I also like playing RPGs keeping all of my characters at experience level 1 and equipped with tattered rags and a wooden sword. Experience points have no recognizable value.
If you can still easily beat the game with the tattered rags and wooden sword (hint: Bioshock is still insanely easy even with the bare minimum of adam), then yes, those experience points have no recognizable value.
10 years ago, the majority of people were not going to movie theaters hoping to see peoples heads get cut off in every other film, now, it's kind of status quo.
You must not have gone to any movies ten years ago, or 20 years ago for that matter. Slasher flicks cropped up in the early 80's.
Gears of War? I've seen it, how is it any worse than Crackdown, FEAR, Halo, GTA, and all the other games out there. Seriously, Gears of War is par for the course.
Pardon me if I just pick on one game here. Halo? You really thing that Halo belongs in the same bracket as GTA? A game where the entire singleplayer campaign consists of killing aliens? Not to mention the fact that all the dialogue in Halo is PG-13, or that, unlike the other games you mentioned, Halo completely lacks any form of dismemberment, unless you count slicing up the zombie-like "Flood", which are halfway falling apart to begin with.
I beg to differ. Just as many people DIED 30 years ago as today, but people didn't explicitly want to see it in their entertainment the way they do now. Culture, as a whole, has shifted.
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho?
To quote the wikipedia article I cited above:
"Early examples of the slasher genre include Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast (1963), Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace (1964) and Reazione a catena (1971) (the latter known by over a dozen titles in English, including Bay of Blood, Carnage and Twitch of the Death Nerve), Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974)."
I simply refuse to believe that the only reason why there wasn't as much violent content 10 years ago was due to the technology
The point I'm trying to make is that there was as much violent content 10, 20, 30 years ago. You have to go all the way back to the 50's to get away from violent entertainment, and even then, Mutant Monster Movies were the signs of the time. Before that, well the soft-ass sports we watch today were a whole helluva lot more violent. The level of violence in entertainment in society isn't increasing, so much as shifting.
human nature... raised differently
Nature != Nurture. Just because you've been raised as a peaceful person, does not mean you magically lack basic instincts, just that they are (properly?) suppressed.
All I'm asking is that people learn to develop their own sense of taste... and I'm not seeing it.
Everyone has their own sense of taste, and it's a mistake to expect to see others exhibiting yours.
All I'm trying to say is that things aren't declining as fast as you seem to think they are. I won't argue that people in general aren't tasteless, or that mindless violence isn't a poor excuse for entertainment. It just seems a little foolish to assume that it's all happened in the last 10 years.
"Please consider the opinion of the adult gamer," sort of disturbs me, somehow.
The fact that it disturbs you, disturbs me. Who are you to say what I can play?
The real issue here, above and beyond the "do games make people violent?" question, is why are adult gamers demanding such violence?
Eh? There's always going to be some example of someone pushing cultural boundries, and Manhunt is one of them, that and Gears of War are pretty much the only ones more violent than last gen. as far as I know.
30 years ago, this level of violence was unthinkable.
30 years ago, people were just as violent as they are today. 300 years ago. 3000 years ago. Only the techniques have changed.
When the topic first came up, and that pretty much started in the mainstream with Mortal Kombat, the defense was that it added realism and immersion. But to be honest, I never bought it.
I'm confused. Do you mean the blood/gore in particular? Is it so unreasonable to think that spearing someone in the chest would draw blood? With the kind of stuff MK characters hurl at each other, not having blood wouldn't make sense. (see: Soul Calibur(Fun game, but come on, sword fighting without any visible injuries?))
We're not talking about adults here, we're talking 13-18 year olds
Nice straw man argument, but we are talking about adults. In case you haven't noticed, however, 13-17 year old males do adult things even though they're not supposed to, (see: drugs, alcohol, sex).
2) Culturally,... because I'm a man."
I dunno about everyone else, but 1.) Beer is a matter of taste, and 2.) The rest can be explained by the "Y" chromosome's gift to men; Testosterone. You can't ignore that one little hormone.
So my theory is that violence is largely used as a means of establishing independance and gender identity
As a means of independence? Maybe. But violence is mostly human nature, not some culturally learned thing. (See: all of history.)
Really? I just bought my Motorola phone on ebay, plugged my existing SIM card into it and it automagically worked. Perhaps you are on the Sprint/Verizon/Nextel(IIRC) CDMA network?
Why is it the duty of individual citizens to police the government? (They should have the right, not the obligation.)
Who else is supposed to do it? You're either a private citizen, a government agent (they've already shown us how great they are at policing themselves), or a corporation, which would only serve it's own interests.
coming into the cafe, buying a cup of coffee, plugging in my laptop and camping on a table for an hour would cost the cafe a lot more than me parking outside and using the same 'amount' of wifi.
You think an hour's worth of powering a laptop costs more than a cup coffee shop coffee?
So if an illegal immigrant goes out and gets a fake ID, SS card, and overall a complete fake identity as in your example, how exactly will some database help? If the identity is fake anyway, and it's a blacklist database, they still won't show up.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.
--Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
Slashdot Mirror
Something tells me most Americans are already doing this.
Bold tag is bold
How, may I ask then, did you see it?
It's spelled "Redundant."
To quote the wikipedia article I cited above:
"Early examples of the slasher genre include Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast (1963), Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace (1964) and Reazione a catena (1971) (the latter known by over a dozen titles in English, including Bay of Blood, Carnage and Twitch of the Death Nerve), Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974)." The point I'm trying to make is that there was as much violent content 10, 20, 30 years ago. You have to go all the way back to the 50's to get away from violent entertainment, and even then, Mutant Monster Movies were the signs of the time. Before that, well the soft-ass sports we watch today were a whole helluva lot more violent. The level of violence in entertainment in society isn't increasing, so much as shifting. Nature != Nurture. Just because you've been raised as a peaceful person, does not mean you magically lack basic instincts, just that they are (properly?) suppressed. Everyone has their own sense of taste, and it's a mistake to expect to see others exhibiting yours.
All I'm trying to say is that things aren't declining as fast as you seem to think they are. I won't argue that people in general aren't tasteless, or that mindless violence isn't a poor excuse for entertainment. It just seems a little foolish to assume that it's all happened in the last 10 years.
I'm sure those aren't just tornado sirens you're hearing...
Really? I just bought my Motorola phone on ebay, plugged my existing SIM card into it and it automagically worked. Perhaps you are on the Sprint/Verizon/Nextel(IIRC) CDMA network?
Why without looking it up? Why should we fail to research our own arguments just because you did?
What's the worst they could do? Shoot him?
square root(999,106) = 999.5529
Try here
5,840,000 results != "practically nowhere"
Who else is supposed to do it? You're either a private citizen, a government agent (they've already shown us how great they are at policing themselves), or a corporation, which would only serve it's own interests.
You think an hour's worth of powering a laptop costs more than a cup coffee shop coffee?
So if an illegal immigrant goes out and gets a fake ID, SS card, and overall a complete fake identity as in your example, how exactly will some database help? If the identity is fake anyway, and it's a blacklist database, they still won't show up.
Starcraft runs at 640x480, that's pretty terrible on a 1400x900 LCD.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.
--Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
This is not acceptable debate language. Please keep things civil, this is a place for intelligent conversation.
That was for the London Stock Exchange