On the subject of violent video games...

Don't underestimate hunting with a rifle. Lots of people get gored while boar hunting, for example. Not sure how good it is at working off aggression, though. My aunts wouldn't let me go with them, because they thought I'd get killed.

For those of us who are video game enthusiasts, it can be difficult not to build a strawman argument of the other side. Let's be as generous as possible here:

Most people do not commit violent crimes. This includes people who play violent video games; very few of them are going to commit violent crimes.

Those are not, I think, controversial statements. You might have one or two nutjobs out there who thinks everyone who plays lots of violent video games is a ticking time bomb, but I think most people looking around can tell that most violent videogamers are not violent in real life.

So let's go to what the strongest proponents of curtailing video game violence would say: "No, of course playing violent video games doesn't make you a killer, but it raises the chance of someone being a killer by X% because of desensitization or whatever."

I don't know if that statement is true, but for the sake of argument, let's say it is.

My response: Too bad. Driving a car results in an increase in incidents of vehicular homicide. We do it anyway. Eating fast food results in an increase in the percentage of people who die of heart attacks. We do it anyway. Drinking alcohol results in increases in domestic violence. We do it anyway.

Each of these things have some utility to people - whether it's just because they enjoy them, or they help them get through every day life, or some combination of the two. We would need a huge correlation between the two activities before we banned the one to stop the other. So if drinking alcohol made it 90% likely that you'd be a spouse abuser, yeah, we'd stop you from drinking alcohol. If eating Mc Donald's made it 96% likely that you'd have a heart attack, yeah, we'd ban it.

Ditto video games. Until we see a direct correlation, the freedom of speech, expression, media, etc; indeed, basic human desires, means that until there is a gigantic issue with video games, the government should not interfere.

I do both. I go out into the plains and hunt rabbits with a takedown longbow, I wouldn't call it "real" hunting or put it on a pedestal above hunting with firearms.

If you want to be a boss, you should hunt boar with a spear. Then you've got the chops to say you've done something impressive. Otherwise it doesn't really matter, bow, crossbow, gun, the end result is you want meat.

To drive a car, you need to be licensed and be sober enough. Eating fast food shouldn't be too frequent if you care about your health; you should watch what you eat, and indeed there's a perpetual public awareness program to ensure normal people don't become obese. Same applies for alcohol.

I think it's fair to say that same should apply for violent video games, a sense of personal responsibility and awareness. It's highly advisable that you don't play a realistic looking hack-and-slash first person game, with graphical violence, until you're mature enough to understand the difference between that and reality. There could be more respect for the ESRB ratings that are supposed to tell you how violent or questionable a game is.

Treating the current ratings as law is a bit excessive, though. To be honest, it seemed a bit too restrictive to require an age of 17 for M-rated games. If you're under 17, R movies only require that an adult accompanies you.

edited 22nd Jan '13 3:38:58 PM by Trivialis

Honestly more parents need to do their goddamn jobs and thoroughly explain the difference between fantasy and reality and/or deny the kids playing violent games until they are mature enough to handle them. I know when I wanted to play Doom as a kid my mom sat me down and clearly explained that it was fantasy, not reality. I understood that, and besides violence in real life is abhorrent. I got that from seeing my jackass dad hit my mom before she left his ass.

Point is, I think more of the blame falls on parents shirking their duties than it does on games.

While this discussion is about video games and this hearing was about music, I feel like it's relevant and definitely worth watching.

Part Two.

Part Three.

Personally, I believe that no one in their right mind commits a violent act solely because they played a violent video game. I also think that people can be desensitized to violence through long-term exposure to violent media, but that exposure won't actually cause someone to commit assault, murder, or anything on the scale of a mass shooting. There are other, more important and influential, factors involved than video games.

As a side note, can anyone think of a murder or shooting where the perpetrator actually said they did it because of a video game, or said that they were inspired by a video game? I've read many articles that state "Some people/specialists suggest/say/theorize that X might/could have been inspired/driven to kill by The Assassins Call of Modern Theft," but none which cite proof beyond "X was violent and he owned a copy of {violent game}."

This. Also, people should be taught responsibility for their own actions, so they don't fob off the blame onto someone or something else. But it's much harder than it sounds...

I hope I used the word "fob" correctly. ^^;

@Triavalis

I wouldn't care to put a mandatory ratings system on games and legally enforcing a restriction on sales to minors, so long as the government was doing it for a nominal fee. Having a private organization like ESRB doing it is problematic.

And while I say I wouldn't care, I also don't think it's going to solve anything. First, again, I don't see whatever small increase in violence we have in the world that is the result of desensitization from violent video games as enough to justify taking action. But more importantly, I don't see it being effective.

Already, most kids access to video games are restricted by parents. Most kids don't have the money to buy video games on their own. Parents generally have to front the cash, which means the rating system is already going to be undermined - a parent who already doesn't care if their kid is buying a violent video game with the money they give them isn't going to suddenly start caring. At most it'll stop kids from buying games in stores between the ages of 16-18 when they can drive there. But more and more video games are being bought online, where an age restriction would be difficult to enforce.

In the end, I just don't see it being effective, but you won't see me fighting that kind of restriction either.

The only real solution is the one that's hard to enforce, better parenting.

This has seemed to be a large trend in our society in the last decade or two, substituting parental oversight with legal regulation.

Another reason I'm a fan of the "doing nothing" approach. Legal regulation seems messy and unnecessary for the size of the alleged problem violent video games create.

Plus the whole question of how many normal adults get hurt for the sake of regulation that may or may not protect our children.

Needless to say, there are more adults than there are children, so I don't think their interests take priority.

edited 23rd Jan '13 1:14:40 AM by Barkey

I'm still waiting for someone to use something like Spec Ops The Line or No More Heroes as an example a horriblebad ultra-violent vidya game.

That's why I say I don't mind if they do the (unlikely to work) enforcement of the ratings system. Adults aren't going to be affected by it.

Someone once tried to use Assassins Creed as an example of a detrimentally violent game.

I have to wonder if they actually played it.

about the parenting... most parents are at work all the time, or too exhausted FROM work.

it's not like the old days, when the dad could work, while the mom raises the kids.

now it's single, unmarried/divorced mom working 2/3 jobs and deep in debt, addled from stress

while in europe the trend is to simply not have kids and have plenty of money/leisure time.

funny anecdote, i was 18 when i bought Perfect Dark. When my mom realized it was a shooter, she protested that if she knew what it was, she never would've let me buy it (even though i used my OWN MONEY and I WAS LEGALLY AN ADULT).

of course my dad loved playing multiplayer.

my mom wasn't an antigamer though, she was a major fan of zelda (even beating dark link in Adventure Of Link! CMOA), dr mario and Pyramid (an Unwinnable tetris2 clone, reached line 255 CMOA) as well as Zanac (beat) and gradius (didn't beat) so she was a pretty hardcore gamer in her own way (and was all but invincible in dice games, Clue, Yachtze, Risk and pretty uncanny in card games, even Yu Gi Oh would likely lose to her)

Hoo boy! Really, Nader?

To clarify, he believed that Obama didn't do enough to address the Sandy Hook shootings, going as far as to call the medium 'electronic child molesters'. On all sides of the aisle, and I can't emphasize this enough, this sort of madness has been going on for decades, and even before video games existed. And yes, the best way to address mediums is for parents actually being responsible rather than let media be the babysitter and count on regulations to keep it in line.

edited 23rd Jan '13 11:04:39 AM by EarlOfSandvich

People thought player pianos would destroy families at one point. I want to go up to these people and point out every example of blaming new media for problems with society as a whole.

I'm trying to look a few moves ahead, you know, when they make a half-hearted attempt to enforce the rating system more, and then go "Damn, it didn't work. I guess we didn't go far enough!" and start suggesting regulation that does affect adults.

It's what they do with guns. That's how I know. <.<

The classification of whether a video game is violent is also problematic. FPS where you guns down hundreds of zombies are called violent and desensitizing while strategy games where I order the massacre of millions in a city or the destruction of a planet with the push of a button is not.

edited 24th Jan '13 3:04:50 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Parents need to know what games their kids are playing. If possible, the parents should be game savvy themselves, and draw the line before letting their kids do. Being on the same level makes individuals more sociable, so that these things will decrease.

We are approving and denying that violent video games are doing something to our minds here. I personally want to chalk it up to the source: the supply and the demand. Who was it that created a trend that craves for more first person shooters? Who was it that lost the spirit of game making by cater to those trendies? The source, supply and demand, increase the amount of such violent media and thus make the problem worse.

At least we can agree that there IS a problem. We can't solve it right away by saying 'oh, these things need to be banned'. Unrealistic violence and realistic violence in games do have major differences though. You have to wonder why they wanna bother make violence more realistic. Is it a way of employee venting? Is the society wanting more blood?

It's because of that annoying Realism kick Western media has been on for...oh, the last decade or so.

edited 24th Jan '13 5:48:27 PM by Zendervai

I like realistic violence in my games...

Not a fan of really cartoony art styles in general.

I just find the realism thing boring. I don't turn to media for realism, I turn to it for amazing and big and epic worlds and stories that couldn't happen in reality. Then I go play Atelier Meruru.

I think part of the problem with realistic violence in the media can be attributed to the principle of "If It Bleeds, It Leads". This is part of the reason why we have things like 24-hour news coverage about the mass murderer at such an event, which in turn can lead into a media moral panic, and why such a thing leads to widespread calls from people and politicians to ban, or even more heavily regulate, mediums and/or guns. Fact of the matter is, those sorts of things don't help matters, and the cycle would keep repeating as long as bad news lead to higher ratings.

It just so happens to be that violence has gone down in more recent years, but there still tends to be a fascination with violence no matter what you do with realistic video games for instance. This is exactly why calling for a ban or censorship is counterintuitive, and most people can in fact distinguish between reality and fantasy. Regarding TotalBiscuit's video, he did raise quite a few good points about the sensationalist nature of news media and how these sorts of things never help with the issue at hand.

edited 24th Jan '13 8:41:02 PM by EarlOfSandvich

^^

The oversized swords and silly little magical girls thing just comes off as corny for me, not my thing.

I'm a gritty grimdark sort of guy when it comes to my media.