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Comments
Aren't the psychological studies linking violent video games to violence all really, really poorly done?
Not to mention, we are in the least violent era of history here.
Pfft, you just don't want to admit that everyone who enjoyed The Sandman series was a sadist.
Well, to be fair, I kinda am.
--stabs ponicalica--
I am also Margaret Thatcher.
Margaret Thatcher was Marie Antoinette? IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
I don't get the relation with Marie Antoinette...
The person who wrote the article does not seem to understand the concept of a "villainous protagonist."
Relevant.
I mean yes correlation is not causation, but you can't exactly tell me youth violence is ballooning out of control when it's mostly been nosediving.
Hrrm. Love that broken jpeg icon.
Copy paste the URL and paste it in your browser's address bar.
Mmmm. I've seen people claiming that some literary classics are "evil", "sadistic" and "sick" for featuring vivid depictions of nasty stuff like torture (in a negative context, of course). So, yeah, I've seen much worse tripe than this.
Here's the image, reuploaded on imgur. For what it's worth, the collapse in violent crime is usually attributed to the end of the crack boom. And either way, violence in media is incredibly old, and violent video games seem far less bad to me than, say, picnicking at the site of a battle, like happened during the American Civil War in the early 1860s.
Yeah, I'm willing to bet on the crack boom thing. That picture shows that violence in video games is at worst a drop in the bucket compared to far bigger issues that we are in fact capable of combating when we bother to look for actual problems instead of lazily scapegoating.
I mean, I used to think that The Matrix was so tame I could show it to my kid brother with no ill-effects, but I now know it's violent torture porn. I just hope it's not too late to keep them away from bully-advocating media like Spider-man.
I don't think video games encourage violent behavior in children, but I've seen a lot of evidence that the more video games a kid is allowed to play, the more of a rude little asshole they are.
>I don't think video games encourage violent behavior in children, but I've seen a lot of evidence that the more video games a kid is allowed to play, the more of a rude little asshole they are.
As opposed to how polite they've always been?
^ I suspect that's probably due to that age-old phenomenon, the spoiled child, rather than being caused by the violence of the games. Also, there might be extreme cases where the kid isn't getting enough interaction with other humans to learn how to behave properly, but that's really a parenting problem.
It's also worth noting that long before video games, George Orwell wrote an essay comparing the then-contemporary crime novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish with older detective novels, and he was also critical of what he regarded as its sadism/bully worship. This stuff isn't new.
I'm now imagining a generic middle school thug wearing a monocle and top hat beating up a little nerdy kid and taunting "stop using overseas war to descandalize the horrors of domestic crime!"
Also even though I know George Orwell != Orson Welles, I always make the connection in my head for some reason, so this bully is Maurice LaMarche as Brain.
No, I'm talking about plain old mechanical processes of the child brain. Children who play intense video games on a daily basis are exposing their underdeveloped minds to an onslaught of visual, auditory and psychological stimulation more frantic than almost any television show or film, and tend to play a single game for far longer than they would watch any one thing on television.
A child who grows accustomed to receiving that much stimulation can't possibly NOT be more obnoxious as a direct result, at least by some small margin. I shouldn't even have to back that up, anybody who has been around kids at all can see it. Everyone has seen children get worked up over something or other and start bouncing off the walls or getting generally bratty. For many kids, that's every single damn day after six hours of FPS's.
Unfortunately, when you make blanket statements about psychology you do need to back it up. I volunteer as an assistant counselor at a religious retreat and don't see your point. Do you at least have some credible science to back it up?
all i see here is a guess. And...well...
Okay, I overcomplicated my statements.
I'm just saying video games are exciting and excited children annoy me. Ergo, I don't want children to be excited because I have a heart like a dessicated prune.
I've met rude teenagers on X-box Live, but that's a far jump from what you're talking about.
I had gathered up a list of sciencey links about video games stimulating aggression before I realized I wasn't even trying to argue that, just that I don't like children and I think they get worse the more entertained they've been.
I've actually encountered quite a wide variety of people on Steam. While they're all gamers (of course), you have the hyper kid with the annoying mom, you have the smartass, you have people of few words who talk to you only long enough to get the coupon they asked you for, you have classic gamers who know their SNES Final Fantasies, you have modern triple-A-titles gamers who will point out how I have a Steam library full of odds and ends but no major games, and much more.
Sometimes I feel like I'm really missing out by not being a gamer anymore but on the other hand I waste enough time as it is
If it makes you feel better, bear in mind that everyone misses out on more than they don't miss out on.
You only have one life, unless you believe in reincarnation. Which is pretty much the main reason anyone would desire such a thing.
From my time on WoW, I get the distinct feeling the more "worrisome" people were hustled off online by parents who don't give a fuck to keep them occupied, and the anonymity more than the content encourages them to nurse their more worrisome tendencies. So yeah.