Originally posted by Erv:
This is a very good point and would probably be the most productive answer to violence in society. But is anyone doing this research and how long is it going to take to find an answer and act on it?
Meanwhile, are we going to continue mass producing tinder for the match or are we going to do everything in our power to protect the vulnerable in society even if this means we have to put up with censorship? And when I say put up with it, I say again that I don't really want it but I believe that as things stand it's a necessary barrier against a would-be tide of violent entertainment, paedophilia and nasty porn.

We'll never be able to get rid of violence, it's part of human nature. But some effort should be made - self censorship by the makers? - to cut back on the gratuitous, over-the-top violence in films and games.

Thanks.

If you want to prevent a "would-be tide" you must know first what can cause that tide. Right now I do not know about facts (results of a statistical research involving, at least, several thousand people who have different backgrounds) that says "games are causing violence". Yes, there are articles in newspapers about a kid who have gone crazy and took a gun into the school. And what? How many kids plays violent games? How many of them kills class mates? Is there such data? And what about other factors? What music most "school-killers" listen to? What TV-programs they watch? Were they accepted in a class? Which grades they were recieving until incindend? What's situation in their families? Did the boy who took gun to school play violent games at all? I'm think that it's abnormal that in such case people quickly start shouting "it's the games fault", while forgetting about every other possible factor. Just think - probably a million of kids played restricted, violent games, and only several of them committed crime at school. For me it looks like mass-media loves this theme and blames games just because doing so will bring more attention, so mass-media will earn more money (I don't think that a good newspaper or a TV-program will care about anything but profit, money and rating). And also, it's bad that peopla are so eager to give away their rights (did they forget that taking their rights back isn't going to be easy?) just because someone said "games causes violence!". I wouldn't believe that unless there is a good statistics provided. For me "A good statistics" means a large research several months long, which involves at least several million people, and gathers information not only about "games" and "school-killers" but also their background, music/tv preference, IQ, knowledge level, family relationships, temperament, etc. Only that could be enough to really prove that games (and not something else) causes a rise of violence in society (and, by the way, who said that there is a rise of violence? Is the source of that information really reliable?)) Otherwise - if there is no statistics, or if it is biased (were created just to find correllation between games and violence, without accounting other factors), words "games causes violence" are nothing more than a dirty commercial trick of mass-media. And, by the way - games are already censored! The are marked "M" contain warnings, etc. What else should be done? Ban the games? That's won't change anything...

P.S. Is suppose that continuing this "discussion" will be most likely useless.

Nature is only violent when it's malnourished.

Some of the worst prisons for violence dropped their violence rates to almost zero in a psychological study funded by universities which supplemented their meals to make sure all prisoners received proper nourishment.

After collecting statistically significant results, the universities removed the funding and published their findings. The program was never picked up by the prisons.

(To be fair, I should point out that one of the criticisms of this experiment is that violence may have also been pushed out by the prisoners' feeling that they were paid attention to. As far as I know, no further experiments were done to test the significance between the two variables.)

Well, I already posted something on the real evidence quite a while ago if you really are interested in reading the facts for yourself. It is the latest meta-analysis (special collation of all the current available studies) which I strongly recommend everyone here read.

http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/fa...-2004/01AB.pdf

(Studies involving "millions" are unnecessary by the way - it is amply sufficient to use study populations of "thousands" to "tens of thousands" to achieve through random selection a truly representative demographic of society).

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Is this the one you meant by the way?
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/181/1/22

It was the only one I could find. If so, dropped to "zero" is an overstatement (an intention-to-treat analysis found a fall of 26.3% in disciplinary actions)

And so this is overplaying it somewhat:
But still a fascinating finding in looking at the various environmental factors which can predispose to violence.

Ok, here are some quick answers:

I must admit, that article is well-written. But information it provides is old. What about a percentages (like "how much violence is caused by games and how much by anything else")? What is used as a "violent game" in this article? What about other (for example, positive) effects of playing games?

(IMHO) The definitions of "agression" and "violence" in that article are a bit different from at least how I understand those words. Maybe in article they are used as scientific terms, but that is very confusing - for example, for me (and I hope, for most people) "agression" means an emotion ("anger"), while in article "agression" means a type of behaviour intended to harm someone.

For me it looks like this one wanted to shoot his school mates long before he started playing Doom. He modified the game - in fact, he created his own game, which simulated "school-shooting" situation. He could have done similar (playing, modeling and planning) thing using toy soldiers. What does Doom have to do with this? ID doesn't even provide tools for creating modifications. We are talking about a modification (apparently, crafted by a maniac), not about original game.

The questions is - why?

What about teaching parents to read age restrictions? I though it is supposed to be part of their duty.

So, only 10% of kids (althoug data is out-of date) play games, other watch TV, and exposure to a violence on mass-media certainly affects behaviour. Then, why the games are at the center of attention?

No comments for the rest of article.

Conclusion:
I personally want to be able to decide what can I play and what I can't play. Because this is called "freedom". People smoke, while smoking isn't too god for health. People drink alcohol while this can be dangerous, too. And that's normal - because every person must have a right to decide: to smoke or not, to drink alcohol or not, to play games or not. The questions is not about a harm, it's about deciding how to live your life, about freedom to do this.If games are accidentally harmful, print a warning on a CD/DVD! Violent games are already age-restricted, so if kids play restricted games, it is problem of their parents.

Originally posted by Erv:
I do for one! I never used to feel uneasy on the streets of my home town late at night, but nowadays there are gangs of hoodies roaming about and everyone I've spoken to about it agrees that there's an air of tension and aggression.
You can shove statistics. As a scientist I can show you a dozen ways to distort statistics but my instincts I can trust!

I blame booze rage. Too much tolerance for beer drinkers, that's the problem. They should all be shot for the good of society. Then we'd have gangs of polite tea sipping kids roaming the streets.

I don't know what's wrong with old farts these days.

I really don't think that computer games can be blamed for appearances of gangs/organized crime. That's two different universes. Besides, most "violent" games (if they really affect human mind) are solo, they teach to rely only on yourself and no one else, they do not teach to gather into criminal groups. In every "violent" 3D action game you are a solo, you don't depend on anybody, you don't cooperate most time. This kind of thinking is (IMHO) incompatible with being in any gang. So IMHO games can (theoreticaly) provide only following dangers.
1) Getting game addiction and dying from starvation. (THAT's definetely possible, especially with MMORPG games)
2) confusing game and reality (this is hardly possible in next 10 years)
3) Developing antisocial agressive behavour. (And that's doubtful for me).

If there are gangs, you just can't blame games for that. That's social problem, tightly connected with the real world, not the games.

Not in every 'violent' game are you left on your own.
(I play Flashpoint when I get bored, and I consistently work in a team. But I don't go running round the town in BlackOps gear with NVGs, MP5SD and satchel charges.)

I think that the only people who are going to treat games as some kind of training session, and then go out into the big wide world and do what they did in the game, are those who are already mentally unstable to the point that they could have snapped at any point.

The press are looking for a scapegoat to blame for the failings of modern society, and because they can't blame themselves they blame video games.

(This opinion is rigged. Any attempt to disprove what my unstable brain tell me will result in a fairly large explosion.)

I suppose that military has some training simulators. I'm not sure if they can be considered "games" or not I agree with the rest of the post, however.

Erv: part of the wikipedia entry for Operation Flashpoint.

:-\ Then, where is the line between "violent" and "simlation" game? People doesn't seem to be afraid of military games, although (for example) Soldiers of Fortune is quite bloody and beats Postal 2 and Manhunt in certain ways...

Is there a line?

Defending your position won't win the "debate". You have to go on the offensive. Instead of saying "it's not the games" you need to blame your opponent's habits and strive to take away their freedom. You have to turn them into the criminals destroying society. You have to rub their nose in their own sh1t.