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There is a lot of controversy surrounding the corruptive influence of video games on those who play them. I was prompted to write this post after having a conversation with someone who was convinced that soaring crime rates etc, were partially due to video games and the entertainment world available to us today. I figured here was a pretty good place to bring up the topic.
Personally i think that if a game incorporates violence at all, then:
a.) it is usually shown in such an unrealistic manner (see flesh-eating zombies in Resident Evil or the pot shot methods of games like Time Crisis) that a player cannot really connect what he/she is doing with genuine suffering, and therefore any enjoyance derived from playing the game is drawn from the 'game' aspect, not the violence.
And:
b.) The gaming environment enforces the idea that what the gamer is experiencing is all eminating from a little whirring box just below their tv. When you are playing a game you can't fail to be reminded of how un-realistic what you are doing is. Not graphically, but physically. I mean, you are holding a controller, and what you do is communicated through this and represented on a tv screen. In my opinion these physical barriers between you and what is happening as a result of you are effective enforcers of realism. By this i mean that no evil thoughts could creep into your brain while you were playing and convince you that you need to urgently right those who have wronged you.. by using a little 'click.. bang' lead persuasion.
While it's true that many of us delight in blowing holes in bad guys i think the sole reason is that we know we cannot, nor would we if the law allowed, go out and start laying into anyone and everyone Schwarzennegger stylee. The false environment of the game player is just that - false. We know this, and that is why we take pleasure in it.
Surely if anything, games serve to pacify a lot of people. I mean, hard day at work? Come home and blast off a few rounds into those ghouls in Resident Evil and your tension just leaves you.
I think crime, etc is as result of frustration on the part of youth, which is for the most part derivative of rejection of authority and society.
My final word on this: Games bring enjoyment and pleasure to our lives - they are not corruptive, manipulative tools from the hands of the horned one himself designed to implant impure thoughts into virgin minds.
GAMES. That's all they are.
Personally i think that if a game incorporates violence at all, then:
a.) it is usually shown in such an unrealistic manner (see flesh-eating zombies in Resident Evil or the pot shot methods of games like Time Crisis) that a player cannot really connect what he/she is doing with genuine suffering, and therefore any enjoyance derived from playing the game is drawn from the 'game' aspect, not the violence.
And:
b.) The gaming environment enforces the idea that what the gamer is experiencing is all eminating from a little whirring box just below their tv. When you are playing a game you can't fail to be reminded of how un-realistic what you are doing is. Not graphically, but physically. I mean, you are holding a controller, and what you do is communicated through this and represented on a tv screen. In my opinion these physical barriers between you and what is happening as a result of you are effective enforcers of realism. By this i mean that no evil thoughts could creep into your brain while you were playing and convince you that you need to urgently right those who have wronged you.. by using a little 'click.. bang' lead persuasion.
While it's true that many of us delight in blowing holes in bad guys i think the sole reason is that we know we cannot, nor would we if the law allowed, go out and start laying into anyone and everyone Schwarzennegger stylee. The false environment of the game player is just that - false. We know this, and that is why we take pleasure in it.
Surely if anything, games serve to pacify a lot of people. I mean, hard day at work? Come home and blast off a few rounds into those ghouls in Resident Evil and your tension just leaves you.
I think crime, etc is as result of frustration on the part of youth, which is for the most part derivative of rejection of authority and society.
My final word on this: Games bring enjoyment and pleasure to our lives - they are not corruptive, manipulative tools from the hands of the horned one himself designed to implant impure thoughts into virgin minds.
GAMES. That's all they are.
I'd just like to say that it is a commen fact that children that play on compturer games at a young age grow up to be in a succesful job and be quite well off!
But then there was that incident with Perfect Dark, wasn't there? The original plot was to include a 'add your head' feature to it, using the GameBoy Camera. But that hope rapidly decreased as it appeared that this would encourage gamers to do what they see themselves doing on the screen - running about like a maniac with a gun shooting down people.
I didn't really see this as a threat. Only crazy phycho people would think of doing that, and chances are, they wouldn't even have bought the game in the first place.
It was just going to be a bit of extra fun - being able to kill your mate with a shot to 'his head' and the laugh at the cripple as he hits the deck. If anything bad was going to happen then it would be the fact that it was fun, funs not bad, and therefore bad would be vanquished.
I hope Rare and Nintendo or even Sony allow there to be this feature in games of the future. When they get over the fact that its just a bit of fun - and no harm intended.
Swish
I didn't really see this as a threat. Only crazy phycho people would think of doing that, and chances are, they wouldn't even have bought the game in the first place.
It was just going to be a bit of extra fun - being able to kill your mate with a shot to 'his head' and the laugh at the cripple as he hits the deck. If anything bad was going to happen then it would be the fact that it was fun, funs not bad, and therefore bad would be vanquished.
I hope Rare and Nintendo or even Sony allow there to be this feature in games of the future. When they get over the fact that its just a bit of fun - and no harm intended.
Swish
shaneo wrote:
> I think that saying that games influence people is just a bulls**t
> excuse that the media use. Anyone with me?
I am with ya all the way.
> I think that saying that games influence people is just a bulls**t
> excuse that the media use. Anyone with me?
I am with ya all the way.
I think that saying that games influence people is just a bulls**t excuse that the media use. Anyone with me?
I put it all down to bad press and public ignorance. Basically, if you are a violent person you are going to go out and do violent things, no matter how much you play Barbie Race and Ride or Tekken 3 you are still going to want to go out and start a fight in a pub on a Friday night just to blow off that excess testosterone.
The press are the main media that I blame for feeding the public's ingnorance of this subject. They seem to jump on the topic whenever there is a lull in anything worthwhile to report. When Resident Evil was first released, there was a furore in the press about it, but news back then was pretty sparse, they had to give the readers something to think about, so they picked on Capcom and of course sales of that title went through the roof.
And of course reading the newspapers rarely gives you all the information you need to form a valid opinion. A headline of "University study shows that levels of violence increase after exposure to videogames" will tend to wash over the fact that this increase was so negligible that it made no difference, and that at the same time another University doing the same investigation got the opposite results.
Conkers Bad Fur Day is a different story, it was pitched by the developers at just the right level, so the press couldn't really make a big thing out of it even if they tried, but of course the internet exploded with rumours about this corrupting gameplay that would despoil the upbringing of minors, even though they neglected to point out that this was an adult game to be sold to those over a required age.
So when you hear all these stories about videogame violence spilling over into real life, or 'video nasties' causing people to go out and do nasty things, get the FULL facts at hand before making an opinion. Check all the sources you can get hold of, do some research, and so on.
Evidence to support videogames adversely affecting a game player's behaviour is far from conclusive.
The press are the main media that I blame for feeding the public's ingnorance of this subject. They seem to jump on the topic whenever there is a lull in anything worthwhile to report. When Resident Evil was first released, there was a furore in the press about it, but news back then was pretty sparse, they had to give the readers something to think about, so they picked on Capcom and of course sales of that title went through the roof.
And of course reading the newspapers rarely gives you all the information you need to form a valid opinion. A headline of "University study shows that levels of violence increase after exposure to videogames" will tend to wash over the fact that this increase was so negligible that it made no difference, and that at the same time another University doing the same investigation got the opposite results.
Conkers Bad Fur Day is a different story, it was pitched by the developers at just the right level, so the press couldn't really make a big thing out of it even if they tried, but of course the internet exploded with rumours about this corrupting gameplay that would despoil the upbringing of minors, even though they neglected to point out that this was an adult game to be sold to those over a required age.
So when you hear all these stories about videogame violence spilling over into real life, or 'video nasties' causing people to go out and do nasty things, get the FULL facts at hand before making an opinion. Check all the sources you can get hold of, do some research, and so on.
Evidence to support videogames adversely affecting a game player's behaviour is far from conclusive.
Read my topic "Schizophrenia, reality and immortality" across the bridge.
Ting is though, as games become more and more advanced with better graphics that become more "real-life" like, could they affect us then?
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the corruptive influence of video games on those who play them. I was prompted to write this post after having a conversation with someone who was convinced that soaring crime rates etc, were partially due to video games and the entertainment world available to us today. I figured here was a pretty good place to bring up the topic.
Personally i think that if a game incorporates violence at all, then:
a.) it is usually shown in such an unrealistic manner (see flesh-eating zombies in Resident Evil or the pot shot methods of games like Time Crisis) that a player cannot really connect what he/she is doing with genuine suffering, and therefore any enjoyance derived from playing the game is drawn from the 'game' aspect, not the violence.
And:
b.) The gaming environment enforces the idea that what the gamer is experiencing is all eminating from a little whirring box just below their tv. When you are playing a game you can't fail to be reminded of how un-realistic what you are doing is. Not graphically, but physically. I mean, you are holding a controller, and what you do is communicated through this and represented on a tv screen. In my opinion these physical barriers between you and what is happening as a result of you are effective enforcers of realism. By this i mean that no evil thoughts could creep into your brain while you were playing and convince you that you need to urgently right those who have wronged you.. by using a little 'click.. bang' lead persuasion.
While it's true that many of us delight in blowing holes in bad guys i think the sole reason is that we know we cannot, nor would we if the law allowed, go out and start laying into anyone and everyone Schwarzennegger stylee. The false environment of the game player is just that - false. We know this, and that is why we take pleasure in it.
Surely if anything, games serve to pacify a lot of people. I mean, hard day at work? Come home and blast off a few rounds into those ghouls in Resident Evil and your tension just leaves you.
I think crime, etc is as result of frustration on the part of youth, which is for the most part derivative of rejection of authority and society.
My final word on this: Games bring enjoyment and pleasure to our lives - they are not corruptive, manipulative tools from the hands of the horned one himself designed to implant impure thoughts into virgin minds.
GAMES. That's all they are.
Personally i think that if a game incorporates violence at all, then:
a.) it is usually shown in such an unrealistic manner (see flesh-eating zombies in Resident Evil or the pot shot methods of games like Time Crisis) that a player cannot really connect what he/she is doing with genuine suffering, and therefore any enjoyance derived from playing the game is drawn from the 'game' aspect, not the violence.
And:
b.) The gaming environment enforces the idea that what the gamer is experiencing is all eminating from a little whirring box just below their tv. When you are playing a game you can't fail to be reminded of how un-realistic what you are doing is. Not graphically, but physically. I mean, you are holding a controller, and what you do is communicated through this and represented on a tv screen. In my opinion these physical barriers between you and what is happening as a result of you are effective enforcers of realism. By this i mean that no evil thoughts could creep into your brain while you were playing and convince you that you need to urgently right those who have wronged you.. by using a little 'click.. bang' lead persuasion.
While it's true that many of us delight in blowing holes in bad guys i think the sole reason is that we know we cannot, nor would we if the law allowed, go out and start laying into anyone and everyone Schwarzennegger stylee. The false environment of the game player is just that - false. We know this, and that is why we take pleasure in it.
Surely if anything, games serve to pacify a lot of people. I mean, hard day at work? Come home and blast off a few rounds into those ghouls in Resident Evil and your tension just leaves you.
I think crime, etc is as result of frustration on the part of youth, which is for the most part derivative of rejection of authority and society.
My final word on this: Games bring enjoyment and pleasure to our lives - they are not corruptive, manipulative tools from the hands of the horned one himself designed to implant impure thoughts into virgin minds.
GAMES. That's all they are.