Slashdot Mirror
Maybe Video Games Don't Make Kids Kill
diagnosis writes "MSNBC has an article on Lieutenant Colonel Grossman, an overzealous Army guy, and his new book. The book attempts to blame things like Colombine on games like Doom ("Death simulators"); the article refutes most of Grossman's claims and actually deals with the subject reasonably. I think that, given the coverage negative, reactionary material available on the subject gets, MSNBC's more reasonable view deserves at least as much notice."
And of course the vast majority of serious gamers aren't violent in real life(DUH....).
This post did not exist until you saw it, at which point you collapsed its wave function
(shame on you!) and caused it to gain cid=4.
-- $SIGNATURE
Sorry old chap, that how Open Source(tm) works;)
Q3A is the only game I have on my machine (after I finally tired of Q2 earlier in the year), and if you look at it with an open mind it really is a simulator of death, gore, bloodsmears, injury, damage and aggression.
If it has any effect on the players, though, it is in the form of catharsis; look at the chat that goes on between people playing. And compare it to most American movies: there is a similar level of explosions/intestines per hour, and nobody raises an eyebrow.
-Andy
How can a man who has probably taught people to :)
kill with their bare hands accuse video games of
teaching people to kill
On a more not-so-serious note, he hasn't played Quake either methinks.
seeking to blame outside influinces such a TV, and video games, or whatever for violent behavor. I beleive that this violence is not the cause of video games, or TV, or movies, or the internet, or space aliens.... i believe that there is something fundamentally WRONG with these kids, and they have easy access to fire arms. if given the choice between taking a copy of Quake, or taking a gun out of a kid's hands. i would choose the gun every time. btw... this is my first post on slanshdot, ever... it is also almost 5 am in hte morning and i have been awake for 34 hours, so sorry if this doesn't make much sense
-joram
If Q3 et al, is a death simulator, its just as much a life simulator ( respawning ). Every good Christian recognizes in the FPS a celebration of the miracle of Resurrection. ;)
Correlation != causation
saying "violent kids play more quake" doesn't show any connection between them. It's like saying that lung cancer causes cigarette smoking. In fact, the opposite is true.
-Dave Turner, AC of convinience
This debate has been going on for a long time - TV was a big offender in the 70s and early 80s, movies got a lot more violent in the 80s and caught their share of flak, and from the end of the 80s it's been common for people to point the finger at videogames/computer games. It still doesn't change the fact that there has never been any hard evidence for a relationship between fantasy violence and real violence.
Personally speaking, I believe that there is a link; but it takes two to tango, and you need someone who is already on a hair-trigger for them to be stimulated enough by a game to injure or kill someone else.
People kill people! :) but i'll make my point simple and clear:
Same for games. I play shoot-em-up games a lot. I enjoy them. I don't have any particularly violent tendencies.
The article is long winded and i am winded from reading it
The availability of firearms (and ammunition) in the US is the main reason for the high shooting rates in the country. All the games do is increase people's accuracy and decrease their surprise at the effects of the weapons that they are using.
All in my own humble opinion and exhausted stupor.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
http://www.zophar.net/things/doomatic.jpg
ZD-Net also put up a story on the subject: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2399 619,00.html?chkpt=zdnnstop
Will this ever go away?
Mario Bros. was the reason why I played around my local sewer.
QBert was why I broke my arm trying to hang from the ceiling.
Frogger was something I thought would be fun to play on the freeway
Gauntlet told me that drinking ale would increase my health.
Ninja Warriors taught me that in the military, only white soldiers are allowed to have guns, and black soldiers are only issued knives.
Anyone else out there been negatively influenced by a game?
It is the accpeted opinion of (most) of the scientific community that tht brain structure (and behavior) of any individual is a product of his genetic makeup and the interactions of the environmnet to which he/she has been exposed upon that genotype. Regardless of the degree which you think television and video games actually influence a person's psychology, it seems reasonable to assert that such large parts of our social evrionment (check the stats concerning averaqe # hours spent playing TV/games in US; we see somtething like 8000 murders before we turn ten) are bound to have an effect on the way a person thinks and acts.
Past studies have attempted to dicover whether or not a causal relationship exists between actual physical violence and such vicarious participation/observation--that is *all other things being equal*, whether children with frequent exposure to violent content are more likely to be violent than children which are not exposed to violent content on a regular basis. Nobody is trying to 'blame' their behavior exclusively on their environment in order to escape accountability for their actions (although I hold a determinsitic viewpoint concerning human behavior, implying that we are not morally 'responsible' for our behavior since we had no choice in it, I still maintain that accountabiulity must be preserved in order to safeguard social order until we can better figure out how the brain works [shrug]).
Given the opportunity, anyone would take away the firearms from the children you mentioned. However, the issue is whether the children who do posses firearms are more likely to use them if they are exposed to violence on a regular basis. I believe it is too difficult to tell at the moment--although I tend to see such exercises as a cathartic activity, individuals certianly become desensitized to the idea of violence and its common manifestations (entrails, death-rattles, screams, etc). It is most certainly conceiveable that such exposure does have a destructive impact upon an impressionable child's behavior and life.
My point? Be more careful before you make such huge assertions. The jury is still out on this one, and is likely to be so for some time yet. As for me, I will at least think twice before recommending 'death simulators' to any children I am even partially responsible for--the danger is too great, and my intuition tells me that something is dangerous about exposing children to too much violence too soon.
hope you get some sleep and feel better.
-Matt
The truth is out there - we'll let it back in after it sobers up a bit. -The Cube
Salon also published a skeptical article on Grossman back in May, when Littleton was in the news.
Joke all you want, but you have to wonder about how much subtle things like this really effect you. Seemingly innocuous things are often more sinister, and sometimes have quasi-hidden agendas (like disney or George Lucas). The subconscious is a strange place; who knows what really goes on in there (I know its weird. I just woke up from a dream in which I was a claymation man with three fingers and no neck running through a swamp full of giant malevolent animated tupperware).
Ive always wondered why advertisers spend so much money on similar saturation-bombing techniques that we dont really conscioulsy notice if they are completely ineffective...
The truth is out there - we'll let it back in after it sobers up a bit. -The Cube
Looking back to the early 80's, when home computers were beyone the budgets of a lot of people, a lot of kids I went to school would amuse themselves pretty much in the same manner as previous generations had before them; setting anthills on fire, smashing windows, and carving pinstripes along the sides of cars with a can opener.
In all of these instances, few of the parents felt *their* child had any problem; if anything, it was "a phase everyone goes through, they'll grow out of it", etc. And through such denial and resignation, a small number of people do turn out to be okay, but the rest are pretty much neglected through such action.
Compound this with many adults wanting to take a break from watching their own offspring and it's easy to see how print and broadcast media, along with the web and simulation/roleplaying games have been villainized over the years.
Yet another moron blindly jumping onto the "videogames are evil" bandwagon. I personally have to wonder how many of these moral and upright citizens have even played a modern video game. Hmmm, lets see...if I shoot a person in Quake they disintegrate into a pile of chunky giblets, if I shoot a person in real like they fall to the ground and scream a lot. Blasting my enemies in Quake requires me to move my mouse over 9 square inches of my mouse pad, firing a real gun accurately requires a hell of a lot more skill. The point of the mayhem in games like Quake and MK is to prove yourself superior to your opponents fighting skills ans enjoy yourself, the point of shooting people is to kill. So I have to ask...where are all of these similarities that people keep talking about?
You can't find any because there aren't any. Video games are just that...games! They are an enjoyable test of skill, not some "train me to be a warrior" digital boot camp. I have been playing so-called violent video games for nearly a decade now and I've never once thought about actually shooting a person. The moralists who keep imposing their views and insisting that we're breeding a generation of killers are overlooking the HUGE psychological leap that has to take place in order to make a normal person switch from shooting pixels to shooting people. The only people likely to make that leap are those whos mental conditions weren't exactly normal in the first place, and society cannot allow itself to be regulated to the point where it's "safe" for it's least stable citizens to lead a normal life.
So out comes that evil word: Accountability. I know it's been said a million times, and will probably be repeated a million more, but people need to start being accountable for their own actions. Parents need to take long, objective, and honest looks at their children before allowing them to play these types of games. If your kid has already been diagnosed with a behavioral disorder DON'T LET THEM PLAY THESE GAMES! It's that simple! If your kid is on medication or seeing a counselor/psychologist for behavioral problems, and that kid goes and shoots 5 people after playing an hour of Quake, it's the parents fault, not the software manufacturers. Parents are the only people who are really qualified to judge their childs day to day mental health and decide if they can handle seeing onscreen violence. If they make a bad choice, or worse yet, choose not to get involved in the choices of their childrens video games at all, then they alone are exclusively responsible for it's consequences. I take reponsibility for my kids. My 5 year old daughter isn't allowed to sit in my home office while I'm playing Quake, she isn't allowed to watch violent movies, and the most disturbing on screen image she's been exposed to is Team Rocket in the Pokemon cartoon. It really takes very little effort for parents to monitor what their children are doing as long as they're willing.
I dunno, this argument reminds me of the parents that took their suicidal son to Yosemite a number of years back, and then tried suing the National Park Service after he jumped off a cliff (claiming that there should have been guards and handrails for chrissake). Children learn by watching their parents, and if parents aren't willing to take responsibility for their children, you can't honestly expect them to grow into responsible adults.
Btw, it was kinda nice to see an MSNBC author research his facts before posting though. Most reporters would just slap up a quicky article claiming that "another credible source" has released new "findings" confirming video game violence. Objective reporting on the Web...I'm impressed!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Armies train people to kill!
Interesting that you can get a whole bunch of people to kill another whole bunch of people who they don't know at all, when under different circumstances they would "hold the door open" for each other, or even share food with each other.
Shows a certain not so good side of people.
We were born with an ability to kill abstractly
One more time just for those who did nit get it the first few times... Life does not imitate art.
Today it's FPS before it was Role Playing Games and Heavy Metal. :) Yeah thats it...
Also movies catch the blame too.
It's just parents trying to find a quick blame so they don't have to be responsable. I'm not saying they automaticly are I am saying they grab at the first chance to asign responsability elsewhere so they can say they are not.
However thies are token shards and not really the problem or even representive of the problem. Instead they respresent the posability that the parent might have recognised the signs if they had known what to look for. Being fair short of a PhD in child psycology they wouldn't have known what to look for. But thats not comforting to a parent who lost a child.
Instead blame must be assigned to something tangable. Something evil. Something they themselfs disaprove off. Something like Role Playing games, Heavy Metall and violent video games.
I know what I want to blame... I'll blame poorly writen software.
But in all sereousness FPS are escapism like movies and role playing games. Not trainning for violence but a way to leave it behind.
I don't actually exist.
1999-12-10 16:07:55 Grossman's book slammed on MSNBC (articles,news) (rejected)
1999-12-01 13:57:51 Intel/Dell acknowledges Coppermine bug (articles,intel) (rejected)
1999-12-06 09:21:22 Merced Simulator posted online (articles,news) (rejected)
1999-12-06 14:17:26 3dfx Open Sources Glide API (articles,news) (rejected)
I'm not bitter (okay, maybe a little bitter), but seems like the slashdot submit news process is grossly inefficient. May I suggest that there is a reason should it be rejected?
i.e. (rejected: redundant)
or (rejected: CmdrTaco thinks it doesn't matter)
The Army used to ban kids who were once on Ritalin or other such drugs because the potential for instability was much too high. No one seems to want to touch the effects these drugs may have had on the Columbine kids. (Luvox was found in the bloodstream of one.) Not in the media, not in Slashdot, nowhere except for "conspiracy wacko" fora.
Also, does anyone else see an alarming trend in America to seek out scapegoats? It seems to me like we are engaging in one crusade after another that seeks to lay blame for people's actions on the objects that they use to act. . .blame the guns for murder and ignore the fact that the gun doesn't get up and shoot someone on its own, blame sport-utility vehicles for vehicle fatalities instead of the drivers, blame condoms for letting people have sex. I don't know, as I see it, at some point we all make the decision to behave either more or less responsibly. If someone goes off and shoots up a school full of kiddies, they made the choice to behave that way. The game certainly didn't make them do it.
On another note, I find the argument that these games increse the accuracy of these psychokids to be rather spurious. Anyone (I'm waiting to get flamed for this one)who has actually fired a pistol AND played a game that simulates the firing of a pistol knows that the computer just isn't a substitute and won't improve your accuracy. There is a big difference between holding a rather heavy firearm at (more or less) arm's length and hitting a target AND cradeling a mouse in your hand (or scrolling a trackball, pressing arrow keys, etc) to aim and fire a simulated, weightless, recoilless firearm. I just don't buy the fact that Quake makes for more accurate shooting. I don't shoot anymore, but I know that Castle Wolfenstien (sp?) didn't improve my acuuracy one bit.
But alas, we live in a society that likes easy answers and lets face it, its relatively easy to point our fingers at a computer game and say "there lies the cause of our (your) ills!" But once we take the video games away, we'll be pointing our fingers at something else, violent books perhaps. Eventually we will run out of objects to point at, and we'll see that everyone is left pointing at each other.
I'm glad the the journalist didn't fall for this guy's book because the esteemed Lt.Col. seems to have substituted military credentials for rational thought. Perhaps instead of writing/reading a reactionary book (a book that appears to shamelessly seek to profit off of recent school tragedies)we should all just sit back and invest a little thought in the matter.
Just my .02 cents
Synesthesia
--not sayin' I have all the answers, but I don't trust the ones I've been gettin'--
Quake is no more of a murder simulator than a mosh pit at rock concert is a virtualized lynch mob or gladiator pit.
Quake is a game where people fight back, are similarly armed, *have the expectation of death(and rebirth!)* built into the game design, and where, at the conclusion of a difficult match, all the (still surviving) combatants generally *congratulate* themselves with effusive praises of "gg"(for Good Game)!
For crying out loud, there's a thing known as context which pundits, attempting to earn themselves a reputation, a salary, and maybe a few cheap votes, seem to try to remove from human nature. (And it's ironic, really--programming context into a computer device is brutally complicated!) One doesn't need to be an expert on even mammalian behavior to know that violent play is a genetic predisposation--most species do so, and we're no different!
But even a tiger cub knows the difference between playfully biting its brother's neck, and just ripping the trachea out wholesale. You know what? I think there's an off chance that we do too.
The author seems a bit to enthralled with rating systems, though. The most interesting event of 1999 will probably end up being the release--and very effective suppression--of the South Park movie. What, exactly, did the mighty R rating, the model of rating systems everywhere, protect sixteen year olds from? The frankest look at the ridiculousness of rating systems ever concocted? The plain truth that life cannot be wholly described in extrasyllabic language? What? (Oh! I just stepped on a nail! I am presently experiencing inscrutably excruciating amount of pain!)
But, you what what? Blaming cartoons for the sins of the child is a time honored tradition in America. What is reality to get in the way?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Mr. Kent (of MSNBC) writes:
"Lt. Col. Grossman's book seems to revolve around a few basic themes:
- Exposure to violent entertainment desensitizes youth to acts of violence and leads to aggressive behavior."
Plain and simple, this is true. If you view/do something over and over again, you are desensitized to it. It doesn't have the same effect after many repetitions. Does it lead to violence and aggression? No, but it doesn't prevent violence either. I don't think the world would suffer if we reduced the amount of violence present in the media.
"- Violent video and computer games are an ultra-effective way of instructing murder."
Yes. An old military rule states that one must perform an action 500 for it to "stick" but 5,000 times for it to become second nature. I've used the MACS before to hone my marksmanship skills and it really is just a Super Nintendo with a plastic laser light gun in the mold of an M-16. Anybody who has played "gun games" at the arcades pretty much have begun to learn the basic fundamentals of marksmanship.
Computer games such as Quake Deathmatch? It teaches kids the concept that life easily restored by hitting the spacebar. I'm not talking about your 13+ kids now, but the eight year olds who have just warezed Quake 2 and are playing it. Who cares if you die? Who cares if I shoot wildly, friendly fire is OFF! Hostage down? Who cares, he'll be back next round! Some concepts of violence in video games will rub off on kids. Ratings won't stop the eight year old AOL pirates.
"- Youth crime is rising in America as is the amount of violence in video and computer games"
Probably not. The reason youth crime is rising is because of the lack of parent's responsiblity. Lock your f*cking gun cabinents. Keep your gun and ammo apart. If you see your kids making pipe bombs, stop them. If you see your kids playing a game you don't like, stop them. If you see your kids downloading hardcore porn, stop them. Talk to them. Geez, I thought it was obvious.
The only way to stop kid violence is for parents to take action. Talk to kids, talk to unpopular kids, talk to "in crowd" kids, talk to geeks, talk to athletes, talk to band members. Whatever. Anything.
People shooting people? It's been happening for a while. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Colin Ferguson on the Long Island train, the day trader in Georgia, too many bother listing. People like to point out that all of the sudden it's kids and their video games. Wake the hell up, it's the irresponsible parents.
To stop adults from shooting each other, make stricter gun laws. Banning guns is not the answer. However, no matter what laws we produce, some nut will go on a shooting spree. Therefore, Carpe Diem and live everyday to its fullest.
Other points: everybody knows that shooting someone in the head will do more damage then anywhere else. We don't need video games to tell us that - it's pretty damn obvious.
BTW, I play Quake X, Half-Life, Doom X, Jagged Alliance, Delta Force 2, all the violent games. Yes, I have learned military and gun related stuff from playing these games that I probably wouldn't have if I didn't, but it doesn't mean I'm going to shoot people.
Rangers Lead the Way!
I often don't like it when journalists try to be cute, but this article was amusing.
:)
I find it sad that no one ever draws the obvious connection, that perhaps kids with a predisposition to or fascination with violent behavior seek out violent games and TV shows. That seems to make the most sense to me.
Remember, guys, Duck Hunt doesn't kill people, angry Lt. Col.'s do. All Duck Hunk encourages is shooting that dog. And you know what? It doesn't work. He still snickers at you!
However: five of the top ten games of 1999 were Pokemon games? That's enough to make me want to shoot someone...
---
pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Ain't it so bloody simple?
Don't throw bricks, if you live in a glass house.
Children turning to killers by twisted entertainment: Part XVI It's the 1st person shooters, please please please, no more sequels
Yep...
:) :)
thats happened many times to me
I think maybe what the problem is... they should have some rejected bin that bored posters can look through before it gets permanetly deleted... because many times.. I've submitted something, and one of them will reject it, then a couple days later, it's posted saying someone else submitted it... probally because a different poster thought it was newsworthy, while the poster that read mine thought it wasn't. It's not so much the 'credit' thing... it's just the fact that it could have been news sooner that it ended up being. And isn't news all about being as current as possible?
I mean... when I submit a story and it gets rejected... then 4 days later it's on here.. I always say "yawn.. old news..."
Anyways... I think that maybe slashdot should do some analysis of operations... remember it's *us* that make your site what it is... Im gonna go AC today..
my suggestion... is to let us have a semi annual suggestion rant day or something... we love it here... but we also want to keep loving it here (is anybody reading this?
Of course MSNBC debunked a book that may lead worried parents to believe that video game violence may translate to the real world; with the recent releases of Age of Empires 2 and Ascheron's Call, and the approach of Christmas, they couldn't have the sales figures dropping now, could they? ;)
Deosyne
There was also a follow up to the interview, plus a lot more to read at the comments page.
No matter how many times people blame something else for a problem in society, I truely believe it falls back onto the parents. I'm not just saying this either I speak from watching my 5 year old nephew play with his friends. My sister has taught my nephew all the good things, like 1)guns are bad (keeping it simple for his small mind) and 2) shooting someone is bad (in play and in real life again just to keep it simple.
On my last visit I observed my nephew at play with his other street pals. I was amazed. He played like any small boy but the other kids woo youd think they were teens when they are only 5-8 years of age. Two of the young girls were using language that would make even a seasoned sailor blush, the other boys were "killing" each other and were arguing about how the other wasnt "dieing" right. After an afternoon of playing my sister spends the next hour deprogramming my nephew so that crap like that doesnt mess with his head. Around 10o'clock I went back outside to find the same group of kids still playing in the steet. Now I don't know about you people but when I was that age, when the sun started to set I was inside in the comfort of my home.
There you go REAL world proof that when parents don't do the job of parenting and spend less time watching their kids that they go bad. Who taught you that killing was bad?
Two Cents In The Bucket (TCTB)
-Felix
Our Army studied the behaviour of soldiers in combat in Korea. This was probably the first time anyone studied it in a systematic fashion.
The psychiatrists found that people normally don't kill, even when being attacked. They just point their weapons in the air and fire. Not the stuff of winning armies. Basic training was refocused to include stand up cut outs, aiming at human silhouettes, and bayonetting storefront mannikins. It works.
The FBI noticed the same thing with police officers in the early 60s. Cops were shooting at bank robbers, but deliberately aiming wide, and still aiming wide even when they were being shot and killed. The weapons training was changed ala Army Basic, and now they go for the no-reflex zone. With no guilt.
What Q3 and Doom do, is teach you to be comfortable shooting at human silhouettes, and to level your weapon. It worked for Kleybold etal. Even though he was a lousy shot, he knew enough to aim at people if you want to kill them, something he wouldn't have known without Q3. That, and they were stoned on prescriptions, like Luvox.
I don't see how your statement attacks the author's credibility. You're not smart enough to know it, but it validates his credibility. The military guy knows what it takes to turn people into killers.
Look at any Arab army in the Middle East, especially the Palestinians. What is the news coverage of them? It's young soldiers shooting in the air whenever an incident goes against them, which is nearly always.
Nobody has ever taught them how to handle a weapon, and of course, nobody is going to. Pretty hard to overwhelm an enemy when you don't shoot at them, but the Arab generals will never figure that out.
I like a beer and a cigar every now and then, and I like guns. And I like sex. A lot.
Grossman da man!
A few questions... Why is it that in the early 90s it was reported that one in every four black men would be either dead or in prison by the age of 25 - yet considering this statistic was based largely upon ghetto youths - how many of these young men had access to Quake? Why did nobody care that inner city schools needed metal detectors installed? Why wasn't it important chest beating news when a friend of mine's father who teaches in an inner city school had a gun pulled on him by a student? Why is it only when it happens to a largely middle class, affluent suburb that we actually care this happens in America? Why does this sort of thing not happen in Britain, where I'm living at the moment, where there is no easy access to guns? Why is it that I play Counterstrike at least three times a week, have experience with firing firearms of all sorts, work in special effects simulating gore and violence of all sorts, got picked on as a kid, and my father took me to see Alien in a theater when I was four, yet I have never shot a living entity in my life, and have no urges to do so? Why is it when the media ran that same clip from "The Matrix" over and over covering the Columbine shooting, they showed the assault with guns - but never showed people running up walls or stopping bullets with their mind? To paraphrase David Cronenberg "The problem with censors is they do what psychotics do. They confuse fantasy with reality." I wish J.G. Ballard's Running Wild was still in print. Prophetic Mr. Ballard, who is usually on the ball predicting the development of our psychopathology, who inferred that adolescents living in a sterile middle class suburb go apeshit and violent when they are cut off from cultural dealings with violence and sexuality. On a case by case basis, with accurate fact checking, one would see that essentially no link can be proven between violent cultural material and actual violence. The British Film Institute published an entire issue of its journal, Sight and Sound, devoted to using the latest data from clinical psychologists and sociologists working in the field, and were able to refute a concrete link between the two. The fact is that for psychopaths, any cultural material could become the trigger for their psychosis because they attempt through force of will to make fantasy reality. The violence in culture is just gravy that they fit into their train. There has never, NEVER, been irrefutable evidence of a link between the absorption of violent media and violent behavior, despite attempts to do so for the past century. Lt. Col Roger Ramjet has a serious major malfunction. At least he has let us know that a former West Point instructor believes the U.S. military is brainwashing ("desensitzing") its recruits with mind control programs. Which is hilarious news to me - I thought they were supposed to be developing "combat awareness". But then again, what do I know, I never taught at West Point.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
....that blindly let their kids watch ultra-violent movies and play adult rated games?
I believe that the *some* under 14`s could be warped a bit by repeatedly killing virtual people and watching splatter-fests. The thing is though this is all getting a bit serious now. Up until a few years ago a game was simply a game, now they are increasingly becoming virtual worlds to escape to.
Simply because graphics are now becoming very closer to reality there is much less of an imagination jump. I can imagine thousands of 12 or 13 year old boys around the world that are excluded and bullied every day and their only pleasure in life is when they get home, start up quake2 or kingpin and happily imagine they are killing the people they hate. Now understand we can(and do) do that without problems, as can most under 14`s.
But don`t you think there are some that can get so sucked in that they wander the school halls imagining a crosshair target the bullies heads?
I certainly would hope that this kid does not have access to guns. Remember these games are pretty recent, there is no precident for these experiences in the history of the human species.
And within a year or 2 (with the PS2 and 4th-gen 3D cards)graphics are going to be almost perfect, no more blocky characters, realistic gore splatters, pools of blood oozing, etc. You think games makers aren`t going to use the new technology to make violence more realistic? Yeah right, the would love all the negative publicity. I guess we can be almost thankful the soldier of fortune game is coming out on todays technology. An alternate reality where killing is realistic and fun is not something under 14`s should be playing.
Of course a disturbed under 14 can be violently triggered by a bully going too far, his own imagination, a movie or a hell of a lot of other stuff.
But i believe that the idiots who cry for these games to be banned can have a very strong case in court, if the disturbed can retreat into a violent world were they can brutally kill their enemies with no consequences for themselves then maybe the game can be a more powerful trigger than anything else in society.
Obviously anyone over 14 can safely play these games and enjoy them for what they are.
But kids imaginations are powerful and intrude on reality (ever watched kids play with toy cars or Gi Joe).
I believe that any parent who lets the under 14`s play at being a killer and watch movies rated 15 or over should be fined instantly, no trial.
And repeated convictions should result in jail or at least a responsible parenting course to be taught to at least care about the upbringing of them instead of just throwing the kids in front of a tv or computer and ignoring them.
Sorry to talk jibberish but i`ve been working all night.............
Called The War in Heaven, by Eternal Warriors. Check out this.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Basic training is all about turning ordinary, nonviolent people into killers, but only on command. It isn't easy, but it works. And yes, the military does use Super Nintendos as a most important part of the process.
Desensitization goes to the heart of women in combat. Few men can normally put up with the sound of women in pain. Even the Israelis found that out. BT now conditions men to ignore their screams, even to laugh at them, except this training doesn't seem to turn off upon reintegration into civilian life.
Hitler new this. He found Germans couldn't kill German Jews. That's why he spread the death camps around different countries. German guards for Polish Jews, Polish guards for Russians.
You ought to read up on the Einsatzgruppen.
I've read an earlier Grossman book, _On_Killing_. He knows much more about people in the real world
actually kill than anyone else I've come across, including that CNBC commentator. Some of the numbers having to do with killing during close combat are amazing: until recently, soldiers in the front lines tended to not fire or intentionally miss when faced with the prospect of killing the enemy. Firing rates during the Napoleonic war, the first and second world wars were from 1-5%. During Korea, it rose to 50%. And Vietnam, about 95%. The difference? Post WWII, the Army introduced realistic stimulus-response fire training.
Just like what is now provided to every school child via violent video games.
None of this says what will make an individual psychotic snap, of course. But today's psychotics are much better trained and armed than those of yesteryear.
Douglas Ridgway
I can understand why people can blame FPS video games with death, but I can't understand how any evidence is procured. I remember in the Comombine (correct me if I spelled that wrong) shootings, the media was saying things about how the stuents involved int the shooting played violent video games. As far as I know, so does every other teenage boy with a computer! This really cannot be used as evidence that video games lead to vioence.
.. one of the strips had Calvin watching a really violent TV-show, and saying something like (not excact quote): "Does video violence glorify violence? Sure. Does it lower our tolerance level for violence? You bet. Does it cause violence? That's hard to prove...." followed by the moral (:-)) "the trick is to ask the right question". The point is that, while both video and computerviolence, may glorify murder and violence. It is really hard to prove that it causes it. People have tried with studies concerning the fact that a lot of kids that plays violent computer games, is aggressive and violent in the real world. The problem is that it is very easy to jump to the wrong conclusion. You can say that: "this proves that computer games causes violence". But in reality any good statistics professor will tell you that this is abusing the statistic facts. It is a sort of "chicken and egg" situation. Does computer games cause violence, or does violent kids have a tendency to play violent games. My opinion is that it is a little of both. Although I'm not trying to say that it can be proved. I just think that people that have a potential to be violent could be triggered by graphical violence. On the other hand, alcohol causes a lot of grief for some people. Even lethal accidents with "innocent" people involved. Does this mean that we should ban all alcohol? I don't think so. Rather than taking the extreme way out, without even knowing the real facts, we should focus on trying to help the people that do seem to get affected by computerviolence. Parents have a tendency to blame the games, when they are the ones that should be held liable, for not looking after their children.
Youth crime as a whole in America is going DOWN .. not UP... Crime and violence by youth are declining. Violent juvenile crime arrests have fallen by 25% since 1994. Don't listen to the hype!
Funny, but the Auditor General here in Perth has just completed a 5 year study that concludes that children playing "violent" computer games won't grow up to be any more violent or abusive than kids that don't...
Life not only imitates art, but art conditions life. You're already conditioned, and don't know it.
If someone dunked the Star of David in urine, you'd be calling for hate crimes legistlation. If the portrait of Simon Wiesenthal was smeared with feces, you'd be in the street.
The Cross was dunked in urine and displayed as art, and instead of outrage, you paid for it. The Virgin Mary, the Christian equivalent of Weisenthal, was smeared with feces, and you cheered.
Why? Because you were taught to. You've never given this discrepancy any intelligent thought, and I'm sure your government schoolteachers never asked you to.
Art is not about thinking, it is about feeling without knowing why. This is why Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, and every other totalitarian wanted to control art. This is why the National Endowment for the Arts is so controversial. Art in the hands of government trains people to kill.
And yes, the NEA financed both of my realworld examples.
You're absolutely correct with regard to shooting accuracy. Quake isn't going to help at all. A game with an electronic gun might help a little, but there's no recoil to deal with.
The MSNBC article has an interesting quote:
"The FBI says that the average experienced law enforcement officer, in the average shootout, at an average range of seven yards, hits with approximately one bullet in five."
... which is pretty sad. I used to be in the military, and I still pride myself on excellent marksmanship. At 7 yards, I can guarantee you that I would make a head-shot on a stationary target every time. And I sure as hell could shoot better than 1 of 5 on a moving target at that range.
But if someone had never shot a real gun before, they'd be much less accurate. The article goes on to debunk this Lt. Colonel quite a bit (pointing out that the kid in Kentucky was shooting at a crowd of 50 people and that he really couldn't miss). It also pointed out that the kid had prior shooting experience, although the Lt. Colonel's book incorrectly asserted the contrary.
The Lt. Colonel appears to be jumping on the fear and paranoia wagon in order to improve his cash flow. If he's really been in combat situations, then he should know better than to spew this kind of crap.
Best regards,
SEAL
A most exclent point. However for the un-educated I have provided a translation of you last peice of sarcasm.
A point I need to add to this: people seem to go on about de-sensitising people to bad language / violence etc.. But by removeing these things from culture you will sensitise people to it. The real world is full of violence and bad language and the last thing kinds need to is to out into this world expecting plesantville.
Everyone seems to be going on about the media targets like doom/quake/carmageddon etc.. But what about Pokemon?
If you stop and think about it this game/cartoon teaches kids to capture innocent animals and then make the fight with others.
then don't fucking say it, or say offtopic in your subject. Learn some fucking netiquitte. "Me Too" adds nothing to the conversation, and in a medium like this, wastes everyone's time. If it's already been said, don't say it; Think before you post, and maybe we can get slashdot back down to 100 posts/article. That is, readable. I'm not some sort of elitist. I wasn't "here before anyone else." But in the last few weeks, the number of comments per article has skyrocketed. And that makes me waste more time here to get less data. And that pisses me off.
What people like Grossman really fail to realize is that games like Doom and Quake may actually PREVENT teen violence.
I don't know about any of the rest of you, but I HATED high school. I went to school in a small rural town, where the jocks, preps, and other such idiots ruled the school. If you had any intelligence or individuality you were persecuted and treated with hostility. I hung with a group of other outcast people that weren't widely popular, but were good people. All the insanity about the "Trenchcoat Mafia" really angers me, because it amounts to nothing more than hysteria generated by the media to single out different people even more so than they have been already, which creates fear and suspicion on the part of all those who "fit in." In freaking out about the Columbine shooting, they are doing nothing more than perpetuating and increasing everything that is wrong with high school to begin with. Furthermore they are also allowing administrators to enhance our police state even more by installing more security cameras, metal detectors, microphones, etc, and allowing unreasonable searches and other invasions of privacy. One would think that they wanted it to be more like a prison than an institution of education, which is ironically the way I viewed it when I was in high school.
I honestly hated high school and most of the moron students and totalitarian staff, and sometimes wished that some sort of fighter plane would miss its target and accidentally drop a bomb on the school on a day that I was sick. But instead of plotting my gameplan for going in one day and blowing a bunch of people away, I contented myself to playing with my computer a lot of the time. And yes, that included many enjoyable multiplayer Doom fragfests. It was a great outlet for all of that frustration, and allowed me to get rid of it in a fun and harmless way. And I met some really cool people in the process.
So, all these people who are criticizing video games, the internet, literature, and any other form of expression as making youth more aggressive, should think about the fact that many of us are interested in these things as a means of coping with all of the REAL aggression that is imposed upon us by "normal" people.
i submitted this to /. but they didn't post it up. very interesting read
Guns don't kill people.
People don't kill people.
Bullets kill people.
Guns just make the bullets go really fast.
If parent would quit using games as a baby sitter then people might not think this of games. TV violence is a lot worse than video games for one reason. You actually see real people getting killed, hit, punched, shot. Oh and I think there has been an increase in this kids killing their peers incedents because of mass media coverage bringing it to all the kids in America. If someone was on the edge that would push them over thinking that someone will remember what they do in the same way. I didn't even watch one second of the Colombine shooting coverage. I just saw still pictures. My kids don't need to see that.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
when you shoot them. It's a common misconception. If a weapon existed that when fired, would knock the other person down from the force of the bullets, it would, by the laws of physics, also cause the person firing the gun to fall. It's not instinctual either, according to studies. The real reason people fall when shot is because they think that's what they are supposed to do. I kid you not. It's those who don't fall even when they have a few bullet sin them that tend to cause the most trouble for the police
There is a reason for the spread of this lie, however, and that is to distract from the total failure of the immoral attack on human rights disguised as a war on drugs. The illusion of increasing crime, and the designation of scapegoats such as video games, disguises the failure of current government policy, leading to increasing the power government has, allowing it to push the failed policy even harder. A vicious cycle -- the more powerfully the government pushes its drug policy, the worse the policy fails; the more it fails, the more scapegoats the government uses to increase its power to push that policy.
By the way, the FBI page is not very conducive to reading the UCR. The sections with information are not linked, but they are there if you poke around enough.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
I wanted to run over pedestrians and push other people off the road WAY before Carmaggeddon came out. Carmageddon has merely allowed me to practice so that when I finally succumb to "road rage" I will run over pedestrians with skill and style.......
MUHAHAHAHA!!!
On a more serious note, psychiatry (sp?) has long recognised that cars represent "defended space" and people are naturally more agressive when "their" space is intruded upon. So these desires to run over pedestrians are perfectly natural, and have little, if anything to do with playing car games. Just don't transpose thought into action!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Though their statistics may be true, that violent games make violent kids, it is actually the opposite way. There is a difference between saying "Violent games make violent kids" and "Violent kids play violent games." Violent kids play violent games, because they are probably entertained by them--but the cause for their violence are not the games, but something else. Stating that games make kids aggresive is like saying that "Shotgun Bubba" hunts deer because he played too much Deer Hunter. The reason, that "Shotgun Bubba" may play Deer Hunter, is that he likes hunting deer--but the game Deer Hunter is not the cause for this. Another example is that many people play sports games because they also like playing these sports in real life. People that like soccer might be entertained by FIFA 2000, where they can see all their favorite players. But certanly, playing FIFA 2000, won't make somebody become a proffesional soccer player. The point is that the article just states two facts, but shows no correlation between them. This would be like saying "Brushing your teeth causes you to become violent", and your facts would be that all people that were violent brushed their teeth.
non-military credentials? Be he a psychiatrist? Be he a psychologist? Be he any kind of licensed therapist? I be seeing the "Lieutenant Colonel" identifier on his name. I not be seeing the "Doctor" identifier on his name. "Lieutenant Colonel" means he is used to leading military units. Military units train to kill the enemy (among other things). So he must know what causes people to kill. But military units also have Physical Training (push-ups, jumping jacks and running). So physical training teaches people how to kill. Logical. Assuming you buy into his rank as having any validation on this subject.
Then you're just as bad as the first posters.
My belief in the past was that games/movies/TV did not teach kids violence. This point of view changed when I met a 5 year old boy who had been playing doom since he could hold a mouse. This kid had no concept of death or dying. Every day he would often make threatening comments to people - adults or kids - around him. Killing was only a game to him. I am absolutely convinced that had someone put a gun in his hand he would shoot someone just as easily as if he was playing Doom. He wouldn't do this out of malice, but because he did not know the difference between games and reality. That's the danger of video games.
Now, his parents did not put any effort into teacjing him better. This is definitely part of the problem. Good parenting, explaining about games, may help avoid some of the damage done, but children left to themselves will still be harmed.
I'll repeat the important part - The danger is not that games will cause kids to harm someone out of malice, but that they will do it because they don't know the difference.
Even though he was a lousy shot, he knew enough to aim at people if you want to kill them, something he wouldn't have known without Q3.
He knew to aim at people if you want to kill them? What other reason would there be to aim at someone? To ivite them over for Hannukah?
Enough with the semantics though, more to the point, the guy wouldn't have known where to aim if he hadn't played quake? How about walking down to the library and picking up any medical or history book? Would that in turn make people who have a knowledge of basic human physics killers? Why then doesn't more doctors go berzerk instead of postal workers? And why do people who doesn't play computer games actualy kill others, pure dumb luck? Since they can't know where to aim, they haven't played quake.
Yes, there is a connection between watched violent behaviour and expressed violent behaviour. But it's much smaller than say, the connection between endured stress and violent behaviour, or the connection between dysfunctional upbringing and violent behaviour. And if you study you will notice that there is a causual connection between watched violence and expressed, but there has not been a conclusive study to show how much of that is direct and how much is shared (ie the "do people who watch violent movies become more violent or do violent people watch violent movies?" dilema). (Disclamer; I haven't seen one mentionend in any of the sociology and social theory classes I've studied.)
Phase 1: Where do you want to go today? Phase 2: This is where you want to go today. Phase 3: You're not going any
One little nagging question...were those targets shooting _back_ at you?
Notice, the quote is about a _shootout_ at close range, not shooting on a practice range.
Bad guys shooting back at you do not stand there and give you a nice stationary target.
Go look up the statistics on soldiers firing in combat. In some cases, _hundreds_ of rounds are expended per hit.
Personally, I don't think we can point the finger at any single cause of the problem. Do TV, movies, realistic "death simulator" games play a role in developing violent tendencies? Sure. Do the home environment, the school environment, the friends a kid keeps, and parental involvement (or lack thereof) in their child's life also play roles in youthful violence? You bet your sweet ass they do. Do genetics play a role in a predisposition to violent behavior? Probably. All of these are contributing factors to the social engineering of a 14-year old killer.
I _do_ feel that as "death simulators" (gotta love that term) become more and more realistic, it is going to raise the thrill level the player feels while playing the game. I _live_ to experience extreme emotions...so I play games that allow me to escape from reality and experience things every now and then that I'm not going to experience sitting at my desk writing "killer" Perl code. (That's same reason I love poetry and perform some "heavy" classical music every now and then...they all allow me to experience a wide range of emotions) The more realistic the game, the more real my physical and mental reactions to my sensory input are. The difference is that I have a strong enough moral (and psychological) foundation to know that, while it's really thrilling to blow some guy away on the screen, it's not appropriate for me to walk out on Park Ave. one day at lunch and start taking shots at cabbies because they drive too damn fast...and goddamn it, I'm going to make NY a safer place for everyone (except cabbies)! Some children are lacking that social buffer that stops most of us from acting on our more primal urges.
That's what the real issue is. Is it the resposibility of video games to develop social responsibility? Of course not. It's the responsibility of the families, the schools, even the immediate peer group to engineer social responsibility in future generations. If those institutions have failed, it is unfair to point the finger at a violent video game (an aggravating factor, but not a direct cause).
At 7 yards, I can guarantee you that I would make a head-shot on a stationary target every time.
But that's without the stress of a real-life shootout (where the other person is trying to KILL you!). LEO's get a lot of training for these situations, but when it comes down to two people 7 yards away trying to put holes in eachother, it's probobly pretty hard to concentrate (particularily becuase shootouts don't happen that often, so it's not something an officer is used to). I'd also guess that at least some of those missed shots are being fired in the general direction of the bad guy, so that he can't relax and get a better shot.
Hmm.. I guess playing games like Quake/Unreal might help one deal with the pyschological effects of a shootout, and so in that way they could make a person have better aim (because you are used to dealing with that adreline rush of being shot at).
- Isaac =)
3 inch spread the other night. 30 yards, .45 ACP. Took my time though.
Why not blame the person who committed the crime rather than the media, or video games, etc. I mean after all it was their choice to commit the crime, so they are to blame! The media is just an excuse to hide the fact that anyone could actually do something like that with his or her own free will. If they really want to blame something other than the offender, why not blame it on overpopulation, since that is my theory to the rise in crime.
People pay good money to get their message (even product placement in 3D shoot-em-ups) out. Have you heard many .com adds lately? Have you tried punching in a domain name your heard/read in the media? Yes you have.
This is just one example of how the media influences the people exposed to it. Many people in many differant walks of life pay good money to get their message out to the people.
Why do they pay this kind of money to advertise? Because they know that the message has influence.
Consider this:
(1)Ford Motor Company recieved $66.15 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(2)Anheuser-Busch recieved $17.83 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(3)Dell Computer recieved $54.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(4)Microsoft recieved $23.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(5)Time Warner recieved $19.686in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(source)
So we have Ford spending $1,150,700,000 a year telling people to buy cars. Dell spending $227,100,000 a year telling people their computers are cool. Walmart spends $404,500,000 into telling you how warm and fuzzy they are. They do this, because it influences people exposed to the medium.
Now, when people sugest that perhaps the media may have a negative impact on society, the standard response seems to be "We're not telling people to do this or that"' "The media didn't tell that kid to do this or that". Then why do people pay so much for influence in that same medium?
So before you say that the media doesn't influence you think again. It does. :)
(The test: What bands logo was on the nail box in Quake 1?)
did somebody say "OPEN SOURCE?!?!?!!!!!!!"
thank you.
Would a thorough, practiced study of _Doom_ and _Quake_ levels teach people about logical ambush locations, lines-of-sight, and other tactical concepts that might be useful *if* they already intended to go shoot up a place?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Just last weekend I read in a local Belgin newspaper that according to a scientific research team of the University Of Utrecht(netherlands), children having grown up with videao games and having played with it, develop far better their capacities for virtual/pro-active thinking ("what would happen if ..." - like in playing chess), spacial insight, ... . It wasn't proven that playing those games increased violence.
Violence on TV and games are not really the problem; violence has been in art for thousands of years. The real problem is amusement. TV turns everything into entertainment; the war on drugs is entertainment, our political spectacles are entertainment, the tragedies of others are purely entertainment. Combine this with the fact that TV is NOT real (it is mediated reality, and epistemelogically polluted), and that the advertising detritus it pipes into your mind is violently irrational, and yes, you have a serious problem on your hands. I can't give a good run down of everything he presents here, but that is the general thesis of the book.
The columbine crime has nothing to do with "teenage rebellion" or "drugs" or "geekiness". It has everything to do with commodification - it was a designer massacre. Idiots putting up ten commandments in schools are only worsening the problem. I think Calvin Klein ads are far more dangerous than quake.
support gun control: take guns from cops
But then I played Unreal. I didn't think much about it at the time, but after blowing off something's legs and having it claw its way after me, hearing people scream in pain as their lives are needlessly wasted in a hail of rockets -- watching the news turns my stomach.
And what do people against violence in the media often suggest? Make the violence less explicit and just generally prettier. Now I think the notion of people -- children in particular, when I was watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a child it all flew over my head, I just thought Raphael was cool -- taking subliminal moral lessons from entertainment is bullshit, but if things are that way, which would you rather have your children believe -- that Wile E. Coyote can escape a mallet, anvil, and bowling ball on the head unharmed to concoct another scheme? That it might be okay to hurt someone if you're angry with them? Or that when you hurt people, they're hurt?
I think when people want to sugar-coat violence they're running from having to face the real consequences of what happens when you hurt someone, and there could be many reasons for this. To see the desensitization to the consequences of violence -- not to violence itself -- you have to look no further than the heroic way we looked at Kosovo and its ilk, and ignored the fact that we destroyed hundreds of lives that had nothing to do with our conflicts.
(A little clarification here -- "showing children what violence really accomplishes" doesn't mean showing Halloween to three-year-olds. In my mind, it means letting seven-year-olds see, say, Dragon Ball Z -- where the protagonist recognizes the consequences of fighting and avoids it even at his own peril, and the villains really hurt people, and not just physically.)
Looking at it, I'd guess he meant that art influences behavior, the better the art, the stronger the influence.
Doom and Q3 have really poor quality art. As technique and hardware improve, the art and its influence will increase. So, as Doom gets better, there should be more school shootings.
The thing that rebuts this, is that killings at school have been dropping the last ten years. Our awareness is greater, but only because school violence has become the promotional bit of choice for ABCNBCCBSPBS.
As for gun control, never have guns been less available in society. 30 years ago, my brother used to take the train out to the sticks for rabbit hunting, and nobody gave a second thought to the rifle he was carrying. Just try that today (please don't).
One thing, though, if we had a Republican president, we would be hearing about mental health cuts and how it ties in.
I understand how working on Windows and related excreta has made you bitter, twisted, and without any moral values. You have also lost the ability to write clear, brief, and succinct text.
I also understand how hurt you feel, as you see the value of MS stock sink lower in the water, like the Titanic before she went down. Get in a lifeboat now, before they are all gone.
Abandon your hatred. Abandon your Thesaurus. Repent for your sins (I know this will take you four nights, if you are as long-winded in your repentance as you are in your postings) but I am patient, and I will wait.
Embrace open source. Help make the world a better place for all, gameplayer or not, by creating software and protocols which don't suck.
Love,
The Penguin
If you had a 9 year old son/daughter, and you had the choice to give them Q3 or Pokemon, which would you give them? Let's also say that your 9 year old is especially gifted (since you taught her/him the ins and outs of Linux :-)) and knows where he/she can go online and download the violent games. Would you not observe your child's computing habits until you thought they were old enough to handle more adult oriented games? Just a thought...
/. zen: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters...
Mr. Penguin, I think that was yet another Perl-generated nonsense post.
If his arguement in this case made sense we would need to have a full investigation of the military, people would end up court marshalled and it would cause a huge shake up of the simulator using part of the military. Of course, if you told anyone with a brain in the military this thesis, they would laugh at you. Simulators in the military are designed to teach soldiers to use things like tanks and fighter planes more effectively, not to brainwash them. Games like Quake are not even realistic simulators, unless there is some other dimension where getting shot in the head doesn't kill you and ogres and other monsters exist. Quake and the rest are designed for having fun, it is true that some (Rainbow Six or Medal of Honor ) do attempt to include a certain amount or realism. But even then, I do not believe anyone ever learned how to shoot a gun with a mouse (besides, the realism in these games and the lack of "Satanic" imagery means they'll be less likely targets than scary looking games like Quake. This isn't about logic, or science, it's about image. The politicians want to look like they are going after the evil game makers who are hurting our children, and going after a game called Medal of Honor or one based on Tom Clancy's novels won't do it.) Besides, if I have a gun, and the person I want to kill is completely unarmed and untrained in combat situations, the other person is probably going to die even if I lived in a box for the last twenty years and never saw a gun in my life. Guns are powerful killing machines, extensive training with them is needed only when you are facing an armed and trained opponent. My Dad was a cop for twenty years, and I still wouldn't want him to face a teenage kid with a gun if he was unarmed and not wearing his vest. An even worse situation is if you take a bunch of school kids who are more likely to freeze up when scared than react in the way a person trained in combat is, and the situation will definitely turn out tragically. (I think movies do give us a distorted view of combat, they make us think that completely unarmed people stand a chance against a well armed foe. But I don't blame the movies, I blame people for being naive enough to believe it!)
But if you want to really understand how open minded and enlightened the government (and Grossman) are about video games, you need only read this, a letter from a professor of media studies at MIT.
Incidentally, I found the MSNBC article to be touchy-feely gobbledygook. Sure it takes on Grossman (Grossman is an obvious crackpot) but it seems to punctuate every sentence with "but then again, he may have a point." It's because of guys like the articles author that while I can easily get a real .357 Magnum anytime I want (and probably could have stolen my Dad's when I was still in grade school, if I'd had a mind to), if I want to get a plastic lightgun to play House of the Dead II on my American Dreamcast, I'll have to rewire it so it will no longer block out the Japanese light guns. Incidentally, I believe in the Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms. (Sorry, I know the stuff about guns in this post will certainly be picked up by gun control people on this forum, but gun control is a seperate issue. Guns are dangerous, the arguement comes down to whether you think they are more dangerous than having an armed government and an unarmed populace. I just don't want to get sidetracked into this issue.) However, I also think it is incredibly naive for people to think that restricting plastic lightguns is going to stop any crimes other than the many that are actually committed with plastic lightguns (against photon-based life forms, no doubt) when real guns are available.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I can't wait to try this on my Beowulf Cluster...
Why not say that NEWS MEDIA makes kids violent.
Let's use the same reasoning here. You read in the paper, and see on television reports of murders. Over and Over and Over. Then, you hear and see stories about Rapes. And Kidnapping. And rioting. Now because you read all of this in the paper and see it on the news, that means it's your turn. You've been desensitized to it, so Let's RUN OUT and KILL a man!
Wrong. Why is it wrong? It's wrong for the same reasoning behind why video games don't make people violent. It's a psychological issue, folks! But nobody seems to want to admit that. Why put blame on the individual, when we can blame a mass market?
But if you try to change the scapegoat, the entire argument falls apart. Get over it people, Video games make about as many psychotics as Romper Room.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
...is difficult to describe, and multifaceted. I will not try to do so here, but I think I can point out two things that other posters just touched on about:
1) With a growing number of kids who are not doing the same activities as kids one or two generations earlier. We as a society are becoming *increasingly* digital and interconnected. The media/parents/unconnected fail to realize that most of the younger generation of kids are not entrenched in the mindset of "real world" competetive activities (sports, etc). Why? You can get the same rush by playing Quake as you do by playing a game of football, without the potential for injuries/accidents. And you can do this while doing other things on your 'puter. Of course, you get good exercise by sports...
2) The media likes to have scapegoats that are unknown & a distinct minority. Many older folks don't even know what the core of the game is all about. All they see is the blood and gore. Not a high percentage of the total populace play games that dish out gobs of blood (I only played Quake/Doom when my friends did, but I spent far too much time on Starcraft/SpacewardHo).
3) A real fear I have is that most of these games *are* zero sum. The world as we know it, is generally *not* (society is a good example of a non-zero-sum environment). Immersion in this kind of activity for long periods of time, and development of other psychological needs (ego, self worth, etc) based on these games causes a very fragile (and potentially disturbed) individual.
Of course the same results with addiction to real world sports (football, tennis, etc), but it's significantly more difficult to get addicted to such activities (due to fatigue, accessibility, weather, etc), and Also, enough people like real world sports that this becomes "okay" with the media.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Shortly after playing a 72-hour marathon round of Nethack I, Snood Wigglesworth IV, felt greatly compelled to journey with my pet cat into the nearest sewer. Uncanny, isn't it?!
See this excellent article:
http://web.chad.org/var/doc/gamers- are-killers/
You are a conspiracy theorist aren't you? Serieous all pro-legalization people come up with the craziest ideas. The simple reason is youth-related crime reporting == ratings. Its all about the benjaminz bebe. When something comes around that dethrones youth-related crimes as king of ratings, the media will apropriately shift.
i have recently been contacted by an elite research group that is claiming my open source game is causing children to abuse midgets.
i want to defend my labor of love by asserting that a game cannot cause children to abuse midgets. did the "wizard of oz" or "star wars" cause children to abuse midgets?
no, what needs to be addressed here is what has happened in this society that it now produces children who are midgetopathic.
what about parents who take their children to midget tossing events? ever hear of "midget bowling?" how is it that i grew up playing midget-centric games (you don't think mario is a midget?!) and i am not abusive to midgets?
no, friends, this is a fundamental problem with society, not just one highly innovative open source game.
i think these political opportunists and other social vultures need to start thinking about real solutions to real problems, instead of spending all of their time working on the next election.
how many times have you seen a midget being abused in media (a problem as old as media itself). are you abusive to midgets? that's what i thought.
yes, midgets are a valuable resource in our society. without midgets, we wouldn't have "munchkins," "r2d2," "jawas," or "willow." i, for one, am deeply grateful for their contribution to society and i, for one, would not create a game promoting anti-midget sentiments.
thank you.
I personally think most correlations between video games and teen violence are bull. Having said that, however, I must point out the following:
Saying that people are naturally violent, naturally want to be violent, and that video games only tap into this urge and desire misses the point, which is: social orders are all about getting people not to do what they naturally do, because what they naturally do isn't good for cohabiting with the rest of society. Killing is one of the most natural acts in this world, but societies make most instances of killing illegal.
If you want to say "We have to suppress real violence, and therefore we have to allow for pretend violence in order to let people release their pent-up frustrations at not getting to be violent.", then you have a different point.
And while you're at it, you can also point out that many of the rules of law were founded on the idea of not suppressing violence, but rather in channeling violence and revenge in certain fashions. I.e., when a slave or a tree killed a man, it was given to his family to hack up into bits as revenge. With things like capital punishment still floating around, our society is much more violent than many would hope. I'm still amused by the correlation between calling for capital punishment and demonizing video games.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
What kind of person says that their kids are so detached from reality that they can't tell the difference between a computer screen that has angels with ripped off wings and the rea 9mm in their hands in the school yard?
What I'm trying to say is there are other problems going on with some kid says that playing a game made him want to kill people. In gact, has any _kids_ said that or is the adults who don't want to blame the fact that they let the TV and the computer grow their kids up?
I've gone out with my share of single mothers to know that if you don't parent your children, they'll find a way to let you know.
I woiuld think that an M16 with a scope would be slightly easier to aim with than a musket. Perhaps this explains these statistics? Not to mention a musket takes 15 seconds to reload after each shot.
It makes me want to puke when some feeb with an agenda uses a tragedy like this to blather his/her preconceived ideas and sell books!
Got a beef? Plug a name into the Bizarre Rumour Generator!
Yeah, that's right -- "thou shalt not kill" would've been a terrible message for those monsters to read every day.
The trench-coat boys were a group of upper-middle class, well-off white youths who became severely disatisfied with their inability to achieve a higher social standing. Having been merinated and desensitized by a voilence-glamourizing gun-crazy American culture, they attacked the unaccepting social class in the way they were best taught.
Read Dr. Elliot Leyton's book "Hunting Humans" to learn what brings serial killers and and mass murderers to cause havoc among the social class they couldn't achieve. - Stephen@rightclick.ca (sorry, I'm not logged in)
A lot of people don't deserve to be parents.
Their constant ignorance of their child(ren)'s well-being, and lack of care in ensuring they have a healthy, loving home environment, creates far greater consequences than they could ever imagine. Kids who are ignored by their parents (that is to say, their parents give them less loving attention than other parents give their kids) will more than likely end up sitting in-front of the computer screen for hours and hours at a time, indulging themselves in one thing or another.
Ideally, they'd become Linux zealots, and become productive members of the community. That's not always the case, though. Depending on the acuteness of the home environment, especially at earlier ages, they may have the ingrained need to "act out", to "be seen", and to "get back at society" for what they perceive as its oppressive behaviour towards them. And thus are born your counterculture hackers, your obsessive Unreal Tournament players, your sexually depraved MUD-players, and so on. A lot of these kids end up becoming desensitized and disconnected from the reality around them, and suddenly walking through a high-school (the one they hate, the one that oppresses them) becomes a matter of fragging people on the other team.
The best way for society to avoid this sort of bullshit is for the parents to practice hands-on parenting from day one, and never, ever quitting. This means spending more time doing activities with the kids; going to sports events; ncluding them in family activities; encouraging open, honest dialogue; and, sure, playing FPS games infront of the computer... If you're a parent, and you're reading this, READ THAT AGAIN. Don't assume you're a great parent, just because you think you're the most damned amazing person to ever walk this earth. Don't be an ignorant fool -- love your children, and demonstrate that through positive words and positive actions, every day.
As for the games? Often enough, these things are developed by people who are themselves desensitized to violence and such. Perhaps John Carmack was neglected as a child, and this is his way of showing the world, "hey, I'm allright". But what does it matter... we shouldn't be spending our lives judging the artistic talents of others. We can simply choose not to buy (or download) the game.
Daltorak.
Of course, this is not to say that us normal folks shouldn't enjoy a game of Quake 3, but this guy seems to have gotten his facts backward (among other things).
Lt. Col. Grossman's book seems to revolve around a few basic themes:
Exposure to violent entertainment desensitizes youth to acts of violence and leads to aggressive behavior.
Violent video and computer games are an ultra-effective way of instructing murder.
Youth crime is rising in America as is the amount of violence in video and computer games.
Now, you would think that a career soldier would know better than this. I know I am working with a condensation of the Colonel's words here, but work with me.
Point one: Exposure to violence certainly does desensitize, but I think that what leads to aggressive behavior is a lack of discipline, compassion and focus. If a person, young or not, does not have effective means of safely externalizing aggressive feelings and instincts while still feeling safe and cared for, they are going to go nuts and start blowing people away.
You never see a story about some 17 year old gunning down his class where the headline is "Happy, expressive, and well adjusted captain of the wrestling team and merit scholar John Smith executes school mates in a fit of undefined pent-up rage". You also never see the headline: "Disciplined and obedient Marine Private Jackson slaughters his squad for lack of purpose and direction".
Point two: Violent video and computer games are an ultra-effective way of instructing point and click techniques. Sure we can learn some strategy and conniving and learn to become very comfortable with "killing" thousands of game entities. But we all know it is not real. No matter how realistic a game is, it will never be the same as killing a real human being, face to face.
If *anything* is an ultra-effective way of learning to murder, it is enlisting in a branch of the United States Armed Forces. I don't think the Colonel can argue against the fact that most people who enlist, whether or not they are innately aggressive people, are quite definitely tought to kill. Are we to believe that the thousands of violent game players in this country are more dangerous than the thousands of professionally trained killers? I personally don't think either group is inherently dangerous, mainly because the vast majority of people in the world really are fairly well adjusted and not likely to hurt anyone without provocation.
Point three: I could swear I have seen several articles by now, citing findings that youth crime is actually down, in spite of the rise in violence in games.
That is all I have to say about that.
Nothing can possiblai go wrong. Er...possibly go wrong.
Strange, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong.
Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
If you want more people than just the Slashdot community to see this article, go down to the bottom of the article. There's a rating system MSNBC uses so that viewers (readers) can rate every article they read, on a scale from 1 to 7.
I'm not saying Slashdot effect the poll and vote 7 all the way - read it for yourself. However, I certainly voted 7.
The top ten stories at MSNBC.com are updated constantly, but at least if the rating of this article reaches a few people outside of the community that already sympathizes (sp?) with it, it'll be worth it. Also, I think the top 10 headlines are read aloud on MSNBC's television broadcasts (but am not sure).
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Working in retail, I have had parents get extremely violent towards me in the presance of thier children for thing I cannot change. I have seen parents fight eachother in the toy section of a department store full of cildren for a package of pokemon cards/a fuby/a tickle me elmo. You try to convince a child that a game like doom is real, you would most likely be laughed at. But honestly when thier parent or people they look up to become violent in a generaly trivial situation what kind of example that that set on children?
Video games? Blameing things on someone/something else is a trait that humans have adopted quite well since climbing to the top of the food chain. Anyone who has ever watched a political assembly would know this. The person with the best excuse is generaly the most popular. Its almost like kicking dirt in the face of the founding governments that generaly were based on integrity. But the sad thing is when poeple get hurt by this blame game.
Funny you should mention this... A friend of mine just told me about that very thing happening that resulted in his wife's car being totaled. Her car was parked at the gas station where she works when it was hit by a truck that was released into neutral by a 4 year old left alone in it.
Fortunately, only property damage resulted, but the story about the little boy's mother trying to cover for her mistake was almost funny.
-The Consul
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
Everybody wants what they can't get, and everybody wants to do what they can't do. So naturally, it's fun to kill imaginary people within a digital realm. But there aren't any truly harmful effects from killing imaginary beings. The question here is what prevents people from going out and killing people? Or raping people? Or taking out baseball bats and beating people? I believe that it's the intuition within. Everybody knows that getting shot hurts. So if someone would want to kill someone, just the fact that it hurts would cause that person to think more deeply. And another point that Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman missed was the fact that practically all of these teenage killers had some sort of mental illness. I can't stress enough that most of our population does not have a mental illness, and the thing that makes these kids kill are violent childhoods, and other sorts of things. Also, a lot of these killings related to religion in some way or another, but I can't really connect them.
Finally, with all due respect to him, Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman is an idiot. He is completely out of touch with the teenage population, and however old he is, he needs to be a teenager now in order to understand how teenagers these days work. The world is changing so fast that teenagers 10 years ago would probably feel somewhat awkward in high school now.
tomcrooze@hotmail.com
http://www.autodream.com/litestep
These are the reasons that I think kids shoot up schools. There is no nice little category that we can put them into. This is of course, just MHO, based on my observations over the last few years.
1) Most of these kids have been on ritilen. Ritilen is a mind altering drug. We know that it calm's kids down. But, what else does it do? This definately needs more research. Anyway, kids on ritilen, or at least the vast majority, just find school boring. Maybe if we changed the way we learn from rote memorization and textbooks to other things it would help.
2) Most were rejected by the school. They recieved little respect. They were bullied. Perhaps the anger dwelt up inside of them, causing them to explode in rage and shoot up their school. We need to stop bulling in the schools. Teachers need to take responsibility for takink care of other students. They need to listen to the nerds, goths, freaks, etc... too, not just the cool kids.
Also (more of a side note about ritilen), according to David Keirsey, most kids on ritilen are of the SP temprement. This would amount to discrimination against Sensing Perceptives. I think ritilen should not be perscribed in schools for anything.
3) I am willing to admit that video games might have played a role in the shootings. Would they have done it anyway>? Yeah. Did all the shooters play these games? No. But probably the more violent of the shooters played these games. But, the question is do people who play violent games become violent, or are they violent to begin with and get he games later?
4) Perhaps this is, in part, the what Kurt Cobain called the Male Macho Ethos. Where we all try to be stronger then each other. We all think we are meaner, can kill better. It's the what people turn into when they go in the army. They become emotionally indiffrent to almost anything (on the outside), killing becomes easy (on the outside) and they just want to be stronger, kill more, blah, blah, blah then the rest. This might explain all the killers being boys and none girls.
(This might also be why football is such a poopular sport, as Jesse from `Saved By the Bell' said "it a bunch of barbarians kicking each others butt!")
It is, of course, why I don't believe that the army solves anything. It is still worse for both sides, then if they had never fought. And besides, a sufficantly advanced socity should be able to work out our diffrences through treatys, peaceful protests and peaceful revolutions. (note: only in extreme situations is force actually required. In overthrowing a dictator who is killing many people, yes, you will have to get through guards, probably not peacefully, but there are very few excamples of times like this, where there is no other way).
So, in conclution of this rant, I believe that it's a combination of the male macho ethos, rejection from socity, ritilen (sometimes) and video games (sometimes). Also, notice I didn't mention guns. If a kid wants to shoot up his school, he will. The kids at Columbine (sp?) broks what, 22 laws? (you know, if we were breaking _23_ laws, we wouldn't do this, but, t's only 22, so it's ok). If they wants guns, they will get them.
Anyway, I think the way to prevent this is to stop trying to turn our little Johnnys into army men (even things like playing army). This will stop giving men the perception that we should be like that. We need to get kids off of ritilen. We need to teach our kids to accept everybody. Never to be mean. However, I still fail to see an answer to the question:
Do violent people buy violent games? Or do people who play violent games become violent?
Until we know the answer, we will just have to hold off on the banning of violent games in America.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Centipede taught me that heavy artillery works great against insects.
Yet our kids watch the same shows and movies, with the difference that they're shown earlier in the evening on tv, and rated far less strictly (The only ratings are all ages, 12 and 16. Violence that is rewarded or excessive gore goes to rating 16, as does pornographic sex, pretty much everything else is fair game).
Only now are young people perceived to become more violent, but the media and games have been the same for years. So obviously there is some other factor that's to blame. My favorite would be unbridled capitalism, the demise of solidarity, and the coming-soon demise of social services and welfare, forcing people to look out for themselves and only themselves. Etc. etc. The breakdown of the social fabric of society has actually been blamed in Dutch media. No solutions are at hand though -- smaller classrooms, taking care of grandpa, all the obvious things are preceived to take to much time, effort and money, both privately, as well as publicly.
So maybe these are the things to look out for. No wonder kids don't learn how to solve disputes non-violently if they never even socially interact with their own family, but only with the tv.. (Which isn't the tv's fault!)
Food for thought?
--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The games isnt the real problem.. The real problem is that the parents of the kids that ends up shooting up schools are feeding them with knowledge of weapons at an early age.. And the fact that in the states its pretty easy to buy and own a gun. Video games are played all over the world but the shootings are allmost only in the states. So instead of these guys blaming the video game industry they could look at the real problem and change the weapon policy in the states..
- "May the force be with you..."
I've played FPS's (Wolf3d, Doom x, Quake x) for over five years now. So when I recently started playing Paintball, I would have an edge; after all, mastering rail shots via mouse, and circle strafing has to give me some advantage, right? Well, I did learn two things:
-Being able to hit people with a rail from across the field doesn't mean beans when you're actually holding a paintball gun; and
-It can hurt when you get hit!
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
In Japan kids play the same violent games that American kids play. The cartoons they watch are significantly worse however. Much Aneme isn't considered fit for young audiences in the US.
Japan has 1/100th the number of murders by children that occur in the US. They also have slightly more suicides. There is something more going on here than what you watch or play.
disclaimer: I can't recall the reference for these stats but perhaps some Japanese Slashdoter will care to inform us.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman is a fucking mental midget who wasn't happy with his Army retirment benefits. So since he clearly had no real skills or talents (or intelligence), he decided to make the natural choice of going on a crusade. Good choice if you have shit for brains. I guess we need these kinds of people to make us laugh. Expect to see him on Springer in a transexual love triangle when his fifteen minutes of fame are up.
"What ever happened to just plain crazy?"
-Chris Rock
Not when the posts are on-topic.
-- $SIGNATURE
Today, in the US, access to guns and explosives is more restricted than ever before. The KKK (over 5 million members in the 20's) can't attract more than a handfull of whackos in New York City. Welfare services and homeless programs ensure a minimum standard of surival. Some kid shoots some people becasue he was "picked on" (note: He wasn't a victim of the Chinese Exclusion act; He didn't get fired because he said it would be nice if Black people got to vote, too; He didn't get treated like a second class citizen because his name ended in a "z"; People didn't believe that he ate babies; He was "teased").
So why are things like this happening today?
I think that it is mainly a breakdown in the general feelings of self-reliance in this country, coupled with the loss of the traditional family.
People used to have a feeling of pride and self-reliance, the feeling that they were responsible for themseles and their family. Beginning in the sixties, this has changed. Nowadays, it's covenient to blame your parents for not loving you, The White Christian Straight Man (a minority) for "oppressing" you, and the government for not supporting your kids and your lottery ticket habit. During the Depression, my grandfather risked jail by poaching deer to feed his family. Welfare is now the name of the game. Even when I was a kid, we kept water and firewood on hand, since we were usually the last ones to get the power turned back on. Now, coming up on the year 2000, it is chic to brag how unprepared you are (Is there anyone who thinks that there won't be civil unrest? That whackos won't be out in force, looking to create trouble? Did you see the WTO meeting?).
The loss of the traditional family(mom, dad, and the extended family) without anything to replace it has given people a rootless existence. Single-parent households allow less time for the kids, which means they get raised by the television. Fewer close family members means that the kids don't go to Aunt Selma's for the weekend, they get a babysitter(who plunks them in front of the TV, of course).
I don't pretend that I know any of the answers, let alone all of 'em. But, I do know this: Kids are getting worse, not better. And this crap didn't happen in the times of regular family meals, discipline, and limited teleision, either.
-----------
--------------------
Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
JCal: You have called games like Doom and Quake "murder simulators" implying that they can actually teach a person to operate a real firearm and shoot it accurately. Yet in most of these games, the firearms are of a fantasy-futuristic variety with no relationship to real weapons. Also, the games are played in a sitting position and players click on buttons on a mouse and keyboard. Why do you believe playing these games trains children to know how to aim and fire a real, loaded firearm?
Now look at his response:
Col. Grossman: John, if you play at flying a plane we call that a flight simulator. If you play at shooting people it is a murder simulator. Like a plane, a gun is a mechanical device that you learn to use. I primarily apply this term (murder simulator) to games where you actually point a gun and learn trigger reflexes and other skills. But just as a flight simulator where the "player click on buttons on a mouse and keyboard" is still a flight simulator and still useful in helping you learn to fly, so too with Doom and Quake.
Now, that's fair enough. I don't take too much issue with what he says here. But now look at what he does:
Now a law enforcement sniper training magazine ("Sniper". . .) wrote the following in their recent Issue 28:
"A new video game "Silent Scope" is the latest rage at the local arcades. This video game puts you, the sniper, behind a scoped rifle, interacting in an unfolding scenario in which your talents are needed to help rescue the President's daughter from terrorists. The game will help you on observation skills, tracking and identifying targets, snap shooting, and movers. It will never replace real range time, but it is a nice variation and it is fun."
"observation skills, tracking and identifying targets, snap shooting, and movers." This is what is being taught. Like a flight simulator it will not replace real "stick" time, or real "range" time, but it helps.
See how he uses that one particular game, which uses an actual gun (albeit one that doesn't fire bullets) with a scope as its weapon as proof that first-person shooters are "murder simulators"? Remember the original question? See how he not only glossed over it, but used the arcade game, which nobody has in their house and which has an actual gun, to prove to the reader that first-person shooters, which use mice and keyboards on home computers, can teach kids to become expert marksmen?
It's one thing to speak from the heart and to the emotions. It's quite another to be so blatantly deceptive about it. I hope others caught that too.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Finally theres a reporter who can make sense of this whole witch hunt. There has been a select few good reports from various sources, but most of the mainstream media has been anti video game bullcrap. It's good to see that the big news organizations are getting a clue.
-- There's only one replacement for displacement.....
Games such as DOOM, Quake, Quake II, SiN, and other similar "death simulators" have sold millions of copies. There have been under a dozen violent attacks on schools since these games have come out. 99.99999% of people who play these games don't have violent outbreaks. Therefore, we have statistical proof that violent video games *PREVENT* violent behavior. Not even to mention the fact that the worst school massacre of all time took place in the 1920's...
Esperandi
Not everything that portrays violence glorifies it. In the other much blamed media (ie. Hollywood) there are several really good movies that portray violence and its effects. Movies such as Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Three Kings show death, violence, war, and the effects of these and yet, I hardly think that most people would claim that these movies glorify violence. They instead show the effects and the harmful consequences. Furthermore, most video game violence, even in first person shooters, is hardly realistic. I've seen more violent Warner Bros cartoons....I would contend that most peoples idea of handling weapons and killing people is a great deal more visceral and probably comes from either movies or in some very sad cases, real life gang situations or other similar situations. A video game has never taught me how to load a rifle and as far as I know, most first person shooters use made-up fantasy weapons. The day I can pick up a rail gun at my local pawn shop after a seven day waiting period is the day I will start blaming video games for increasing violence....
--she sings from somewhere you can't see...
If companies could find a way to target ads at fetuses, they'd do it. "This Ultrasound scan brought to you by Gerber."
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The thing I find the most amusing about this entire topic of "Death Simulators" is the fact that the game they used to explain computer game violence, was Doom. How old is Doom? If you find 2D pixelated sprite blood to be violent, it makes me wonder if your vision is alright. Not only that, but you can only move your gun along the x axis, you can't aim up and down, the game pretty much does it for you. If they chose Quake2, over Doom, I would have given this whole debate a little more consideration, but up until now, it's just too stupid. We all remember them blaming it on TV, Movies, and Music. What's next, food?
-FweE-
Many people claim that violent games encourage or 'desensitize' kids towards violence. Others make the base case of 'take it in context--everyone knows its not real.'
First off, realness and correct context don't matter. Many pilots I know have commented on an interesting phenomenon...parents and kids who have flown computer flight sims are quicker to learn real flying than those who haven't. It seems to me that all simulators, no matter how 'unrealistic' do in fact provide a basic skills introduction.
Second, who says people 'know games aren't real'? I have several friends who fume when they are losing--even to the computer. I even get annoyed when 'my teammates are killing me'. They can become 'real' even to those of us who can code and know how 'false' they are.
Finally, the responsibility mentioned by others needs to be taken seriously. Adults need to learn that kids==responsibilities. Don't ask industry to 'regulate itself', regulate your own. Everyone has different standards. My parents had high ones, and I ended up getting a full college scholarship because of it. Without their (strong) guidance, I wouldn't have...
Do the responsible thing. Don't buy your kids video games, don't spoil them. Reformat your windoze box to eliminate thos video games and install Linux...maybe then they'll really learn about computers. Video games affect us all.
One of the most common statistical misconceptions: the connection between the increase of violence on tv/in videogames and the increase of violence in society. I'm not argueing that there could be a connection, but there could as well be a million factors that have caused the rise in violence (if there is one). The point is, you just can't tie two pieces of statistical data to one another, even if it seems on the surface logical. And to my knowledge (although I must admit I'm not an expert) a direct connection between tv/games and violence has never been shown. And yes, some people that watched a lot of tv/played a lot of games have committed violence acts. That's to be expected ofcourse since people in general watch more and more tv and play more and more games. I could as well be stating that there is a connection between the depletion of the ozone layer and the increase in violence.
Some humorous examples of statistical data abuse (forgive me for not giving exact references):
- The research a year or so ago that tried to show that computers/internet makes people depressed (do YOU feel depressed?)
- In a program that I heared on the radio once a doctor claimed that computer (screens) caused epilepsy because lately he got more and more epileptic children that also played a lot of video games (well... DUH!)
- Some researchers once showed that when there were more storks in the land there was also an increase in the amount of children born (luckily they didn't make a connection)
>The reason youth crime is rising is because of the lack of parent's responsiblity.
Read the fscking article! Youth crime has been FALLING for the last five years, not rising. Why are you arguing an alternative causation for a hypothesis that is patently FALSE!?! Everyone's in such a rush to prove themselves smarter than the other slashdotter's that the end up tripping all over themselves. Feh!
And how many games have you played where you score points for sticking a gun under a desk and shooting a scared kid, or firing wildly into an unarmed crowd of civilians? The parallels being drawn between these real life incidents and video games are kind of silly. How about kids playing with those little plastic green army men? Sure they're a little less hi-tech, but it's the same line of thought as a video game, simulating war and conflict. And people die in war and conflict. That's the way it goes, for better or for worse.
And why do they always bring up Doom? The only way doom would drive me to kill is maybe cause I'd be pissy cause I couldn't afford a computer new enough to play at least quake.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
When I was about six or seven years old, I played with action figures, "Star Wars" and later "Masters of the Universe". I thought the good guys were stupid, the bad guys were way cooler, and I enjoyed playing with them. It usually ended with the deaths of all the figures. Occasionally I really broke them, ripped off the heads, I even burned a furry one. I didn't watch much TV, if any, only the common child stuff. I wasn't a suppressed geek at all, in fact, I was the leader of a group of kids during Kindergarten and elementary school. I also experimented with insects, nothing to be proud of, but I think it's a very common thing. At that time I even was a Christian who still believed in God as an old guy on a cloud.
What's the point of this personal history? Tell me if that is common history! Aren't all humans violent in such a playful way? I have never killed a human being and don't want to ever do it! I firmly believe human nature does contain violent aspects but you can keep it under control. People have to learn that, it's their parents job to teach it, to teach them respect and morals. Perhaps violent fantasies are a necessary balance, you think of it, so you don't have to do it. Frankly, that's similar to sexuality, and sexual desires. Are sexual offenders people who masturbate always, never, or regularly? I think it's a similar situation and I'd like to see some statistics and studies about that! Since the majority of people do it regularly, and only a minority is offending, that could give some insight...
Finally - back to my point and main claim: I think the most important factor that determines if you act out your violent fantasies in real life or not is upbringing. No game or movie can influence a child's life as much as the parents. Don't blame anything, take responsibility again, they're your children.
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
. . . *does* improve your health, at least if it's the real, unfiltered, stuff. *huge* proteins, yeast, just about everythign good for you except meat. Aside from whole milk, it's tough to think of anything better for you . . . .
[no, american beer does *not* have any resemblance to ale . . . ]
obtrivia: hangovers may be milder/nonexistent with unfiltered, bottle-conditioned ale or lager--the yeast is full of vitamin B, the shortage of which is a cause of hangovers. On the other hand, yeast are better than coffee for keeping you, err, regular . .
In the months following the Columbine shootings there has been a lot of debate among the press about what exactly caused the incident to happen. While we can be sure that there is no one single cause, one important "cause" has been left out. It is a cause that might be a little close to our hearts, and it is related to the video games that many of us enjoy on a regular basis, but not in the way that the press typically depicts them as anger filled de-sensitizing catalysts for violence. The true cause is more likely the reset button.
It is the reset button which form habits that cheapen the value of life, teaching us "If I can't do it well, why do it at all?". Points low? just restart, learn from mistakes, avoid random bad luck, and play the same level over again. Its very reasonable, its the "smart" way top play games. It gives us the chance to perfect the grenade attack on the giant beast, or to avoid the random vaguries of getting attacked on a trading run and losing your transports. We learn by experience to save often, and to restart whenever danger looks like it may get the best of us. Why bother to continue Pac-Man (or any other game) if yoiu lose two of your three lives on the first level? This is the same mindset going through many youths, they (I also speak of my own experiences) feel that they have already blown so many chances that "winning" the game becomes a distinctly foreign concept
These are the games that teach us that rather than getting through a difficult period, with a tenuous hold on life, we should just hit the reset button. Unfortunately we don't have a save button, and we certainly can't start from the begining again (though many wish we could)
I am hesitant to use examples here as they may be misleading, but it would seem clear that commitment to the game dramatically changes the dynamics of the situation. Whenever playing against other people, it is not in our best interest to quit the game as we will undergo a period of being "out" until the next game starts up. Similarly, the simple investment of a quarter (now more likely a dollar), as might be done in the arcades, encourages the game to the final conclusion, no matter how desperate the situation.
This is equally true playing "oregon trail" (or whatever incarnation the game may be in now, I can only refer to my only experience with it on the Apple II), or even microsofts solitaire (or anyone elses solitaire for that matter)if you are dealt a bad hand, deal again.
Anyhow, in the end it going to be conjecture as anything that could "prove" anything about the subject would be so full of mumbojumbo that any intelligent reader would not be able to take it at face value.
seibed
Me, too.
I hear this a lot in different contexts. "You can't know someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes."
Perhaps. If I'm not in your situation, if I'm not a part of your age/race/gender group, I won't have a perfect understanding of what it's like. But to say that you must be a part of whatever cohort to understand it at all is to deny our ability to empathize and learn about each other.
The logical endpoint for such an argument is a solipistic world in which none of us ever try to understand each other because, hey, I'm not you and you're not me. It means that I might as well not care about gender equality because I'm male and can't ever understand what it's like to be a woman.
Our empathy is part of what makes us human. Let's not stifle it just when we're making progress at using it.
Sargent
No? Surely you must have! The Army Officer hath pronounced such deeds to be True!
(Reality Check: Whilst I think it extremely probable that violent kids will enjoy violent games, that does NOT mean the converse will be true. I also think unfeeling kids will enjoy games that rely on a lack of sentiment. Again, the converse will not necessarily be true. If all dogs are animals, it does not mean all animals are dogs.)
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)
If you want to look at a genuinely violent game (and I'm speaking here for informational purposes, not as an advocate of the anti-gaming movement), take a good look at the Counter-Strike mod for Halflife. The pacing, the models, the setting, the guns, the way people die, is all designed to model reality more closely than just about any other game on the market.
Counter-Strike is, I believe, the most played game on the net right now. Should there not, by alarmist accounts, be a rash of shootings? Or, at the very least, a rash of enlistments in the Marines, and Seals, and other special ops type groups?
Warmcat is exactly right about the nature of our desire to play games. It *is* catharsis. While Rummy and Asshole and Egyptian Ratscrew can serve one part of my brain, and Nomic works for me much of the time, sometimes a video game is a better release for whatever stress I'm feeling.
These are games. No matter how realistic they may seem at first glance, they are nothing more than loose isomorphisms. I do not play Counter-Strike to feed my desire to kill; I play Counter-Strike to feed my desire to engage in a tense and engaging teamplay experience and (on a good day) excel (sp?). I yell at the screen in frustration when I bugger up, not to voice my bloodlust. It must be recognized that gamers, even passionate gamers, are as a whole, passionate about gaming and not passionate about the content. Most QuakeX players don't sit down thinking, "Must kill...must fire rocket launcher..." any more so than Pac-Man players sit down thinking, "Must destroy godless undead creatures..."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=nomic
I have real-world experience with what happens if you try to overprotect a child from violence. (Well, it's not first-hand experience, but let's just say that I have known this person from birth and he's now in his mid-teens.)
When he was born, his parents -- his mother, really, I don't think his father ever actually bought into it -- decided that he would not be exposed to anything related to violence. (I suppose this was a reaction to seeing me grow up several years earlier playing with GI Joes and the like, and (IMNSHO) wholly unrelated discipline problems at school. (Come on, I'm a geek, who didn't get picked on when they were young?))
Anyway, when he finally started walking around and talking, they went to great pains to ensure that he was in a positive, nurturing environment. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good thing. However, they went out of their way to censor anything resembling violence in his life. I don't know how many five-year-old boys think the Care Bears are the coolest thing in the world, but it just seemed weird to me.
So he continues to grow up. He learns how to cook and sew -- again, these are good skills to have, especially for later in life when one is living on one's own. But everything he did in play time had violent undertones. He would routinely fashion clubs or ray guns out of Legos and the like and go around hitting imaginary foes. Ghostbusters came out about this time, and he got hooked on it. His mother lightened up a bit, but only a bit -- it was sort of violent, but it was entirely directed against ghosts and other things that don't exist.
So when he got the Ghostbuster gun for his birthday, what was his first act? To run around shooting at his baby sister. Heh.
About the time he was eight-or-so, something weird happened. One day his grandmother bought him a cap gun and some caps! You would have thought the world was coming to an end. (His father couldn't have been happier. 8^) ) When the caps ran out, he was still running around with the cap gun shooting at everything -- and I mean everything, people, animals, cars, appliances, rocks, you name it.
Later that year, his mother finally loosened her reigns on the poor kid and let him get GI Joes for his birthday. As it turns out, he had been going over to friends' houses for a few years and playing with violent toys anyway. His play-acting of violence increased slightly thereafter, but now, in his mid-teens, he is a perfectly well-adjusted kid. He just reached the level of Eagle Scout.
Moral of the story: kids, especially boys, are hardwired to express themselves actively and (in a limited fashion) violently. Stop trying to suppress this genetic feature and start spending efforts towards directing this output in creative fashions. I know from personal experience (of the first-hand variety) that violent video games and violence-based toys (like GI Joe) provided a release for all of my built-up aggression toward the world. (Nothing's better than coming home after being beat up at school and blowing away some demons in the dark... 8^) ) But would I ever go out and actually kill anyone in real life? No. Why? Because I learned early on that that was just something you didn't do. I'm not sure if it was my parents who taught me that -- I think the only thing my parents actually gave me (in the heredity sense) was common sense, which says that taking a gun to school and killing the bullies is wrong. Why? It's wrong. Plain, simple.
In closing: with all of this BS over censoring violent video games and such, has anyone actually watched the evening news lately? I see more so-called Bad Stuff on the news that in a Jackie Chan movie...
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
This is interesting, since I've been playing Driver lately. After playing that game for a bit before I head out somewhere, for the first few minutes I consider the emergency break a valid tool for turning.
That proves to me that video games can influence people. Me and my emergency break. A gun owner and Quake. But you know what? WE DON'T USE THEM BECAUSE WE HAVE SOME !@#$%& COMMON SENSE.
And there the line is drawn. Could video games have stimulated a school shooter? Hells yes. If video games didn't exist, would the shootings still have happened? Hells yes. A psycho is a psycho is a psycho. Sometimes things have no reason. However, people want to blame, and games are an easier target than the consiquence free Jerry Springer society that's being built in Amerika.
"This is everyone else's fault but mine." - Homer Simpson
I agree with your post for the simple reason that your was the only one I read that seemed balanced. I dont believe someone who says that video games kill (a US soldier on top of that!! What profession has more blood on their hands?) but the /.'ers arent any better by taking the total opposite. Yes, the parents are main culprits because it is their responsability to instill the values you mentioned. Of course, since nowadays both parents work (this is not an anti-feminist rant, btw!), the children dont have the same access to their parents as they did just 20-30 years ago. Kid is born, babysat when it is 6 months, then a daycare and then school. It ends up seeing its parents after they come home from work for a few hours and say what you will but the first few yers are the most important to a child's upbringing. So where does a child get most of its values system? TV adn other forms of entertainment. Parents use TV as a glorified babysitter. Look at Teletubbies: parents plunk their kids in front of the TV at the age of 1 so the kid is entertained and the parents can have some time off and instead of the child working on motor skills and learning about social interaction it sits passively in front of the box. What does that give you? A child's learning process is at an early age dictated by NOT the parent but by TV programmmers who are in the biz for money,not education. And argue all you want but teh message in the entertainment field (TV, films, video games, etc) are filled with violence and as with most brainwashing techniques, repetitive scenes of violence will tend to desensatize a child towards it. The american bullshit macho atitude towards gun ownership is another topic that we could deal on but we can leave for another time. Interestingly, parents will not their 11 year old go see an 18+ movie because of the violence but will allow them to buy a game which basic rule is to 'kill' Do I blame the TV or video games? No. It is the parents responsability. Is TV guilty? Yes it is in the long run because violence is easy and spectacular and it makes money (lots of it). And if you want to see something really disturbing: check the obesity rates among american kids. With the terrible nutritional habits of the US, kids are getting to be obese at younger and younger ages. Internet, computers, cable TV, etc..will insure that this trend will dramatically increase what is already an epidemic. Anybody who is over 30-35 will remember their youth: coming back from school..doing homework quickly so we could go outside to play with our friends. Cartoons was a saturday morning thing. Look at kids today: video games (C'mon , even I cant play one NHL 99 game only!), TV which is geared to the young comsumer (even music geared to pre-adolescents), computers and the Internet. More than video games: the couch potatoe symdrome which has been exacerbated by new technologies is what we should worry about.
I think both the author of this article and Grossman blur a very important distinction between different types of video games. I think it was one of the id guys who recently pointed out, there's a difference between a game where you aim with the mouse and shoot with mouse clicks, and one where you use an actual gun mock-up (e.g. Duck Hunt and Virtua Cop) to aim and fire. The former cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, teach you to kill, at least from a skills standpoint. The latter, however, possibly can. There's quite a difference between squeezing a plastic trigger and firing a real gun (weight, noise, recoil, etc.), but it's a lot closer than mouse-clicks.
The gun interface of Virtua Cop et. al. is probably unneccessary- a more conventional interface could be just as much fun, and without the potential negative repercussions. In general, I think steps away from realism in various ways would, on the whole, be a positive thing: The more unrealistic and video-gamey a game is, the more it will be disconnected in people's minds from the real act of killing. Furthermore, I find a video-gamey unrealism to be fun. Take a look at Quake 3, for example- almost everything about it is ludicrously unrealistic (e.g. the weapons), but it's a lot of fun, and that very unrealism makes it more fun. Furthermore, Quake 3 and other deathmatch games are probably an improvement on single-player-style games because yyour opponents are as strong and capable as you, and so it is less likely to condition one to a massacre mentality, since you cannot simply find a big gun and mow down a whole room full of bad guys.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Oh, and I happen to think that seat belt laws are an unneccessary intrusion of government into people's personal lives and a revenue generator for the police rather than a useful safety measure. I don't know why he believes that just because something is the law that everyone is going to agree with it, except that he has a dangerous, authoritarian point of view. (Which dovetails nicely with his thesis that its OK for the military to brainwash soldiers.)
This comes from the part of the article where Grossman really starts to rave, although out of context it isn't as bad as the rest of the quote. I bring it up though because I'm not sure what the Ha! in parenthesis next to the President is supposed to mean. Is it "Ha! Even your beloved Democratic president insists that police must prevent kids from getting bad games" or "Ha! the president agrees with me, you have no choice but to do so as well" ?One final quote, taken out of context from this page:
I put this statement in to let it stand for itself. It is not an appeal to reason, it is demagoguery, and it also sounds like raving. Let's take it apart:How many lives, how many shattered families, how much blood is it worth to YOU
If we put, to let people pick posies or grow corn as the next part of this statement, I think the answer still has to be "none." I just don't happen to believe that Doom causes any of these things, but Grossman is setting it up that "If you don't believe that video games cause violence, if you don't agree with my solution, your a monster who is willing to see people murdered for your own enjoyment." Nope, since Grossman's solution will stop 0% of the violence, I'm not risking anyone's life.
have kids rehearse murder and killing and maiming
This is the way children talk when they want to impress you with what they are saying, it is redundant and uses the word and too many times as a way to emphasize something. What's the difference between murder and killing? No need to use two synonyms in the same sentence to argue the same thing if you are arguing from reason.
in the comfort of their own homes
Sooo, if the kids were practicing murder and killing and maiming in the alley behind some bar, that would be acceptable? What does the "comfort of their own homes" have to do with anything? Oh, I see, "those sick violent video game playing murderers get to be comfortable as they plan their atrocities."
Incidentally, Quake and Doom don't teach murder but defensive combat. i.e. if a hideous demon is trying to kill you, and you have a weapon, you try to take him out. No different than what I'd train my kid to do if he were being threatened by a mass murderer with a gun. (Ok, I tell him to try to get out of there and call the police, but if the only option were to fight for his life I'd want him to try to take the bad guy out rather than just lay down and die. Murder and self-defense are two different things, Grossman attempts to make them morally equivalent.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I meant to put a link to this page above where it says "this page."
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Intending to write and complain, I went there using IE4.x over my AOL connection (how vanilla can one be?) and it crashed IE4 and AOL both.
You're welcome to inform them of this, the site shouldn't be very busy right now!
You said:
"Computer games such as Quake Deathmatch? It teaches kids the concept that life easily restored by hitting the spacebar. I'm not talking about your 13+ kids now, but the eight year olds who have just warezed Quake 2 and are playing it. Who cares if you die? Who cares if I shoot wildly, friendly fire is OFF! Hostage down? Who cares, he'll be back next round! Some concepts of violence in video games will rub off on kids. Ratings won't stop the eight year old AOL pirates."
If a parent isn't watching his 8 year old child, then the PARENT should be arrested when the kid shoots people. I grew up watching Looney Toons and whatnot, then later, playing Nintendo games. Every step of the way, I had a parent over my shoulder teaching me the fundamental lessons of life and morality. I play Unreal Tournament a lot, but if you met me, you'd find me to be totally laid back. I rarely get angry, and I am not violent.
Wile E Coyote did not warp my mind by blowing himself up, the same way Wolfenstein 3d didn't give me the idea that Nazism is okay.
BoneShintai
Before you go yammering about how this man knows nothing about video games or their effect of youth, don't play hypocrites and start commenting on books you haven't read. Go buy the book, read it, /then/ make your commentary.
I'm familiar with one of Grossman's earlier books, "On Killing," which was aimed more at the military and talking about, well, you can probably guess from the book's title. I wish I had a copy here at work with me so I could quote some of the statistics he used, but I'll try to give you the gist.
In the Civil War, the accuracy of soldiers, measured by casualties in ratio to shots fired, was abominable.. Barely 2%, if memory serves. Even accounting for the lack of accuracy of their firearms, it was obvious that very few of the soldiers were hitting their targets. Compare this to their accuracy, on the range, against a simple round target, and you can see that they are doing far worse on the battlefield.
Grossman makes the suggestion that many of these men were unconsciously trying A) not to hit their target or B) trying not to get shot, and in a panic. He also notes that artillery weapons suffered much less of a discrepancy between in training and on the battlefield. He postulates that man has a natural, inbred aversion to killing his fellow man, which is common among most animals.
He goes on to describe this same discrepancy all over history, until we come to the modern era. He starts to make his point about video games with the Faulklands conflict. Here we have two forces, with similar amounts of training, similar weaponry and size of force. The only difference in their training is that the Faulklanders are training on shooting dummies.. Human silhouettes. The Brits are still training on a gentleman's target, the bullseye. He postulates that the fire/no-fire ratio is higher with the Faulklanders, because they have become desensitized to the idea of training their rifle on another human being.
Fast forward to Ft. Benning and the U.S. Army. The infantryman's accuracy takes a considerable jump right about the time that the Army standardizes to field training using pop up dummies. These dummies look very human, at a distance, and only appear for a brief few seconds. It's acquire, shoot and reshoot, before the target drops out of sight.. Grossman, and the Pentagon, believe that this greatly increases the infantryman's likelihood of shooting the enemy. From all appearences, they are correct, although we haven't had a good conflict to test the theory.
Now pause a moment, and compare our military pop up targets with Quake. Quake, the targets move.. Fast. People have to chase them.. Aggression is king. Grossman's theory is that this is eroding the natural instinct not to kill your species just like those dummies and pop-ups do. Think about all the blood you see in an action movie? People dying left and right, with the heroes just marching through. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, that might affect that disinclination to shoot?
I've gotten away from my point, here. READ THE DAMN BOOK. Don't go shooting down someone's theory as groundless until you've read it. Check his facts.. Don't go whining and flaming here until you've at least done that.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Every study I have seen cited to say that violent video games cause violence show a correlation between the two, NOT a causation effect. There are also a multitude of studies showing a correlation between blacks and low standardized test scores, so by the same logic, blacks are less intelligent than whites. Studies showing a correlation between violence and violent video games can always be explained by saying that the type of people who are violent are going to enjoy playing violent games. If you want to convince me that games cause violence show me a study that refutes the fact that of the tens of millions of people who play violent video games, only a handful have committed unusually violent acts.
I'de be willing to bet that Ford sales would be cut in half for each year if they didn't advertise. What I'm suggesting is that the m(b)illions they invest in advertizing is done for a good reason. The company message, placed in the media, has a positive effect on their bottom line. That is a testiment to the reach of that media.
For decades now, companies have bought add time because people that are exposed to the medium are effected by that medium.
Bitch bitch bitch, you know what, I have seen and played violent video games, I like them, I WILL NOT KILL PEOPLE. I watched the Matrix, am I a killer? I listen to many kinds of music and one is Marilyn Manson, once again am I a killer? Am I satanic? So many think that these games are sick, these movies are desensitized to real life violence. It makes me sick, the media blaming everything from the trench coats to probably their watches for all I know. I mean come on, sure you see a guy shot to hell and back in the movies, do you think, "Oh cool! I am gunna do that"? I think what is sick here is the fucking media dogs that show this kind of shit, I KNOW THAT PEOPLE WERE SHOT, why the hell do they show the blood, the gore, the bodies of those poor kids? I mean in movies and video games it is FAKE. But the media likes to show us the realness, this is the most bizzare and sick entertainment I have ever seen, to see kids all bloody, most dead being taken away. The shooting of J.F.K. I just love seeing half his FUCKING head blown off in history, I mean shit, teach it but do you need to show it? I find it hard to believe that in the days of anciant Earth people watched movies and videogames before they killed people in massive slaughter, they did not play with G.I. Joes, they did not own b.b. rifles as kids, yet still they unmoraly killed, the torchers of those days? My point is that there is not more violence in these days then in the past if anything there is LESS. Before I end I want to ask all the people who cover Di's final minutes of life. Did you get what you wanted? The biggist story of a lifetime? Are you happy that you killed one of the most generous women in the politcal enviorment? Well you got a damn good story, and lots of nice shots of her death. Good job you fucking vultures, vampires, and thugs. Many of you sick bastards probably got exactly what you wanted and went home to kiss your wife, tuck in the kids and get a good nights sleep. People kill people, people with major problems, fucked up families, families who tryed and gave up, and sometimes the exception with mental problems. END -Cyjacker
Check out the top ten! Hooray for Slashdot!
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Incidentally, I haven't read Mein Kamph, either, and yet I still feel justified in concluding Hitler was a bad man.
I will continue to fight people like the Lt. Col. until my bones are slotted in the cold earth (and even after that if need be.) People like you don't intimidate me, I don't care about his book. The man who wrote it is a slimy example of American political evil, that's all that matters.
Incidentally, I'm guessing that both weapon accuracy and weapon training have improved since the Civil War, so I don't think much of On Killing either. You may not realize this, but we have laser sites on firearms now, we didn't even have those in Vietnam. I cannot help you if you choose to be the lapdog of a dangerous authoritarian fanatic.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
(somewhat off topic) Isn't it funny that the recent high profile cases in the school violence happened in predominantly white schools? The premise of violence in school is fundamentally different between inner-city & suburb.. The former is usually gang-related, but the latter is god-knows-what.. If I may borrow words from my cousin who used to work as a teacher in Oakland, Ca (predominantly minority).. She said that the responses that she got from her class after Columbine incident was rather amusing. One of the guys in her class said that this kind of incident would never ever happen in the first place in the inner city, because he/she who would try to pull something like this would get his/her "caps popped first." ;-) Okay, jokes aside.. The point is that the inner city kids who are relatively more violence-ridden can't seem to understand the motives behind the incident like this. Could video games have contributed to the result? Video games are far more worse than gang influences??
Now, I don't consider this study to have been particularly scientific. But it does give one a new perspective on video games.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I have always found video games to be excellent ways to relieve stress, especially FPS games. It just feels good to blow your troubles up, virtually. ;) Seriously, though, Grossman needs to cut the crap. I never went around stomping on people's heads because I played Mario. I never learned how to aim a gun and fire it by pressing Page Down, Delete, and ctrl. I find it especially hypocritical that Grossman flaps his trap about violence when he happens to be working in the army. The guy needs to stop.
Don't even get me started on Senator Lieberman. What kind of idiot tries to ban minors from playing M-rated games in arcades?
Incidentally, if you've ever seen Otaku No Video you'll see that pop-culture which is mostly consumed by teenagers has the same bad reputation there as it has here. To paraphrase the some of the video's subtitles:
So, it seems "No matter where you go, there you are."All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
...is that the reason people are increasingly accepting of more governmental control in their lives is that they are too busy to take care of and raise their own children, and don't want to be held responsible (as they should be) if Billy goes to school with an AK-47 and blows away 7 other children.
It's all about liability, folks. People want to know that they're not responsible for how their kids turn out if they're not raised properly, when in fact, they should be held accountable.
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
No, you don't lose a point when you're fragged. You can have 200 deaths and 100 kills and you'll still beat the guy who got 99 kills but didn't die. (note: I have a history of getting 90% of the kills and 50% of the deaths of people who regularly beat me, so maybe I'm biased...) And not only are the repercussions next to nothing, but they're being adjusted even lower in Quake 3 for the sake of "game balance" (read: keeping newbies from becoming frustrated). New respawns start with 125 health instead of 100 so they can't be killed in one hit. The default weapon is a serious machine gun instead of a joke blaster. All the non-default weapons are quite good, and easy to get a hold of fast. No more runes in CTF. No more power armor. Even the default Q3test policy of forcing respawns to wait until after your old corpse hit the ground is gone!
What bands logo was on the nail box in Quake 1?
Potential buyers aren't always ready to jump out there and purchase. There are probably a much larger number considering or wishing to buy a car and advertising reaches them and at least gets the company name and car model in their head so that they will at least consider it when the time comes around. By sheer numbers of those who watch whatever media, they are sure to get someone.
Yes, the ads by themselves don't sell the cars -- but they do make you interested. I saw a Lincoln LS car ad (great commercial btw), and then went online to see great reviews of the car and then went out to buy one myself. Without that advertising, I probably wouldn't have even knew the car existed. Even if I did, come on, this is Lincoln here, I doubt I would have bought a lincoln based on what I've seen from their cars in the past.
Local dealer advertising? Give me a break. They don't show much of anything; they just blather on about deals and "Hi, mom!".
Both are good for what they are for, I guess. Local dealer ads for those directly considering pricing and an immediate > 3 months purchase -- and those extolling the virtues of the car in motion to get the word out.
His point should not be on the inborn tendency of humans to not kill their own kind. Every human has that inborn tendency to not kill- but it only needs to be eroded once, and it will never come back. For many people where I grew up, hurting other people became easier to do after they were exposed to hunting animals. People didn't do it more often, but when they had to, they did it without hesitation. In my life, I have never actually gone hunting, and yet, when I was in fights in high school, I couldn't bring myself to hit the other person. With all of my "death training" in Doom and Quake, I was still able to differentiate between real people and mutated zombie Shotgun Sergeants. OTOH, someone who has shot and killed a deer with their own riflery, as well as gutted it with their bare hands and a knife, shows no such compulsion. So, from my own experience, I find it difficult to see how Grossman can draw this analogy from his data.
And as far as an inborn tendenct to not kill being present in animals, I can speak from experience. I come from the backwoods of Northern Wisconsin, and I have never experienced an inborn aversion among animals to kill other animals of their own kind. Carnivorous animals (like coyotes and dogs) are well-known for their ability to slaughter other packs of such animals in the wild. Wild herbivores (like deer, elk, ducks, geese, etc.) have no problems with killing each other over mates and territory.
Throughout history, civilized and uncivilized peoples have killed each other with and without reason an uncountable number of times. What more does a person need to know about the capacity of living things to kill other things?
Don't forget that this guy is the same man who called "Doom" and "Quake" murder simulators. I know, I know, that's a rephrasing of what everyone else is saying but the important point is that he admits that what the military does *IS* murder. Interesting considering that murder is a capital offence in this country, except maybe when it's to "protect American interests."
- I'd never heard of them before and I
wouldn't have noticed unless someone had
pointed it out.
It's always the parents fault. I agree 100% - if you live in a vacuum with no contact to the outside world EVER.
Not the "Meet Cal Worthington & his dog" blither. I was referring more to what I've noticed with my friends & family - when someone's looking for a new vehicle, they're going to get a copy of the newspaper or magazine (e.g. regionals like the AutoTrader or Car & Driver, Consumer Reports & similar) and compare prices.
The only manufacturers who really seem to benefit from brand-awareness campaigns are the new ones (e.g. Killed-In-Action, etc); otherwise, it's usually a question of who's offering more for less.
Just because Quake X(I'm being the devil's advocate here) is a murder simulator, and now because of it I should be able to take out several people with a couple of well placed sniper shots (e.g. Railgun type shots) doesn't mean that I would want too.
I would like to play this guy at a "death simulator" sometime to see how many times I can "murder" him.
And one final thought, StarCraft will make you launch nuclear missles, Mario will make you eat "magic mushrooms", and Tetris will make you drop heavy things on people.
If I had any moderator points... Moderators!please moderate previous post up.
I could not agree with you more. But you have to regress your analysis one level further:
The problem is, that parents generally *don't* have the time to do what you outline. Hell, I'm single, and I hardly have the time to do everything that I need to do in one day.
My previous assignment was in France, and here people have 39 hour workweeks (soon to become 35), 5-7 weeks of vacation each year, and most of the problems that we see in the U.S. simply arent prevalent. The folks here have time to care and nurture their children... there are benefits to Socialism.
Ranting aside, something really needs to change in our overworked, overstressed society, or all of this Columbine shit will just get worse and worse.
As far as I see it, games are simply not part of the equation if there is the kids are loved enough (of course, one could postulate that these games would not be anywhere near as popular in such a case)
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I heard a long discussion on NPR about the reasons for why violent crime is on the decline currently and had been on the rise for a long time before that. Arguments largely centered around law enforcement and punishments, whether three-strikes is effective, the increase and decrease of drug usage, increases and decreases in earning power and employment... video games and movies were never mentioned.
Now, this doesn't exactly 'prove' anything, but it does show that people filling the DA's position and vocal critics of unfairness in the legal system alike believe that the causes lie in underlying facets of society, not in our entertainment-of-the-moment. They might just be onto something.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Oh :).
Anyway, both are advertising on the same target market in a different phase of being prepared to purchase.
Actually, tv car ads are mostly just for brand awareness so that if you ever think of purchasing a car or truck, it will be the first thing that comes to mind. While it has less effect than purchases that are more impulse, it does have an effect -- at least subliminally -- on brands that aren't sufficiently differentiated in price or features. The auto oligopoly generally has similar prices as per the current price setter -- so prices of similar model car are usually very similar. There of course is still product differentiation -- but market share is usually more or less stable. Moves to obtain more market share are also often very slow. Unfortunately with the barriers on the market, no new competitor can join in and really innovate and produce cars that dont fall apart within 3 years.
In correlation to the story, to not be so off topic -- it does show that the media and advertising does affect us -- but we aren't often aware of it, even if we've taken some business or advertising courses and can identify the key words used to elicit a sale, in a testimonial or whatever. Fortunately we're able to filter this information more efficiently as adults; otherwise we'd all be going to Devry, eating pringles for dinner, and being like mike and using product x.
As a enlisted soldier, I, for one, have used MACS.
:)
It's basically a shooting range, on nitintendo + custom M16 lightgun. That's it.
It's there to teach shooting fundamentals, ie, steady position, trigger squeeze, good sight picture, etc.
Scoreing is based on the *real* military qualification range, where a hit is a hit, regardless of location. It also provides a 'up close' view of each target showing shot placement afterwards.
The targets are standard human 'shillouette' targets, not realistic figures.
Does this sound like desentizition to you?
Nope, didn't think so.
I beg to differ
Perhaps you should take a look at the cover from Wired Mag from April 1997 and read the article that details exactly how the military is used Doom in training.
A quote from the Wired cover story:
Marine Doom shows how anxious the corps is to use nontraditional ideas for keeping its soldiers sharp. And it's not above picking up tips from the business and entertainment worlds. For example, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, the Quantico base commander, recently took his top officers to a stock trading floor to study how people behave in chaotic situations. "The military needs to borrow from the commercial sector," says Carl Builder, author of The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis. "The commercial sector is moving much faster, for instance, in this area of simulation technology. This is the kind of thinking that the military needs."
If crime is being reduced, can't the FBI (or rather, the DEA) claim the War on Drugs is being won? This would be silly, of course, but your points don't seem to follow. Youth crime is going down though, and schools are still safer than the home for kids. In fact, the media focus on certain things, like these violent attacks, is pernicious in the respect that it puts undue policy focus on what are minor social problems- the majority of violence done to children is perpetrated by adults. That's what needs major policy aid, but we just don't hear about it because it involves less spectacle.
One of my flatmates is usually a nice, calm individual, however, put him in front of a playstation with a copy of Tekken 3 and he becomes rapidly fustrated, often waking up the rest of the flat in the early hours of lunchtime with yells of anger and hate.
He is now no longer invited in our Quake deathmatches due to his yelling at the players, telling them that he will come over there and 'kill them in person' if they kill him again in the game. On a similar note, he also does this in our table-top roleplaying games out of character (i.e., once again yelling at the player, rather than character).
He claims that he plays these games to relieve his anger - we find he shifts his anger onto us rather than his daily woes. Again, whilst not playing these games he's perfectly calm and rational - put him in front of one, and he's gone.
The rest of our group who play far too often, never raise our voices except in jest. We're all from similar backgrounds, in a similar situation (all 2nd and 3rd year Uni students), and mostly male. The difference in game attitudes (during game) are drastically different - but either way, I won't expect any of us to find a gun or kill someone. After the game, he calms right back down - but he can be terrifying during - and at times, he does make me think that people who write about connections with games and violence do have a basis with some people.
Like I said, this guy just snaps. I don't think Quake gives him the skills to do this, but I do think it could give someone the motivation.
Kokij
I know this is gonna be late to be moderated up, and i'm behind, but here's my seldom heard .02.
I just saw the South Park movie. I loved it. The message is great, and this is what I'm all about.
Why wasn't there a giant movement to stop pokemon?? Its VIOLENCE. SouthPark is cursing. and sex. Things that will come in due time for these children. Violence is the real problem.
I could rant for hours. I'm done.
The problem today is that no one wants to take responcilbity for their actions. We are a society of victims. This is reflected in many law suites (Oh dear, I have spilt hot coffee on my lap, I will sue someone) and the want to place blame on someone other than themselves. "Oh no, it couldn't be those kids.." I have news for you, kids rape each other. Kids murder each other. Why? Not because of some dumb game, it's because "it's not their fault".
In correlation to the story, to not be so off topic -- it does show that the media and advertising does affect us -- but we aren't often aware of it, even if we've taken some business or advertising courses and can identify the key words used to elicit a sale, in a testimonial or whatever. Fortunately we're able to filter this information more efficiently as adults; otherwise we'd all be going to Devry, eating pringles for dinner, and being like mike and using product x.
I have to say, I agree with how well most adults are very well educated to filter messages out of the media. Having been exposed to advertising most of their childhood (adds on sat. morning tv anyone?) and adult lives, people have a wonderful way of applying adaptive filtering to weed out the junk.
The original intent behind my post was to point this out to some of the younger readers on /. and to get them to think about what they hear/see around them. People pay b(m)illions to influence people exposed to the media, and the viewers/readers are being influenced.
The *content* is also influencial and to try and deny that is to try and deny that year after year, decade after decade, companies pay _Billions_ to get their message into the media.
I don't believe it's true, if that is true then it would mean our military is run by amoral morons:
a). 'Desensitation' has been equated with brainwashing and 'removing consciences' by the media (and Lt.Col. Grossman). You can't have it both ways, if it's wrong for to brainwash kids, it is wrong to brainwash soldiers.
b). I do not think training on Doom is useful for being 'desensitized' for combat. However, it does teach quick thinking which may be a good thing. I still don't like the idea that our tax dolars are being used to allow Marines to play Doom. Oh, and what video games did the Marines play before the Normandy invasion? I can't think of anything worse they've had to face since that single war time event. They got mowed down on that beach and they kept coming. Something that used to be called 'courage' before people like Grossman decided to treat American soldiers as murderers in print (see On Killing).
c). How is shooting unrealistic human like figures who neither speak nor react like humans more 'desensitizing' than shooting bears or deer? Give me a choice I'd rather face someone who was intent on killing me who had only played Doom than someone who had hunted real live animals.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
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All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I can't understand why the government doesn't let me own an atom bomb. I'm just a law-abiding collector of atomic weapons. It's just the criminals who should be banned from owning atom bombs. If the government would just vigorously prosecute people who kill using atom bombs, then there would be no danger to society from law-abiding citizens owning nuclear weapons. Besides, I need an atom bomb to protect my family. What if a foreign army attacks my house? I'm not going to be able to defend my family using puny little rifles and pistols; I need a REAL equalizer. So the next time you hear of someone killing people using an atom bomb, don't blame the bomb! People kill people; atom bombs don't kill people!
People, as a whole, look for someone or something to blame that they do not fully comprehend. It's natural.
:)
:), in the height of the depression. I'd like to add that we would be lying to ourselves if we said that violence coming from kids didn't happen back then.
However, it is the job of the ones who do comprehend the situation to keep everyone else in line.
The truly sad part is that people tend to look for 'some big monster' out there to blame when the real problem is *much* closer to home.
I also have to admit that the heavily-biased media loves to over-dramatize and latch on to topics it feels it can drive, with this being one of them.
One poster mentioned that, in the 1930's, you could buy guns and ammo in the supermarket (or the version available then.
We just didn't hear about it.
Remember, the first in-your-face type of news only happened during the Vietnam war (circa 1970). It brought the real world into the eyes of the nation right in their living room.
I agree with much of what I see in the above post, but one thing grates:
If you see your kids making pipe bombs, stop
them. If you see your kids playing a game you don't like, stop them. If you see your kids downloading hardcore porn, stop them.
No. It's not quite that simple. But in the next sentence, Redking gets it right.
Talk to them. Geez, I thought it was obvious.
How many here reading this played with explosives in their youth? Would you have stopped just because mom or dad told you to stop? Probably not. Would you have used those explosives to kill or maim? Probably not deliberately (accidents happen). Telling the kids to stop, or trying to make them stop, is useless by itself. They'll just try (harder) to hide it from you, and it'll be more dangerous than ever. Talking to the kids is required. Listening to the kids is even more important. Find out why they're making explosives (or playing violent games, or downloading porn). Determine for yourself whether the kid is showing healthy curiosity or dangerous violent tendencies, and then act accordingly.
If the kid really is dangerously disturbed, there will be other signs, and you might miss them if you just flat-out ban (explosives, shoot-em-up games, porn) without some serious two-way communication first. If the kid's mostly okay, but likes (to blow things up, deathmatches, porn sites) some guidance might be in order, to keep him/her from hurting self or others. Get the otherwise-normal kid who's fascinated with explosives some safety equipment and a long talk with a chemistry teacher. Make sure the underage porn fan knows the difference between fantasy and reality, and some of the basic "facts of life".
Communication is vital before deciding on a course of action.
Not food but color chalk. It over stimulates the students causing them to go crazy.
True, this insitance on honor also stops a lot
of the coruption and pety crime we see dayly.
I.e. In Japan if you rape a child the father
will kill you for doing this, then kill himself
for failing to prevent it.
The result ? Pedofiles are fearfull of angry
parents with nothing to luse.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?