A sane person, in this context, is someone who, amongst other things,
is capable of differentiating between fiction and reality.

Preposterous. If a person can't distinguish between fiction and reality, then
they are either insane or drugged, neither of which has anything to do with
computer games. Sane rational people do not transfer fictitious experiences to
reality.

Your core argument appears to be that human beings are basically robots who
can be trivially reprogrammed by arbitrary people with a few hours of light
entertainment. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

I made no claim of a correlation between a game's quality and its alleged
affect. I merely refuted your earlier claim that such games are "cleverly
crafted". Unfortunately, only a few percent of games are cleverly crafted, the
vast majority merely wallow around in stale derivitive mediocrity.

Furthermore, violent media do not promote violence, they merely contain
it. As for promoting violence (or anything else), again, if a person cannot
think for themselves, then they are of unsound mind and are a danger to
society.

Boo hoo.

Most "western" countries are reasonably similar in this regard.
Violent games are played in all of those countries. The difference
is they don't have 10,000 gun deaths every year. I wonder why?

You continue with this "social engineering" nonsense. Who are these
"social engineers"? You surely aren't trying to claim that the producers of
"violent media" are involved in some mass conspiracy to plunge society into
anarchy? Games developers are not social engineers, they are people who write
games (entertainment) for money (i.e. people making a living). It's in their
best interests that people behave in a civilised manner, go to work/school,
and don't roam the streets rioting. That is, so that people can earn money to
continue to buy their games (and maybe a new PC every 6 months to play them
on). Maybe you've been watching too much Fox "News".

Descriptions of "Sane" and "Sanity".

"Unfortunately, only a few percent of games are cleverly crafted, the
vast majority merely wallow around in stale derivitive mediocrity."


Which ones are cleverly crafted?

Fallout, Final Fantasy, Half-Life, Quake 1/3, Doom 1/2, Call of Duty, Medal of honor, Silent Hill 2/3, Beyound Oasis, Landstalker, Dune 2, TES series and more... this is just about 5% from all game market...

I wonder - why are the people trying to blame only games? There are certainly a lot of bad movies around, for example, etc...

So virtual reality and life style branding are in your opinion just a huge waste of money.

The people who control the "Free" Market control the lives of Millions if not billions of people world wide.

You know only what they want you to know. Your reality has been dictated to you by people you will never even know.

Here you fail to see how classical conditioning works. Haven't you ever gotten a slogan or a song stuck in your head? This is how violent media works. Because you see it so often it just becomes a part of the background noise. Its influence is not conscious but subconscious.

Just remember, someday you may become a parent yourself. And you will see things differently then you see them now.

I have often said that the United States is the most dangerous country to live in outside of an actual war zone. Which just goes to prove my point about violence in the media . You don't purchase a gun because you feel safe at home. You purchase a gun because you seek to protect yourself from "bad" people. I suggest you read the Rifleman magazine by the NRA. They always run two or three stories about armed citizens who successfully protect themselves from attack with their own fire arms.

Karl Rove comes to my mind as a good example of a social engineer.

The creators of "Violent media" target the message to motivate the desired groups. They don't want general chaos because then they would lose control. However they do want to keep the wolves feeding on the sheep to curb population growth.

Sounds almost like "The Matrix" movie.

slogan? never. A song? Yes, several times, (although this happens very very rarely) but upon one of those conditions:
1) I've been listening to it during the whole day, at least.
2) I've been sitting in the orchestra that played that song during last two months 4 hours in a day.
3) I've been very very tired, and the day was very busy.
And believe me, I haven't ever sung such song unwillingly. I kept hearing it in background, it annoyed me, but nothing else. I was the one who controlled my behavior, not the song.

Sorry, I disagree. I do not see a connection between "a background noise" or "a song in the head". When something is playing in your head by itself that means that you've got to rest - your brain is just too "overloaded".

"A person buys the gun to protect himself/herself". Excuse me, but this is a bit ridiculous. Gun won't necessarily protect you. You can't rely on it. If someone is attacking you, a gun won't immediately stop attacker in all cases. You'll have to kill attacker instantly, or you must know at which point to shoot to make him fall, at least. (and if he is armed, then making him fall doesn't necessarily help you either). That's unless you have a shotgun or grenade launcher or machinegun or cannon (and I don't think that citizens can walk around with these). With the gun you'll be able to kill attackear in most cases, but not necessarily protecting yourself at current time. (for example, attacker can die several hours later due to a blood loss, but now he is enraged and is coming for you). I'm no military expert, but from what i've read in a various source (martial arts literature), I've learned that firing a gun into someone won't always make him fall, and in some cases won't even prevent him from hurting you. Another problem is that when person is armed he is feeling "too safe" and in some cases can be concentrated on his weapon, which (he thinks) is the thing that gives an advantage against others. This feeling is dangerous and it can be used against armed person. By the way, gun's weren't designed for protecting it's owner from someone (bulletproof vests were designed for that), they were designed for killing someone. In my opinion, if a weapon fires bullets, it was designed to kill, not defend. By the way, there is a theatrical rule that says "if there is a rifle on the wall, it will shoot at the last scene of spectacle". So, if person is buying a gun, he is going to shoot someone someday.

Your words about "guns used as a defense" leads me to a grim conclusion.
The games aren't providing violence. But the people are "mistaken" and they are thinking that a tool designed for killing others gives them defense. So they buy a gun instead of a bullet-proof vest (or "shocker"). The gun is a dangerous thing that gives a feeling of power. Sometimes when someone is in a bad mood, he thinks "I'd kill him!", but has no ability to do this. Gun gives you ability to kill anyone with a move of a finger. If someone isn't in a right state of mind - either drunk, tired, angry, under a stress, etc - i.e. is controlled by emotions, and is not in the state of mind when he can thinks clearly, carefully weighting the situation at the same time, this person can chose to shoot. He may regret it later, but there will be another gun-death.

By the way, are the games supposed to make people kill others using only guns? I certainly didn't hear about someone killing someone else with chainsaw due to playing Doom too much (I really don't think that such case could have been unnoticed). There are also knives, are there any knive-related cases connected to the games? I've never heard about them. And what about napalm (Postal 2)? Or poison (Hitman)? Or stringulation device(Hitman)? Or a crossbow (any fantasy game)? Or a club (Thief 3, or any fantasy game)? Or did anyone try to throw "fireball" at someone else because of playing rpg games too much? Or did anyone tried to "put a "Poison 25 dmg per second" spell"(Morrowind) on anyone else? Or tried to fry anyone with "lighting bolt"? For me it looks like you are concentrated on a "shooting" games too much. There are a bunch of other games without guns, which a very violent - Did you play a "Blade of Darkness" or "Die by the Sword", for example? if not, how about "Condemned" (by Monolith)? What about those games? For some reason media doesn't seem to be accusing those games...

I try to blame anything that's outside of my power to change, that way I can sit on my ass and complain instead of taking some kind of initiative to politically organize.

God knows it's easier to sit and watch tv than to go talk to my neighbor about local policies.

LOL... I'm sorry, but that's the funniest two sentences I've read in a while.

The reason the concept of God exists is to explain away everything that's beyond your power to comprehend and control.

Why did the tornado hit the house and kill everyone but you? It was the will of God, obviously.

The freedom to play sick games which extol violence, that's a cause worth defending is it? You guys heard of Jamie Bulger? He was a toddler who was tortured and butchered by some other kids after they'd watched snuff movies. Censoreship is there to protect the vulnerable. Long may it be so!!

After taking your freedom to play whatever you like, someone can decide to take your other freedoms as well. For example, the right of free speech is dangerous - someone can dislike what you say, and hurt you. So, you don't need a right of free speech. The right to walk where you want is dangerous. You can walk across road at the wrong place, and you'll be hit by a car. So you don't need a right to decide where you can go, because it's dangerous. The right to elect a goverement is dagerous - you can elect a wrong person who might start another war. So you don't need a right to elect a goverment. The right to marry anyone you want is dangerous - you can marry a wrong person and be unhappy. So you don't need a right to marry anyone you want - goverment will decide that for you. You don't need a right to chose a job, because you can pick a wrong one, you don't need a right to chose an education, and, finally, you don't need a right to live. That's all logical, but do you want to live in such society? I do not.

By the way - how many times it must be said that these games are age-restricted!!! They were NOT designed for kids. If kids play these games, blame their parents. It the same thing as if a kid drove a car and killed someone during an accident.

...This is a complete caricature of my argument. I have never expressed views to this intent. Although there is quite obviously the rational component to human thought, there is also a significant subconcious component; which to make a generalization not necessarily characterizing anyone in particular here, is frequently overlooked by those who greatly emphasise the former over the latter in the interplay from which human behaviour arises.

You err in assuming that my view is the polar opposite to yours
(to the extent of the quote above) instead of the position I have actually been trying to advance which lies exactly inbetween these two.

As you write above, of course the idea that we are wholly at the mercy of the influences around us is nonsense (otherwise, how could anyone be culpable for a crime? It could simply be argued that environmental influences are wholly responsible for our behaviour and that we have no choice but to act upon them). On the contrary, you seem to believe the complete opposite and that the environmental factors are trivial to resultant behaviour, which is why I appealed to scientific evidence that indicates this is not true.

...I hope clarifies my earlier statement:
"Who said nothing should be done?" Well it certainly wasn't me, and I have never disregarded the efforts to improve the social environment (just concentrating at the point at hand here, besides any other benefits of social improvement programs) and remove factors which may predispose to unhappiness and aggression. I'm going to leave the rest of this paragraph though, plus the conclusion at the end of it, as it is an ad hominem logical fallacy which doesn't really have anything to do with whether a government should in principle be regulating game content or not.


Can I ask what evidence you have to back up these statements? (And I don't mean circumstantial evidendence). Otherwise, If I have shown you the studies, if you just don't wish to believe them then there's nothing else I can do. As to the second point, at least for younger people you do admit that violent media can influence actions. However, the reason only these two age groups are referred to in the analysis is because these across the board are the only two age groups that regularly use this sort of violent material. You can't have it both ways - you want people to have to have the freedom to choose, and yet the overwhelming majority of people who would be purchasing this game would be exactly these young college age individuals. Admittedly more work needs to be done in this area, but there is no reason to believe that at the age of 25+ complete rationality takes over and environmental factors are no longer of any importance! Thus it is sensible to extrapolate these results at least some years after the college period.


Unfortunately, whether ErV pointed this out earlier or not, this has been disproven.


What you call the 'artificial' conditions are entirely the point - the idea is to remove any of the multitude of obfuscating factors aside from the video games such as you mention later in your post,

and therefore be able to say with certainty that any increase in aggression during the trial is solely due to the aspect being tested, i.e. violent media. With regard to any beneficial social gathering aspect, this has been found to be unimportant.

I'd like to take this opportunity if I may to explain the nature of study designs and also answer your question. The reason why these studies involve thousands rather than millions of people is due to the huge expense in their operational costs. Study individuals are chosen at random to provide a sample of the total population so that any results are representative, with a test group of thousands typically used. The larger the study, the more 'power' it has in the probability that it accurately represents the country. The purpose of a meta-analysis is to statistically combine the results of many studies in order to determine where the overall balance of evidence lies.



In fact, the purpose of the paper, despite the introduction (which is beside the main point, and only to act as a starting point for discussion by loosely hypothesising whether aggressive games *could* have played a role in the Columbine shootings) is to document the link between violent media and aggression, and not to evaluate for example the frequency of school shootings versus hours of 'Doom' played.

Thus what was found was a link between greater violence on the small scale and aggressive media - resulting in antisocial / immoral behaviour that typically won't make the headlines. Why it is that in America this seems to have translated into more shocking acts of aggression could be due to anyone of a hundred American culture factors: Gun culture? Social polarisation? Greater biological tendency in the population to psychosis? Gun availability? Copy cat shootings? I'm sure you could think up plenty yourself.

...So therefore, not necessarily (at least not 'noticeably' with regard to the national/international news media).

Please no sarcasm - it has a tendency to produce flame wars.
Anyway, there is another aspect to these sorts of trials which I think it would be relevant to talk about here. Reviews of this nature focus on societal trends. However, within any given society there will always be variation - some who are affected more than others.

At one end, those such as the Columbine shooters, greatly affected by the media they watched? (my hypothesis only!), and conversely, those whose behavior is minimally affected, perhaps those such as yourself (as you claim to be), and John Carmack. However, your statement shows you have misunderstood the paper. It is not arguing that every single person that is exposed to violent media will be radically altered in their behaviour to become mass murderers! Only that on the balance of the evidence, generally, on average, aggressive behaviour increases. Seeking to apply generalised conclusions to specific individuals is again a logical fallacy.

Not in the slightest - nobody is advocating thought control. Just thoughtful and wise government.

"...government of the people, by the people, for the people..."
(Abe Lincoln, Gettysburg address, emphasis added).

No: is bad, for many people. (Just to explore your point of view a little in an avenue that might be relevant: do you believe that all illicit addictive drugs should possibly be legalised, as some may be able to use them without experiencing any negative effects, and that it is a rational individuals choice as to whether he or she uses them or not? Or might there be a role for government in restricting antisocial influences?)

My entire point was to try and show to you that such games have a demonstrable effect to the detriment of society, morality aside.
Personally, I think these findings only reflect the teaching of my holy book all along; that aggression/anger, if not innately bad, can often lead to evil and unhappiness.


To finsh with, unfortunately, I do think it is more serious than that (not intending to sound like a broken record here, but I'll say it anyway) ...as I believe the evidence shows. Role playing and stress relief are important, but I think what was found was that these games *increase* aggressive behaviour in the long run, rather than anything else.

Peace.

Originally posted by Erv:
I'm afraid this tommyrot is the same old FUD trotted out by every opponent of censorship. I don't want to live in a nanny state any more than you do but neither to I want a society where kids tote knives and guns because they think it's cool. If you don't think that's happening already then you don't read the news!
As for whether violent games encourage violence, I suggest that they de-sensitise people to violence and that's a bad thing. As for being age restricted, kids will get hold of these things with or without their parents knowledge and that's a fact!

Where do you anti-censorship fanboys draw the line? Do you believe paedophiles should have the right to make and watch kiddie porn? I doubt it.
I agree with mikieboy. Even if extreme violence in films and games doesn't exactly encourage real life violence, it can desensitise people's reaction to it, make it less shocking and unacceptable.

What kids do reflects state of the society.

Have you seen that big warning screen that appears in a Postal 2 at startup?:
Do you really believe that if someone will make those games forbidden for everyone, those games will disappear and kids won't be able to get those games? I don't think so... And, of course it far easier to blame computer games than to find out while kids try to get those games anyway, why they are agressive, etc. And BTW - don't forget, that not every kid in a world have a computer...

I believe that "kiddie porn" is restricted but still exist. It would be useful to find out what causes interest to those kind of things, and what turns human into paedofiles. Then you could eliminate root of the problem, and you'll fix the problem. But not vise versa. Same with games. You can restrict all "violent" games, but they won't disappear (You'll waste your time "fighting the Hydra"). Or you can try to find out, why violence is attractive and eliminate problem from it's root. I suppose that second approach is more productive and useful.