Social Impact of gaming?

[welsh]

Yikes! Even the Economist is getting into this debate.

So the social impact of gaming- is it bad or are all things that are supposed to be bad for you actually good?

Video gaming

Chasing the dream

Aug 4th 2005
From The Economist print edition

As video gaming spreads, the debate about its social impact is intensifying

IS IT a new medium on a par with film and music, a valuable educational tool, a form of harmless fun or a digital menace that turns children into violent zombies? Video gaming is all these things, depending on whom you ask.

Duh! Mindless Zombies! Of course anyone who ever played Age of Kings learns nothing.

and who is playing these games?

back to the article-

Gaming has gone from a minority activity a few years ago to mass entertainment. Video games increasingly resemble films, with photorealistic images, complex plotlines and even famous actors.

"War.... War never changes." Probably most famous quote from that actor.

The next generation of games consoles—which will be launched over the next few months by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo—will intensify the debate over gaming and its impact on society, as the industry tries to reach out to new customers and its opponents become ever more vocal. Games consoles are the most powerful mass-produced computers in the world and the new machines will offer unprecedented levels of performance. This will, for example, make possible characters with convincing facial expressions, opening the way to games with the emotional charge of films, which could have broader appeal and convince sceptics that gaming has finally come of age as a mainstream form of entertainment. But it will also make depictions of violence even more lifelike, to the dismay of critics.

Yes, but if gaming is limited to consoles, they will always be less than what they are capable of being.

This summer there has been a huge fuss about the inclusion of hidden sex scenes in “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”, a highly popular, but controversial, game in which the player assumes the role of a street gangster. The sex scenes are not a normal part of the game. But the offending scenes can be activated using a patch downloaded from the internet. Senator Hillary Clinton and a chorus of other American politicians have called for federal prosecutors to investigate the game and examine whether the industry's system of self-regulation, which applies age ratings to games, is working properly. Mrs Clinton accused video games of “stealing the innocence of our children” and “making the difficult job of being a parent even harder”.

Bitch! Didn't you hear them when they said the same thing about rock'n'roll! Have you no memory!

Honestly, kids are not that innocent. Not after having survived a generation in which their parents are into their second or third marraige.

As a result of the furore, “Grand Theft Auto” had its rating in America changed—from “M” for mature (over-17s only) to “AO” for adults only (over-18s)—by the industry's rating board. But since most big retailers refuse to stock “AO” titles, of which very few exist, Rockstar Games, the maker of “Grand Theft Auto”, is producing a new “M”-rated version without the hidden sexual material. This is merely the latest round in a long-running fight. Before the current fuss over “Grand Theft Auto”, politicians and lobby groups were getting worked up over “Narc”, a game that depicts drug-taking, and “25 to Life”, another urban cops-and-robbers game.

And then there was the sex and drugs in Fallout....

But hey, violence is still Ok.

Ironically, the “Grand Theft Auto” episode has re-ignited the debate over the impact of video games, just as the industry is preparing to launch its biggest-ever marketing blitz to accompany the introduction of its new consoles. Amid all the arguments about the minutiae of rating systems, the unlocking of hidden content, and the stealing of children's innocence, however, three important factors are generally overlooked: that attitudes to gaming are marked by a generational divide; that there is no convincing evidence that games make people violent; and that games have great potential in education.

Start with the demographics. Attitudes towards gaming depend to a great extent on age. In America, for example, half of the population plays computer or video games. However most players are under 40—according to Nielsen, a market-research firm, 76% of them—while most critics of gaming are over 40. An entire generation that began gaming as children has kept playing. The average age of American gamers is 30. Most are “digital natives” who grew up surrounded by technology, argues Marc Prensky of games2train, a firm that promotes the educational use of games. He describes older people as “digital immigrants” who, like newcomers anywhere, have had to adapt in various ways to their new digital surroundings.

The old farts don't like it because they SUCK!

Just getting by in a foreign land without some grasp of the local language is difficult, says Mr Prensky. Digital immigrants have had to learn to use technologies such as the internet and mobile phones. But relatively few of them have embraced video games. The word “game” itself also confuses matters, since it evokes childish playthings. “What they don't understand, because they've never played them, is that these are complex games, which take 30, 40 or 100 hours to complete,” says Mr Prensky. Games are, in fact, played mainly by young adults. Only a third of gamers are under 18.

“It's just a generational divide,” says Gerhard Florin, the European boss of Electronic Arts, the world's biggest games publisher. “It's people not knowing what they are talking about, because they have never played a game, accusing millions of gamers of being zombies or violent.” Digital natives who have played video games since childhood already regard them as a form of entertainment on a par with films and music. Older digital natives now have children of their own and enjoy playing video games with them.

I swear, this group of freaks would have us all watching fucking teletubbies.

The gaming industry is trying to address the generational divide. It is producing games designed to appeal to non-gamers and encouraging casual gamers (who may occasionally play simple web-based games, or games on mobile phones) to play more. This has led to the development of games with a wider appeal. Some of them replace the usual control pad with novel input devices: microphones for singing games, cameras for dancing and action games, and even drums. In addition, the industry has started to cater more to women, who seem to prefer social simulation games such as “The Sims”, and to older people, who (if they play games at all) often prefer computerised versions of card games and board games. Other promising avenues include portable gaming, mobile gaming and online downloads of simple games. Many people enjoy gaming, but do not necessarily want to commit themselves to an epic quest that will take dozens of hours to complete.

Ok, old people and gaming. Now this is a disaster waiting to happen. Sorry but most of the old folks I know who are into gaming play slot machines in casinoes, drinking their scotch and giving their pensions and retirements to the casino operators. Which is great for Don Trumph but is a fucking waste to the rest of us. Considering the millions that get pissed away in the casinos, I think that's a bigger problem.

So instead of screwing the computer gamers, which at least support a technologically competitive market, why not just pry all those old blue haired ladies from their slot machines, take them to the wall and shoot them. Or force them to learn how to play Grand Theft Auto.

The industry, in short, is doing its best to broaden gaming's appeal, which is of course in its own best interests. For the time being, however, the demographic divide persists, and it does much to explain the polarisation of opinion over gaming and, in particular, worries about violence. It also provides the answer to a question that is often asked about gaming: when will it become a truly mainstream form of entertainment? It already is among the under-40s, but will probably never achieve mainstream status among older people.

It will as the old people start to die off. give it about 20 years.

But aren't critics right to worry that gaming might make people violent? Hardly a week goes by in which a game is not blamed for inspiring someone to commit a violent crime. After all, say critics, acting out violent behaviour in a game is very different from passively watching it in a film. Yet surveys of studies into games and violence have produced inconclusive results, notes Dmitri Williams, who specialises in studying the social impact of media at the University of Illinois. And, in a paper on the subject published in June in Communication Monographs, he notes that such research typically has serious shortcomings.

For example, studies have examined only the short-term effects of gaming. There have been no studies that track the long-term effects on the players themselves. Another problem, says Mr Williams, is that it is meaningless to generalise about “game play” when there are thousands of games in dozens of genres. It is, he notes, equivalent to suggesting that all television programmes, radio shows and movies are the same. Better-designed studies that measure the long-term effects of specific types of games are needed.

They're beginning to happen. In his paper, Mr Williams describes the first such study, which he carried out with Marko Skoric of the University of Michigan. The study concentrated on a “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” (MMORPG) called “Asheron's Call 2”. This type of game requires the player to roam around a fantasy world and kill monsters to build up attribute points. It is “substantially more violent than the average video game and should have more effect, given the highly repetitive nature of the violence”, the researchers noted.

Two groups of subjects were recruited, none of whom had played MMORPGs before and many of whom had never played video games at all. One group then played the game for a month, for an average of nearly two hours per day. The other group acted as a control. All participants were asked questions about the frequency of aggressive social interactions (such as arguments with their spouses) during the course of the month to test the idea that gaming makes people more aggressive.

Moral choices
Game players, it turned out, were no more aggressive than the control group. Whether the participants had played games before, the number of hours spent gaming, and whether they liked violent movies or not, made no difference. The researchers noted, however, that more research is still needed to assess the impact of other genres, such as shoot-'em-ups or the urban violence of “Grand Theft Auto”. All games are different, and only when more detailed studies have been carried out will it be possible to generalise about the impact of gaming.

Note that there is an inherent assumption, that gaming will lead to bad results.
But the alternative is not considered- that gaming may actually produce positive side benefits.

Consider for instance- you want to beat your bosses head in with a hammer. Instead you take a pulse rifle to some mutant scum. But for your pulse rifle and the mutant scum, might you have not beaten your bosses head in with a hammer?

One's ontology shapes one's epistemology.

But as Steven Johnson, a cultural critic, points out in a recent book, “Everything Bad Is Good for You”, gaming is now so widespread that if it did make people more violent, it ought to be obvious. Instead, he notes, in America violent crime actually fell sharply in the 1990s, just as the use of video and computer games was taking off (see chart 2). Of course, it's possible that crime would have fallen by even more over the period had America not taken up video games; still, video gaming has clearly not turned America into a more violent place than it was.

What's more, plenty of games, far from encouraging degeneracy, are morally complex, subtle and, very possibly, improving. Many now explicitly require players to choose whether to be good or evil, and their choices determine how the game they are playing develops.

Alas, this is one of the great parts of Fallout....

In “Black & White”, for example, the player must groom a creature whose behaviour and form reflects his moral choices (get it wrong and the results can be ugly). Several games based on the “Star Wars” movies require players to choose between the light and dark sides of the Force, equivalent to good and evil. Perhaps most striking is the sequence in “Halo 2”, a bestselling shoot-'em-up, in which the player must take the role of an alien. Having previously seen aliens as faceless enemies, notes Paul Jackson of Forrester, a consultancy, “suddenly you are asked to empathise with the enemy's position. It's very interesting. Games are much more complex than the critics realise.”

The move away from linear narratives to more complex games that allow players to make moral choices, argues Mr Prensky, means that games provide an opportunity to discuss moral questions. “These are wonderful examples for us to be discussing with our kids,” he says. Indeed, perhaps the best way to address concerns over the effects of video games is to emphasise their vast potential to educate.

Even games with no educational intent require players to learn a great deal. Games are complex, adaptive and force players to make a huge number of decisions. Gamers must construct hypotheses about the in-game world, learn its rules through trial and error, solve problems and puzzles, develop strategies and get help from other players via the internet when they get stuck. The problem-solving mechanic that underlies most games is like the 90% of an iceberg below the waterline—invisible to non-gamers. But look beneath the violent veneer of “Grand Theft Auto”, and it is really no different from a swords-and-sorcery game. Instead of stealing a crystal and delivering it to a wizard so that he can cure the princess, say, you may have to intercept a consignment of drugs and deliver it to a gang boss so he can ransom a hostage. It is the pleasure of this problem-solving, not the superficial violence which sometimes accompanies it, that can make gaming such a satisfying experience.

Nobody is using “Grand Theft Auto” in schools, of course, since it is intended for adults. But other off-the-shelf games such as “Sim City” or “Rollercoaster Tycoon”, which contain model economies, are used in education. By playing them it is possible to understand how such models work, and to deduce what their biases are. (In “Sim City”, for example, in which the player assumes the role of a city mayor, no amount of spending on health care is ever enough to satisfy patients, and the fastest route to prosperity is to cut taxes.)

Games can be used in many other ways. Tim Rylands, a British teacher in a primary school near Bristol, recently won an award from Becta, a government education agency, for using computer games in the classroom. By projecting the fantasy world of “Myst”, a role-playing game, on to a large screen and prompting his 11-year-old pupils to write descriptions and reactions as he navigates through it, he has achieved striking improvements in their English test scores.

Another area where games are becoming more popular is in corporate training. In “Got Game”, a book published last year by Harvard Business School Press, John Beck and Mitchell Wade, two management consultants, argue that gaming provides excellent training for a career in business. Gamers, they write, are skilled at multi-tasking, good at making decisions and evaluating risks, flexible in the face of change and inclined to treat setbacks as chances to try again. Firms that understand and exploit this, they argue, can gain a competitive advantage.

Pilots have been trained using flight simulators for years, and simulators are now used by soldiers and surgeons too. But gaming can be used to train desk workers as well. Mr Prensky's firm has provided simple quiz games for such firms as IBM and Nokia, to test workers' knowledge of rules and regulations, for example. For Pfizer, a drug company, his firm built a simulation of its drug-development process that was then used to train new recruits. Other examples abound: PricewaterhouseCoopers built an elaborate simulation to teach novice auditors about financial derivatives. Some lawyers are using simulators to warm up for court appearances. Convincing older executives of the merits of using games in training can be tricky, Mr Prensky admits. “But when they have a serious strategic training problem, and realise that their own people are 20-year-olds, more and more are willing to take the leap,” he says.

So games are inherently good, not bad? Actually they are neither, like books, films, the internet, or any other medium. All can be used to depict sex and violence, or to educate and inform. Indeed, the inclusion of violent and sexual content in games is arguably a sign of the maturity of the medium, as games become more like films.

Movies provide one analogy for the future of gaming, which seems destined to become a mainstream medium. Games already come in a variety of genres, and are rated for different age groups, just like movies. But just how far gaming still has to go is illustrated by the persistence of the double standard that applies different rules to games and films. Critics of gaming object to violence in games, even though it is common in movies. They worry about the industry's rating model, even though it is borrowed from the movie industry. They call upon big retailers (such as Wal-Mart) not to sell AO-rated games, but seem not to mind that they sell unrated movies that include far more explicit content.

Worse. The problem of films is that they are generally passive entertainment and often sold to a rather stupid audience. Games are at least active and require interaction.

In June, Senator Charles Schumer held a press conference to draw attention to the M-rated game “25 to Life”, in which players take the role of a policeman or a gangster. “Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill cops,” he declared. True, but little Johnny should not be smoking, drinking alcohol or watching Quentin Tarantino movies either. Just as there are rules to try to keep these things out of little Johnny's hands, there are rules for video games too. Political opportunism is part of the explanation for this double standard: many of gaming's critics in America are Democrats playing to the centre.

Which is a foolish move for Democrats.

Another analogy can be made between games and music—specifically, with the emergence of rock and roll in the 1950s. Like games today, it was a new art form that was condemned for encouraging bad behaviour among young people. Some records were banned from the radio, and others had their lyrics changed. Politicians called for laws banning the sending of offending records by post. But now the post-war generation has grown up, rock and roll is considered to be harmless. Rap music, or gaming, is under attack instead. “There's always this pattern,” says Mr Williams of the University of Illinois. “Old stuff is respected, and new stuff is junk.” Novels, he points out, were once considered too lowbrow to be studied at university. Eventually the professors who believed this retired. Novels are now regarded as literature. “Once a generation has its perception, it is pretty much set,” says Mr Williams. “What happens is that they die.”

Thus death to the old generation will dispell the stereotypes.

Like rock and roll in the 1950s, games have been accepted by the young and largely rejected by the old. Once the young are old, and the old are dead, games will be regarded as just another medium and the debate will have moved on. Critics of gaming do not just have the facts against them; they have history against them, too. “Thirty years from now, we'll be arguing about holograms, or something,” says Mr Williams.

Porno Holograms...... Hmmmm......

 

[Rev. Layle]

that whole 18-49 age range in that first pie chart seems a bit to broad of a range to cover.

Perosnally I would like see it broken down into 18-25, 26-35, 36+ or something like that.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

Yes, and playing video games for most of my life has reduced my attention span so I can't be bothered to read the second half of most of Welshes post.

 

[calculon000]

if gaming is limited to consoles, they will always be less than what they are capable of being.

Thus death to the old generation will dispell the stereotypes.

I am siging these remarks because they are so god damn true.

Many criticisms that politicians have for the purposes of political opportunism are complete bullshit. I wish you could just tattoo the crime vs game sales chart to the forehead of every critic of gaming and never have to hear them babble on about the subject again.

 

[Max Demian]

One major long-term impact of demographically proliferated game-playing beginning at very young ages is the inherently “untrue” perspectives of reality people will be acquiring and shaping their lives to. When one recreates reality into a virtual simulation (a typical computer game, if you will) he necessarily does so according to his (or theirs) perception of actuality, that is he interprets for us what he thinks the world around him is. An inherently error-prone process, similar in resemblance to the A/D conversion – which actually is not quite far from what today’s science seems to be saying. Thus it is necessary to control the type of content children can get their hands on, and in certain cases parental surveillance and interpretation should be necessitated. Especially so when it comes to sexual content of the more unorthodox type, i.e. sexual perversions. The libidinal drive is hardly dormant in children, it’s merely suppressed by the moral authority of their parents and superiors and it is quite possible that excessive viewing of such “behavior” could lead to early neurosis in a world that discourages sexual interaction amongst adolescents and prepubescents.
The other problem I see is that games seem to offer a sort of escape from reality, a sanctuary from the everyday frustrations and distresses we are plagued with. Although we can argue them as a remedy for some acute “malady”, one must clearly understand the impact of excessive, chronic and retreatingly motivated game playing. This is were I call for help one of my favorite psychologists: William James.

“No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we have laid down. A ‘character’, as J.S.Mill says, ‘is a completely fashioned will’; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain ‘grows’ to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of emotions evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of a nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers of France by his eloquence, to follow Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glowing for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores some actual case, among the squalid ‘other particulars’ of which the same Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau’s path. All Goods are disguised by the vulgarities of their concomitants, in this work-a-day world; but woe to him who can only recognize them when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form! The habit of excessive novel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coach-man is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens with a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted [p.126] enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterward in some active way.[19] Let the expression be the least thing in the world-speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers - but let it not fail to take place.”

One's ontology shapes one's epistemology.

I guess what you ment to say is that our existence shapes the way we perceive, or know things – i.e. existence precedes essence .
Hope this helps clear some matters up.
Cheers

 

[MethidParadox]

Yes, and playing video games for most of my life has reduced my attention span so I can't be bothered to read the second half of most of Welshes post.

haha, hell yea same here.

I think these liberals need to just shut their yaps and stop trying to tell everyone else how to live. Plenty of kids know curse words and know what sex is, its not that big of deal. So who really cares about their innocence, innocence is only a thing that makes people ignorant and weak. All you have to do is teach them how to adapt to the real world, and teach them what is right and wrong and hope that they practice life under those simple rules...

Their just stupid games, just as bad as stupid stories, stupid movies, anything that has sex and violence... geez, stop being so weak I say, just live.

 

[Dove]

that whole 18-49 age range in that first pie chart seems a bit to broad of a range to cover.

Perosnally I would like see it broken down into 18-25, 26-35, 36+ or something like that.

I had the same problem.

Very informative, although it happens every four years so I'm a bit used to it. Hillary running then I take it?




Now I'm looking forward to that 25 to life game. Just looked at the site, looks great.

 

[Max Demian]

Maybe we should move this thread to the General Discussion forum, coz it has less to do with gaming (or any particular games by that reckoning) and more to do with the general public opinion of games and their socio-psychological influence.

 

[welsh]

Kind of a cross-over topic, but ok.

 

[Bradylama]

This week's Economist was an unusually interesting one.

 

[4too]

Political Operatives

Political Operatives

I think these liberals need to just shut their yaps and stop trying to tell everyone else how to live.

The Republican Information Machine, has a 'profile' for liberal expressionists,
the Jane Fonda --- "'Hollywood"" types. These 'Celebrity' talking heads, ...
Hillary appears to be of that opportunistic sort.

I've not taken , 'Hillary', seriously since - her - task force for improving the national health care system was such a dismal, political failure. It's the type of world view that will pay a PROFESSIONAL P.R. consultant, TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, to advise Al Gore "' wear more beige"" . This WILL improve his election prospects among ""select demographics"". Our own memories are history enough to rank the 'sales-person' abilities of 'Hillary' and ""THE MAN IN BEIGE"".

But.

Wait until 'The Republican Information Machine' focusses on media morals.

Then 'games' will be -- Godless -- .

The reason there are crack babies ..... and abortionist ... baby killers

The reason why 'Johnny can't read'.

The reason why "Johnny' does n't volunteer for the USMC ....



The reason why the U. S. can't ""liberate"" (pacify) Iraq.



'The Republican Information Machine' is a wrathful, spiteful, sword of moralizing vengeance. IT takes no prisoners. IT libelously slanders any 'citizen' of the Republic that does not conform to IT's syntax and iconography. Witness, the media - murder- of Senator John McCain after winning ONE north east state in the, YEAR BEFORE GEORGE -- the 2000 Republican Presidential Primary..



The reason why gasoline will cost more per gallon than the retail shelf price of GTA: Remake Number 10 Zillionth, ... why the reason will be, ... ,

any straw - person - of convenience.

Maybe some creative political operative will link the collapse of our oil civilization to "Hanoi Jane" and ... .. 'Hillary'!!!!



When one hears the political education of the Republican Operatives, when one feels the next wedge issue cleave away one's civil liberties, AND ultimately one's economic freedoms: Big Power Means Big Government -- Big Government Means Big 'Bubba'. One may look back fondly at pin ups of " Barbarella ", and the air headed 'do-gooder'"" opportunists"" like 'Hillary'.

If the game "industry' can buy off the future Permanent Republican Majority, with soft and hard campaign donations, and conform to some fig leaf of educational - squad tactics in built up areas motif, for the 'once-and-future' 'liberators' of Creationist Theology . One may have that 'naughty' version of GTA ...

Take care ...
Playing slots and Hold-'em Poker may be one's last 'entertainment' bullet before being over run, bullied and bitched into some Splinter Baptist Sect or some Pan Media Evangelical Cult ....


""I lub Big Bubba"".



Playing slots and Hold-'em Poker .....

As for the game "industry', always betting on the lowest common denominator, it may well implode into a black hole of BOREDOM.

Thus forgoing any 'Big banG' cultural revolutionary finale, with the consummate WASTELANDs "'hollow men"' , ending ... a ...WHIMPER.





4too

 

[LazyGnome]

When I was a kid, I got influenced more by movies than video games (of course, how could I throw a fireball at a turtle), but that didn't last very long.

The day after I had seen The Karate Kid for the first time, I was "karate chopping" other kids on the playground. One of them retaliated with a swift kick to my testicles, and I learned that maybe I shouldn't imitate everything I see.

 

[ferdinand]

God, the solution is so simple, and has been said so often, but no-one says it LOUD enough.

Take Heed: "If You Don't Like It, Don't Use It".

This should have been somewhere in the ten commandments.


If people are whigning that their child became antisocial or agressive after playing a game, then they shouldn't have bought it for them. If the kid bought it themselves, maybe it should be taken off them.
Everyone who is complaining that their child is watching bad movies, playing naughty video games, etc, Do Some Freakin' Parenting! Yes, you may get a tantrum or a surly teenager for a while, but parenting has not, and never will be, assimilated into the convienience culture. It is not easy, and you will have work. Deal with it and stop blaming you problems on moving pictures and pieces of code.

Tune in later for a rant on public figures condemning such items because some idiot mums can't see fault in themselves.

*exhales*

 

[welsh]

Nice post 4too

Ferdinand, while I take a critical view of this desire to legislate gaming on accuse gaming for social collapse, you're prescription doesn't work.

Assuming the hypothetical of some 12 year old kid hyped up on GTA comes across the parking lot and blows your head off with a 12 gauge shotgun. You realize that turning of GTA did little to stop that event as your blood spreads all over the pavement. Should this event happen just once it's an anomaly. But if it happens a thousand times, etc, it becomes a social problem as it shows a trend throughout society that the individual has little control over.

Since you cannot control the behavior of individuals, this becomes a social problem requiring more socially tailored answers.

 

[Bradylama]

So, how many thousands of kids are commiting GTA-inspired crimes?

 

[welsh]

So, how many thousands of kids are commiting GTA-inspired crimes?

Exactly.

Furthermore how many of the crimes that are committed can actually show a necessary and sufficient correlation between the crime and the game? Or even that game playing made a significant difference in the propensity to commit a violent act?

As the article points out, the problem with the "computer gaming is evil and leads to violence" is that, in fact, our society has become less violent during the same years that people are playing more computer games.

Meanwhile other variables- income levels, after school activities, working parents, hours at the office and away from home, funding to schools, other avenues of violence, are not accounted for.

This might just be bullshit, but it might even be worse. It might be distraction from the things that are really important.

But then this is the problem of democracy- the ability of the majority to target a minority as the cause of its ills. In this case the minority if game players and the industry.

 

[DarkCorp]

Fucking puritanical politicians.

If they all want to blame games then what the fuck was in Hitler's playstation?

 

[ferdinand]

Ferdinand, while I take a critical view of this desire to legislate gaming on accuse gaming for social collapse, you're prescription doesn't work.

Assuming the hypothetical of some 12 year old kid hyped up on GTA comes across the parking lot and blows your head off with a 12 gauge shotgun. You realize that turning of GTA did little to stop that event as your blood spreads all over the pavement. Should this event happen just once it's an anomaly. But if it happens a thousand times, etc, it becomes a social problem as it shows a trend throughout society that the individual has little control over.

I'm not saying we get rid of GTA. I really enjoy the game, personally. All i am suggesting is that those conservative vote chasers ignore it if it offends their WASP moralities. just because they think it offends God or whatever, doesn't mean they moral in saying it should be destroyed. A kid who renacts part of GTA with a shotgun would have renacted any other violent film/game if he hadn't chosen GTA. I'm not talking to the people who use the game, but those who find it offensive. Simple.