block gun sales to them.
Ken
How many jet liners full f people were smashed into buildings using nothing more than box cutters on September 11, 2001? As I recall inonly one plane did the passengers 'swarm' their attackers and foil their plans.
Ken