God I love Slashdot. It's pretty much pointless to attempt to explain why someone might have a certain opinion on a topic. In this case sex in videogames. Offering ideas out to respond to a question about "fear of sex" automagically means that you must believe strongly in them. I don't think video games make killers or sex freaks or cause you to believe in space aliens. I do however believe that media imagery drives culture and is reflected in the behavior of those that consume the content. This is pretty obvious. Kid thinks hip hop is cool, wants hip hop gear, maybe a little bling or a tricked out car, picks up language from the artists he likes to listen too. Or kid thinks metal is cool, grows hair long, buys a guitar, takes to flipping the devil horns etc. Media, shows you things. You become interested in things you are exposed to. You may try some of these things out. You think snowboarding looks cool, you might go try snowboarding. You see someone having a good time doing drugs you might want to try it. Now let's see why would a parent not want their kid (pre-teen especially) being exposed to say explicit lyrics in music or sex or even violence. Well, believe it or not as social animals our children don't exist in a vacuum. They go to school they need to interact with others in a structured environment. One where telling the teacher to go fuck themselves can be highly detrimental. Especially if they are ten years old or less. The same goes for sexual behavior. Even a kiss can get your kid expelled these days. So you try to teach your kids the best you can on appropriate behavior. But guess what? Kids aren't robots. And for everyone mentioning that violence is different from sex because there is no inherent motivation to do violence, try playing with a two year old. We learn through stern lessons in childhood that violence is unacceptable. Give a two year old a baseball bat and he'll whack you on the head with it, and laugh. Anyway, environment affects behavior. You can't argue against that. The various media we are exposed to present concepts and experiences that are part of our environment. Video games don't create killers, sex freaks and space mutants but they are part of our cultural fabric and have as much impact as any other art form. And yes it's fantasy. Maybe the big question is why is GTA one of the biggest fantasies people in America have?
"If the only reason sexual content is censored is to prevent children from mimicing them and making poor sexual choices, then why can't women's breasts be seen on TV?"
Nowhere in my post do I say it's the ONLY reason. I am merely offering some reasons which are not related to bible thumpers. The constant argument that anti-sex bible thumping fundamentalists are censoring boobies is not the total story. There are legitimate reasons why you might not want your kids to be exposed to this. Yes parents need to be talking to their kids about sex and half the reason is to put some perspective on the common depictions put forth by the media (cheap easy sex is fun).
My handle comes from a character in a finnish children's book series called "Snufkin". I shortened it to snuf because everyone thinks "Snufkin" is a girl's name. 23 is simply because "snuf" was already taken and 23 is a rather important number from a discordian point of view. BTW "snuf" is not porn. Snuff with two Fs refers to films made showing people being killed.
"I'm certainly not going to argue that violence is ok" See this part up here is saying that I know that violence and killing someone has consequences. I was addressing the grandparents post about "what is the fear of sex" by stating that there are reasonable fears.
Note the part in my comment where I state "Now I'm all for more sex and less violence".
I'm simply replying to the grandparent as to some reasonable concerns about sex as depicted in media. No I don't think watching video sex leads to kids becoming an AIDS infested porn stars anymore than playing Doom leads to mass murder. The media does project images depicting what is considered cool and kids do react to that. Why else would kids mimic the dress and style patterns media superstars? As a nerdy kid who figured out after high school that if I dressed a certain way, talked a certain way and hung out in certain circles I took could get laid - I can say that media imagery impacts how teenagers and young adults behave. As someone who also made bad decisions and ended up living a life close to a character from an Irvine Welsh novel - I can say from a first hand experience that cheap sex, drug use and violence is hardly as glamourous and exciting as Hollywood likes to depict it. Scary, depressing and dangerous would be better adjectives. I got out - but not everyone does. I lost several friends because they couldn't get out of the lifestyle, some are dead and some are mentally destroyed. The fact is that depictions that show consquences of these types of behaviors are more interesting from a story perspective. A military FPS that attaches meaning to the death of a squad mate is telling a better story (single player at least). I don't like the "it's only a game" thinking. It is a game, but games are in my opinion another creative artform just as relevant as movies or music. I'm not asking that PacMan put on a condom before he gives Ms. PacMan a kiss in the between level animation, but in the case of a game like GTA - I think it would make perfect sense for the protagonist to buy a condom. It would work within the genre.
I'm certainly not going to argue that violence is ok and sex is not, however sex does carry with it certain responsibilities. The fear in parents is that their children will be attracted to unsafe and irresponsible sex. Also that sex won't be associated with love but rather just used in a physical manner. Unprotected sex can lead to disease including AIDS which will change your life forever and kill you. Unprotected sex can also lead to unwanted pregnancy which in a lot of ways is worse than disease as it impacts an entirely new life. Abortion has a dramatic physchological impact and can't be considered an "easy" solution to pregnancy. Now I'm all for more sex and less violence and I don't consider the naked human body something sinful. The fact is though, that depicting sex should also educate about the possible dangers. Maybe virtual sex needs virtual condoms. After all your GTA character gets fat if he eats too much junk food and doesn't exercise. Maybe he should come down with an STD if he fucks every skank in the neighborhood. Or maybe he can be have his cash taken away to support the kid he fathered.
I had a Pentium Pro key ring made by Intel which was pretty cool. It was metal with the Intel Inside logo on one side and the Pentium Pro's dies on the other side. The Pentium Pro had a seperate die for the cache and cpus which made it neater to look at than than the regular Pentium keychain.
My thoughts exactly. Hopefully someone with a little sense and a mod point will bump you up. Artists never create "something from nothing", artists are influenced by any range of experiences and use their experiences to create. Art is not something that comes from the void.
"Already years ago, Gibson was writing books that could be read/listened to in a randomized chapter sequence. I guess he really knows the subject of mixing and remixing..."
Everything he know he learned from William S. Burroughs. I've always considered the Naked Lunch the perfect bathroom book as you can open it to any page and just start reading.
"My guess is that the market for low quality, shaky-cam movies is very, very small in reality."
Except that high end bootlegs are usually of the Telecine, telesync or screener types which are better quality. Telecine is a true transfer from film to digital, telesync's are normally shot from the projection booth with a direct audio feed. Screeners are less common nowdays, but are ripped from DVD or VHS advance copies of the film. Generally speaking the quality is of course lower than a DVD or seeing the film in a theater but generally much higher than the old shaky-cam with camcorder mic sound stuff. I myself prefer to see it in a theater or wait for the DVD.
The Nvidia "way it's meant to be played" thing has been used for tons of games. I think just about anything Electronic Arts puts out had the slogan at some point. The thing that's really irritating is for the most part it's just bs marketing. So while for example, Half Life 2 did actually run a bit better on ATI and Doom 3 ran a bit better on Nvidia - for most games it isn't true. I was pretty annoyed when I bought a Nvidia 5600 Ultra and found that performance was a bit off in Battlefield Vietnam. A game that told me Nvidia was the way to play it everytime I loaded it.
At the time ATI's cards were faster than Nvidia's 5x00 series. I upgraded to a 5600 Ultra from my older 4400 and noticed almost no performance gains. While the 5x00 parts were direct X 9 compliant you couldn't use the DX9 game options because the impact on frame rate was severe. Although my experience with the 5x00 Nvidia series was less than spectacular, the card was very stable, just as my 4400 before it was. I've avoided ATI due to have bad luck with their drivers in the past. So although I was tempted to get the x800 series when it came out, I waited for Nvidia's 6x00 series. I do recommend reading some reviews with regard to the cooling options on the cards. Some vendors have better heatsink/fan setups than others. BFG Tech's cards are usually pretty good.
As a Hawaii player I'm glad to see Aussies and Kiwis on the servers as I finally have more players who are awake and gaming when I am. At least half of my guild is from Australia or New Zealand. Lag hasn't really seemed to be any more of an issue for those players.
"If the game is no longer interesting now that you've gone through all the content, then stop playing."
Absolutely. It is however kind of difficult to just leave an MMO. It's like a breaking up a relationship or something. Especially if you have a guild of good people you play with. When World of Warcraft came out, a lot of my City of Heroes guildies dug out for the new game. As I'm not a hardcore player I still hadn't hit level cap yet and neither had my rl friend. So we both stuck to playing with a dimished guild. A couple months later I hit cap. We were a bit bored of the game, having seen a ton of the content already. The prospect of leveling new toons through the old mess was daunting. But still we played for awhile. Finally I broke down and picked up World of Warcraft when I noticed it came with a ten day trial I could give my friend. A week and a half later we had made the decision to move to WoW and are once again having fun exploring a new MMO. We'll probably go back for City of Villains at some point or on to other MMOs like Auto Assault in the future. But quitting the first MMO was an odd experience. Like you don't want to say "sorry guildies thanks for the help, seeya around" even though you aren't having fun any more.
Are you playing PVP games? I played City of Heroes first and now World of Warcraft. CoH is PVE (player versus environment) with only arena style consensual PVP. WoW on a PVE server also is mostly only consensual PVP unless you go into a PVP area (i.e. an opposing factions town). In both games I certainly didn't get creamed from the get go. CoH has a nice tutorial which gets you up on the interface and general gameplay. You start off busting heads too. In WoW the first 10 levels are practically a tutorial. Easy quests and you get enough powers to know if you are going to enjoy the class. Some MMOs are brutal PVP only affairs - but not all of them.
True. And thankfully SP2 should help with this problem. I still take comfort in being behind a hardware firewall. Considering the low cost of a basic router/firewall unit, I recommend it to anyone getting a broadband connection. They aren't infallible but they don't hurt to have connected.
Slashdot Mirror
God I love Slashdot. It's pretty much pointless to attempt to explain why someone might have a certain opinion on a topic. In this case sex in videogames.
Offering ideas out to respond to a question about "fear of sex" automagically means that you must believe strongly in them.
I don't think video games make killers or sex freaks or cause you to believe in space aliens.
I do however believe that media imagery drives culture and is reflected in the behavior of those that consume the content. This is pretty obvious. Kid thinks hip hop is cool, wants hip hop gear, maybe a little bling or a tricked out car, picks up language from the artists he likes to listen too. Or kid thinks metal is cool, grows hair long, buys a guitar, takes to flipping the devil horns etc.
Media, shows you things. You become interested in things you are exposed to. You may try some of these things out. You think snowboarding looks cool, you might go try snowboarding. You see someone having a good time doing drugs you might want to try it.
Now let's see why would a parent not want their kid (pre-teen especially) being exposed to say explicit lyrics in music or sex or even violence. Well, believe it or not as social animals our children don't exist in a vacuum. They go to school they need to interact with others in a structured environment. One where telling the teacher to go fuck themselves can be highly detrimental. Especially if they are ten years old or less. The same goes for sexual behavior. Even a kiss can get your kid expelled these days.
So you try to teach your kids the best you can on appropriate behavior. But guess what? Kids aren't robots.
And for everyone mentioning that violence is different from sex because there is no inherent motivation to do violence, try playing with a two year old. We learn through stern lessons in childhood that violence is unacceptable. Give a two year old a baseball bat and he'll whack you on the head with it, and laugh.
Anyway, environment affects behavior. You can't argue against that. The various media we are exposed to present concepts and experiences that are part of our environment. Video games don't create killers, sex freaks and space mutants but they are part of our cultural fabric and have as much impact as any other art form. And yes it's fantasy.
Maybe the big question is why is GTA one of the biggest fantasies people in America have?
"If the only reason sexual content is censored is to prevent children from mimicing them and making poor sexual choices, then why can't women's breasts be seen on TV?"
Nowhere in my post do I say it's the ONLY reason. I am merely offering some reasons which are not related to bible thumpers.
The constant argument that anti-sex bible thumping fundamentalists are censoring boobies is not the total story.
There are legitimate reasons why you might not want your kids to be exposed to this. Yes parents need to be talking to their kids about sex and half the reason is to put some perspective on the common depictions put forth by the media (cheap easy sex is fun).
My handle comes from a character in a finnish children's book series called "Snufkin". I shortened it to snuf because everyone thinks "Snufkin" is a girl's name. 23 is simply because "snuf" was already taken and 23 is a rather important number from a discordian point of view.
BTW "snuf" is not porn. Snuff with two Fs refers to films made showing people being killed.
"I'm certainly not going to argue that violence is ok"
See this part up here is saying that I know that violence and killing someone has consequences.
I was addressing the grandparents post about "what is the fear of sex" by stating that there are reasonable fears.
Note the part in my comment where I state "Now I'm all for more sex and less violence".
I'm simply replying to the grandparent as to some reasonable concerns about sex as depicted in media.
No I don't think watching video sex leads to kids becoming an AIDS infested porn stars anymore than playing Doom leads to mass murder.
The media does project images depicting what is considered cool and kids do react to that. Why else would kids mimic the dress and style patterns media superstars?
As a nerdy kid who figured out after high school that if I dressed a certain way, talked a certain way and hung out in certain circles I took could get laid - I can say that media imagery impacts how teenagers and young adults behave.
As someone who also made bad decisions and ended up living a life close to a character from an Irvine Welsh novel - I can say from a first hand experience that cheap sex, drug use and violence is hardly as glamourous and exciting as Hollywood likes to depict it. Scary, depressing and dangerous would be better adjectives. I got out - but not everyone does. I lost several friends because they couldn't get out of the lifestyle, some are dead and some are mentally destroyed.
The fact is that depictions that show consquences of these types of behaviors are more interesting from a story perspective. A military FPS that attaches meaning to the death of a squad mate is telling a better story (single player at least).
I don't like the "it's only a game" thinking. It is a game, but games are in my opinion another creative artform just as relevant as movies or music.
I'm not asking that PacMan put on a condom before he gives Ms. PacMan a kiss in the between level animation, but in the case of a game like GTA - I think it would make perfect sense for the protagonist to buy a condom. It would work within the genre.
I'm certainly not going to argue that violence is ok and sex is not, however sex does carry with it certain responsibilities. The fear in parents is that their children will be attracted to unsafe and irresponsible sex. Also that sex won't be associated with love but rather just used in a physical manner.
Unprotected sex can lead to disease including AIDS which will change your life forever and kill you. Unprotected sex can also lead to unwanted pregnancy which in a lot of ways is worse than disease as it impacts an entirely new life. Abortion has a dramatic physchological impact and can't be considered an "easy" solution to pregnancy.
Now I'm all for more sex and less violence and I don't consider the naked human body something sinful. The fact is though, that depicting sex should also educate about the possible dangers. Maybe virtual sex needs virtual condoms. After all your GTA character gets fat if he eats too much junk food and doesn't exercise. Maybe he should come down with an STD if he fucks every skank in the neighborhood. Or maybe he can be have his cash taken away to support the kid he fathered.
I had a Pentium Pro key ring made by Intel which was pretty cool. It was metal with the Intel Inside logo on one side and the Pentium Pro's dies on the other side. The Pentium Pro had a seperate die for the cache and cpus which made it neater to look at than than the regular Pentium keychain.
My thoughts exactly. Hopefully someone with a little sense and a mod point will bump you up.
Artists never create "something from nothing", artists are influenced by any range of experiences and use their experiences to create.
Art is not something that comes from the void.
Arrrgh my brain! Mention not this horror!
How about Gene Siskel then?
"Already years ago, Gibson was writing books that could be read/listened to in a randomized chapter sequence. I guess he really knows the subject of mixing and remixing..."
Everything he know he learned from William S. Burroughs. I've always considered the Naked Lunch the perfect bathroom book as you can open it to any page and just start reading.
Yeah! And screw Robert Ebert! How does that bastard think he can criticize movies when he doesn't make them!
"My guess is that the market for low quality, shaky-cam movies is very, very small in reality."
Except that high end bootlegs are usually of the Telecine, telesync or screener types which are better quality.
Telecine is a true transfer from film to digital, telesync's are normally shot from the projection booth with a direct audio feed. Screeners are less common nowdays, but are ripped from DVD or VHS advance copies of the film.
Generally speaking the quality is of course lower than a DVD or seeing the film in a theater but generally much higher than the old shaky-cam with camcorder mic sound stuff.
I myself prefer to see it in a theater or wait for the DVD.
"They'd find themselves very short on content to broadcast in a short time."
I kind of doubt that, considering there are already extremely good commercial rips at HDTV resolutions being passed around of every major TV show.
The Nvidia "way it's meant to be played" thing has been used for tons of games. I think just about anything Electronic Arts puts out had the slogan at some point.
The thing that's really irritating is for the most part it's just bs marketing. So while for example, Half Life 2 did actually run a bit better on ATI and Doom 3 ran a bit better on Nvidia - for most games it isn't true. I was pretty annoyed when I bought a Nvidia 5600 Ultra and found that performance was a bit off in Battlefield Vietnam. A game that told me Nvidia was the way to play it everytime I loaded it.
At the time ATI's cards were faster than Nvidia's 5x00 series. I upgraded to a 5600 Ultra from my older 4400 and noticed almost no performance gains. While the 5x00 parts were direct X 9 compliant you couldn't use the DX9 game options because the impact on frame rate was severe.
Although my experience with the 5x00 Nvidia series was less than spectacular, the card was very stable, just as my 4400 before it was.
I've avoided ATI due to have bad luck with their drivers in the past. So although I was tempted to get the x800 series when it came out, I waited for Nvidia's 6x00 series.
I do recommend reading some reviews with regard to the cooling options on the cards. Some vendors have better heatsink/fan setups than others. BFG Tech's cards are usually pretty good.
If you don't know who Jeff Minter is... you won't care anyway!
Um. Reset the Game Cube clock?
As a Hawaii player I'm glad to see Aussies and Kiwis on the servers as I finally have more players who are awake and gaming when I am. At least half of my guild is from Australia or New Zealand. Lag hasn't really seemed to be any more of an issue for those players.
Too bad I wasn't trying to be funny. I was trying to state that games other than Everquest and MMOs can be addicting.
Duh.
My friends and I used to refer to "Command and Crack", "Warcrack" and "Qruacke" - because even these non-MMOs can cause significant addiction.
"If the game is no longer interesting now that you've gone through all the content, then stop playing."
Absolutely. It is however kind of difficult to just leave an MMO. It's like a breaking up a relationship or something. Especially if you have a guild of good people you play with.
When World of Warcraft came out, a lot of my City of Heroes guildies dug out for the new game. As I'm not a hardcore player I still hadn't hit level cap yet and neither had my rl friend. So we both stuck to playing with a dimished guild.
A couple months later I hit cap. We were a bit bored of the game, having seen a ton of the content already. The prospect of leveling new toons through the old mess was daunting.
But still we played for awhile.
Finally I broke down and picked up World of Warcraft when I noticed it came with a ten day trial I could give my friend.
A week and a half later we had made the decision to move to WoW and are once again having fun exploring a new MMO.
We'll probably go back for City of Villains at some point or on to other MMOs like Auto Assault in the future.
But quitting the first MMO was an odd experience. Like you don't want to say "sorry guildies thanks for the help, seeya around" even though you aren't having fun any more.
Are you playing PVP games? I played City of Heroes first and now World of Warcraft. CoH is PVE (player versus environment) with only arena style consensual PVP.
WoW on a PVE server also is mostly only consensual PVP unless you go into a PVP area (i.e. an opposing factions town).
In both games I certainly didn't get creamed from the get go. CoH has a nice tutorial which gets you up on the interface and general gameplay. You start off busting heads too.
In WoW the first 10 levels are practically a tutorial. Easy quests and you get enough powers to know if you are going to enjoy the class.
Some MMOs are brutal PVP only affairs - but not all of them.
I think the old G5 vs x86 debate is pretty well moot now that Jobs is moving to Intel.
Wow that's sweet!
Now can you explain how you install Half Life 2?
True. And thankfully SP2 should help with this problem. I still take comfort in being behind a hardware firewall. Considering the low cost of a basic router/firewall unit, I recommend it to anyone getting a broadband connection. They aren't infallible but they don't hurt to have connected.