The Video Game Industry

> One movie led to the ressurgence of the KKK back in the day.

And much later on Gone With the Wind did something similar

Gone With The Wind was part of a massive effort to build a myth around the Civil War and the Confederacy, that the whole thing wasn't about a bunch of slave-owners not wanting to let go of their "right" to own human being like property but was instead about "protecting the southern lifestyle" and "State rights"

Well, to them "protecting the southern lifestyle" and "State rights" was at least partly about a bunch of slave-owners wanting to own human being like property.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Aug 2nd 2021 at 5:39:58 PM

The lifestyle of owning slaves, and the state's right to keep slavery legal.

It should be noted that a massive part of the propaganda effort was done by women and the Daughters of the Confederacy. The KKK may be more famous due to its violence by the DOC arranged the fundraising, statues, changing of history books, and more.

I mean it was started over states rights to you know own...people as slaves...

It's even stated as such in the succession documents

Exactly. See also 24 and how it was used by the US government to justify torture.

There is very much real-world power in how media influences people, and any form of fiction needs to be both responsible and moral in order to progress society and fight against regression.

In regards to this, kinda love this entry in 24:

Badass Decay: In response to criticisms that the show promoted the use of torture, the writers of the show drastically toned down the number of times Jack tortures bad guys in the later seasons. Many fans felt that the kinder and gentler Jack Bauer made the show less entertaining to watch, as much of the show's appeal came in watching Jack interrogate antagonists who are completely unsympathetic. For better or worse, Season 8, the (then) final season, reversed this for Jack. Hard.

You know a show is messed up when the US army asked you to tone it down.

"There is very much real-world power in how media influences people, and any form of fiction needs to be both responsible and moral in order to progress society and fight against regression."

There's that Moral Guardian level thinking again.

Media can influence people, sure, but not on the level you think, and several decades long studies have shown such an idea as inconclusive at best.

That said, I'm gonna point out that the late Antonin Scalia, aka the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, defended torture by referencing Jack Bauer.

And the studies mostly looked at whether violent media made people commit more violence, not whether media influenced their politics.

So it's less that pro-torture media makes people more likely to commit torture themselves, but rather that it helps lead them to support torture committed by their government.

Edited by M84 on Aug 2nd 2021 at 6:37:14 PM

Just to note, Scalia was an Associate Justice, but he was never Chief Justice.

Also, his situation was not so much him being influenced by media as it was him finding media that confirmed to his biases and using it as a justification for doubling down.

Edited by Silasw on Aug 2nd 2021 at 11:37:35 AM

Hmm, I think I got confused because Scalia became a Supreme Court Justice at the same time the previous Chief Justice retired.

Media influence doesn't have a direct correlation of making us imitate the media we consume. If we consume violent media, it doesn't necessarily make us violent. If we consume problematic sexist media, it doesn't turn us into sexists. Watching God's Not Dead every day won't suddenly turn me into an obnoxious evangelical Christian with persecution complex.

What media does influence is about normalizing and reinforcing the behavior, views, or framing of the piece, especially if media is the only thing a person has as a point of reference. So if all media portrayals of black people were Uncle Tomfoolery or Gangsta Rap, and that's the only thing a person has as a reference to black people, that will color their perception and interaction with black people, whether or not that they're racist. It's why media representation matters, because kids use media as a means of informing themselves of the outside world that their parents aren't able or willing to teach.

This was done in the video game industry with advertising. Early video game industry with Pong and Atari was advertised as family friendly entertainment. When the video game market crashed in the 80s, Nintendo rather than sell themselves as electronics which was more unisex, they sold themselves as toys, which at the time was heavily gendered and Nintendo chose to market to boys. That advertising influence is still felt today, with a lot of people consciously or unconsciously regarding gaming a primarily guy thing, which propagated itself through both the consumer and developer side of the equation and is felt all the way to the present.

I feel Scalia also was attempting to use propaganda to support his position.

Original Position Fallacy.

And it seems this has cost Blizzard its first sponsor.

PC Gamer: T-Mobile branding removed from Overwatch and Call of Duty League websites

It hasn't been officially confirmed that the sponsorship is over, but it does seem like T-mobile is no longer going to be a sponsor for the Overwatch or Call of Duty Leagues.

The question of whether media violence has impacts on Real Life violence has had issues, both with the presence of Moral Guardians who have a tendency to engage in motivated reasoning and thus calling the credibility of the entire field into question, and by the fact that most of the evidence is quite questionable:

• There are widespread concerns about cherry-picking and publication bias.
• Most studies that show effects have tiny effect sizes, and confounding factors abound.
• Many of them reflect scenarios that are not representative of Real Life behaviour.

Blizzard's president is gone (from Jason Schreier's Twitter)

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Aug 3rd 2021 at 2:41:21 PM

And nothing of value was lost.

Kinda picturing them jumping out of the window onto a helicopter with a bag of cash.

There's a statement by Blizzard, but it's the usual bullshit coupled with some Refuge in Audacity.

Jumping out a window with a nice golden parachute, I suppose?

Schreier notes that the "co-leader" title makes it clear that Bobby Kotick is the one in charge. If so, this is not an improvement. Take out the abuser, put in a rapacious money-grubber.

By the way, when linking to Twitter, please identify the source.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 3rd 2021 at 8:38:41 AM

Go on, take the money and run

As someone put it succinctly, "A billion people play Grand Theft Auto. If it causes violence and aggression then we would have seen a bit more than a blip."

The best thing is a large number of the people who rail against this violence in video games are guys like David Grossman whose "warrior training" has helped foster a horrific a police state where violence is the go to from them.

Edited by miraculous on Aug 3rd 2021 at 6:16:25 AM