On the subject of violent video games...

I've been reading up on Fox's opinion of violent video games, and what I've found is completely unfounded.

They have [ONE] labaratory study that they base all of this off of. They talk about it here: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4589741/violence-on-the-brain-from-your-video-game

So they based all of this on ONE study. One. Nothing else to back it up other than theory.

I can't believe they would be so shallow about human nature. Every human is different. Not all of us like to play crime based games. I hate them.

This also shows how little they actually know about video games. Most people in online games like first person shooters don't really care about winning. They care about themselves doing good.

If you send them home and ask them to think about how they can be better, they probably won't say "Well, I'll just use this uber aggresive tactic that lets me tomahawk the enemy's face and cut off his nose." They'll say "I bet if I hide in this corner and wait for others to come by." How is that more aggresive?

They also treat aggression like it's a horrible thing. If used wrongly,yes, but what about correctly? Someone has to be aggressive instead of conservative. What would we have done if Andrew Jackson decided during the time when a civil war almost occured to "wait it out"?

No. He went down there and ordered them to stand down or he was going to hang them.

Sometimes aggression is good.

In short, there is nothing really harmful about video games. What is harmful is human nature. A video game didn't make you pull the trigger on an old lady. You did.

Those who believe video games cause violence follow the philosophy that your memories make you who you are. That is not so.

It is not your memories, but how you interpert your memories that make you who you are.

Video games aren't bad. Choices are bad.

Don't you just love reports that are treated as if they were the sacred word of a higher power?

Well we all know Mass Effect 2 was a rape simulator.

Well, at least they actually have a study this time, instead of just relying on wild conjecture like they usually do.

Fox News applies the Teamster method to their research - totally half-ass the job doing just the bare minimum to qualify as having done the task.

Hence, opinion. Also: New Media Are Evil. Combined with healthy amounts of You Can Panic Now and Journalists Are Fuckwits.

Kukukukukukukukukuku... Reading up on Fox and Violent Video Games, what a riot. It's like purposefully searching for a way to kill a few more precious brain cells by reading the sheer and utter stupidity.

"They also treat aggression like it's a horrible thing. If used wrongly, yes, but what about correctly?"

It is horrible. Love can and should suffice. Regardless, most people are not in the military or police.

edited 25th Apr '11 5:03:03 PM by LoveHappiness

A little aggresiveness is what told us that we revolve around the sun. Aggresiveness is what made the USA a country. Conservative means to stick to current ways, which is good in some cases. But some times you have to be aggresive when you have to find a new way to do things.

And some aggressiveness means going for what you want.

"Aggresiveness is what made the USA a country"

I'm a citizen of the world.

Although I live in it, I am not a fan of the US at all.

I do agree aggression is sometimes justified. But 1) I doubt most violent media are actually teaching healthy behaviors and 2) For most of your day-to-day life, interpersonal aggression is harmful.

edited 25th Apr '11 7:25:09 PM by LoveHappiness

True.

Though I find violent games and movies are good for stress relief; I've always said better someone blow away some pixels on a TV screen than snap and go all Charles Whitman.

That's the problem. The media are Completely Missing The Point, (and sometimes not) in that people with stress and anger management problems might be inclined to play violent video games and they might be inclined to become serial killer rapists (in that they rape serial killers, maybe even serially) or serial killer-rapists, but most of the time the media are missing the point and accusing one of the effects of causing the other effect instead of seeking their joint cause (in the case of most school shootings around the world, for example, the shooters are, more often than not, victims of bullying or insane, and you can't blame either on videogames).

The easiest way to support that violent video games affect children and adults is obviously to raise a child in a room that is devoid of anything and everything that is unnecessary for survival.

then show them a violent video game.

And get maimed with a game controller because the kid doesn't know what a teevee (or a game, for that matter) is? Who do you think you're fooling? =)

Everything effects everybody.

A memory is like a tool you can configure. Which memories you get provide you with different tools.

I personally think kids should stay out of rated M games till they are teens at least, but that's the parent's decision.

Besides, this sort of thing will be vented one way or the other.

The Romans had gladiator fights to satisfy their blood thirst. We have video games. Which do you think is more harmful? Putting people in pits to slaughter each other or allowing people to play games where only digital avatars die?

I'm shocked, shocked that a Fox News article is anything other than fair and balanced.

Sarcasm Self-Test Complete.

edited 26th Apr '11 10:12:30 AM by pagad

Either my sarcasm detector is failing, or you are pretty, pretty new around here.

What really bothers me about the whole hubbub about violent video games is that we STILL don't have a rating system for books, so parents can know which books are appropriate for kids and which ones are not so much.

Edit:Please note that if I were to have children, for the most part I would NOT pay too much attention to ratings once they hit a certain maturity level, say around 12-13. Now, there's truly dehumanizing cultural works out there that I would try to have them avoid, but for the most part I and all my friends grew up with violent media, with really no discernible effects. I don't see why things would be different now.

Now, if games/movies took a turn for the worse, and started to be more truly dehumanizing than they are currently, then yes. But generally speaking most games I think are on the up and up.

edited 26th Apr '11 8:28:40 AM by Karmakin

To need a rating system for books, kids would have to read them.

Had I any children, I would find the casual anti-intellectualism and xenophobia of Fox News a much graver cause of concern than any amount of Ludicrous Gibs.

You've never heard of manga, have you? Those have ratings systems.

Also novels from manga publishers and Harper.

edited 26th Apr '11 10:08:10 AM by Enzeru

Edited accordingly.

I think he meant book books. Classical literature suffers from this the most. The school programme in Russia, for example, includes works with intense amounts of Fridge Horror which are considered obligatory reads as an artefact of the old Soviet system (which chose works and writers more for their ideology than actual literary merit or AGE-APPROPRIATENESS). While I can agree that it's nice for kids to have read War And Peace or Dead Souls by age 16, a lot of things I had to endure in school (especially around the 8th and 9th grades, when most kids are 14 or 15, I was twelve) weren't... well, weren't well-thought out in that regard.

Also, a lot of books and plays and what-have-you regarded as children's classics are never properly screened for Fridge Horror, Nightmare Fuel and Paranoia Fuel. The Blue Bird is a big offender, for example, when looked at from the modern sensibilities' point of view. <shudders>

Meta-analyses:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063648

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2001.tb00787.x/abstract

http://www.springerlink.com/content/66217176984x7477/

Experimental studies:

http://www.geneseo.edu/~kirsh/vita/mortalkombat.pdf

http://www.springerlink.com/content/p5718439411p1544/

http://facstaff.unca.edu/tlbrown/RM1/VideoGamesAggression.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40064334

http://home.fsw.vu.nl/ea.konijn/files/Konijn_NijeBijvank_Bushman_DevPsych_2007.pdf

Correlational studies:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1996.tb01472.x/abstract

http://tinyurl.com/3uul5yg

I don't like it, but they mostly seem to be saying the same thing - playing violent games makes you more violent. (Though strangely, one of the studies classed Final Fantasy as a non-violent game...)