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Interview With Gary Gygax About Game Violence 171

Posted by Hemos from the proving-the-point dept.
bdavenport writes "After yesterday's post on game violence and the relation to real-world violence, i found this interview with legend Gary Gygax. He expounds his views on a range of subjects, one of which is his opinion that gaming violence, having been vilified since the 1970s when it related to D&D, is not causationally linked to actual violence. "
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Interview With Gary Gygax About Game Violence More

Interview With Gary Gygax About Game Violence

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  • Re:Violence, the real story. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok OK OOOK! We've heard this same argument over and over again. Take music for an example. Kids back in the 70's and 80's would listen to a record backwards - apparently the music/record would tell the kids to go out and rape their cat or something. (Ozzy?)

    Today, it seems to be video games that are causing kids to do these horrendous things. Uh...does anyone see the problem here?? People do stupid shit sometimes. The adults are looking for ways (scapegoat?) to explain the irrational behaviors exhibited by youth. Are there deep seeded psychological issues? Were the parents negligent? Nature? Nurture? Beer? ;)

    30 years from now it will be something else that is "the cause" of these irrational actions by people. Face it - you're going to have a small section of the population that deviates from the norm - ALWAYS.

    "Those damnned neuro-implants! I told ya Marge! Access to all that information, playin' games, surfin' the hyper-web...If it wasn't for those implants, those two kids wouldn't have nuked that convenience store!"
  • Bill Gates, in an interview today, expounded his views on a number of subjects, one of which is his opinion that Windows, having been vilified since the 1990's for its instability, is not causationally linked to actual data loss.
    Quoting this guy on this matter is absolutely ridiculous. Sure, there's a chance he's right. But for crying out loud, quote an objective third party who's qualified to study this matter!
  • Nope...just wore the shirts anyway, along with a good percentage of the student population.

    I guess you don't know squat if you paid penalties for something that was not wrong.
  • You must have had some shitty teachers. And how can anyone be smug at $24k a year?

    I think what pissed me off in high school is when the administration would start talking about banning this or that for some insane reason - which was to say that declining grades were probably due to the Iron Maiden t-shirts being worn - as smart as violence is linked to video games.

  • Man...I suck at FPS's (unless I get a sniper rifle). I can't aim worth crap, even with a real gun and a still target.

    If the world ever does become anarchy, I'll probably get fragged pretty quickly - hopefully though I won't blow myself up like I tend to do in Unreal.

    Hmmm...time to baricade myself in the New York Public Library and change my name to Brain - where's Adrienne Barbeau?
  • Ahh... so a logical argument loses foundation when the person has a stake in it? Everyone has a stake in something they make an argument for. The fact that he's on the other side makes him a good person to make the argument. Would it be preferable to ask an uninformed bystander
  • That's pretty funny.

    Seriously, Canada does have some ammount of limited military power. They do contribute to UN and NATO exercises. They even buy American and British built warplanes. I know they have a navy.

    The extent of their forces is unknown to me, but really, they need it for limited self-defense. They haven't been attacked in how long?
  • "Grandparent" Post:
    This trains people to pull the trigger without thinking. This is the same psychologically as playing Quake or Halflife.

    Parent Post:
    Well, I've had quite a bit of training in the Canadian Army myself. Even with training, we still expect that more than half of all combatants will not shoot at another human being, but will miss. This is pretty much a constant.

    Well, any military worth it's rounds would train to think before shooting. If you shoot without thinking, you might as well start shooting innocent people. You don't shoot at anything that moves because it moves. Proper aiming should be automatically. Pulling the trigger should never, ever happen until you are sure your target needs it. They even teach this philosophy to the Navy Seals. From my impression, in general they aren't trigger happy or killer robots.
  • no you are not supposed to think before shooting. If this was true, you might decide not to shoot, for various reasons. The people in command dont want members of the Army to think, just follow their commands.

    And maybe they'd want the Aegis ships to start shooting down airliners as well? There HAS to be a discriminating factor involved at every level of weapon use. I think there were US soldiers in the Korean war that got ratted on for killing a bear in a fire fight.

    The military would get EXTREMELY bad press if there is evidence of soldiers shooting just because there is a target. Wanton massacres are discovered in due time. The Vietnam war proved that. There will always be a loose crank, but they breach protocol. In the US, the military is under civilian control. If the civilians don't like how things go, they get the lawmakers to change things.

    No fighting force is perfect, and there is evidence of wrongdoing that happens in just about any major war, but it just isn't widespread.
  • "Pure" isn't the issue with TSR games. "Fun" is. The GURPS games, the Hero system, and even parodies like Tunnels and Trolls were a lot more fun than D&D, Star Frontiers, or Gangbusters (all of which pointlessly required completely new rule systems).

    There's nothing at all wrong with people playing hack & slash, and even hack & slash role playing games. It's just highly annoying when that's perceived as the whole point of all Role Playing Games for all of us. Screw that!

  • I'm sorry to see someone else got modded down as "offtopic" for slamming Gygax. It was obviously someone who's played the games that are his only credentials. Gygax and TSR put out such hack-and-slash dreck that "roll playing games" made a better label than "role playing" did. TSR was the MS of the RPG industry. I've heard bad things said about Wizards of the Coast as well, but was fairly pleased to see them buy up TSR.

    In case you're moderating and missed the on-topic point: Gygax is a pretty sad spokesman for supposedly persecuted game companies. If anything, TSR capitalized on the free publicity that D&D got when kids' suicides were blamed on it and religious nuts claimed it taught Satanism. For a more relevant, more persecuted game designer's perspective, talk to somebody at Steve Jackson Games [sjgames.com]. If that rings a bell, it may be due to the uproar when the US Secret Service raided [io.com] the company, nearly put them out of business, but never brought charges.

  • Sorry to see this get modded down as "offtopic" (as I said in my other [slashdot.org] post on the subject). It's relevant in that Gygax likes to blow smoke, and isn't necessarily someone who gamers like to have speaking for them on issues like this.

  • Well, aside from the ridiculous name-calling in your comment, have you ever considered that putting a gun in the hand of a young person, with training, and with supervision, is not an act of violence?

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it's NOT.

    Rolling On the Floor Laughing.

    Consider for a moment the idea that real-life exposure to guns is in no way, shape, or form, an act of violence.

    And I am the Pope! I AM THE POPE!! WWAAAOUOAUOUAOUOHHHH!


    --

  • To kill someone, you have to look away from your computer.

    Not if you work for the NSA.. Did anyone else think of 'Command & Conquer' when watching 'Patriot Games'?

    0.25 * ;)

    Your Working Boy,
  • There already exist the concept of role-palying, or story telling if you will, which is more than enough for us.

    Seriously.. Rules are meant to be 'reinterpreted'.. Though I still consider Magic cards tantamount to crack, I don't have quite the spite I used to have about them and their role in 'destroying' traditional roleplaying...

    Diablo and its ilk (I don't include MUDs because they feel like a different category to me, more of a 'realtime' Zork thing which is separate in my mind) have done good things and bad things to traditional gaming. I can keep in touch with gamer friends from around the country/world, but there's just something to getting together in a musty room with oddly-shaped dice and a stage for hamming up the death scene of a 9th level dwarven barbarian that I miss.

    Oh well.

    Your Working Boy,

  • Yes. But in fairly balanced individuals this period is quite short and doesn't lead to anything more than some harmless daydreaming.

    I don't dispute that such a thing could adversely affect someone who's mental condition isn't as stable. But is this really the fault of the catharsis itself?


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • I'm not saying violent games or TV cause kids to become murderers. I AM saying however that I believe it contributes. Many households use the TV as a replacement for time spent with parents, and therefore expose their children to things that the parents may not yet have addressed as being morally or even legally right or wrong.

    Who's at fault here? The TV show producer or the people who expect the TV show to stand in lieu of a babysitter or, heavens forefend, quality time?

    I'my sorry, but there's far too many excuses out there drawing attention away from the real issue.

    SHODDY PARENTING .

    Most of these people would LOVE to let the government raise their kids for them. Then we could have whole generations of maladjusted misantrhopic psychopaths walking the streets!

    RPG doesn't desensitize one to violence. It merely draws attention to it in a way that clearly deliniates fantastical conflict from the real thing.

    And FPS games like Quake desensitize nobody if the player's parents take the time and the *OOH NASTY WORD COMING UP!* effort to explain and reinforce the difference between the cartoonish violence in games and the real thing.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • Well. Lemme chuck a couple imps and cacodaemons at you. =)

    A la peanut butter sandwiches!

    *POOF*


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • Being exposed to something doesn't mean you're more likely to do it yourself. I've been exposed to beer most of my life. I don't drink.

    In my job, I have access to narcotics and some of my patients are narcotics abusers. Notice that I don't shoot up?

    Both my parents smoke, as did all of my grandparents, and most of my immediate family. I took one drag on a cigarette at age 8 and haven't touched another cigarette, cigar, pipe, etc since.

    I've seen real people literally beaten do death. I've seen people shot. I've seen people hurt in ways you wouldn't wish on ANYONE.

    Does this mean I'm going to go out and mangle someone? Not in this lifetime (though I could probably make your hair stand up with some of my empty threats...).

    If parents take the time and effort to educate their children and the difference between real and imaginary violence, they're far less likely to actually do it themselves. But when their babysitter is the computer in the corner running Doom, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, Unreal, Half-Life, etc all day every day, I can see how a kid could become disconnected.

    Who's fault is that though? The games' or the parents'? It's time to stop looking for excuses and focus on the real issue.

    SHODDY PARENTING


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • so you get more people who join up becuase they, for lack of a better way of putting it, enjoy combat.

    Actually, most people in the military nowadays are in for the college bennies. The lifers are in mainly because it's a chance at a somewhat honorable career. Very, VERY few of these individuals EVER want to actually go to war. And most people like this will be weeded out in permanent party assignments.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • So you're saying catharsis is a myth? And pray tell, how is describing a mythic battle (complete with magic and monsters) going to make someone any better at killing REAL things?


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • If you can show that (just for instance, I have no idea what the actual numbers might be) 25% of the population has spent significant amounts of time playing Quake III / HalfLife / UT / etc., and that a disproportionate percentage of violent crimes (like 35% or more) are attributable to people in this group, THEN I might begin to believe it.

    This is exactly the sort of belief that makes for bad science. If a disproportionate percentage of violent crimes are commited by gamers that play fps, then all you've shown is that people who commit violent crimes like to play video games. It says nothing about the causality.

    To make this point another way, during the breast implant lawsuits in the States, medical evidence did not prove any causality between breast implants and all of the medical problems that were attributed to them (note: the lawsuit was still lost by the breast implant manufacturers, though). During the trial, the breast implant manufacturers conducted a study where they showed that people that wear nail polish are more likely to have the medical problems that people that had breast implants. Their point was not that nail polish caused the medical problems (a correlation), but that the was no causality involved.

    Correlation and causality are not the same thing. Yet this misconception is common throughout the public (note to medical equipment manufacturers: go with a trial by judge instead of a trial by jury next time).
  • ROFL! Now this is funny!

    --Jim
  • Canada hasn't been attacked since those American bastards tried it almost 200 years ago (War of 1812). In reply, we (well, we were part of the British Empire at the time) burned their President's house, which had to be whitewashed to hide the smoke and scorch marks.
  • That's tellin' him. I think the word you want is "causally".

    This is what happens when people write but don't read.
  • It is the adverb form of causation... uhh, well, OK I just made that up, but I think that is what the writer is trying to do.
  • This oft-cited study is a load of horseshit.

    All it proves is that kids can be made to hit a plastic clown ten minutes after watching violent cartoons. You have not proven they will turn out to be criminals, nor have you even proven they will hit the clown a week later.

    And my grandfather spent lots of time engaging in simulated violence. It was called training. And it kept him alive during 21 months of combat while stationed in North Africa during WWII. I'd call that a benefit.

  • Uhh, no. ALL advanced infantry and special forces teams train in "shoot houses" which have a mixture of good guys and bad guys. This sort of training is becoming more and more commonplace as military forces are more frequently deployed to accomplish non-traditional missions.

    I defy you to find a soldier who would voluntarily and intentionally take an innocent life. Of course in any population, you have sociopaths, and there may in fact be soldiers who have sociopathic tendencies. However, my (unfounded) suspicion would be that the percentage of sociopathic soldiers would be LOWER than the percentage of sociopathic civilians, due to the camaraderie that all phases of military training instill in the recruits.

    Your posts smack of somebody who knows little about the military beyond what you've learned from Oliver Stone flicks.
  • Desensitization is not necessarily a bad thing. I very much want my ER doctor to be very desensitized to the grievous wounds s/he encounters on a day-to-day basis. Desensitization simply means that you are able to have rational, rather than emotional, reactions to stimuli. Seems like a good idea to me...
  • If guns promote violence, knives promote violence. Cars promote violence. Tire irons promote violence. Screwdrivers promote violence.

    You want to know what the least common denominator is? HUMAN BEINGS promote violence.

    As far as European gun advocacy, we can continue that discussion when you explain how Switzerland manages to not explode in gun-crazed frenzies, considering that most households are equipped with an honest-to-God assault rifle.
  • My grandfather used handguns his entire life, and never managed to kill anything. Just because you don't think target shooting is an OK thing doesn't mean you're right. The framers of the Constitution also disagree with you, but for reasons other than target shooting.

    As far as your argument about Switzerland goes, do you really think a person who intends to commit murder (which is against the law) would balk at extracting their assault rifle from the closet (which is against the law)?

    I don't have any trigger happy NRA friends. Come to think of it, I don't have any trigger happy friends, nor NRA friends. As far as the NRA goes, I'd be surprised if any significant fraction of the people who have committed crimes using firearms were NRA members, which brings me back to my original point: The most dangerous thing on the planet is human intent. Guns (and the violent video games being discussed in this thread) do nothing to change this fact.
  • Quake doesn't get people angry enough to kill their mother or shoot their high school teachers.

    I agree with you 100% It wasn't Quake that made me angry it was HIGH SCHOOL!

    Join me in my efforts to have high schools placed under public criticism - Perhaps we can even have them banned. Seriously, write your congressmen and tell them that it's those fucking smug teachers with their $24,000 a year salary that makes kids go ballistic - Not the games they play to unwind after coming home from a stressful day of school.
  • Do you really get used to violence?

    I have emmensly enjoyd movies like Pulp Fiction, Aliens, Brain dead and so on, which contain violence. For about a decade I have played role-playing games, and thus have a lot of respect for Gygax. In almost every game there has been a fight of some sort. I haven't gotten used to violence in any way for I haven't really experienced it for real. Of course I've had I've had my share of playful wrestling with my friends, but I would hope that thats all part of normal life or are we going to live in a world where, say red is forbidden color to use in for example art because it is the color of blood.

  • From what I can say, almost all of the most enjoayble moments of role-playing have been improvised, and I feel like being blessed by beeing receiving more than my share of really enjoyable gaming experiences. Most of them have even been non-violent, despite the "violent" nature of the role-playing games.
  • Even though this was labeled as Flamebait I have to respond.

    I for one couldn't care less if role-playing games were a "dying industry". Role-playing games are a land of imagination. For those of us who are playing now, we don't need any more new releases from any company. There already exist the concept of role-palying, or story telling if you will, which is more than enough for us.
  • Wow! Between my reading your two posts, Voyager sped up dramatically!

    Rick


  • I don't agree with you. I don't think that TV violence desensitizes you more then computer games. In TV, and I would say mainly in the news when you know that the violence is real, you are watching real people suffering and applying violence. This would be an awful vision so you simply create a "wall" to block your feelings from that. The more you can relate to the subject of the violence the more you suffer.

    It's very simple to test this, what kind of animal would you fell more petty when you watch it suffering, a dog or a cockroach, a cat or a fish, a monkey or a spider? You can relate more to the animal that have faces because they are more "human" then the ones that don't.

    Computer games, in my humble opinion, are more like a violence attenuation. You fell pissed off with something you go then and play quake for a few moments and get that stress out of your system. There you have all the power to blow up any of the terrible pixmaps monster or players you see. It is the same with sports, mainly the openly violent ones like American football, people don't get more violent just because they play a violent game.

    --
    "take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"
  • Hmmm... what about the flayer jungle in Diablo 2?

    :-)
  • Ok, maybe games don't lead to violence, but malicious trolls attacking my humorous post was sick...

    They make me want to take someone's head off.

    I wonder how many flames/trolls lead to violence?

    :-)

  • Nooo.... you don't get it (or are you trolling too?) The phony ad is a husband and wife saying how tekken helped save their marriage. They have it out on the screen ("This is for 25 years of Macaroni and cheese... whap!", etc)

    The *troll* was the guy who said it was a picture of some guy's head cut up...
  • Go watch Summunor Geeks on ifilm.com now. That is about as realistic depiction of D&D as I've ever seen.
  • The other thing most sims don't prepare you for is the fact that the other guy is shooting back.

  • I haven't played in close to ten years but I always found that the best adventures, for me and my players, was for me to improvise 80%+ of the time. I'd prepare an adventure (just a bit more than an outline) ahead of time based on which characters were being played. I'd then choose out some good artwork (good --> stuff they'd never seen before), miniatures (players and monsters), and anything else I needed (I can't remember the name of the company now, but there's a company out there that makes styrofoam hexes that you can cut, shape and paint and put together to make dungeons, caverns, etc.). Choosing miniatures was fun because I usually had new ones each time we played and I generally would leave them out for the players to see before the game so that they'd get to "ooo" and "ahh" over what they might run into. But after I got behind my GM screen with my dice and outline, I'd start to weave a story (which usually started with the company in an Inn during a thunderstorm... cheesy, I know, but effective). I found that the more often I did this, the better the stories, the adventures and, thus, the evening was.
  • YES! Some sanity!

    Would someone please moderate this one up, (I never have points when I need them.)
  • Seeing violence does not make you kill someone. Being desensitized to violence does not make you kill someone. There are millions of people that are exposed to violence every day, and to greater extremes than murderers. While desensitization to violence is not the best thing, it does not cause violence.
  • ...which is that they have bad parenting skills and don't teach their children the morals that they (children) need to learn.

    Umm, am I missing something or did you just go and do the same thing by picking another easy target - the parents? *DING* You win 5 hypocrite points...

    It's not so easy as that. Life is not black and white. There are a LOT of factors involved in what makes people able to kill others more easily -> envrionmental factors such as bad parenting, abusive relationships, military training, video games and media, etc. as well as genetic and mental disorders that are just part of who people are.

    Noone can blame this stuff on any one thing. It all ties together in a complicated web of cause and effect. But unfortunately, we live in a society that likes quick and easy solutions. And politicians will latch onto that fact like crazy and give people what they want to hear.

    We can whine and moan about it all we want here on Slashdot, but it's our representatives in government that need to hear our voices. They need to know that we understand that it's a complicated problem with no easy solution and we're not going to take their easy one-liners anymore. So go home and write your congress[wo]man today! Make your voice heard.
    ----
    Lyell E. Haynes

  • Scapegoats are always going to be needed because people in America right now just cannot accept that some people are freaks and mad dogs that will simply go off.

    I don't know that I would say that this is limited to America, or that "some people are freaks and mad dogs," but I would definitely say that here in America, scapegoats are needed. You never see blame placed on individuals anymore, it must be a corporation, industry, or non-living entity (like the internet). It seems to the entire society refuses to accept that perhaps we have a lot of people becoming parents that aren't prepared to become parents. I am one who watched tons of the pre-hysteria Looney Tunes cartoons (ie, where they showed the characters blowing up, etc) but didn't go off and kill a lot of people, or stick firecrackers in my sister's mouth. Why not? Because my parents always reminded me that what I saw on TV was not reality! Children are a lot more intelligent than Society gives them credit for, they just need someone there to show them the way. I really wish America (and perhaps other parts of the world, but I can only speak of the USA) would buy a ticket on the clue bus.
  • For the record, I don't think the post deserved a flame of any kind, but if you feel you must flame, well, I commend your use of the word "fuckwad" (speaking of middle-school level diction...). This is a word that doesn't get the level of usage it deserves. Wouldn't CNN be better if they threw in a "fuckwad" every now and then? If there was even the slightest chance that "fuckwad" would be used in the presidential debates, I'd actually watch 'em. Show me the church where the clergy tosses out the occasional "fuckwad" during services, and I'm there.

    Color me easily amused, but a well-placed "fuckwad" goes a long ways in my book.

    "Asshead", too.

    ... 'course, it'd be better if it wasn't always ME being referred to by those words, but hey, ya can't have everything.
  • The police force have innocent bystanders pop up, which you aren't supposed to shoot. The Army have no bystanders, you shoot everyone.
    So you're the sort who goes into combat without the rest of his unit? Even if there are no innocent bystanders, there are sure as hell people on your side. You don't shoot at everybody--you shoot at everybody who's wearing the wrong uniform. That's a bit of a mis-statement, actually. You always aim, but you only shoot when you've decided what you're aiming at is a viable target. Viable targets include:
    • things in the wrong uniform,
    • things that are trying to shoot you, and
    • things you were told to shoot.
    The people in command dont want members of the Army to think, just follow their commands.
    Uh huh. Which Marine boot camp fantasy movie did you get that one from? The military sure as hell wants you to think. They want you to think military.

    --
  • Video/computer games are notorious for their gratuitous violence and lots of blood and gore, along with the fact that the primary users are children.

    The fact is that the vast majority of computer gamers are adults. The myth that this is a youth market is part of the problem.
  • >>Well, I've had quite a bit of training in the Canadian Army myself.

    What? Canada has an army?

    ...

    Or, as one of my online friends from Canada said, "When I was a soldier in the canadian army (and we do have one)..."

    To which another replied, "Hey, now you're giving away the size of our army too!"

    Attempting to inject some levity, don't flame me too much.
    --
  • 10 minutes after the interview Gary rolled a 6, which meant for him to keep his dying industry alive by being geekier than anyone else possible.

    I'd probably need a good dose of biblethumping or therapy after reaching the zero-self esteem point which lets me say stuff like, "Okay, I'm an elf with turquise eyes and a +1 midget slaying dagger hidden in my garish coat of many-pockets" without extreme embarassment.

  • I've always found this odd... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If constant bombardment to violent graphical content doesn't effect our behavior, then why do so many advertizing companies make so much money selling graphic content that they hope will influence our buying behavior? This debate has always just seemed a waste of time due to the obvious answer to the above question - yes there is a positive correlation. I however find there is no room to dismiss responsibility just because there is one. Responsibility and accountability on the part of the person(s) carrying out the violence are more of the areas of thought that I subscribe to. Then even then it's a heart issue and that is not easilly coerced by attempting to control outward circumstances. If someone is interested in promoting their violent agenda, they aren't going to be stop pursuing that interest until they have a change of mind or heart. So materials are really just a matter of convenience, not a cause. doulos (too lazy to look up my password to formally login)

  • Wow. (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    The man behind the magic--literally! It must be really cool to play the characters that inspired a lot of core D&D spells. (Bigby's Crushing Hand, anyone? :)

    I could care less about the "violence in gaming", and it looks like Gary Gygax agrees, too. But the rest of the interview is great. (even if I liked The Realms better, because Elminster is the man, it was all still in the D&D universe...)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • And that is why I don't buy the "media violence doesn't influence viewers" arguement. Violence is not entertaiment. If you think that it is, you should see a therapist. Now.

    Thanks for your opinion doctor. Oh wait. You aren't a doctor, are you? I've played video games for as long as I can remember. Since I first got my hands on an atari. Everything from Combat to Unreal Tournament. Yet I've never harmed anyone. Don't even own a gun. Violence is not something that just seeps into you from playing a game. It requires hate and/or fear as well. I don't feel any of that when I play games. It's just fun and challenging to play with teams of people toward a common goal. I have a blast playing games. It doesn't make me angry or violent. I think it's ridiculous to even suggest such a thing. Perhaps you'd be more accurate saying that if video games make you angry or more prone to violence you should see a therapist.

  • Haven't you considered the possibility that you might be desensitized because you don't think there's anything remotely wrong with having fun blasting people to bits.

    Yes, I've considered that. Then I rejected it. I simply don't see the connection between playing Unreal Tournament with my friends and actually killing a human being. For me, there is no connection between the two whatsoever. I have no animosity towards anyone I play with, many of them are good friends of mine. I know I'm not harming anyone. The game is great fun. You get to play as a team and that alone makes it better than most single-player games. I also play paintball sometimes. I don't consider that to be violent either. The field owners go to great lengths to make sure nobody gets hurt. Players also take precautions and play by certain rules so that nobody gets hurt. There just isn't any sort of violent mindset involved as far as I can tell. It's more a spirit of cooperation, teamwork and sportsmanship like you'd find in other sports.

    I think many of these video games are very similar to sports. Football is quite physically violent, but people don't get upset that millions of kids play football every day. Yet they do get upset that kids play "violent" video games together. Why do you think that is? Many people get injured, and once in a great while even killed, playing football. I don't know of anyone who has been injured or killed playing a video game. (well, aside from some wrist strain after playing for too long at a time.) Kids who play real sports are (in my own experience) often violent towards other kids. It's never the math geeks going around beating other people up. It's the football players, the basketball players, etc. I'm not saying there is a causal link between violent sports and violence against others, but it would probably be a lot easier to build a case for that than to build a case for video games causing violence.

    Second, while the article certainly didn't prove (or even try to) that there was any connection between the drop in real violence and the increase in violent games, the drop in violence is real. People are becoming more and more hysterical about violence among children even as the number of incidents has been dropping steadily and substantially for years. Why do you think that is?

    And it's not their religion which tells them to do it - it's their culture - what everyone around them says is tolerable or even the right thing. They've been desensitized.

    They've been desensitized by real violence, not by pointing a mouse cursor at a character on their computer screen and firing a big green ball of lightning at him. People have grown up with such violence being a part of their everyday lives. The boys grow up to be like the men around them who are their role models. They see how the men treat the women and they do the same. That's what desensitizes them. Real life.

    You don't change whole nations in one generation, you do it in a few steps. And you usually start with the kids.

    It starts with adults. Kids learn from them. They learn to be like the adults. They don't grow up in a vacuum. They usually have plenty of people around them. It's those people who teach them how to act (or in some cases neglect them which leads to a whole separate set of problems which can also lead to violence). Perhaps if kids were raised without proper guidance and in a bad environment, they could learn bad things from tv, movies, music, games, etc. But I don't think those things are to blame. It's the fact that the child is growing up in an environment where he/she is not given the attention and guidance needed to grow up to be a well-adjusted adult.

  • Hmm, what sort of "goal" is it to blow someone up with a rocket launcher? Or sneak up on someone to shoot them in the back Rainbow 6 style? Does that help you build your socializing or "team" skills? Do you even understand how bad that sounds?

    Seems to me that if you maintain even a casual relationship with reality, you would realize that you aren't really blowing people up with rocket launchers or shooting people in the back. You're playing a game in which your character is put in a position where such things are expected, and even necessary for that character's survival. It's not a real situation. It's not a real environment. Those aren't real people. It's nothing more than a game. If someone can't understand that, then they have larger problems and probably shouldn't be playing those sorts of games, but that's probably a decision to be made by a psychiatrist. I don't see games having any sort of desesitizing effect on normal, well-adjusted people. They understand that the game is not real, nor are the actions performed in the game something you would do in reality.

  • Either that, or do you think it has something to do with supply and demand? In WWII, people were being drafted left, right & center - anyone who was able was asked to fight. Nowadays, the armed forces is a career choice - only people who want to join are joining - so you get more people who join up becuase they, for lack of a better way of putting it, enjoy combat.
    --

  • Oh, how original...the laugh to prove the other person wrong treatment.

    To make things clear, I'm not trying to prove anything here, anything but that my contempt. Saying that guns don't promote violence is .. ahem ... just ridiculous.

    What follows is not an argument either, it's just to explain my POV. In Europe, gun advocates are only found in one part of the political spectrum. Not amongst the liberals, not amongst the the conservatives, not among the communists, socialists, free enterprise supporters ... They're mostly found among the racist, foreigner fearing, paranoid far right activist.

    That doesn't prove anything ... it just shows a lot.

    --

  • If guns promote violence, knives promote violence. Cars promote violence. Tire irons promote violence. Screwdrivers promote violence.

    The only purpose of handguns is to kill. Knives have many other purposes, from spreading butter to sharpening pen. So your bogus cliché does'nt apply.

    As far as European gun advocacy, we can continue that discussion when you explain how Switzerland manages to not explode in gun-crazed frenzies, considering that most households are equipped with an honest-to-God assault rifle.

    It's the reserve army. Plus the guns have to be stored in a safe place, and (if I remember properly) extracting them of it without a good reason is illegal. Not quite the same thing as your trigger happy NRA friends. Plus switzerland is not very typical of Europe by any stretch.


    --

  • My grandfather used handguns his entire life, and never managed to kill anything.

    My grandfather used knives and his entire life, and never managed to spread butter. MWAAAH AHA H. Thanks for the laugh.


    --

  • If imaginary violence found in RPG, or seen in computer games, has any kind of effect on the youth, what can we say about the bunch of dangerous idiots called NRA who stick guns in the hands of their children .. oh but wait, it's only for training.

    Watch my karma go down in flame on this one ... mwaaaa h ah ah ahah.

    --

  • A friend and I decided that if a word got a least 1000 hits in Google, it would qualify as a "real word" (no matter what Webster says).

    I'll have to remember that for my next game of Scrabble.. I wonder how many points you could generate with 'xyzzy'...

    Your Working Boy,

  • Actually I believe you have that somewhat wrong.

    The point of games like Quake, just like Laser Tag, LARP, etc, is catharsis.

    Most people have a certain amount of stress/tension that builds up in the normal course of their lives. Now some people are able to release these tensions without much effort. Others need something to focus in on so they can let off steam.

    Some people use sporting events: C'MON! KILL THAT DAMN QUARTERBACK!

    Some people drink. Sometimes excessively if their real life sucks bigtime.

    Some people actually take up sporting passtimes like boxing, or martial arts to help work it out. Or go to the gym.

    And a certain segment of the population turns to role-playing as a safe outlet for their anger/tensions. It's an area where they're able to stand toe to toe with the biggest and baddest, and slug it out.....yet still go to work the next morning without that side-trip to the hospital for broken ribs, or jail for disturbing the peace.

    In character, they can do things and release in ways that would be socially unacceptable IRL (hacking things and people to bits, blowing things up with fireballs, sic'ing hordes of undead on a character who's just a bit TOO like your boss, and backstabbing some schmuck aren't generally considered polite).

    It also gives the players the chance to explore social situations which they might, otherwise, not encounter. I've seen some really introverted, shy people become absoloute maniacs in-character. And you know what? It was fun as hell! Like improv acting...with magic missiles. And believe it or not, this doesn't disconnect them to society. It connects them.

    Yes, it uses fighting and conflict as a facilitator. But what does better business at the movies? Sterile documentaries or action movies?

    Some people can just curl up into a good book and live, vicariously, through it. RP is a way to share the book with people.

    Also, all but the most delusional understand the difference between the fantasy of the RPG and reality. IOW, there's no cure light wounds when you shove a real sword through someone's chest.

    Most of these things apply to Quake-style competitive games as well. Again, violence is a facilitator, but it's still cartoonish, and quite clearly deliniated from real world violence.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • Xdaemon dun said:

    Go watch Summunor Geeks on ifilm.com now. That is about as realistic depiction of D&D as I've ever seen.

    Better yet, why not check outthe original sketch in MP3 format [deadalewives.com] over at The Dead Alewives' website [deadealewives.com], seeing as this is where the (screamingly funny) Summoner Geeks skit came from originally :)

    (Warning: If you actually play AD&D, watching this may not be such a good idea. Not because of insult...no...just the titters that will happen from then onward whenever someone states they're going to cast Magic Missile... :)

    (Then again, most of the AD&D games I've been into invariably seem to transmogrify themselves into episodes of (insert X series of) Slayers. ;) So one character in a D&D game I was in bore an uncanny resemblance to Gourry Gabriev...the guy who rolled it (my husband) really WASN'T trying for Gourry. It just happened. :)

  • What the hell does "causationally" mean? Is that a real word, or did you make it up? And even if it is a real word, someone once said that good writers never use a five-dollar word where a fifty-cent word will do.

    Strunk and White would frag you where you stand.

    --Jim
  • Cute... but wrong. Frag is the sort of word that Strunk and White would love. It's a nice, short, single syllable that explodes out of the mouth. It's simple, unpretentious, and gets the meaning across with effect. It's slang, of course, but is not made up.

    Flay is a nice word, too (remember Silence of the Lambs?), but doesn't mean the same thing.

    --Jim
  • In the fifties they nearly banned comic books for attributing to juvenile deliquency.

    In the sixties it was the hippies and the drugs that caused all the violence. Yes, BTW, I know the stereotype of the peace loving hippy but then again every radical politico in the sixties were
    referred to as a hippy.

    In the seventies it was the drugs still (everyone really liked drugs around this time ;->).

    In the eighties it was those satanic role playing games.

    Today, they complain about video games.

    Scapegoats are always going to be needed because people in America right now just cannot accept that some people are freaks and mad dogs that will simply go off.

    They have to have a reason so we can prevent it. It is bull. Famous people cannot die without a conspiracy behind their death, John Kennedy, MLK or even freakin' Princess Di. Nothing random can happen and nothing can happen that is totally unpreventable. There are people that actually think that we can actually prevent a warped kid from shooting up a school or some weirdo from attacking kids or terroists from bombing our ships, etc..etc.. ad nausem.

    We are not in control. Expectation is just a way of thinking you know what is coming next AND YOU DON'T. Get over it.

  • Dick Cavett said it best, when he said "Personally, I see more comedy on television than violence, but nobody is complaining about comedy in the streets."

    I get so fed up with people using "common wisdom" to bring their points across... "If a drink costs less at happy hour, people will drink more. It's OBVIOUS!" (Why couldn't it be, "if a drink costs less at happy hour, people will simply save money?").

    If it's so ****ing obvious, then do the damn studies, and do them with statistically meaningful numbers. And don't be afraid to publish them when they show that your "common wisdom" was incorrect.

    "There's so much violence in these computer games, so they MUST be causing all the violence we're seeing in schools." (BLAH!!!!)

    --
  • You feel it desensitizes one. Do you feel that way because you feel it has happened to you? If not, how else can you 'feel' that this is what happens?

    I for one am still *horrified* by real life violence.
    And I"ve played a *SHITLOAD* of extremely violent video games and watched violent movies.
  • A friend and I decided that if a word got a least 1000 hits in
    Google, it would qualify as a "real word" (no matter what Webster
    says).

    Google reports:

    • xyzzy: 38700 matches
    • r5rs: 9690 matches
    • r2d2: 41000 matches
  • I am 15 years old, and have played violent video games for a considerable time (not that long, maybe since I was 13 ;) I will NOT watch violent movies, and even can't watch the sicko-horror scenes in Monty Python (which I on the whole love, if they'd can the damn animations and b/g/g). I am in NO way desensitized to violence. I am well aware of the difference between a couple hundred pixels on my screen (and a couple thousand on another, not to mention packets and memory state) and a living human being. Hell, I have a hard time sleeping after reading my WWII books. Believe me, I play Counter-Strike and other 'killing' games at LEAST an hour a day (average, of course), but I don't think I'd even shoot at someone attacking me (thakfully, I've never had the chance to find out). In-game I'm a brutal terrorist, but in the real life I'm a soft fuzzy guy who loves his new kitten. There is a sharp difference there. Perhaps I'm different, but people seem to ignore people like me. Perhaps they should actually research non-killers (that is, people who aren't fscked up in the head to start with).
  • I'm not sure why Gary Gygax's opinion on this subject is really that valuable. A person who writes the material that has accusations leveled at it is hardly an impartial subject....

    -Moondog
  • While video game violence may or may not be linked to real world violence, I can't help but feel it does desensitizes one with related violence in the real world through exposure. One essentially gets used to it.

    - systmc
  • This guy has the Ego of Nerd-dom +3

  • Gygax and TSR put out such hack-and-slash dreck that "roll playing games" made a better label than "role playing" did.

    Maybe that's just because he didn't have you around to point out all the flaws! No, I'm semi-serious -- where were all the modern RPG gods when TSR was pumping out this awful tripe? I'll tell you: they were either in the basement with their D&D books or they thought "D&D" stood for "Death and Dismemberment" and had something to do with insurance.

    Whatever your feelings on the "hack and slash" style of play that Gary Gygax implemented in D&D (and promotes to this day despite it's obvious obsolescence) the fact is that early TSR products were pioneering a large number of concepts that are still in use today even in fully modern RPGs. Do you mock the simplistic and primitive Pong or Space War? I think not -- these games not only created the concept of the video arcade game but proved that it was commercially viable to create such a thing.

    Despite your lack of respect for the primordial ooze that TSR's early products are to the RPG industry as a whole, I have to agree with you on one point -- TSR's utter lack of appropriate response to the religious zealots who targeted them. Rather than use some of the cash in their (at the time) overflowing coffers to buy some good lawyers and conjure up a defamation suit or four, TSR just rolled over and took it square in the jaw -- giving the religion industry a perfect villian for their sheep to hate.

    "Religious fanatics assasinating our character? OH NO! QUICK, change the names of the demons in our monster manual! Issue press releases about how we don't promote satanism! Retreat! RETREAT!"

    I firmly believe that it was this lack of any serious effort to defend their products when it mattered most that triggered the beginning of TSR's slide into bankruptcy. TO THIS DAY there are LARGE numbers of non-religious-extremist people who "know" NOTHING about the game other than that it "caused some kid to commit suicide"! They obviously heard or read about some distorted report of the Egbert case and never heard anything after that. What's wrong with this picture?? Can you imagine GM not saturating the media with ads full of James Earl Jones listing off car safety features after Nader's successful recall lawsuit? What was TSR doing while their game was being crucified by critics with pathetic credentials [rpg.net] for crimes it never had anything to do with?? Certainly not enough, otherwise I wouldn't be meeting all these people who had their only opinion of D&D shaped by some shitty TV "news" magazine that's been off the air for years.

  • Originiating in the armed forces, "Frag" means 'kill' in a FPS. oriignally, however, it referenced hitting your own guys with fragmentaion grenades accidentally
    ----

  • I rest my case.

    Dlugar

  • If you're sick and tired of video game violence, push nonviolent games such as Tetris [8m.com] on your kids.
  • End public education and you see a small decrease in violence by disaffected middle-class kids.

    Then watch the riots start.

    Then watch the revolutions unfold.

    Pick your poison.

  • It's funny to think back to middle and high school. I had a knife held to my throat by another kid once in 7th grade (he was "just joking around"). As far as I know, he didn't play any role-playing or computer games.

    I saw a number of brutal fights in high school, including one between a guy and a girl where he knocked her knife across the cafeteria and started ripping her hair out. From what I knew of those two, neither played any role-playing or computer games.

    The year after I graduated from high school, two kids who were suspended from school paid a visit with a pair of handguns. They shot three staff members, one fatally. No mention of computer or role-playing games.

    But I have seen the other side of the coin. I knew a guy in middle school who was very much into role playing games who broke into the school and trashed part of it. He was later shipped off to military school where I understand he found a perfect outlet for his f-ed up emotions.

    A few years after high school, I happened to meet a friend-of-a-friend who played some role-playing games and hung out on BBSs. At dinner, he ordered a very rare steak ("put it on the grill, count to five, flip it, count to five, then bring it out"). A couple weeks later he was arrested (and I believe later convicted) for brutally murdering his former girlfriend. The funny part is, I started playing with this guy's old gaming group after that and had a great time with a group of mostly well-adjusted geeks.

    There are plenty of people in this world who's brains just aren't wired right. Not all of them can be ex-marines or postal workers when they dump core. Some will use a computer. Some will play role-playing games. Some will be in wealthy families. Some will be vice presidents at large companies.

  • Various groups of people always seem to be looking for the "magic bullet" when it comes to the cause and cure for crime and violence in society. Especially when the violence was committed by someone very young. Many people seem to just want a scapegoat, something that they can point to as the cause. I think it should be fairly obvious though, that there is never such a simple explanation for any specific act of violence, or for violence in general. It is a very common belief that exposure to violent movies, videogames, etc. desensitizes the viewer. Whether or not this is true, the affect that viewing anything has on a person depends very much on their set of values with which they can evaluate it. Studies have shown that when parents view television with their children, and discuss what they are seeing with the child, it greatly affects the way in which the child thinks about what he/she is watching.
    Personally, I don't really play any RPGs or gory video games, but I don't really think there's any causation between viewing violence and committing violence.
    I believe that many of the main causes of violence in our society are social and economic factors. Many parents don't spend enough time with their kids, and never give them any context with which to interpret the violence they see. This is much more of a problem than the fact that the kids are being exposed to violence. Inequality and oppression, both social and economic, also seem to sometimes lead to violence. There also seem to be people who for no apparent reason are just pre-disposed towards violence. Mental illness can sometimes be a factor. All of these things and many more can lead to violence. Any specific act of violence is likely to have its roots in several of these factors.
    Trying to blame violence on television/movies/videogames/music is just a cheap way to opt out of asking deeper, more disturbing questions.
  • he was speaking casually, but the word he wanted was "causally".
  • so, if it's only a game, it would be ok with you if we had games where you get to splatter Jews all over the screen, rape women, lynch blacks... it's just a game, right? It doesn't cause anything, why not make it more realistic? That stuff happened in our history, it'd make a good game, wouldn't it?

    I don't think so, but I'm curious what you think.

  • I don't think that its the games which are really at fault for encouraging any violent behavior in youths. Violence starts mostly with dischord in the child's home and family life. Discontentment and frustration in his or her real life is what can drive them to physical violence. Keeping families working together and stopping the real-life abuse is where we should direct our efforts. Placing attention and blame onto violent games or television shows is not the right thing to do.

    Quake doesn't get people angry enough to kill their mother or shoot their high school teachers. Violent games and TV shows just help disconnect offenders from the realization of their crimes, after they've been commited.


    :)
  • Of course violent video games don't make people kill other people. To kill someone, you have to look away from your computer.
  • The reason people attack the gaming market is that it's an easy target...

    Video/computer games are notorious for their gratuitous violence and lots of blood and gore, along with the fact that the primary users are children.

    It's a lot easier to tell people that it's the "violent games" that are causing their children to become violent and socially maladjusted, rather than tell the truth, which is that they have bad parenting skills and don't teach their children the morals that they (children) need to learn.
    --------------
  • Is anyone aware of any actual STUDIES on the subject of video games inducing violence? Because I don't buy it, but it shouldn't be TOO difficult to determine. If you can show that (just for instance, I have no idea what the actual numbers might be) 25% of the population has spent significant amounts of time playing Quake III / HalfLife / UT / etc., and that a disproportionate percentage of violent crimes (like 35% or more) are attributable to people in this group, THEN I might begin to believe it. Such a study is not really possible with regards to violence in most types of media because exposure to them is too ubiquitous (how many people HAVEN'T been watching TV but are still "mainstream" enough to make a reasonable control group?) But it shouldn't be difficult with VGs - there's still plenty of "normal" people out there that have never fragged (I think - maybe I'm just out of touch!) Granted, this is nowhere CLOSE to showing a causal relation (which is really QUITE difficult in anything involving patterns of human behavior; this is why psychology, sociology, etc. are still considered "soft" science), but right now all we have is anecdotal evidence (which is no evidence). "Some kid(s) played a bunch of violent games and then went and shot up their school. When asked what they were all about, the kid(s) said "I play Quake lots"."

    But think about it - although the video game industry is steadily extending its audience into the over-30 crowd, the main consumers of VGs, especially ultra-violent VGs, are the under-30 crowd. These are ALSO the people that are the most emotionally volatile. It's nothing to do with VGs, it's just developmental! Teenagers (and to a lesser extent 20-somethings) are still developing mentally and physically and emotionally. They're more volatile. It's this volatility that both makes them likely to commit crimes of "passion" and also likely to play violent VGs! I would contend that the "real violence" and "play violence" are both EFFECTS of an underlying CAUSE - plain ol' human adolesence! C'mon, seriously, how many people here over 25 can honestly look back at their years from age 10ish to 25ish and NOT wonder how on earth they made it through adolesence and pre-adulthood withOUT killing themselves or anyone else or just losing it and blasting things randomly?

    I suspect that if my hypothetical study above were conducted that the results would be exactly the opposite - violent gamers are LESS likely to be violent in real life. I think this is because the outlet that it provides to get aggression OUT of your system more than offsets the desensitization effects. At least that's certainly how it works for ME. My bottom line has been stated over and over by others, but it's worth repeating: the dangers of violent games (TV, whatever) are marginal. The vast majority of people that wouldn't have gone on a killing spree or whatever had they never played, watched, read, spong-absorbed this input are NOT going to suddenly flip-flop because of it. The unbalanced few would be unbalanced without it. The slim margin of people that MIGHT flip because of it are NOT worth depriving the human race of its natural talents for creativity. Personally, I'd be MUCH more likely to flip if all I could play was the VG equivalent of "The Care Bears"...
  • Violent games and TV shows just help disconnect offenders from the realization of their crimes, after they've been commited.

    Yes, but then we wouldn't have a handy scapegoat to blame, would we? After all, if we were to focus societal and economic resources on fixing the discord in the child's home and family life, we might get some real results.

    Another example would be the War on Drugs. Back during Nixon's time, we spent two-thirds of federal monies on prevention (demand) and one-third on punishment (supply). Now we keep locking up more and more people, and it still doesn't change the behaviour. Because it's politically easy to be tough on crime, not actually go through, program by program, and see what really delivers results.

    And this is to the point that over 50 percent of many counties budgets are spent on the justice system, where they used to be in the 20 to 30 percent range.

  • The other thing most sims don't prepare you for is the fact that the other guy is shooting back.

    Severe duh. Man, where's the whiz and gusts of air from the bullets, the tracer rounds screaming at your eyeballs, the panic inducement of trees spattering as they're hit, the noise, the fires, the confusion even when you're calm and the world has slowed to a crawl and you realize that you know exactly what you're doing and it's happening while you're almost floating above it all.

    Until they come out with home theater games with this kind of thing, you're still going to have people who think they know what to do, but don't. The sickening feeling of realizing that that body is a dead person, or worse is wounded, and what you had to do with the whole equation. The friends and what is happening to them. The reality that it really doesn't matter if you call for help, because by the time it arrives it will be way too late, but you do it anyway.

    But ... sims can make young punks think they know all this stuff and buy a gun and it's sooo easy to pull that trigger and be the big man. And then it jams, it's heavy, you miss and lots of innocent people end up dead. That's NOT good.

  • Re:why the gaming market is attacked (Score:3)

    by Danse ( 1026 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @10:24PM (#707346)

    Umm, am I missing something or did you just go and do the same thing by picking another easy target - the parents? *DING* You win 5 hypocrite points...

    Well, maybe he's as sick as a lot of us are that parents don't seem to ever shoulder any of the blame when some kid hauls off and shoots somebody. As soon as it happens, reporters and cops and everyone else start digging to see what games the kid plays and whether he spends time on the internet or not. Nevermind that his mom is a crack addict and her boyfriend is a dealer who leaves guns laying around the house. Nah.. it's gotta be the video games.

    Parents are supposed to take responsibility for their children. That includes deciding what games they should be allowed to play, what they should be able to watch on tv, what they should read, what they should be allowed to do. You can't just point your finger at the games and declare that they are to blame. Trying pointing at the parent for letting the child play the games or for not taking an interest in the child enough to know that there was a problem and trouble was coming. Parents seem to think they can just have all the kids they want and society is supposed to make sure they turn out alright. Time for them to wake up.

  • Question (Score:3)

    by small_dick ( 127697 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:00PM (#707347)
    Why did people kill each other before video games? Just curious.

  • Violence, the real story. (Score:3)

    by NicGCotton ( 186611 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @03:20PM (#707348)
    Here's a fact. Being exposed to violence desensitizes you to it. That's any type of violence; verbal abuse, violent murder and rape, and everything in between. Hearing something horrible happen on the radio desensitizes you a little. Seeing it on TV does it more. Doing it interactively on the computer, where you make it happen, desensitizes you a lot.

    If you are desensitized to violence, you are more likely to do it yourself. If violence is a viable solution in every aspect of your "play" life, then you will begin to see it as a solution in your "real" life.

    The younger you are, the more pronounced the effect is.

    Example: Normal people off the street will not, unless circumstances are extreme, kill someone. The US Marines need to train people to kill someone when they are not in direct personal danger. So they use pop up targets with the shape of a human. This trains people to pull the trigger without thinking. This is the same psychologically as playing Quake or Halflife.

    However, it is true that video games are not responsible for much violence in society. The amount that they desensitize you is not massive and mind bending. Video games are only really a threat to people who are violent or already in a mentally suggestive state.

    [The above is based on the expert opinion of the Chief of Psychology and Administrative Director of the local Phyc. Hospital.]

    This is my opinion: I think that putting Solider of Fortune in the hands of 6 six year old should be a crime.

  • Desensitizing is misunderstood. (Score:3)

    by Dr. Zed ( 222961 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @04:26PM (#707349)
    If I become desensitized to something, such as violence, that doesn't mean that I will be more likly to commit violence. It just means that it will have less emotional impact.

    Example, I am desensitized to violence and I see someone shot before my eyes and they are now lying in a pool of their own blood. Do I pull out a gun and start shooting people too? No, I assess the situation and call for help. A less "desensitied" person would probably just stand there screaming. I don't have to have an emotional reaction to know what's right.

    People are still responsable for their own actions. "Quake" doesn't teach people to shoot real people, it teaches them to click targets on their computer screen....

  • Strunk and White, ActionTeam!!! (Score:3)

    by protein folder ( 228881 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @04:25PM (#707350)
    Now, two of your favorite english language stylists team up from beyond the grave to bring you hardcore grammar mayhem!!!

    William Strunk Jr., abandoned by his parents and raised by wolves untill he graduated from the University of Cincinatti, and legendary author of English Metres, is highly cheesed because nobody cared about it. Now he's back with a printing press and a score to settle!

    E. B. White was bitten by a highly intelligent radioactive spider that could write messages in her webs. Now he is more powerful than ever and is fighting on the crusade for elegant prose--but can his rage be kept in check? Or will he finally be driven to destruction by people who "done seen things" and don't know the difference between "its" and "it's"?

    Find out on the next episode of--

    Strunk and White, ActionTeam!!!

  • Boneheaded experiments galore? (Score:4)

    by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @03:35PM (#707351) Homepage Journal
    I am a mental health professional, and the research I am aware of shows the above statement to be false. There have been many, many studies on modeling of behavior that absolutely shows an increase in violent behavior when exposed to media with violent content. The simplest and most well known of these was an experiment exposing children to movies of other children hitting life-sized dolls with a control group of children doing regular play without violent content.

    This is an example of the kind of boneheaded research that makes me wonder how the experimenters managed to pass their undergrad classes let alone get a Ph.D or M.D.

    Firstly I'll comment on ivaldes3's misdirected ire. Repeat after me, "RPGs do not increase violent behavior". A Role Playing Game is a group activity played by a close circle of friends who exercise their imagination pretending to be wizards, warriors, gods, superheroes, etc. Several studies have shown that the one thing that links violent/suicidal teenagers is the fact that they are usually loners who feel isolated from their peers and family and are the victims of abuse either by their peers or their family.

    Secondly, the boneheaded experiment you described is the most contrived piece of garbage I have ever heard of. Children imitate/mimic what they see around them, after all that's how they learn to talk. If you show children images of other children performing actions, it is extremely likely that they will imitate this behavior. The fact that they mimic the behavior of the children in the movie only shows that they are healthy and observant kids. To leap from the results of that experiment to then claim that RPGs cause violence is not only unreasonable but extremely illogical.

    Second Law of Blissful Ignorance

  • An ex-Sargeant's opinion (Score:5)

    by WillSeattle ( 239206 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @03:41PM (#707352) Homepage
    Example: Normal people off the street will not, unless circumstances are extreme, kill someone. The US Marines need to train people to kill someone when they are not in direct personal danger. So they use pop up targets with the shape of a human. This trains people to pull the trigger without thinking. This is the same psychologically as playing Quake or Halflife.

    Well, I've had quite a bit of training in the Canadian Army myself. Even with training, we still expect that more than half of all combatants will not shoot at another human being, but will miss. This is pretty much a constant.

    Playing Quake or Halflife is nothing like using a force-feedback rifle simulator. They used to ban us from paintball games because we actually used weapons and knew about kickback, reactions, wind drift, shadow perception, and all the other factors necessary to complete a real kill. And even a simulator is a far cry from real combat. It's not quiet in real war, it's way more boring and way more exciting, and even the best game is jigged for playability, whereas real combat is a heck of a lot of misses and a lot of unseen targets, regardless of technology.

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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