Violent Video Games

And that is the heart of the matter, far to easy to blame the game even if that game is some what distasteful. Parents should take stock of there family first.

 

I think that it is about time I put my two cents worth into this thread.

No, I do not think in any way that they should. First off I consider this as just another way for Big Brother to tell us how we should live. We must take into context who these games are being designed for. As the first large scale generation of gamers grows up the games are increasingly being geared toward them. Well over 50 percent of video games have an 18 or older rating. Parents should play the game first or watch some one else play a game before letting a small child play a game. Also we are only looking at the bad. Games such as Call of Duty and Counter Strike, while can be violent, can have multiple enemy's on screen at any given time. Studies have shown that people who play these types of games have superior visual tracking abilities, and understandings of there surrounding environment outside of the game world.

Yes, I would think so. However at younger ages everything can influence a child. I would like everyone to read an article written a few years ago by an MIT professor. It think it can answer the question better than I can.

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked
Henry Jenkins
MIT Professor

A large gap exists between the public's perception of video games and what the research actually shows. The following is an attempt to separate fact from fiction.

1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.

According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester.

2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.

Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one relatively narrow school of research, "media effects." This research includes some 300 studies of media violence. But most of those studies are inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds. In these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different from the environments where games would normally be played. Most studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment. That's why the vague term "links" is used here. If there is a consensus emerging around this research, it is that violent video games may be one risk factor - when coupled with other more immediate, real-world influences — which can contribute to anti-social behavior. But no research has found that video games are a primary factor or that violent video game play could turn an otherwise normal person into a killer.

3. Children are the primary market for video games.

While most American kids do play video games, the center of the video game market has shifted older as the first generation of gamers continues to play into adulthood. Already 62 percent of the console market and 66 percent of the PC market is age 18 or older. The game industry caters to adult tastes. Meanwhile, a sizable number of parents ignore game ratings because they assume that games are for kids. One quarter of children ages 11 to 16 identify an M-Rated (Mature Content) game as among their favorites. Clearly, more should be done to restrict advertising and marketing that targets young consumers with mature content, and to educate parents about the media choices they are facing. But parents need to share some of the responsibility for making decisions about what is appropriate for their children. The news on this front is not all bad. The Federal Trade Commission has found that 83 percent of game purchases for underage consumers are made by parents or by parents and children together.

4. Almost no girls play computer games.

Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However, the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased over the past decade. Women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games. Spurred by the belief that games were an important gateway into other kinds of digital literacy, efforts were made in the mid-90s to build games that appealed to girls. More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that attracted many women who had never played games before. Given the historic imbalance in the game market (and among people working inside the game industry), the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are often portrayed as powerful and independent. In his book Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones argues that young girls often build upon these representations of strong women warriors as a means of building up their self confidence in confronting challenges in their everyday lives.

5. Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.

Former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that because the military uses games in training (including, he claims, training soldiers to shoot and kill), the generation of young people who play such games are similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in their everyday social interactions.
Grossman's model only works if:

• we remove training and education from a meaningful cultural context.
• we assume learners have no conscious goals and that they show no resistance to what they are being taught.
• we assume that they unwittingly apply what they learn in a fantasy environment to real world spaces.

The military uses games as part of a specific curriculum, with clearly defined goals, in a context where students actively want to learn and have a need for the information being transmitted. There are consequences for not mastering those skills. That being said, a growing body of research does suggest that games can enhance learning. In his recent book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Gee describes game players as active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for improvement. Players search for newer, better solutions to problems and challenges, he says. And they are encouraged to constantly form and test hypotheses. This research points to a fundamentally different model of how and what players learn from games.

6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.

On April 19, 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. ruled that video games do not convey ideas and thus enjoy no constitutional protection. As evidence, Saint Louis County presented the judge with videotaped excerpts from four games, all within a narrow range of genres, and all the subject of previous controversy. Overturning a similar decision in Indianapolis, Federal Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner noted: "Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware." Posner adds, "To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it." Many early games were little more than shooting galleries where players were encouraged to blast everything that moved. Many current games are designed to be ethical testing grounds. They allow players to navigate an expansive and open-ended world, make their own choices and witness their consequences. The Sims designer Will Wright argues that games are perhaps the only medium that allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters. In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters. In the right circumstances, we can be encouraged to examine our own values by seeing how we behave within virtual space.

7. Video game play is socially isolating.

Much video game play is social. Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play with spouses or parents. Even games designed for single players are often played socially, with one person giving advice to another holding a joystick. A growing number of games are designed for multiple players — for either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed players. Sociologist Talmadge Wright has logged many hours observing online communities interact with and react to violent video games, concluding that meta-gaming (conversation about game content) provides a context for thinking about rules and rule-breaking. In this way there are really two games taking place simultaneously: one, the explicit conflict and combat on the screen; the other, the implicit cooperation and comradeship between the players. Two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer as friends off screen. Social expectations are reaffirmed through the social contract governing play, even as they are symbolically cast aside within the transgressive fantasies represented onscreen.

8. Video game play is desensitizing.

Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat. In some circumstances, they seem to take pleasure wrestling and tousling with each other. In others, they might rip each other apart in mortal combat. Game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." The same action — say, sweeping a floor — may take on different meanings in play (as in playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions. Media reformers argue that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims. Yet, a child who responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed. Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic circle" of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play.

Henry Jenkins is the director of comparative studies at MIT
The Video Game Revolution: "Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked" by Henry Jenkins | PBS

Any game that would encourage you to rape women should never be created. there are just certain lines that one should, and hopefully never will, be crossed. As Musso pointed out, there are no games that I am aware of that encourage such behavior in game play. Games have a rating to inform us as to the content of the games. When I purchase such games at my favorite local game retailer I get carded to make sure I am old enough to purchase such games. If parents disapprove of the content their children are exposed to in such games, then I blame bad parenting since the parents bought and gave their children a game they shouldn't be playing.

I agree that there are to many factors at work here, but IMO I feel that any problems that should arise in the play of games, eg violent behavior outside of game play, is more an indication of some other problem, not the cause of it.

 

Hi Richard-ahh those were the days. I too wound up giving mine away-along with about 40 or so games-to my Nephews. B ack in about 1998 or so-I bought that Nintendo 64-and had Sarges Men, Goldeneye and the Starwars games. Then on Jan 6th 2000-someone broke into my apartment and stole all the Nintendo stuff-as well as a rare make Walther P-38 Pistol I had (which im most definately sure that it now resides in a police officers collection.

PS, For Musso and MikeB-like Richard-soon as I can rep points headed your way. Great posts.

 

In all my years of playing violent games I have never had the eye twitching idea of "Hey I think I should go out and kill people for whatever reason!"


When playing COD-WAW today I was playing free for all dodging shots of this expertly hiding sniper and I proceeded to make a long trek across the map and got to a position to flank him. I loaded in a rifle grenade and proceeded to mortar it into his hiding spot. I hit him spot on and when I went over to inspect his body(As well as pick up his rifle that kille so many others) I seen that his legs were torn off. I was proud of myself for outwitting such a good opponent and then I turned of my X-Box and went to have a nice visit to my grand-mothers house I actually just got back. See? Is there anything wrong with that?

One thing that shocked me about COD-world at war was that during the end of the Russian campaign when you fight in Berlin, there is a scene were 3 Germans emerge from a subway tunnel quivering with their hands up and begging; you have to make the decision to shoot them yourself or two other Russians will throw Molotov cocktails at them. I found this detail quite dark.

GTA4 was a game that is like a playable gang movie. But it was sickeningly cruel. My friend who I think is becoming a "skin-head" loved the game especially the the things your character said. He shot an old woman at point blank range with a Pistol grip shotgun and your person sais "Dont mess with me!" in his Slavic accent. What did that old lady do? Ill never know but I do know that that game takes things to extremes beyond todays violent standards.

 

Our two oldest lads are playing a lot of Super Mario Bros. And we are scared they will turn out to be chubby Itallian plumbers....

 

I've been playing video games from the very beginnings of Pong, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong etc... Right though all the GTA series, Medal of Honor, COD's and everything in between.

I can honestly say that I have never jumped over barrels in a monkey suit, picked up a prostitute, stolen a car or shot a German SS soldier in the bollocks just to see the look on his face. Am I doing something wrong?

No.... because my parents and my common sense told me the difference between right and wrong. The media love linking actual violence with cyber or TV violence, simply as a way of comprehending the actions of sick individuals, but they should realize that the film and video game industry is replicating and exaggerating today's society, and not the other way around.

 

There is the key element which is missing in today's society, parent participation.

 

well I don,t read alot but my dad bought me a hole bunch of books all concerning world war 2

 

Indeed.

Heres your new game now go away I'm busy.

MAKE TIME FOR YOUR KIDS!




Thanks everyone there has been some great posts on this topic.

 

1. Should real violent games be banned?
   I don't believe that real violent games should be banned, they shouldn't be made at all period, these video game companies keep trying to see how close to the edge they can get. When it comes to games to be honest yes I love my war games but to me they are not violent they are a reminder to me of the brutality of it and its not made to look any way for shock value.
   
   I am happy to say that I play war games with my 7 almost 8 year old nephew and we have played such games for the past 3-4 years now, but he knows the difference between what a game is and what real life is and he understands the risks involved. He isn't going to play a game and think that it looks really cool to reenact or emulate.
   
   Because he is so young he hasn't seen any videos of footage from war, or even war movies because of how graphic those are in comparison, but just from the game alone he has an understanding he doesn't get excited if he kills someone he just does it so he won't be the one getting shot.
   
   Games on the other hand like the godfather, grand theft auto, mafia, max payne I won't let him play those type of games they offer nothing, im not saying some of those games are real violent, i guess killing is killing, but you shouldn't have a game where a weapon is a double dildo, or part of the game is to score with a woman or shoot up a crack house.
2. Do violent games effect children?
   yes they affect children, thankfully my nephew isn't just given a game to play and left alone he doesn't think guns are cool or something to play around with. Now when he gets older if he wants a firearm and go to a fireing range thats something completely different, but he doesn't emulate the games he sees. Even wrestling games you always hear on the news how some kid died or killed someone else over something so petty as that.
   
   I am sure there are a lot of parents or relatives out there who do spend the time with their kids out there, but theres always going to be those few where the video games do have more of an impact on their life then they should.
   
   
   
   I am sorry for the long rant, i've been playing video games now for about 20ish years so its something that i am a bit passionate about

 

Not to nitpick but there never was a published video game where anything of that sort was encouraged.

 

well I play video games like call of duty and medal of honor and I never try and repeat what I see on the game theres an animated character shoot and thats what I do but sometimes I get a little trigger happy playing games

 

Violent video games shouldn't be banned, and they can't effect children if their parents do their jobs.

 

Actually, some people say that violent games are a good getaway for kids who are violent as they release some of their stress and violence into a machine.



Cheers...

 

You could be right, when I am stressed I listen to Motorhead in the car. It helps.

 

I don't think there would be a problem if parents monitored what they're children are playing. In the same way that films carry age ratings, games do too, and if a parent doesn't want their child to play an adult themed video game they don't have to let them. I saw an article on Yahoo where a man was trying to sue a videogame store because he bought a game for his 12 year old son, and found an ecstasy pill concealed in the instruction manual. Terrible, yes, but the game in question was Grand Theft Auto IV. An example of irresponsible parenting; this man actually bought the game for his son.

The only course of action I think that should be taken is to universalise the ratings system between films and games, making it easier for parents to understand what the game contains. After this it is up to the parents to monitor their children's game playing choices.

 

Grand Theft Auto...What an evil sick game.

 

Oh come on. GTA4 is a hell of a blast I amuse myself just doing bad things just because... It helps extrincate the sociopath within me And, it's meant to be played by people over 18. So, it's not a kid's game. It's not meat to be. It's meant to be an entertaining experience for adults who know what they're doing (in most cases at least). I think a troubled home will have a bigger impact in the life of a children than a simple computer game.



Cheers...

 

All of this discussion comes down to generational differences... times have changed. I believe it's a tougher day in age in raising children, no excuse but its the truth. Being aware and responsible is the key - bottom line

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