Games and Violence -post your opinions here!

[Firelance]

It's not often I post here, but hey...

zccording to a report by the Surgeon General's office of the United States on teen violence...


the preponderance of evidence indicates that violent behavior seldom results from a single cause; rather, multiple factors converging over time contribute to such behavior. Accordingly, the influence of the mass media, however strong or weak, is best viewed as one of the many potential factors that help to shape behavior, including violent behavior.

and...


Third, a developmental perspective is essential for understanding how media violence affects youth behavior and for framing any coherent public health response to it. Although this report focuses generally on the violent behavior of adolescents, it is critical to understand how children are influenced by and respond to media violence, especially in order to recognize and help those who are particularly susceptible to adverse effects. Most youths who are aggressive and engage in some forms of antisocial behavior do not become violent teens and adults. However, it is well established that many violent adolescents and adults were highly aggressive and even violent at younger ages, and the highly aggressive child is at increased risk of growing up to be a more aggressive young adult (Nagin & Tremblay, 1999). Because influences that promote aggressive behavior in some young children can contribute to increasingly aggressive and even violent behavior many years later, it is important to understand the early factors that may play a role in later outcomes.

- http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/chapter4/appendix4b.html
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Now looking at this, it would seem that exposing your young child to violent images and media at a very young age causes violent behaviors later on down the road, hence making it the parent's primary responsibility. Sure, you can't screen everything from your child. They come to you to ask for a drink at 1AM and they see Bruce Willis shoot terrorists with a machine gun, that's when other measures need to be taken. I'm not for censorship, but if it keeps me from being shot one night by some nutcase, then so be it.

[Dyntheos]

My 3 year old daughter hides behind a chair when something on TV is scary (like someone being punched) whilst she will happily sit on my knee as I gibbify creatures in Wizardry8 (my latest time vortex).

TV seems a truer medium for violence, and the news is certainly the most violent program on TV, yet it's never pulled off air.

Video games tend to have low impact at least from what I have seen, because my daughter at the age of 3 can discern the make believe which is a computer game.

TV is such a passive thing where emotions are bottled up and absorbed waiting to be released. How many of us have come out of an action flick pumped up a bit due to the action? We are like sponges when it comes to TV or Movies. Yet a Video game requires input from the user and actually relieves those emotions that cause a hightened state. You don't walk away from an intense death match LAN ready to go out and kill ppl, you leave it drained, worn out and ready for some sleep.

[TheGunslinger]

First spake by Dyntheos:
My 3 year old daughter hides behind a chair when something on TV is scary (like someone being punched) whilst she will happily sit on my knee as I gibbify creatures in Wizardry8 (my latest time vortex).

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Okay, maybe I've just been out of the loop for awhile, but WTF is gibbify? To make someone into giblets?

[SquidDNA]

Dyn, so I'm speaking as a young adult now, but even as a teenager I had the inverse reaction-- I became wholly desensitized to violence in conventional media, but damn if I didn't walk away from a subterranean ambush by headless still trembling and full of adrenaline.

I don't mean to shift the topic, but I think there's an important distinction to be made here, and I think its totally relavent to the topic.

Violence is not the same thing as suffering. Violence is damage or destruction, but especially directed at living things, and especially people. There can be profound, sustained violence with little or no suffering. Boxing is a good example. Violence out the wazoo, but none involved are traumatized. Action movies are violent, but we really seldom see the suffering attached to that violence (and maybe that's part of the problem?)

Take "Mercury Rising." Not a terribly popular action / suspense movie with Bruce Willis as (I think) a federal marshall protecting an autistic boy whose parents have been killed. I cheered when one of the bad guys was sliced n' diced by shards and hunks of broken glass, but I was choking back tears when the autistic boy was struggling to understand that his parents had died. The bad guy was in really intense pain for maybe a few seconds before he lost consciousness and died, but the boy had suffered a loss he couldn't communicate. Walking out of the theatre my then-girlfriend asked me "Doesn't it bother you that you're so desensitized to violence?"

It didn't, really. Violence is an inescapable part of the nature of things. That doesn't mean we should all run around like slobbering anarchistic brutes beating the shit out of people for fun; it just means that destruction and damage happen, and inevitably it happens to you or someone you love. On the other hand, sometimes it happens to something you want to eat. The point I'm trying to make is, it's in a way good to be desensitized to violence, because when push comes to shove, you may be needed to deal with the source of that violence (or the victim) immediately, and if you're paralyzed with shock you're letting the team down.

Remaining sensitized to suffering is something which has always been difficult to explain the value of. If one can't understand the importance of helping other people to begin with, I sincerely doubt anyone can explain it to them in any terms. So I won't try here.

The PC game I've never played but hate most from reading the reviews is "Postal," where you essentially walk through urban settings killing anybody you like. Children cry for their parents, people beg for mercy, etc. From what I've read, this game links the violence and the suffering adequately. The problem is that it rewards you for both. So that aside, would it be possible to have media content that was still as popular as what we have now, but demonstrates the link between violence and suffering? Sure, Metallica's "One" has the whole war-wounded thing going, but it was Trent Reznor one of the Columbine shooters quoted in his journal.

Suppose people just don't want to hear about suffering, only violence: what would the next step be?

(Note: I'm not suggesting that media is solely responsilbe for these problems, only that it is a factor, so this post examines only that factor.)

[Shin]

If a game has violence just for the sake of having violence, it's dumb.

Violence is a method. Being thus it should be a method of doing _something_. If the purpose of the method is just the method itself, it becomes devoid of meaning. Just like talking for the sake of talking, arguing for the sake of arguing, eating for the sake of eating, living for the sake of living.

On violence and video games, think of it as training simulations that pilots go though. The more accurate the simulation, the better it helps them learn how to fly. But it doesn't really affect their desire to become a pilot.

Frequent exposure to violence enhances one's aptitude for it, just like practicing how to read. You can read Shakespeare until you become adept at the english language, but will it make you love poetry?

Rather, it is the pilot's desire to fly that makes him appreciate realistic flight simulations. It is the reader's love of poetry that makes him enjoy Shakespeare.

Why do people like violent games?

For many, the violence just comes with the challenge. Are boxers in it to defeat the opponent or do they just do it to be able to hit things? Is their joy in seeing an opponents swollen face or in winning the match?

Which is the real problem? People playing games and almost believe for a moment that they are shooting at real people? Or is it people who carry guns and almost believe for a moment that they are playing a game?

What separates the rational from the psychotic?

The important questions are the ones that people must answer themselves.

[Vaarok]

Ok. Firstly, I would mention the point regarding television.

Linearvision is a horrible noninteractive thing, where you learn to be a uninvolved observer rather than a participant.

To cite an example, how many of you have watched something horrific (say a hostage get shot) happen on television, and what was your response? Sit there. Look at what happened on television.

Now, let us examine our reaction in a computer game (without taking the sick route and killing the hostage yourself) if that hostage buys it, what's your reaction? Damnit! Noo! <subtext> I could have done something, I'm responsible</subtext>

Computer game violence teaches emotional consequences, because you are a participant. Television/Movie violence promotes dispassioned detachment.

Also, I once mentored a kid for three years, very agressive and violent, but a good kid. He just had so much frustration inside him. Eventually, I gave him a copy of Diablo, and he could find someplace where he could vent his agression nondestructively. So he went from punching holes in his bedroom walls to getting angry, walking away, and if it still bothered him, playing some Diablo and distracting himself. I sincerely doubt, by watching him, that he was releasing that anger into the monsters so much as he was just going on a digital vacation from his anger, so that when he returned to reality, he'd either forgotten about it or let it dissipate.
_________

And secondly, what is the negative connotation always attached to violence?

I know how to flesh and butcher animals. I go out into the woods, shoot a live, defenseless creature, maybe have to shoot it again to finish it off (unlikely), and then take it apart with my hands and a knife.

That'd be "horrific" if it were on television. Remember SurvivorII with the wild pig?

Likewise, two years ago, I shot my dog. That dog had been my companion-sibling since my second day of life. She was closer to me than my mother, father, or sister. Yet she was very old and in pain, starting to die, and after consultation with the vet and my family, got out the rifle, said goodbye, and ended it for her.

Killed my closest, most beloved family member.

Yet it was for the best.
Most people would be incapable of such things, balking or running horrified from such a situation. I however, was raised to take responsibility and do what is necessary.

Our species has begun to devolve from responsibility and taking the pain into some sort of instant-gratification, knee-jerk reacting disney-and-McDonalds soundbyte and hysteria fueled cattle.

[sajuukar]

Violence is human nature

According to some study, when people dream, it tends to have somthing to do with agressiveness 90% of the time. That doesn't mean that most the dreams that we remember are agressive, but that humans are naturally agressive.

Some computer games are violent because there are people who want to let out all those caveman instincts. GTA 3 for example it very very violent, but anyone who has played it cannot say that they did not enjoy it.

:angel:

[StarHawk]

Hey hey I like violent games and all but does that mean I want to go bash someone over the head afterwards NO infact if I get pissed of after working hard all day and just want to frag something I play delta force or anyother game I might have in at the time and I just go around blowing bad guys out of this world and you know what it feels good because I get all my aggressivness out.
However when I watch TV after a hard day of working on stuff and I am really pissed at myself or someone else I watch TV and I just want to go bash more heads.

P.S. Kung Fu is also a good outlet for those agressive tendencies I certainly like it.;)

But the point is weather it be TV PC or Sports we are agressive beings [especially us guys] and sometimes its better to go frag thirty dumb bad guys on a comp game then it is to watch TV and wish you could go out and frag thirty guys in real life.

TV if anything is more of a violent input then Comps which in a way is a violence out put we get to crush maim and destroy in a part of our lives so we dont want to crush maim and destroy in real life.

[Langy]

Media does NOT affect violence in teenagers. At all. Proof? Galdiatorial combat in Rome. Did people start going out and killing everyone after seeing gladiators kill each other? No. They had a ball watching them kill each other then they went back to their daily lives. People who think that the media makes people more violent are either ignorant or misinformed.

[skywalker]

I wrote a whole long essay on this, I'll post it l8r.

See, people like Langy (No offence, really :) ) is the result. You may not REALIZE it, so therefore you shrug it off, and you gradually get desensitized. This isn't an immediate effect, you don't see violence and try to mimic it. It is nothing like that. It gradually pushes violence farther and farther away from the part of your brain that says "Bad in any context". Video games that are too violent I simply don't play, but whenever I do enjoy getting a kill, it is simply satisfaction at outplaying, outthinking, outshooting, or outllamaing :-p an opponent...

Video games are by far the lesser of evils, but you can't control TV, you really can't do jack about content. The big companies will stop at nothing to get the things they want. Big companies are really obsessed with themselves and bad for the customers, but you may not be left with a choice. Sierra Entertainment cancels the good games, forces developers to release games early, making them buggy and giving the devs a bad name, and just fires excellent companies for no reason (Read: Dynamix)..... peh.

[Langy]

Sky - I never said that you don't get desensitized by violence. Of course you do. You can't be sensitive to it and watch people kill each other live (galdiatorial combat). The fact is that that doesn't make people any more or less violent. Desnesitization is NOT a bad thing. Why would you think it is?

[skywalker]

I would think it is. If you get desensitized, you begin to get the feeling that it means less. That brings you to think it is "okay". You wouldn't think it as much of a big deal. So, you would begin to be violent, because you don't think others take it seriously.

[StarHawk]

1. Langy I think its Gladatorial. [since you like making remarks about my spelling]
2. I agree with Skywalker on that matter.

[Mr.Popo]

Goddammit, violent games aren't a factor in teen violence!! You think some perfectly normal Joe is gonna blow away his classmates because he downloaded the Soldier of Fortune demo!? For crying out loud, bullying and isolation makes the kids wanna kill like that. In case you haven't been watching the news, there have been so many kids that were gearing up for a massacre on the kids that were making fun of them. Wake up guys, games aren't a factor. It's poor parenting and idiotic behavior.

[Langy]

Starhawk - When did I ever say anything about your spelling? When did I say anything about ANYONE'S spelling? Never. I've talked about grammar (like actually capitalizing letters and using periods), but not spelling. I know that I can't spell half the time, so I'm not about to go after someone else for it.

Sky - Desensitization doesn't make people think it's okay. If you think violence is okay because you enjoy killing people violently in a video game then you are the problem with america, not the game. Seeing as nobody would actually think that as it is complete nonsense, witnessing violence does not make people violent. Also, desensitization is NOT 'getting the feeling it means less.' It simply is not getting emotional over it. If you think it means less because you play violent games, then you shouldn't be playing them as you obviously are either under the age of 2 years old or are mentaly retarded. And I mean that.

[ADUN]

Originally posted by Mr.Popo
Goddammit, violent games aren't a factor in teen violence!! You think some perfectly normal Joe is gonna blow away his classmates because he downloaded the Soldier of Fortune demo!? For crying out loud, bullying and isolation makes the kids wanna kill like that. In case you haven't been watching the news, there have been so many kids that were gearing up for a massacre on the kids that were making fun of them. Wake up guys, games aren't a factor. It's poor parenting and idiotic behavior.

Cant argue, thats the EXACT SAME thing Ive been spitting out for the last year or so..
quote from Ray in scarry movie 1..
"Its not TV shows that make phyco killers, Its cancelling TV shows that make phyco killers."

[bluevorlon]

Vital Humour Injection Needed (http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2000/20000602h.jpg)

[zenogias]

What's funny is that, in these debates, everyone always talks about "healthy" ways of releasing violence, yet I don't recall ever seeing/hearing anything about controlling violent urges in such a way that they no longer become a factor in ones life.

[Vaarok]

By the blood Zeno, that is a truancy of societal expectation and new-age dogma, the same crap that usually causes such agression.

Control to such a degree as you seem to be implying is in general a horrible idea, because it's basically a dam. Rather than letting the tension drain away in a regulated manner, you just keep walling it off until it overflows and releases a torrent of destruction.

By nature humans, teenagers, males and combinations of the three are innately agressive, to a subconscious instinctive level. I'm often scared when I pause in my day and realize just how much of how I'm acting isn't really choice, but rather an innate, strong instinct with some manufactured idealogical coating to make it seem like it's an idea rather than a programmed action.

This leads to my agreement that societal pressures lead to this. If a beta wolf is being picked on by others in the pack, it'll either fight or flight. But when you're a human stuck in school, thereby denying flight, with a societal pressure denying you the ability to fight back, you suffer until your rage overwhelms your control. Then you go postal with your fists, or you wait even longer, go to therapy that just identifies you're angry and drains your bank account, and then you finally crack the dam with a 12ga, some homemade frag grens and a semiauto .223

[Alpha_Monkey]

Awright, I'll keep this brief, since I'm not really known for my eloquence with words...

Games don't make me violent. Stupid people do. That and the fact that my PC has had a new problem to fix everyday this week.
If I go on a self-destructive bender (not a stretch of the imagination), be damn sure there's a good reason for it...

If someone goes nuts through the influence of TV/Video Games, they must have been unstable to start with. It's just that their family was too dim to notice.

Alpha_Monkey; telling it how it is...