Tetris?!? Tetris is a horrible game! Recently, two kids were arrested for throwing brightly painted cinder blocks off of an overpass onto cars below. When brought to trial, they blamed the influence of Tetris. Turns out, only two weeks before, they were throwing huge, brown wooden barrels off the same overpass!
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You know, Matrix 2 is just like a live action version of Mario 2, where you squat down until you glow and then you can fly!
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I know that I've always wanted to spit fireballs. And when someone angers me, I know that I could easily vanquish them either by bouncing on their head, or by picking up the nearest object and throwing it at them.
Oh .. and eating random mushrooms make you feel huge and all powerful, man!
{edit : it really helps to read both pages of a thread before responding to a question.
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Someone put forth the question: Do violent games reduce aggression by venting it, or build aggression by fueling it?
I suggest a third alternative: The thrill of a violent video game is a wholly different emotional experience than the anger which leads to physical aggression. In real life, people kill because they are angry, afraid, etc. In a game, people kill because it's part of a fun and challenging fictional experience. I don't think anyone kills in a video game because they are angry at the fictional characters, or because they are afraid of imminent death. They do it for the same reason that soccer players kick balls into goals, and that football players sack each other. It's part of the game.
The kids in this lawsuit are a rare case because apparently, they saw real-life killing as a game. This kind of disconnection with society and reality is a different sort of problem from aggression. They did not play an aggression-fueling game until they were just so filled up with rage they had to run out and murder someone. I get the impression that they went out and killed people because they were bored, frustrated kids with little sense of right and wrong. For that, we don't need to make games less violent. We need to make games more fun and parents more involved.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I play RPGs, so I'm constantly obsessed with building experience points at work, so I can level up. Which can cause a serious detriment to my Constitution and Charisma ...
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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"Video games certainly do not kill people."
Well, they can, if you hit the person with it hard enough, just under the....um, nevermind.
If they win what will make the video game industry boring is not the lack of Extremely Violent games, but the lack of any violence portrayed in any game, for with that precedent what game company would want to risk a lawsuit, even one sure to fail.
You say that Vice City is too violent, how about Sim City? How about someone who sues over Sim Neighborhood because the saw what happens when you don't put a door in a building, and the sim died, and they thougth that would be neat to try on thier RL Neighbor.
Not likely? If you were producing Sim City Neighborhood, would you think the risk not worth the fun of adding those scenes?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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If they rule against the video game industry...then what about suing the movie industry for violent movies...tv studios for violent tv shows, etc. It is a slippery slope once it is ruled that you aren't responsible for your own actions.
Posts: 512 | Registered: Jun 2002
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quote:If you worked in an urban or semi-urban public school, I doubt you could continue to think of this game as a good thing, or of its publishers as good guys.
I worked in urban high schools for three years in college and I think that teen violence is much more strongly influenced by poverty, perceived lack of efficacy, desperation, lack of good role models, and actual violence than by violence in the media.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Dawg- if the emotions aren't the same, then in what way is the game exciting? Personally, I am not okay with my spouse viewing porn because it isn't the same as actual adultery. But I guess I will now have to reexamine my Unabashed FandomPosts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you worked in an urban or semi-urban public school, I doubt you could continue to think of this game as a good thing, or of its publishers as good guys. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I worked in urban high schools for three years in college and I think that teen violence is much more strongly influenced by poverty, perceived lack of efficacy, desperation, lack of good role models, and actual violence than by violence in the media.
All of that is granted in my prior post. But reply to the sentence you quoted. Are you saying, then, that this game is a positive thing?
Are you saying that this game is not a negative thing?
Look, I said in my post that I didn't think the families should win this lawsuit. I'm a big defender of free speech, and other freedoms where we trust people to be mature, instead of needing to be protected from everything. But I think sometimes we go to the extreme of believing that speech should be protected because all speech is good or appropriate. And it is not. All speech is not good or appropriate. Some speech and art is destructive. Some of it is irresponsible. And we should protect it anyway because the cost to us as a society of not doing so (i.e., the loss of free speech) is greater than the cost of protecting it (i.e., socially destructive messages propagated through media and art).
It's all well and good to say we need more positive role-models. I agree with you. But that doesn't take away from the fact that there are people making a buck through titillating and gratuitous images of violence and destructive sexuality, and it doesn't take away from the fact that this is wrong. Sadly, there is a cumulative effect in our society, so that our good role models are having to compete with negative messages that are being repeated all over the place, and sometimes they get drowned out in the din.
Sometimes it's a bit facile to look at a violent kid, or a drug dealer, and say "Oh well, s/he didn't have good role models. It's the parents' fault." From time to time, though, you meet a kid in this circumstance who does have loving and caring parents who provide a good example. And it wasn't enough for whatever reason. Sometimes the good role models lose the competition for the kid's soul.
All kids have positive role models, negative role models, and their own decisions. They should certainly bear responsibility for their decisions. But I think we go a bit too far when we say that all the negative messages they get are okay. I think there's a whole spectrum of gray in there.
I think I'm trying to strike a middle ground here. Free speech is all well and good. I'm for it. But what about social responsibility? I'm not talking about outlawing games and suing their makers, just using my right to speak freely and say that this game is being marketed primarily to teens, despite Rockstar's claims to the contrary, and despite the game's rating, and that this game contains some pretty extreme stuff. Not only do I not think Rockstar is the good guy, I think they are pretty immoral.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Dec 2002
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quote:If you worked in an urban or semi-urban public school, I doubt you could continue to think of this game as a good thing, or of its publishers as good guys.
If you leave out everything before the comma, then you would be absolutely right to criticize me for not responding to the spirit of this question. However, to me anyway, the sentence as written implies that anyone who has worked in an urban or semi-urban public school would know that violent video games are a prime contributing factor to teen violence. And I just can't get behind a statement like that. Now, if that's not what you meant, then I misunderstood you and I apologize.
quote:It's all well and good to say we need more positive role-models. I agree with you. But that doesn't take away from the fact that there are people making a buck through titillating and gratuitous images of violence and destructive sexuality, and it doesn't take away from the fact that this is wrong. Sadly, there is a cumulative effect in our society, so that our good role models are having to compete with negative messages that are being repeated all over the place, and sometimes they get drowned out in the din.
I'm also not sure that I can agree that such depictions are absolutely morally wrong. I mean, from the get-go I have a problem with absolute moral statements. But supposing that we can say that it is absolutely morally wrong to do so because it contributes to delinquent attitudes amongst our citizenry, I still don't know that I can get behind it, because I don't really think that it alone is much of a contributor. Japan's popular media routinely depicts violence and sexuality (and violent sex) that most Americans would find shocking and there is far less violent crime there than here. It's easy enough to say "Well they have a different culture," but I think that's exactly the point. When a society as a whole doesn't do enough to teach a sense of obligation to its young people, then things like this can become a problem.
quote:Sometimes it's a bit facile to look at a violent kid, or a drug dealer, and say "Oh well, s/he didn't have good role models. It's the parents' fault." From time to time, though, you meet a kid in this circumstance who does have loving and caring parents who provide a good example. And it wasn't enough for whatever reason. Sometimes the good role models lose the competition for the kid's soul.
Yes, you do sometimes see that. However, I highly doubt that you see many kids with good parents, in affluent neighborhoods, with responsible peers behaving this way.
quote:All kids have positive role models, negative role models, and their own decisions. They should certainly bear responsibility for their decisions. But I think we go a bit too far when we say that all the negative messages they get are okay. I think there's a whole spectrum of gray in there.
Yes, they should certainly bear responsibility for their decisions. I think you are also saying that just saying "They're responsible for themselves" and leaving it at that is ludicrous. We do need to try to give kids good role models, and we do need to try to instill the right values in kids. I just think that focusing on things like popular media is not the right thing to do when, in my opinion, poverty, powerlessness, and peer pressure are so much more of a problem. But those are harder problems to tackle, so we choose to focus on the easy things.
I don't think we really disagree here, it's just a question of degree. You think that this game company is morally wrong because of the message that they are sending. I'm saying maybe that's true, but only if the message is being received, and I don't think that it's being received on a significant level.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Are you saying that this game is not a negative thing?
It's not the kind of game I would just give to a child, but if you found someone lying on the ground with a broken leg, an open jugular, a tiger sitting on their chest, and a splinter in their finger ... why would you immediately start pulling the splinter?
Compared to the other influences that have a much greater, measurable impact on a child's behavior, I can't imagine why this game should even be a major priority. Its developers certainly should not be considered solely liable for their customers' behavior.
Handing this game off to a kid is a bad idea because it's healthier for children to have a measured and guided exposure to the horrors of life, rather than just being tossed out into the middle of it and forced to figure it out for themselves. But it is ALSO a good thing that we are free to express the horrors of life in fictional contexts like Grand Theft Auto, for the benefit of adults.
Grand Theft Auto isn't the most uplifting of game franchises, I'll be the first to tell you. But it isn't an apocalyptic danger to our children. We have far worse things to worry about in the real world — and if we actually did manage to fix the other problems in our children's lives, then they would be healthy enough and morally conscious enough to approach Grand Theft Auto like adults, and it would have no negative effect.
I just think we need to address the real problem instead of the tiny side-effects. It's like we've got a giant dead horse in our kitchen, and we're swatting flies. We do ourselves a huge disservice by running around assigning massive amounts of blame to insignificant factors, while ignoring the core problems. I mean, who cares what game or movie or song inspired these kids' M.O? I'd much rather find out who raised them not to care if their neighbors live or die.
By the way, I learned all my analogies from video games Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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How many of us here would say that "media" (TV, radio, billboards, print, films, and video-games) has an impact on our behavior?
Or, put another way: who here would spend $1 million (US) on 30 seconds of media access?
Violent video games are certainly not the sole cause of physical violence among children and/or adults, but it is certainly a component. I'm not exactly sure where it falls on the spectrum, but I personally believe that it's somewhere above swatting flies (but below the dead horse).
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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If you're trying to say that changing what brand of beer you buy and killing people are even close to being the same thing, I will respectfully have to disagree.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Geoff . . . you're answering a comment of mine, but not really my post.
I haven't said that the producers of the game should be liable, or that they're the primary culprits.
Just that they claim it's a game for adults, but they clearly market it to teenagers and early teenagers, and that this is irresponsible on their part.
No, it's not the only thing wrong with our society, or the worst. But since when do we ignore things that are wrong on that account?
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Dec 2002
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