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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."
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?
Salon also published a skeptical article on Grossman back in May, when Littleton was in the news.
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!
After playing Carmagedon, I really shouldn't be driving. Carmagedon is a 3-D style racing game in which one of the main objects is to run over pedestrians. Running them down makes a nice splat and you get points and more time to continue the race. Without running anybody down, you only start with like 30 seconds to finish the race, just not possible.
I had played this game in college when I didn't have a car, so I didn't notice anything for a while. But as soon as I got home and got behind the wheel, I found myself looking for pedestrians! It was really more of an uncontious thing. I'd be driving and I'd see a group of people and I'd really have to activly tell that this is reality and its not right to drive my car into a crowd.
The only upshot to this, is that when I realized I was thinking like this, I quit playing the game and the feelings wore off in a couple weeks.
Given this, I'm not sure that shoot 'em up games are the best thing for anybody that has access to guns. Given my experience with cars, I'd imagine that playing shoot 'em ups makes you look at the gun in your hands a litte bit differently. Especially, if the gun belongs to somebody else and you have not really been trained to use it.
Obviously, computer games aren't the only factor here, in fact probably not even the main one, but I think that most of us here are too quick to say, "I play them and nothing bad happens to me, so it must be alright."
There was also a follow up to the interview, plus a lot more to read at the comments page.
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?)
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.)