Violent Video Games

I in no way believe violent video games cause real violence. I don't support censorship or hysteria. 

On the other hand, I find them really disturbing. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I feel there's a point where graphics and sound have gotten so good that murdering a simulated human being in a game these days is worlds away from shooting cartoon Nazis in Wolfenstien 3D. 

I recently played a little "Batman- Arkham City." Awesome gameplay, but for whatever reason the violence, sexuality, and language were all maxed out far beyond what you'd expect from any aspect of the Batman franchise. 

Not sure I have a specific point. Thoughts?

I prefer my video game violence to be of the bloodless Looney Tune variety.

bkev said:

It's all about Worms, baby.

I spent more time on that game that I think any other. In college we would have HOURS of hotseat games, with pretty much anyone on the dorm floor wandering in for a round. 

DuracellEnergizer said:

I prefer my video game violence to be of the bloodless Looney Tune variety.

I do to. But the vast majority of my entertainment falls into a "PG-13" category. 

But games seem to be either Super Mario or Whore-Killer 5000.

Mrebo said:

I think there are good criticisms to be made on an artistic level. There are some really dreadful films that can be similarly criticized.

 

I agree. But mainstream film that I consume as entertainment, even the violent ones, pale in comparison to the constant, and increasingly shockingly realistic violence in games. 

Very few films have the amount of bloody heads exploding per second that some of the big FPS games have. 

georgec said:

I think violent video games are mostly harmless

DON'T PANIC

     I wouldn't be a bit surprised if fps games were saving more lives than they take. They provide aggressive and irresponsible teenage boys with an outlet and catharsis while keeping them occupied for hours instead of out bored drinking and looking for trouble.

      That said, there might be 5 or 6 of the most extreme sort of lunatics out there who could be effected, together with some other radical influences, to commit horrible acts.

      People deemed "Mentally Ill" are, as a group, more peacable than the population in general. If you remove the small minority who are deemed MI AND are obviously violent toward other innocent people or obviously OBSESSED with gorey or mass mayhem imagery, the remaining MI population is FAR more non-violent than the pop as a whole. It would make FAR more sense to pull non-MI people off the streets at random and shoot them full of poison while imprisoned rather than bother the MI people who are not obviously obsessed with violent imagery or commiting violent acts against innocents. 

thejediknighthusezni said:

It would make FAR more sense to pull non-MI people off the streets at random and shoot them full of poison while imprisoned

Yes, that makes complete sense.

*eyeroll*

Davnes007 said:

 

Violent video games are an easy sale. If you shoot people, or beat them up, or anything like that, almost every 13 year old boy will want it.

However, if the game involves any thinking, or non-violent stuff, those same kids won't even try it. Sex and violence means big money. 

Examples-

"Call Of Duty: Excuse To Shoot Stuff" = Instant hit.

"Sim City: Make People Happy" = Slow Sales.

"Street Fighter 10: Blood & Boobs Edition" = Line Ups around the block.

"Test Drive HD: Quiet Sunday Drive" = 10 people bought it.

 

For the record - I think First Person Shooters are a dime a dozen, and I only like playing Grand Theft Auto because of the driving.

 

I think that is a little simplistic. Your premise seems to be that games are aimed at 13 year old boys. I believe the largest demographic of video game players are ages 18-34, with an ever increasing number of females to be found in those numbers. It makes sense for game makers to aim for this age group.

I do feel a little disturbed when I see 10 year old kids running around making Left 4 Dead references, or talking about how great Bioshock or Grand Theft Auto is. I feel like parents really need to monitor what they let their kids play, and think twice before just writing them off as silly games. It seems many of the same parents who let their 13 year old kids play GTA are the types that wouldn't let them watch rated R movies. I think this is because of the same misconception Davnes seems to be making, that games are for 13 year old boys.

Half-Life, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead 2, and Fallout 3 are probably four of the most violent games I have every played. When I first played Half-Life as a teenager, I remember the level of violence being rather shocking to me. Perhaps it makes me sound like a pansy, but after dying for the first time in that game I had to turn it off. I remember having a really weird unsettled feeling after watching my character's bloody skull roll across the screen into a pile of intestines left behind by a downed security guard. It was a borrowed copy, I decided it wasn't for me, and uninstalled it. I didn't play it again for a few years, when I found myself engulfed in a really intriguing, enjoyable, and imaginative (and yes, sometimes downright freaky) horror story.  

I felt similarly disgusted almost ten years later in one particular level of Bioshock, where a character commissions you to go kill his enemies and take pictures of their bloody corpses for him. It was pretty messed up. Bioshock may well be my favorite game of all time, and an outstanding example of video games as a medium for the delivery of art and thought provoking story telling. The messed up deprived violence of the game, and the way you as the player just go along with it doing as you are told throughout, ties into the major twist at the end of the game, causing more thoughtful players to look back on all their actions throughout the game, which ultimately delivers a pretty positive nonviolent message. The game definitely isn't aimed at thirteen year olds, and if there is a thirteen year old with the maturity and mental capacity out there who can truly wrap his brain around the story and message of the game, then they just impressed the shit out of me.

Left 4 Dead 2 is honestly a fairly mindless game centered around a generic zombie story, but its focus is in working together as a team, and if you refuse to work with your team mates, you're screwed. I think it is a great deal of fun, and I miss the days when I used to play it with Mr. and Mrs. 005 and Xhonzi. It's not aimed at little kids, and more often than not they made the game unplayable. It was only really worth playing when playing with real human team mates, and when you ended up getting paired with some squeaky voiced kid, you could pretty much expect he wasn't going to work with you and was just going to leave you for dead or run off on his own and get himself killed. 

Fallout 3 is very violent, and also covers a lot of very adult themes throughout. Nothing like this existed when I was thirteen, and I am not sure if I would have been able to get into it then or not. The game requires a lot of interaction with non-playable characters (who often use very R rated language). The game can really suck you in, it's when watching someone else play the game, you realize how slow moving it is, and how much time is spent talking to people or walking from point A to point B with very little action taking place between. I'm pretty sure my thirteen year old self was way too ADD to sit through it. Of course, I am sure there are plenty of thirteen year olds who do play it, and love it.

Bottom line, all four of these games were designed for and marketed to adult gamers. The fact that thirteen year olds get their hands on them is simply bad parenting. They do contain very heavy adult content, fortunately, adults are capable of picking and choosing entertainment appropriate for themselves. If it is too upsetting or over the top, just stay away. We've managed this for a long time, if sex upsets you, put down that erotic novel. If violence upsets you, don't watch that movie. If you don't want to see naked people having sex, turn off that porn. Unfortunately, video games have been stereotyped as toys for kids that some adults occasionally enjoy playing with. Just like other forms of entertainment, video games appeal to a large number of age groups, and their are games appropriate for each one. 

I feel like this is a big issue, and that if half the parents that willingly let their kids play these games had any clue of what content they were actually allowing their children exposure too, then they too would be a bit disturbed by it. The games are clearly marked and labeled for their content, the gaming industry has done its part, now it is in the hands of the parents.

Part of the problem is that Video Games are still seen as :

All the ratings systems and parental locks will not prevent hysterical media and hysterical politicians from cashing in on the notion of children in peril.

If they are in peril (bear in mind the world survived rock and roll music, reefer madness, EC comic books, video nasties and internet porn) it's lazy parenting that's the risk. Not the games.

If entertainment media is to be tailored exclusively to infant safety almost everything will have to go.

No Dickens, No Shakespeare, No Bible.

Most video games involve a level of violence because they are fantasy realms.

If people can't hit fake people over the head they are more likely to hit real people over the head.

I'm more worried by the formulaic than the violent, the boring than the brutal.

Make things interesting and coherent and nobody will care how many times that cat got it's face squashed flat by that mouse.

timdiggerm said:

Just so you guys know, Bingo is using a picture from a movie that I haven't seen to communicate the idea of "stupid, silly games". In the film "The Hudsucker Proxy", they invent the hula-hoop. I'm guessing that is a design drawing of the hoop.

Specifically, I believe the line is "You know? For kids."

Talking about games with a mate at the bar, perhaps my view is skewed. He says many first person shooters are much more sci-fi, less realistic than the games I'm thinking of (which is skewed by the preferences of my nephews) and that many games are more about lazers and explosions than human faces being blown off, and would probably fall under a "Sci-Fi Violence" PG-13 rating as a movie.

There was a PC game, Harvester, back in the mid 90s where you wake up an amnesiac, and have to do various missions, many of which backfire and cause horrible grief for the other characters.

There's a slow progression from stealing a barbershop pole, to poisoning a dog, to setting arson to an empty diner (that inadventently leads to the suicide/murder of the owner and her daughter), until eventually by the end you're beating a teenage girl to death with a bat.

At the end you learn the entire premise of the game was to desensitize your character (and to an extent you the player) to violence, to help train him to be a serial killer.

This has always stayed with me as a game as "art." It really made me reflect on violence, and how I would never have played a game about murdering a teenage girl as she begs for mercy, and yet the game managed to get me to do it. It created an emotional response, and made me reexamine my thinking, and isn't that what some of the best art does?

Although FYI I never became a serial killer.

Maybe the technology wasn't present when you were a kid.

Which would mean you must be almost as old as I am.

Kids play with guns and swords and violent toys and play war (and that's just the girls).

Halloween is a devoted to children dressing up as monsters, killers or victims.

They love it (but only if it's not real).

As for children being really violent just hang around the buggers long enough.

They bully each other without mercy and are in general horrible.

The only thing separating most children from the dangerously insane is their size.

Upscale children three times their current size and it would be a blood bath.

TheBoost said:

Although FYI I never became a serial killer.

Pics or it happened.

TheBoost said:

I in no way believe violent video games cause real violence. I don't support censorship or hysteria. 

On the other hand, I find them really disturbing. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I feel there's a point where graphics and sound have gotten so good that murdering a simulated human being in a game these days is worlds away from shooting cartoon Nazis in Wolfenstien 3D. 

I recently played a little "Batman- Arkham City." Awesome gameplay, but for whatever reason the violence, sexuality, and language were all maxed out far beyond what you'd expect from any aspect of the Batman franchise. 

Not sure I have a specific point. Thoughts?

 

I don't care how good the sound and graphics get, killing a someone in video game will never ever be the same as killing an actual human being. 

Warbler said:

TheBoost said:

I in no way believe violent video games cause real violence. I don't support censorship or hysteria. 

On the other hand, I find them really disturbing. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I feel there's a point where graphics and sound have gotten so good that murdering a simulated human being in a game these days is worlds away from shooting cartoon Nazis in Wolfenstien 3D. 

I recently played a little "Batman- Arkham City." Awesome gameplay, but for whatever reason the violence, sexuality, and language were all maxed out far beyond what you'd expect from any aspect of the Batman franchise. 

Not sure I have a specific point. Thoughts?

 

I don't care how good the sound and graphics get, killing a someone in video game will never ever be the same as killing an actual human being. 

How do you know until you try it?

(don't try it)