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Game Ratings; Are Combat Sims Worse Than FPSs?
Two separate articles on violent games today. The Toad pointed out a
New York Times AP story
on how AOL will start rating games; conflicting signals on whether "adults-only" games will be kept. And atomJack mentioned a
metamute article which "compares how 1st person shooters have taken a lot of flak, yet sim games seem to be fine with everyone. The article argues that the sims are so realistic they are basically training kids for war and in fact some are used by the military for reference." Personally, I think the Mortal Kombat-style games are worst of all - but maybe that's because I don't play them.
Even if your site is not the scam that I think it is (because who knows if you're really giving the banner ad revenue to charity), your posts are about as offtopic as Canter & Seigel's old USENET posts on how to get a green card.
AOL is like Nintendo. Right now, AOL is saying "Oh, how horrible. These violent games are harming our children. Oh, for shame... the horror, the horror." If their rating or banning of games leads people to jump ship from their accursed network in large numbers, the way Nintendo's censorship of the original Mortal Kombat (a shallow game, but sort of funny in a Pythonesque way, I thought at the time. Of course, I've only played it one/two times, tops...) caused people to jump ship to Sega, they will give the customers what they want. Hence, just as Mortal Kombat II was just as gruesome on Nintendo as it was on Sega, AOL won't let everybody quit them so they can play Half-Life over on Microsoft Network. :) ;)
As to the sims issue: Just about any useful knowledge can be applied to war in some way. Sims are used by police and the military (my Dad participated in a sim which was overseen by some CIA types in case the sixties riots turned into a full scale revolution), which was run between two rooms using an intercom system, a map and a board with markers representing police, rioters and civilians. Of course, my Dad was a police captain in a large Northeastern city, so it may have been useful for him... he had to run the police all the time. (Though it was only a 2 day seminar... in CA of all places, at least he got a trip out of it). I may like sims (well, I like some though not many) but they aren't very useful to me because I have no troops
However, it must be said that all this stuff about games being "killing simulators" started because of a man Lt. Col. David Grossman, whose wacky ideas involve American soldiers being brainwashed into zombie killing machines by eeevil games like Doom, but its OK because the troops are controlled by their superior officers. (An idea I find insulting to the soldiers of the US armed forces, both in its lack of truthfulness and the malevolence of its content if such an absurd idea were true.) However, when the evil profiteers at id (or wherever, they like to pick on id in particular) release these games on civilian children, it turns them into mindless uncontrolled killing machines. Unfortunately, the ravings of this lunatic have been picked up with an uncritical eye by much of the press, but we need to consider the original source.
The article on sims? Typical of a myopic political point of view that probably doesn't understand that a true lover of sims might enjoy playing as Vietnam during the Vietnam war, not because of sympathy for the Viet Cong but for the intellectual exercise of winning a war with a presumably weaker force that was fighting on its own turf. I think most sim gamers are interested in both sides of a conflict from a tactical perspective, and leave Gung Ho jingoism for when they play FPS's like Duke Nukem 3D. If this is left out of sim games, then maybe it is to prevent an outcry from ignorant US journalists who will say, "Look, it's a game where you get to play as Nazi Germany. This is a pro-Nazi game!" (or, if you prefer "Oh look, you get to play as Vietnam, they're trying to brainwash our kids into being godless commies!"), rather than a reflection of the desires of either the sim makers or their customers. Of course, sim games had their origins on sandtables and tabletops, and required two players (or creative solitare rules) so in the original "Battle of the Bulge" type games, one player had to be the Nazi's and one the Allies. I would imagine that for online sims, the same thing would have to be true. Any online sim gamers with comments? (My experience of war sims is limited to games like Shining Force... I'm afraid
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Believe it or not, in many countries of the world it is prohibited to play such games. Travellers to Saudi Arabia are advised not to take chess boards with them, as they will be confiscated upon arrival. Ditto for cards, dice, and probably computer games as well. I take it the Arabic version of Windows 98 does not include FreeCell and Solitarie...
Regards,
Starcraft isn't a simulation. It is a game.
The "combat sims" are probably more things like TacOps, which are realistic to the point of insanity. In fact, the US Marines and some branch of the Canadian armed forces both use TacOps in their training, just because it simulates modern tactical-level warfare so well.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
My cousin was really wowed when Win95 came out, and quickly got addicted to Minesweeper. Then he went to North Korea and tried to stick a flag on a mine. It was difficuly IDing him even with the dental records. It was quite sad, but that's what he gets for buying Windows.
There are too many different types of FPS games. You have the ultimate bloodbath type games like Quake 1,2,3 , Unreal , Blood 1,2 , ... Then you have realistic strategy games like the halflife addon "Counter Strike". Although the bloodiness of quake can desensitize children to violence, I feel that Counter Strike desensitizes you killing actual people. I am not saying we should ban these games (I play them all myself), but they should not be in the hands of 8 yearolds.
You should see the artillery I have in my back yard.
- Allowing parents/those who opened up the accounts create a 'list' of screen names that can only access certain ratings. For instance, an 8-year old might only be given access to games rated appropriate, but denied access to others. Insofar as rating is acceptable at all, I think allowing parents to use it in this manner is acceptable.
What I don't think would be acceptable is:The article's not to clear on exactly what AOL intends to do with the ratings - whether it's just going to show them and not restrict access at all, or if it's going to use another scheme altogether. Here's to hoping that if they decide to enforce the ratings, they do it wisely.
-Denor
Intolerance has no political bias -- both sides are equally intolerant, but of different things.
Intolerant cultural conservatives generally don't care about violence, they care about sex (unless glorified violence is directed at U.S. institutions/authority figures). Intolerant cultural liberals are the ones worried about violence, but they don't care about sex (except insofar as they believe a specific depiction is degrading to women and thus a no-no.)
To tell the difference: Intolerant cultural conservatives didn't like the fact that the hero's wife was a stripper in Independence Day, but thought that heroic combat was okay. The intolerant cultural liberals criticized Bob Dole for praising such a violent movie, but generally had no problem with the wife's profession.
Oh, god forbid a parent should teach the child that in real life that is not acceptable. I guess that would be too much effort on the parents part.
To a degree. But there's still a lot of deviation, like how you get full information about everything your units can see, instantaneously; how units are always identifiable; how marines never run out of ammo; how you can't do something like give attack plans to groups of units (e.g. at clock tick N, the Wraiths should cloak and head for the Pylons, then attack. Simultaneously, the siege tanks open up on perimiter defenses, while a ghost cloaks, takes a certain path, and prepares a nuclear strike. When the nuclear strike starts, the Wraiths are to head elsewhere while a set of transports picks up marines/Goliaths and attacks the units harvesting crystals -- and let this plan be, and shift focus elsewhere while all this takes place). This clicks with the rule that you can't order more than 12 units at once...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Sure it does, depending on the reason.
Remember that MacArthur proposed escalating the Korean conflict dramatically into an all-out war on Communism, by targetting the PRC with nuclear weapons and lacing the Yalu when Co-60?
It wasn't good for his career, or his popularity.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
AOL is not banning all games with a rating higher than Pansy, they are banning games labeled Adult. Last time I checked your favorite FPS games were labeled Mature. I find this sort of inevitable in any case, AOL is trying to police their networks so when the next kid goes and shoots up a school people can't go point the finger at AOL for providing the content or arena for their Adult class game. It's a cover-your-ass tactic that we're going to see with increased frequency as more and more blame is put on computer networks for the world's woes. If you're wondering why this is happening watch the morning or nightly news and count the number of times they use the word "blame".
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I had a hard time believing that what I was holding could very easily injure, or even kill a person, if aimed just right
I think you've stumbled on to something there. I once heard of an 'interesting' introduction to guns that helps to dispell any of your doubts. The father (after some pestering), got out a gun (12 guage double barrel) and a beachball. He showed his son (a young child) how to aim the gun (at the beach ball) and stood back a few feet. He told his son to pull both triggers, and caught the surprised boy as he flew backwards.
Some will applaud the father, and some will be horrified, but the boy was no longer curious, and learned to respect guns. I'm fairly certain that he won't get the idea that it's just like in the arcades.
On a different issue, a teenager is not going to have access to an F-15 stocked with bombs and air-to-air missiles, so those games are ok no matter what.
Not even with millions of Pepsi points!
A friend's brother is a hardcore gamer. I don't know what your definition of hardcore gamer is but he is what I think of by the term. His parents only let him use the internet on weekends... for good reason. He spends 12 or more hours a day playing computer games. I know I can never call during the weekend because he is tieing up the phones.
He is definetly wasting his time. The fact is that games are easy - no one gets hurt. You don't get sore. You barely use any energy by sitting on your ass all day.
And to top it off: you don't have to think about it. It is all knee-jerk reactions. No wonder the gaming industry makes so much money.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Sad but true. Local kid kept hurting himself and others trying to emulate moves from a Mortal Kombat style game. He once had his console removed for a month and normalised. It was pretty obvious that this kid should have limited exposure to some types of games.
What is the take home message? Are these kinds of video games bad? Ofcourse not. But the claim that they are harmless is false, and some kids should not be playing them.
It all comes back to parents being responsible.
With an adult, I agree with you. Any adult person (in a common definition) who can't figure out the clear difference between a FPS game and reality needs to be weeded out of the gene pool asap. But kids who still believe in Santa (who they only hear about from other people) are in no position to discriminate FPS games (which they can see, hear, and control) from reality. Where that maturity line is is anyone's guess.
So I have to disagree when we're talking about kids. There used to be a clear and simple difference between games and reality. No one ever got so into Zork that they tried to off cop thinking he was a monster. But FPS games are becoming more advanced and dependent on long-term assumption of a role, learning game/combat-specific skills, and immersion in a visual, semi-realistic environment. In such a situation, it becomes harder for the less-mature to decide where the game leaves off and reality begins.
The typical reply to this would be that reality begins when you get up from the computer and go outside. But think about this -- modern FPS games are visual representations of non-computer environments. You can pick real-world locations in which to do battle. Many of the storylines and scenarios are tied into real-world things -- governmental agencies, police, and fictionalization of real-world events -- that kids see or hear about in the real world. Here's a test. Take two five year old boys and put them outside in the summer with no toys. I'd wager a chunk-o-money that not an hour would go by before one of them picks up a stick, pretends it's a gun, and plays out a scenario that they saw on tv. And that's just by being a passive observer. With FPS games they *have* to respond and participate, or the experience ends. A problem arises when the kid gets so into the FPS scenario (this is the information vs. experience thing) that they begin to identify with the experience, rather than just observe it.
Here's the thing -- I'm not so terrified that every kid is going to grab a gun and start blowing people away (although we've seen this with increasing frequency). What I'm really afraid of is that the experiences that shape the ethics of a lot of kids are being slowly displaced by fictionalized experiences & environments. That's a lot more subtle, and IMHO a lot more damaging to human culture. Is it a reason for me to go on a jihad against FPS games? Nah. But from a parental evaluation, they sure don't fit in the same category as same-topic movies or books.
I think not...(*poof*)
Still, I'd have to consider this a bug. CmdrTaaaaaaaco?
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
why would the military be even looking at starcraft and total annihilation and command and conquer as any kind of reference tool?
[recruiter]: Why do you want to join the US Army?
[moron]: I've played 8000 hours of Starcraft and I am ranked #1 on BattleNet! I can whup any enemy!
[recruiter]: Hmmmmm. I see. Well I think you have potential. See that man with the white jacket at the door?...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
What I get out of playing either is dependent on me and what I learn out of it is limited by my person. One can say, FPS's tend to make more violent children because more children gain traits that reflect violence.
I'm sorry, but this issue isn't black or white.
---
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Reminds me of a story I read about the guy who invented television. (Phil something.. anyone wanna help me out?). Anyway, the most memorable part of it was that he refused to let his own children watch TV because he thought it was filled with crap. He actually said something to the effect of "If I had known thats what they were going to use it for, I would have never invented it!" He must be doing sumercircles in his grave right now over the FOX network alone (excluding the Simpsons, of course). Reminds me of a similar parrallel, a quote from Tim Berners-Lee, about his invention, "It's not supposed to be glorified television!"
Vote Technocratic! Government by killer robots!
Kasparov must be locked up right now. Chess and card games and such were the original sims. They were used to teach strategy and analytical thinking to children and to keep adult's skills sharp in peacetime. Now all of sudden this is a bad thing? Are these the same people who argue against Harry Potter on the grounds that he encourages that great evil: Literacy?
Do yourself a favor. Spend your every moment doing something productive.
/.?
Does that include reading
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I know how to move my mouse and click a button.
.30 cal rifle.
Yet, for some reason, I have no idea of how to determine which ammo a given rifle uses, let alone how to load it, cock it, or disengage the safety. If it jams, I'm screwed. How do I adjust it if the sights are off? And I still have no idea where the mouse port is on my Mauser rifle.
One thing I certainly am not prepared for is the sore shoulder after firing a few dozen rounds from a
How is everyone training for war and honing their weapons skills and accuracy (by playing Rainbow Six) except me?
8-bit monkeys, 4-bit ducks
As much as I despise AOL, this is good customer service for a family-oriented service provider. I am nauseated by the thought that many believe that it's a specific game's fault for producing rotten kids (ala those Columbine idiots); however, simply providing a rating as a tool for parents to use is a Good Thing.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
I feel like Ian McClelland (the writer of the metamute article) makes some good points about the overlooked violence in sim war games, but I think that he takes the wrong overall approach to the issue. The article reads like a distraction to the rabid cultural conservatives who attack video games, "Don't attack FPS's, go after the the sim's instead." If you really believe that blaming video games for the destructive things that people do is a dodge, and a poor attempt at moral responsibility (and I do), say so upfront. No video game, realistic or not, Sim or FPS, is going to *cause* or *incite* violence in anyone not predisposed to that violence.
"The horse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum does not vary."
Here is a link to a ZDNet article on Yahoo! News. The New York Times' "AP Breaking News" link appears to be down already.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
The US Army is looking to forge links to the entertainment industry, to do a better job at this. I worked with UCLA; in the attempt to entice them to build a center there. It turns out that they went to USC, instead.
It's amazing to see how many different fields are affected by PC games. Graphics hardware, CPU development, and home high-speed networks are driven primarily by games, and now the military is being driven by them too.
We live in interesting times.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
> recently released F15 and USNF produced by
Jane's just seem to get
> away with it, passing the pundits unchecked.
If playing flight sims can give you sufficient clue, motivation, and discipline to pass the tests required in order for your nation's Air Force to trust you with a $50-100+M piece of machinery, to say nothing of the millions invested in your flight training, and the countless hours of support and maintenance and training for the ground crews that support your aircraft...
Although I strongly disagree with the whole "violence in video games engenders violent behavior in real life" premise, if I did accept the premise, I'd much rather see the kids playing flight sims and real-time strategy games than first-person shooters.
Given the (again, IMHO bogus) premise that "children become what they play", a nation of aviators and people who can think quickly under stress sounds like a lot more fun place to live than a nation of people trained in house-clearing tactics :-)
It was "cute" when the two kids in Mars Attacks! used their 'obvious' skills at shoot-em-up arcade games to blow away aliens with their own ray guns; this is still merely a movie story, neatly separated from reality.
I suspect that we may be getting a confusing combination of:
- Games where graphics are, at least in some ways, so "realistic" that they may be increasingly confused for the real world, and
- Unusual, but well-publicized, cases of extreme violence that are so bizarre that they would normally be confused for fiction.
Concern comes in if this "breaks the abstraction barrier," and leaves kids having a hard time telling the difference between reality and fantasy.If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Not that alone - there are many out there who actually agree with me!)
The question is not how violent are the various games kids play, but why in the world do they waste so much time on them? It would seem like they have nothing to do. Why in the world do parents waste money on games for their kids??
People who live for entertainment and fun end up with empty minds, empty souls and empty pockets.
Do yourself a favor. Spend your every moment doing something productive. You will discover what real achievement is. Your leisure time will be that much sweeter. When you stop wasting time in front of the console and give yourself a mission in RL, you discover what real fun is.
People who play games on their computers are wasting time + resources (storage & cpu cycles) = money. If you aren't interested enough in computers to be doing something useful with them, then get outside, read a book, or earn a buck raking someone's lawn. Make it your point in life to use every ounce of your energy to help people out, and if after five years you hate yourself for it, I'll send you $100.
I don't really think that one genre can be singled out as worse that the other, though there are several games that I believe just don't belong on a 10 year old's desktop. But that's the parents' decision, not mine, yours, or any silly ratings.
Personally I prefer combat sims because I think they require more thought and strategy; like chess with tanks. Shooters are more for stress relief to me. I'm a college kid, so whenever I've just finished a large project I fire up Quake 2 and kill my roommate a few times. Better that we do it in the game than in real life, and taking out our stresses in game makes for a smoother friendship in real life.
~Caliban
If so, XConquer, Empire and Gnu Chess are more "harmful" than Moral Kombat, Barbarian II and Doom?
*COUGH!!* Whilst I am willing to accept that there can be a degree of social conditioning from games, I think that it would be seriously pushing it to claim that chess (a game with a genuinely long & bloody history) was damaging kids.
(It reminds me of the argument a few years back that roleplaying games encouraged people to become violent criminals. My counter-argument was that if bank robbers started waving loaded D6's instead of 0.45's, we could do with a few D&D criminals.)
Maybe it's action combat sims that are the problem! Games like Command & Conquer, XTank, Space Invaders...
Yes, even that old classic depicts a bloody war. How many sensible, calm, rational people have gone into penny arcades, or the local pub, and come out violent, moronic sociopaths? Now, how many of those became rational when their alchohol level dropped? Maybe it wasn't the game, then, that had the effect.
Now, I have -nothing- against ratings. It's a good idea to provide a potential audience with clear indicators as to what to expect, and to allow parents or other caretakers to make rational, considered decisions.
Personally, though, I think a linear ratings system is useless. How do you quantify sex vs violence vs screen flicker, etc? IMHO, if you had an independent scale for EACH AND EVERY FACTOR that you wanted to measure, then people would have USEFUL information to go on.
(Screen flicker can trigger epileptic fits, and may have adverse effects on manic depressives and people with other electrical or chemical imbalances. Knowing if a game is going to screw you up for real or not is probably more useful than knowing that, out of the population at large, assuming absolute normalicy in every respect for everyone, the game would be considered suitable for XYZ year olds.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Where is the dividing line between FPS and Sim? Look at Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear. These games are FPS that also have elements of real swat tactic (sim). It is seen as constructive because you play the good guy (government agent) killing the bad guy (terrorist). There seems to be a point to the killing in games like this (a distincly American/Eurpoean point.) Lets imagine a sim where you play the Iraqi Army. You get to kill Kuwaitis and Americans. Do you think there wouldn't be a bit of outcry about this? I do, especially by the American media.
I think with games, the defining line between "good" games and "bad" games, be they sims, FPS or whatever is the American Media's view of what is good and bad. (Most game companies are American, and most of the criticism comes from the American media. I'm not trying to country motivated.)
The American media sees value in simulations of WWII battles because they are part of history. It sees value in Rainbow Six because it teaches kids how to become good SWAT team members. *snicker* Whereas Quake, Blood, etc are games that graphically depict violence for _no_ sociological beneficial reason. They are there for killing alone. They do not sustain the lifestyle and innocence of the American people that the press so wants to keep.
If it protrays intentions that are dangerous to the current (supposed) American way of life then it is "bad". If not then it is "ok". It is all media propaganda. Why won't they let us change?
Gotta run to the "electric mind society"
Random Task
"I can hoist a Jack. I can lay a track. I can pick and shovel too. I'll do anything you hire me to." - John Cash "Legen
This is what the article describes as 'blatant racism':
I don't see how references to Ho Chi Minh and rice are racist. Ho was a leader of Vietnamese, rice is a staple of the Viet diet, then and now. There are many rice paddies in Vietnam. Vietnam is known for being humid.
Not one thing in the quoted text maligns the Viet people or culture. That and the incredibly strained logic attempting to link Jane's with 'Western hegemony' makes me think this is all one giant troll. Looking at it that way, it's actually pretty funny.
-- Jeff Paulsen
As far as I am concerned, they can rate games all they want to. As long as it is only rating, not telling me that I can and can't see.
LocalEmperor
-=He is watching you=-
Just read in the paper that deaths due to shooting are way down, at their lowest level in 20 years. It's funny: When something like Columbine happens, lots of experts are quick to blame video games. But could the opposite be true, that gun violence is dropping because people are taking out their aggression on virtual targets instead of real ones?
Replace "make war" with "make love".
Just don't forget to include some contraceptive code, though, or else...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
The reaction to FPS games by this "moral minority" most commonly fixes on the possibility of what I've heard called "enactment fantasies". The idea is that the deed follows the emotional exciting dramatizations of these game actions: that adversity is solved by mortal violence and mental re-enactment is a hero fantasy.
Then it continues with props. The tools are variations of firearms and accessible. With a gun, your child has all he or she needs to sink sweetly into this vicarious psychosis.
Not really different from the objection to Dungeons & Dragons which I credit a great deal to my interest in reading at an early age. (Fortunately, I didn't have intellectual wardens but good appropriately caring parents.)
With sims, you don't have readily available props. It's more difficult to hijack an air-superiority fighter and ace a few airliners. It's also impersonal. You destroy mecha usually without thinking of the implied human meat inside.
How many members of this "moral minority" are pacifists? How many would be ashamed to have their child in active duty military service? The Christian Broadcast Network talking heads would approve of many of Jane's sims; you don't fly for the U.N. if I remember correctly.
Have you seen that ridiculous TV commercial for the Marines with the CGI demon slayed with a sword in an arena of fire?
I've noticed this trend, and I just want to know if anyone out there agrees with me:
Parents are looking for something to blame kids violence on.
That said, I don't consider violent games the problem, or even violent movies the problem. I consider the problem the fact that parents are not spending enough time with their kids. Parents want to plop their child in front of a computer or T.V. and forgot about it. If parents are so worried, why don't they spend some time with their child instead of letting him play those games and watch those movies? I've played violent games all my life, I even played games called demonic like AD&D. However, my father spent a lot of time with me, and those games were exactly what they were meant to be, games. I didn't look up to them as parenting figures. The only thing that came out of my time playing MUDS and other stuff like that was I learned a lot about computers.
Well, enough rambling, that's my two cents.
"Out, OUT! You demons of STUPIDITY!" - Dogbert
This tears the hell outta me.
On one hand, I'm a flag-waving 'merikin who thinks that the government -- at any level -- should not be able to control what I see, read, or internalize by any method. One of the roles of government, IMHO, is to make sure that any of the resultant actions I may take do not harm another person or group/entity. But I have a vehement distaste for censorship in pretty much any form, and have a rather low opinion of those who put informational input controls into law.
On the other hand, I have a 6 month old boy of whom I'm quite protective. I'm not so sure I want him to be able to play a FPS game in the near future. Reading a book or seeing a movie with a sci-fi/killer/combat/monster/slaughter theme is something that I would prefer to influence as a parent, but philosophically I would never want to be in the position to tell my kid he's not allowed to internalize a specific collection of information -- fictional or not, canned or interactive, in a game, movie, or document. However, when he wants to express outward activities tht include borrowing a 9mm to hunt the neighborhood dogs or build a fuel-air bomb out of my lawnmower, I have no qualms about doing my best to quash such behavior.
However, FPS games are getting to the point where it's not so much an interactive story or glorified logic puzzle. It's becoming a full-blown participatory experience rather than an input of information. To me, the line between the input of information (like reading a book on a combat situation) and resultant actions (participating in a combat scenario) is getting increasingly fuzzy.
I'm not sure what to do about it -- and I have to do something about it, especially for this little guy who depends on me for a great deal of his learning and input. Barring someone else's great ideas, I think I have to treat FPS games as having crossed the line into experience rather than information input, which means that I have to consider a FPS game in the same light as whether I want my kid trained to shoot other people.
I think not...(*poof*)
I don't think it would be wise to make generalizations that game type #1 or game type #2 is worse on childrens' mindsets. It is just to complicated and each game should be rated on an individual basis by the child's parents.
<sarcasm>But this would require that parents be responsible for their own children, and we all know that the various governments of the world are responsible for raising children.</sarcasm>
If a parent thinks that a game is too violent for their child, don't let that child have the game. It's really that simple. Parents who whine about how hard or impossible it is to raise children in one breath and then give those same children obnoxios and irresponsible leeway in the other just need to be spanked themselves!
Happy computing
...in the Metamute article.
That article could have been written by a Green or a staff writer for the "Militant" (a local socialist rag) for all its ramblings about Western "hegemony" and military force.
It does raise an interesting question, though. Military sims on the desktop are generally *not* exactly complete training programs; even those that *try* to a degree (e.g. games that attract grognards) do not model things like communications issues, intelligence (down to profiles of leaders...), logistics (not that many games have the concept of moving ammunition, fuel, or food), delegation (generals did NOT have to order infantry sergeants to get their men to seek cover if, say, an MG42 starts firing towards their lines), and so forth.
What they *might* *possibly* suggest is the usefulness of warfare as a useful tool. Frankly, that's one that I firmly believe should stay in the toolbox; remember that one logical consequence of civil disobedience / pacifism is martyrdom...
That, and the fact that there *are* often sides that can arguably be considered "bad", despite what some would have us believe. It's hard to argue that, say, the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria -- known for raiding villages and brutally murdering / mutilating civillians by the scores -- is *not* in the wrong; nor, arguably, were the Flying Tigers on as low a moral level as the SS Totenkopf on the other front. There's nothing wrong with labelling an aggressor as such...
There's also nothing wrong with pointing out the nature of the land. Vietnam's territory includes a decent number of rice paddies -- and if you're going to fight there, you'd better know about that. It's no more "racist" to note this, than it would be to suggest that the Khyber Pass is a salient feature in its locality, or that should one attempt to attack Washington, D.C., that the Potomac is wide enough that throwing a coin across it would be tricky for most of us...
As for balance, examine existing games. Consider, for instance, MS/Atomic's "Close Combat" series, which allows you to play as either side (German Wehrmacht/SS, and the Allies (British/Polish/US/USSR) on the other. CC1 and CC2, at least (I've never tried CC3) don't particularly issue judgements on either side, with the possible exception that it seems that playing Germany in CC1, you *have* to let the Allies take St. Lo in order to end the game; you can defend it all you want but as long as you do, it'll continue. CC2 lets you *win* as either (as the Germans, by, say, eliminating the paratroopers and blocking the British XXX Corps at Son Town for the duration of the game; the Allies, by linking XXX Corps with the besieged paratroopers and securing all bridges). Anything wrong with that?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
. What kid is going to play that kind of video game? An intelligent one.
Quake can push a marginal child over the edge.
Yes, Quake could push a child on the edge of destructive agression over the edge. So could Masters of the Universe or Tom & Jerry. So can a game of cowboys & indians. So could a bad day. So could seemingly nothing in some cases. It all depends HOW marginal the child is, and probably if a child has been driven to that point, there is something else that is very wrong.
I believe that there are adults (if you wish to call them that) who should not be playing these games. But we cannot deny the freedoms of everybody else for the sake of the exceptions: they must be handled as the individuals they are.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
There are and always will be exceptions to the rules. Quake can push a marginal child over the edge.
I think that the real problem here is that society doesn't have a problem with generals that order to kill millions, only with people that kill a few.
"Kill one and your a murderer, kill one million and your an king, kill everybody and you're god."
As a parent of a 5-year-old with a VERY active imagination, I've begun to worry about this issue a little.
My son has a very difficult time understanding the difference between what he imagines and what is "real". As such, I carefully monitor the content of what he sees/watches/plays. As he begins to grasp this distinction better, I probably will have less concerns.
All this is an aside to another point: It seems like this "imagination" ability is really stressed by teachers & pre-schools. Really. It's what Barney's all about for instance (I mean, the show is essentially about making stuff up, so's Rugrats also).... I wonder if this deliberate cultivation of "suspension" is causing more problems than the violent content itself.
Maybe this answers why most people play ultra-violent videogames and watch lots of violent TJ & movies and are never violent, and yet we have a few, spectacular incidents of very violent behavior in youngsters who seems oblivious to the "reality" of the event. Maybe were getting a higher percentage of these than before because of other factors, like the rise of "disconnection"? I don't know, just thinking out loud... what do you think?
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Ah. Remember _Warcraft II_?
Remember how those ugly orcs and trolls were so *obviously* evil, and how the fair Elves were the righteous defenders of the land? Clearly that's a metaphor for how the Man keeps down minorities and seeks to oppress them. The peons must be struck down if they rise! Let the fair rule! And so forth.
;-)
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Shoot-em up. We all know this genre. Quake is probably the best known of them all. Usually first person although there are a few in the 3rd person.
Tactical shooter. I consider this an offshoot of the former. Games like Thief, and Rainbow Six fall into this category.
Head to head fighting. Street Fighter and descendants about sums it up.
Real-time strategy. This is a broad category. You might have past (Age of Empires), futuristic (Starcraft), or modern or fantasy. These games focus on resource management and tactical positioning.
Turn-based strategy. Games like Warlords drift in here. Also many of the old SSI type wargames fit this category.
War simulation. The best example I can think of here, would be the Harpoon games.
With that said, I don't really think there's a problem with ANY of these categories. It's the way each individual game is presented that should determine the rating.
I don't think anyone who has played Harpoon would argue that it is warping the minds of children. If anything, it is very educational with regard to naval operations.
Less remarkable: fighting games. But look at the difference. Street Fighter was hugely popular, and yet cartoonish. Mortal Kombat on the other hand glorified killing your opponent in the most gruesome way possible. So rate them separately.
I don't think that sims should be ignored, but the simple fact is that they don't usually glorify the things that will get you a mature rating.
Perhaps some video games lend to violent behavior, but this is just one small part of a greater problem in society. The games (and developers) take alot more heat than is deserved. Society just wants someone to blame when little Johnny snaps. For the majority of us, I think games are just a pastime, and a way to relax, nothing more.
Best regards,
SEAL
(Apology in advance, there is profanity in this message, but I feel that it was necessary to convey my opinions on the matter at hand.)
I'm sick of this assault on video games.
I've played video games since I coud walk over to them and put my money im, when I was a kid I wasn't learning how to be a ping-pong superstar I was just playing a game, I wasn't learning how to defend the planet against alien invasion or nuclear holocaust I was just playing a game.
This whole "These games are used by the military to teach people how to kill..." is utter bullshit. So what? Chess was designed to teach military strategy so that armies could go forth and KILL in a more efficient manner. So all of the wars of the past thousand years are because of chess, yeah that's it. Now I'm going to sue Parker Brothers because hundreds of millions of people have died in wars because of Chess and they are now profiting from this bloody game! This must be stopped.
I'm a hunter, I go out in the woods with a gun so that I can kill defenseless deer or rabbits or sqirrels or turkeys, so what? I've killed animals for sport, what does that prove? Does it mean that I'm any more likely to harm another human being without just cause? I say no. Why would a video game make someone more violent? The military uses a conditioned response to get people to kill, it doesn't matter how they do it. In the 1960s the US military used silhouettes of human forms popping up at various distances as a stimulus to provoke the response of aiming and firing without thinking. Let's ban silhouettes while we're at it. The fact that technology allows them to replace silhouettes with CGI doesn't mean that the computer is to blame. If these games were so great at teaching people how to shhot and kill, THEN WHY DOES THE US MILITARY STILL USE OLD FASHIONED FIRING RANGES?
Because you can't learn to shoot from playing a(modern) video game. You can't learn to deal with the noise and/or recoil of a real gun. You can't learn to compensate for breathing and your heartbeat from a video game. It take MONTHS to YEARS of practice with the REAL THING before you're good enough to go out and kill people. Video games don't cut it.
While we're at it let's go back to burning books in the old Nazi fashion. After all The Art of War by Sun Tzu is a manual on how to conduct a war. We must stop teaching our children about making war. Let's all play flower planting simulations and see who can come up with the best ideas for saving the rainfores.
The simple fact is this, some people CAN'T STAND the idea that there are people who enjoy doing different things than they do and by God someone must put a stop to it.
I enjoy a good game of Quake, Half-Life, Close Combat, and yes you guessed it Mortal Kombat. If I'm not bothering you...LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
One of the arguments used by the "ban-the-games" crowd and the media covering Columbine is that first-person shooters somehow teach kids to be supersoldiers.
Wrong.
I am a shooter of some skill. I've been shooting for many years, including some competition, and I also play FPS-style games (off-topic: Half-Life is my favorite). I know what it takes to be a good shooter, and I know what it takes to be a good gamer. The two have almost NO overlap.
Being a good shooter requires a calm head (physical trembling, however small, can mean the difference between a hit and a miss at rifle ranges. Jerking the trigger will cause a miss even at close handgun ranges). Being a good shooter requires intelligence (what is your target? What is beyond it? When something suddenly appears, do I shoot or not?). Being a good shooter requires attention to detail, in the care of your firearm and thinking about the circumstances of your shooting.
This has what to do with first-person shooters?
When the military uses FPS-style simulators to train soldiers, the concepts being taught are to pay attention to your flanks and rear, and to familiarize entry teams with the layout of a specific place (example: the Marines are the ones in charge of embassy security. They have "levels" with the floor plans and layouts of all the US embassy installations, so a guard can receive familiarization with all the rooms of a building and all the likely places the "bad guys" would hide, without bursting in on the ambassador's quarters in the name of "training"). They teach *nothing* about shooting skills.
But then, if this were well-known, there'd be no sensationalist headlines for local media atempting to get national attention, would there?
--Lance
Don't be so sure that FPS don't adjust behavior. The other day, one of my cats jumped on the desk that my computer is on, during a 2 hour frag fest. I turned and looked at it, and attempted to launch the alt-fire flak cannon from Unreal at it. Needless to say, I clicked twice before I realized the cat wasn't bouncing off the desk as it would have if it were a bot. Needless to say, I exited unreal at that point and went and got some dinner.
Not to sound crazy or anything,but those would actually make good game titles...
Holiday in Cambodia the Video Game:
Depending on how it is worked out, a survivalist approach to keeping your tribe/village/town alive despite an occupation situation or external invasion operation while having to manage the townsfolk and keeping them alive with enough food and preventing injury would be excellent to prepare people mentally and emotionally for traumatizing situations where home invasion or kidnapping might be an issue.
Sim Concentration Camp:
I think this has actually been done, but from the perspective of the prisoner... you basically try to escape the camp and avoid detection as much as possible before your spirit is broken. You have to follow rules and regulations and basically survive the camp as long as you can, working on finding a way out.
Of course, the flip side would be to manage a concentration camp and that would mean expansion and the logistics of personnel relocation and handling.
Drug War 2000:
This would be a good game for youner teens to get into to help fight existing mentallity of younger people about drugs being "not so dangerous". By seeing the suffering, people can actually understand why their parents say "no". And why they themselves should say "no".
MS 5 year plan: Visual Stalin: The five year management cycle of a whole nation in order to improve or destroy it. What's so horrible about this? You have the choice of making your country into a dying cesspool or into a prosperous nation. It all depends on whether the person playing the game is focused on good or bad intentions.
Marshal Law: You're In Charge!:
Basically Sim City with more killing and management of people in the city against their will. Either to control violent situations or to control the people. There is quite a bit a person can learn about crisis management when a panic occurs in the town and marshal law is enforced. For both the individuals and the people in charge.
Faces of Death with DX7:
:|
Unless this is a history lesson, there is little useful need for a game like this. Showing people the faces of the dead or dying is hardly educational or useful in any strategic way except to traumatize or desensitize the player to it. Or gross them out.
If you meant playing the various "evil" figures of the world's history and doing the strategic planning by being them and managing their reign, then it effectively becomes another war sim with loads of micro-management. But would be limited in education value as the views may be biased.
Take it with a grain of salt. You cannot blame games for ruining childrens' lives if the people who are the childrens' parents do not make headway to look after their own childrens' well-being.
You wouldn't let a child walk the streets of a dark alley without a few friends and even then, suggest they take the long way. You spend hours lecturing them about not talking to strangers... but you can't take the time to teach children about the rights and wrongs of morality.
If your child views the games' morales as more important than the ones you are trying to teach, then that's a problem you need to deal with and work out.
A person with a strong mind will enjoy the games or not play them. But they will hardly be brainwashed by them. With children, it is a different story. Which is why adults and parents, especially, should be there to make sure that their children are not taking in experiences you feel would be hurtful to them.
Striking at the game manufacturers for this is like blaming the stories in a book you read to your children for teaching them the wrong principles in life to follow. You're an adult, you should act like one. Especially if you have children. Find the time. Put in the effort. But don't place blame... because that doesn't help your child one bit.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
Um... no. I'm into gaming and I have a semi fulltime job and I got to 18 hours a week of college. I am not into it obsessively.
If you are going to make generalizations let me make one... Sports promotes taking steroids and making fun of outcasts, forcing the outcasts to kill people at the school. If you are appauled by that statement I was yours.
The US Army uses a *HUGE* network of Amigas that run a wargame scenario/sim. It's ran on a hexagon terrain layout imposed over actual maps, very similar to actual wargames such as "Squad Leader" or "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich".
The scenarios vary depending on the training objectives of the units. I've worked on Division (10,000 soldiers+) Sims. The computers provide the stimulus for the maneuver unit headquarters out in the field. The actual tanks and Bradleys stay home, just the HQ's and staff deploy. Supposedly, the computer stuff is transparent to the guys in the field. All the communications from the sim cells are via tactical communications (radio).
Every battlefield unit is represented in the sim, from flights of airplanes to tank companies to 3-man scout teams.
In all, it does its job. Mostly the play is focused on the planning of operations and the interaction between the top guys.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Here's a satire on a somewhat related topic I wrote for school a couple months back:
Not too long ago, as I sat in the kitchen perusing through various religious pamphlets I had received in the mail, I heard the unmistakable utterance of that vilest of words, "check," from my daughter's room. Fearing the worst, I rushed to her room, opened the door, and found the worst. I stared in horror as I saw my older daughter holding a figure of a horridly malformed horse chopped off at the neck. I stood petrified as I saw my daughter use this statuette, obviously of pagan-inspired origins, to knock over another piece, which I later learned to be termed a bishop, an obvious attempt of our immoral society to encourage the disrespect of our theocratic leaders. Finally taking action as a responsible parent, I swept all of the fetishes off the board and took the wicked "game" out of my children's sight. I immediately set the cursed work aflame--certain to have my children turn away for fear of any evil spirits locked within the hideous figurines.
After much research, I have discovered that this chess is not the only supposed plaything our decrepit and immoral society has used in order to turn our children away from the most narrow path of righteousness. One of these is "Monopoly", a devilish work which teaches those engaged in it to capitalistically subvert helpless peons through the soulless acquisition of real estate. "Hungry, Hungry Hippos", a game in which the players push on the backs of multi-colored beasts, thereby forcing them to consume small white capsules, serves as the possible cause for why many of our formerly innocent children have become involved with illicit drugs. In the killing-simulator "Trouble", participants must vigorously strike a die-containing hemisphere (Bearing a shocking resemblance to the top of a human skull!) every turn, obviously encouraging them through this repetition to attack their peers in a similar manner. The debauchery termed "Twister" requires no further comment.
Yet another example of a wretched attempt of our nonecclessiastic society to subvert our impressionable youth is a self-termed "classic game of battle field strategy" called "Stratego". Even the board of this game has been designed to look like that unholy place of death and destruction, the battlefield. In this game each player places several bomb,s obviously encouraging our playing children to plant explosives in the real world: I am certain that research would show that Timothy McVeigh had experiences in his childhood with this game, thus encouraging him to place, in a manner similar to that found in "Stratego", the bomb which killed so many in Oklahoma City.
Have we learned nothing from Columbine? It is our duty as responsible parents to stop these reprehensible encroachments from corrupting the minds of our impressionable youth. We must carry out this duty through any and all necessary means: by pushing Congress to restrict the sale and production of these games, by boycotting all establishments where such establishments are found. We must take action now, for if we do not, we will ultimately find ourselves plummeting into an abyss of immorality and destruction, the abominable horror of which we cannot even begin to imagine.
--
That's it. While I'm thinking about my aching fingers, does anybody know how to cut and past from an eterm to a netscape window?
On another, note, at my high school this Monday, we're going to wasting 15-30 minutes of school-time by having a "European fire drill"--basically a huge overreaction to Columbine. When we hear the "beep...beep...beep" we have to turn off the lights, lock the doors, and not let anybody in. Even if they ask and we know them (if they're late of the like) we can't let them in, but have to tell them to go to the auditorium. Then we have to get under the desks, being sure to stay as far away from the windows as possible.
Personally, I'm going to be finishing my calculus homework using by watch light.