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[Column] General: The March Against Violent Videogames
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What's with all these idiotic and stupid comments on this thread saying "americans believe this and americans think that not". Not all americans think this way. Not all americans think nudity is the devil and not all americans are fat gangster cowboy nascar drivers or whatever other stupid things you other people think. It's mainly just the older generation who have no idea what they're talking about and convincing/forcing their kids to start up those stupid "cease fire" things with some games. Anyone in this country with half a brain knows that theres other problems going on with people and not the video games.
We're not all sitting on our scooters at walmart waving a tiny flag. Get a grip europe.
*Goes to wiki*
*Check the voilent crime stats page in US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States*
*Noticed a heavy decline of voilent crimes since video games became mainstream (just before the release of PS1*
*Won discussion*
Really...do these senators in the US not have internet? I mean...really? Homocide rating has only been lower twice in the last 50 years and that was early 1960s! Since then it started to raise...I guess the Mafia where playing to much games as well. Actually the crime rates are pretty comparible with the rise and fall of the Mafia in the US. Anyhow how could voilent crime families have anything to do with that stuff. They do not murder! Games do!
Once again, politicians & the mass media take advantage of a terrible situation to push whatever their agenda happens to be at the time. Sigh...
Anyway good article, and I agree 100%. Blaming game makers (or gun manufacturers, for that matter) for violence is like blaming the makers of matches for arson, swimming pool companies for drownings, or Alexander Graham Bell for the Jerky Boys. It just doesn't make any sort of logical sense.
This topic has brought this longtime lurker out of hiding...
For the people who love to put the blame on video games for all of the violence in the USA (in different times the "great satan" would have been comic books, or maybe the dreaded rock and roll music), I like to remind them that these games do exist and are played around the world. They are played in England. They are played in Japan, etc. Ours is not the only first-world nation where violent video games (and movies) exist. But guess what; we still somehow manage to have a disproportionately greater number of mass shootings on American soil than in any other first-world country. So, I don't know, perhaps common sense might suggest that the problem lies someplace other than just at the feet of video games and Hollywood?
I remember when I was in high school and the whole PMRC was going on and Congress wasted it's time dragging Dee Snider, Frank Zappa amongst others to explain themselves because heavy metal was corrupting the youth. D&D was blamed for people getting kids into Satanism and of course all the horror movies were subjected to the same BS.
How about some responsible parenting and personal accountability. That's what they should be looking at. It's all a function of the government being a bunch of useless, out of touch, corrupt fearmongers who will do just about anything to get re-elected so they grab onto a knee-jerk reaction that might help them win at the polls rather than taking a look at the real issues.
Americans have legalized firearms, Europeans don't. Americans get random shootings every 6 months, Europeans every 20 years. Both play the same video games.
Where's Spock when you need him???
Having lost a good friend years ago and getting to see the entire cycle of investigation and accusation close up, I've spent many a long night pondering all sides of this arguement.
I agree that far too often people dissect the life of a disturbed person and focus on the hobbies that make them distinct from from the person doing the dissection. In my grandparents' childhood, it was playing cards and novels. In my parents' youth it was rock and roll. In my youth it was dungeons and dragons. Now it's video games.
But, to play devil's advocate for a moment: although violent games don't change the character of the player, what they may do is help an already-disturbed person train themselves into being a more effective weapon and, within a gaming subculture, may be less likely to be detected as disturbed or be as connected to influences that can help them.
But what I can say, I we had American gun laws in the UK, our murder rate would be sky high, the combination of our macho / binge drinking culture and being able to pick up a handgun from Tescos would be insane.
The problem with this link is there are far more real world arena's where one could receive even better training in using a weapon, some free to the public and many that are tax-payer funded. From boy's camps to the community firing range.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
If video games trained you to be a better killer. How come I am not a ninja?
Anyway lets blame video games and remove them, but lets also blame everything that has an equal or stronger influence. That would include:
Sports (this includes playing a viewing)
Guns of course.
News (they love violence, so covering violent news stories has to go)
Moives
Novels
Comics
Music (it can stir your emotions so it must be bad)
Parents who own or are interested in any of the above must have their childern taken from them (because they are exposing their kids to such things)
If we did all that we would have a perfect world...
Oh crap the Amish still have violence.
Yes, I think these games glorify violence too much. But the violence we do in the games is far less troublesome than the violence that we do to each other because of the games.
"Violence" is nothing more and nothing less than a violation. At its extreme, it's physical battery or lethal force. But we violate each other, and the industry violates us, every day. The publishers sell you the illusion of ownership, power and prestige, only to rip it away from you the moment the games can't deliver enough bodies and wallets to them. We post grief videos and rage quit videos on YouTube. We are indifferent to, or even take pleasure in, the misery of others in the course of playing these things. And in the course of all this, we have the publishers who are laughing their way to the bank.
But, of course, none of us are going to admit that our past time is less than squeaky clean. Then again, I wouldn't expect anything else from addicts like us.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I'm still baffled on the amount of shootings in countries where they legalise the use of arms. There are people who don't know Obama is president of the USA (at least so I've heard... as I'm from Europe), but are allowed to weild a gun. The following might be a little harsh, but it's based on research and newspaper articles on a subject currently in debate in the Netherlands: Lower educated people should be told what to do A LOT. This sounds weird, but I get my statement as a conclusion on a discussion on health care. Research shows people with lower education have more health problems and cost the society more in healthcare. Moreover, in the Netherlands health insurance for them is even cheaper than for those who have a higher education (actually it's based on income, but those two are more often than not related). Higher educated people not only pay more, but they often have a healthier lifestyle: they eat healthier (less fastfood, more vegetables, etc.) and they smoke less. Right now the debate is on if it's right to raise the insurance for higher-risk groups (as is the case with car insurances) or adopt another solution (as to raise taxes on unhealthy food).
To relate this to the shootings, there's just incompetent people out there and access to guns is way too easy. Everyone can buy one and a lot of people do. Not to bash on lower educated people, but when the government here is worried about what those people eat, why should they, on the other side of the ocean (where obesitas is a far bigger problem) be allowed to have guns? Not to say higher educated should be allowed to have guns, but when you ask me I'd rather have someone more intelligent or someone with a special education and priviliges (e.g. police officers) carry a gun than someone with half a brain.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/gun-ownership-statistics-demographics/ Gun ownership is a lot higher as educational level is lower, and that's in percentages. Take into account that there's a lot more lower educated people...
"We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
And for MMORPGs ever so true...
I don't know how the virtual goods thing is going to play out, but that is that and this is this.
Video games don't make people snarky anymore than a football game. I think those people were like that to start with. In other words, if you are a violent person and play video games and then go do violent things, its not that games fault.
That's not "putting blinders on" over my hobby. Its logic.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
Swear I have seen the my Government trying to pin violence in video games over and over and have never brought up a shred of proof backing it otther then a someone who is paid to say these things. Never once over the past 20 oe o years since I started playing games have I ever had a thought to go out and commit mass violence.
It has nothing to do with games it is all about how peoples brains are wired but as an American I feel the higher ups are just too stupid and old to understand this.
Sorry to get off topic, but I have to disagree on the last statement, there's very little link between mental illness and voilence, people whom are mentally ill are no more or less prone to commit such acts (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/). If you examine all the mass killings, the majority of them were male and of a certain age. Last I checked, women suffer from mental illness as well and it's almost unheard of that that particular gender participates in large scale shooting sprees. Even if the perpetrators in these shootings were mentally ill, no one bothered to check what sort of medication or substance they had been inducing. Many legal pharmaceutical medications for mental illness, of the sides effects, one of them is psychotic/violent behavior (SSRIs falling in that category).
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Stop discussing the issue of gun control and violent video games. Seriously, stop. Don't get involved in the conversations in your daily lives or on news media sites.
Instead, do everything you can to shift the attention back to what really matters: the budget. Two weeks ago, we were facing a fiscal cliff and the problems related. That problem didn't go away just because the politics of the day changed. As Americans, we should be ashamed that the media can so easily influence our discussions and distract us from the issues that really matter.
If you want to change the discussion, you can't keep discussing gun control and video games. Bring back the discussion about the budget. Post on your social media site of choice and post on news sites.
Yes of course, it's violent video games that are the problem, not the fact that you can buy semi automatic weapons from local gun stores and bullets from local supermarkets or that you can buy hand guns, rifles or shotguns from most sporting goods store or even pawn shops in the U.S. and let's not even mention the black market where the sale of unregistered weapons is rife, no it must be video games that cause these murders and robberies, remember guns don't kill people, people kill people except where video games are concerned then it's video games kill people, because that's much more a convenient answer to the problem than standing up to U.S. gun manufactures and lobbyists, far easier to put the blame on an industy that is far more popular and successful.
America, ...how not surprising of you.