o.k.-i thought i'd put a little disclamer in when i posted this, but i didn't show, so...basically, i didn't write this, i found it on some website, and the girl that killed herself was in the year above me in my school. basically...Violence In Games - Myth And Misconception
The subject of simulated violence in games and its effect on society is a perennial and emotional subject. Even amongst veteran gamers, which one might suspect would be a case of preaching to the converted, the issue can be debated fiercely enough to ignite flame-wars on any number of forums.
I present here my own thoughts and feelings on the matter in an essay first posted on the Quake 3 World Forum's Level Editing section. Should you wish to quote this essay in whole or in part, please ask my permission first.
I look forward to the day when the observations contained herein are obsolete.
I've read, thought and talked about this subject many many times, but I've never posted on a forum about it, so bear with me.
What I feel compelled to remember in this debate is the fact that this is in no way a new phenomenon. The earliest example I can cite from the modern era is the treatment recieved by comic books and their writers in the 1950's. Pulp horror and sci-fi had existed for decades, but only by then had they became popularised and, more importantly, sold to children. For many years, government bodies imposed ridiculous amounts of censorship on comics, dictating to the writers every detail of their work that was or was not acceptable for publication. Sensationalistic 'public information' newsreels were contrived showing interviews with supposedly traumatised kids. But in spite of the best efforts of the authorities, comics were bought in increasingly vaster numbers and became vital avenues for expressing ideas and commentary for the sub-culture of the 1960's. Today, no politician would waste his time attacking them. Graphic novels are big business, are read by a comfortably wide range of people and agegroups and are even the basis for high-profile movies. So they're mainstream, they're 'normal'. And the hordes of demented, socially maladjusted fans we were warned about back then have completely failed to materialise.
The same pattern occurred in the early 1980s in Britain ( and possibly elsewhere, though I'm not sure ). When video technology was first mass produced, an epidemic of low-budget movies with lurid subject matter spread all over the country. These movies contained huge amounts of explicit porn and, more significantly, horror. They were dubbed by the infamously reactionary British press as 'video nasties'. Much effort was made to censor this material, ban it and actually destroy it. Politicians made speeches, film crews made documentaries and newspapers wrote front-page headlines. Much hysteria ensued. The fantastic irony is this: video nasties were available almost exclusively on the inferior format of VHS. The technologically superior Betamax was immune. What happened has gone down in marketing history. The overwhelming majority of VCR sales were for VHS, because people wanted to watch their collections of 'nasties'. Betamax fell by the wayside and became a joke, the entertainment equivelant of the Dodo. This gives unequivocal proof of how out of touch the authorities actually were with their socially-responsible posturing and also how irresistable is the force of mass popularity.
This has happened again and again through the late 20th century. After videos, heavy metal.
Then: Play your Black Sabbath records backwards ( this is in the days of vinyl, kids. Ask your parents what I'm talking about :] ) and you'll hear the voice of Satan!
Now: Pink Floyd compilations are great Father's Day presents and ageing rockers are figures of fun.
What about Roleplaying Games?
Then: Tom Hanks stars in the embarrassingly cheesy 'Mazes And Monsters', the plot of which implies roleplaying drives you to suicide.
Now: Warhammer earns enough cash to run a small country and half the postgraduates in Britain own a copy of the 'Vampire - The Masquerade' rulebook.
Currently, it is the computer game that is the great media evil. But only because it is still in the process of encroaching on the mainstream and most people look at the flash and gib of Quake III, then at the impenetrable passion of the player at the controls, and cannot understand. Parents are always threatened by anything which communicates to their children at a deep level that they themselves cannot. That is why all of the right-wing propoganda and evidence is geared to play on parental fears and not aimed at the actual players. When it is not just a schoolkid who turns up at my local internet cafe to play Counterstrike, but when he brings his dad along too, that things are really progressing. I see it happening already.
The arguments and evidence to support the 'games make our children into killers' movement is sloppy, minimal and entirely subjective. After the Columbine incident, which affected me more than I expected, Charlton Heston made statements relating to the goth culture that he despises so much. While questions were being asked about the dubious gun laws in America, Mr Heston had the brilliance to suggest that the black trench coats that were the main identifying item of the goth schoolkids should be banned. While 9mm calibre assault rifles should not. That is not only prejudiced, it is absurd.
Not long after, a documentary aired in Britain ostensibly investigating the sinister reallity of computer games. The program was poorly informed and relied entirely on personal anecdote and opinion. The journalist responsible, whose name I unfortunately forget, was quite obviously not personally concerned with the issue at hand or any of the other participants. He was young and ambitous and seemed to have chosen the most emotive topic he could, thereby making it easier to gain a sympathetic audience. Again, the entire exercise was geared towards scaring parents with piecemeal information and sensationalistic techniques. It was a cynical career move. Amongst the worried parents and right-wing survivalists, not one child or gamer was interviewed in the program. The best sequence was when two supposed scientists ( social scientists, i.e. people without proper qualifications ) conducted an 'experiment'. Having lost the argument a while ago that playing games turns ordinary people insane, a more subtle danger was proposed: immediately after a deathmatch, calm and decent folk become unusually aggressive. To test this theory, the experiment used punishment ( freezing water ) and reward ( jellybeans :/ ).
Not one scientist would, or did, authenticate this rubbish as anything other than untested, unregulated and unempirical. It's value as scientific evidence is nil. It's value as provocative T.V. was much greater.
At the end of the day, I believe this issue pivots on the understanding, and more often the lack of understanding, of profound human psychology - comic books do not make psycopaths; horror movies do not make psycopaths; rock bands do not make psycopaths; computer games do not make psycopaths...people make psycopaths. That is how it happens and has done since human beings have behaved as social animals ( according to most anthropologists that would be perhaps 2 million years ). It was not the music of Marilyn Manson or Korn that compelled Scottish teenager Nicola Raphael to take her own life, it was the vicious school bullies who made her life unbearable misery for months that should be held up to public scrutiny. That, of course, will not happen. It was not the movie 'Natural Born Killers' that made a young man go berserk with a handgun in a shopping mall, but his father who not only beat him daily for non-existent transgressions but also took his son to the closet and forced him to choose the belt he would be bludgeoned with. It is the father at whom our social execration should be justly directed. Instead, his name is forgotten while the title 'Doom' is on the lips of every right-winger from Texas to Fleet Street.
And it must not be forgotten that we are responsible too, whenever we turn a blind eye to abuse of the innocent. This is a beautiful world we are part of that is tragically soiled with the excrement of human failure. We have great music, we have great artists and of course, we have Quake. But we also share a planet with ignorance, hypocrisy and brutality. And the kinds of incidents I described are being enacted at the very moment you are reading these words.
In truth, this persecution is not really about the threat of burgeoning serial killers. Fundamentalists see all such things as a threat, not to society as they would have us believe, but to their own selfish world view. It is not the material that is dangerous to them, but the people it effects. For nothing is more dangerous to a repressive institution than people who can think for themselves. And young, independently minded folk are always the first ones to get involved in stuff that's cool - like rock music and roleplaying. And Quake.
As members of a rich and still youthful cultural phenomenon, the best thing for us to do is simple...keep playing. Just as with the much harrassed comic books of the '50s or the video nasties of the '80s, continuous exposure to the mainstream and increasing artistic sophistication on the part of the developers will result in computer games being wholeheartedly accepted by society. Then the ignorant, prejudiced minorities will have to find something else to persecute for being inspiring. Take heart, all makers of the gaming world: every mesh we mould, every brush we lay, every frag we score moves us further out of the dark ages of social repression and closer to a healthy society. And we'll have a lot of fun doing it.
Times are not more violent, they're just more televised - Marilyn Manson
The only thing that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing - Edmund Burke
Well they tell you you're damned and prepare your shame / But longevity hear my name! - Fields Of The Nephilim
agreed. i have agrued this point my whole gaming life. its a shame no one listens to us, we are of "the warped" those whos minds have already been taken by the films/comics/video/bands/games.
making matters wosre, the pyschos, blaming games so they get a lesser sentence. MS were freatened with prosecution after 9/11, all because if ur plane hit a building it'd crash
People find it easier to use a scape goat than to admit that parts of society are breaking down. its bad when a kid goes to school with a gun and shoots his teachers then blame it on video games, the thing being how did he get hold of the gun+ammo? why did he choose to shot that teacher or those other students? why didnt anyone notice them planning this sort of thing?
has anyone seen the news about people trying to blame the Matrix for some robberies and killings in america blatently believing they were in the matrix. to be honest this is just a little far fetched, if some one isnt mature enough to see fact from fiction then why arnt they getting the help and education to help them. in my view people should stop blaming and give people the help they need before half life 2 is blamed for a scientists killing spree of all his specimines and co workers.
spiff didnt you read jimmies post on moores site, we ARE in the matrix. now the matrix is a simulation of society, and society is just a simulation of order, therefore just like "real" matrix is also a sim of order. now as such we should respect the laws of the matrix as we would the laws of society, thus the crimes hold as much charge being in the real or martix, except in matrix u may get a visit from the smiths...
My beleif is no matter how real something is the rules are still there, and for a reason, i treat virtual people just as i would a real person.
Really Nktwild
Umm, didn't you just rant on about how there's a large difference between violence in reality and in a video game and now your telling me you treat vitual people like real people. Even in GTA hey, they're just ordinary joes and you go and run them over don't you. Is this how you treat real people as well?
Just to clear up the matrix stuff I found this in New Scientist. I re-wrote it and condensed it a little so it might not follow the original arguement as accurately as it could. (copied from my original article on my friends site Directassault.co.uk.)
The matrix might really exist. If we ever invent A.I. which is highly likely as the human brain carries out 10^24 functions per second and we have computers up to 10^21 fps. Then, it won't be long until we can simulate the human mind. Now, if we did this we wouldn't just do it once we do it many times to run different scenarios.
Now these simulations will eventually achieve the evolution of theyre own A.I.'s and so on and so forth. Which means there will be many worlds out there full of A.I. Now, I know this isn't quite the same, no actual physical body (the Gigeresk power plant), but what is reality? O.K., that’s just too much complication. Anyway, statistics state, that therefore the probability of you being the original world is incredibly low. Therefore, we are all experimental A.I.'s in an infinitely large chain of "experiment".
Jimmy
(if any one from New Scientist sees this I'm not intending to break any laws. If I am, tell me and I'll take it down)
Originally posted by jimmi tIt's not only a matter of getting machines to be as 'fast' as the brain, but actually designing the 'software' that can perform all the conscious and sub-conscious associations that the brain performs when receiving external stimuli, with memory.
the human brain carries out 10^24 functions per second and we have computers up to 10^21 fps. Then, it won't be long until we can simulate the human mind.
A professor at my varsity once said something I thought was pretty cool. Why are we struggling to understand the human brain? Maybe the brain perceives us trying to understand the inner working of the brain and therefore sabotages our efforts.
Just something to think about...
Originally posted by jimmi tbut the object of GTA is to run people over, besides they get up and walk after 1 min. in halfe-life i go out of my way to save all the scientists.
Really Nktwild
Umm, didn't you just rant on about how there's a large difference between violence in reality and in a video game and now your telling me you treat vitual people like real people. Even in GTA hey, they're just ordinary joes and you go and run them over don't you. Is this how you treat real people as well?
ok i have heard all jimmies thory about the matrix and how if it existed there is a very small chance of us being in the real world, but isnt that all a little depressing, anyway my mind is screwed up enough over the question of is there a god only leading my to hope i have a soal.
we seem to have turned a descusion about videagame violence in to opposing rants about our reality being an illusion and whether it is possable we are in the real one. my logic saysthat if we were in the matrix the machines would do all they could to prevent us from realising it, hence the agents removing those who try to tell people in the film, as we are able to freely discuss it and develop very possable theorys about it only goes to prove we are most likely to be in th real world. only when the person who was about to develops a conclusive theory that we are in the matrix dies sudenly in a convenient accident could we question our own tangeble existence.
anyway NK didnt you tell me about hos you had fun working out all the damage points using a scientist on half life.
i recall a soldier of fortune2 multiplayer moment (not with NK) where i used a USAS-12 to blow the head clean off an opponet (of course it wasnt clean blood spurted everywhere) this a thaght was very ammusing, as my opponent was sitting in the same room as me he was able to curse me and my team mates said it looked cool. the thing being multyplayer is a nice safe way to kill real people, only to get fraged by them 30 seconds later when they get the rocket launcher, the good thing bing after the game is done we all return to our office jobs safe in the knowledge that it could nevre realy happen (although my point blank range 12bore shotgun round to the neck could have done it! anyone know?). if a person cant tell the difference between the computer screen and real life the are in need of help quake 3 gamers you cant get a hand held weapon to send a wierless leathel charge to someone standing 40meters away its not possable, so WAKE UP IT WONT HAPPEN join the depressing reality.
Originally posted by CrowleyOnce the hardwares there the software will come, eventually
It's not only a matter of getting machines to be as 'fast' as the brain, but actually designing the 'software' that can perform all the conscious and sub-conscious associations that the brain performs
Jimmy