Viewing Thread:
"Who else is sick of games getting blamed for everything bad?"

Recently, video games have become the scapegoats for anything wrong in the world, just like movies before them. For example, some people have suggested banning MS Flight Simulator because it may have helped the suicidal monsters who committed the September 11th atrocities to fly. First-person shoot-em-ups were blamed for causing the awful tradegy at Columbine. I can see it now...Fifa 2007 blamed for kids playing football instead of doing their homework! Please...I do not see how a perfectly sane person can suddenly massacre their fellow classmates after a session on Doom. Surely if parents are against video games, they should not allow their kids to play on them. In fact, certain studies have shown that a quick half-hour on Quake allows a person to vent out all their anger, and so does them a world of good. Of course there are going to be a miniscule amount of people who get influenced by video games, but that's all the media needs to call for all games to be banned. If you agree, please reply. If you don't, give me your argument.

It is completely down to the individual, as Wookie Man says.
I am not violent because of playing video games. However, the next man may well be.
I know for a fact that racing games HAVE influenced me. Whilst driving round small country roads in Tuscany this year, I noticed myself getting quicker and quicker, changing gears all the time to keep revs high. It was not until my girlfriend asked me to slow down that I realise how fast I was going. I never knew how to race cars before but I realised that I was thinking about gear selection and racing line automatically when driving. It can be dangerous but the local Italians were still quicker than me !! Maybe they play more hours on GT3 and Colin McRae. Can someone find out please ?

I find sometimes games don't help me calm down.

If I'm really annoyed, I'm not usually concentraing when I'm playing, so I do crap, so I end up thinking "Stupid game" (normally in stronger language) and that annoys me even more.

However, I agree with Wookiee, I've been playing games for a few years now, not as long as him obviously, but they've had no effect on me.

I'm a bit different with films though, I remeber both Aliens and The Thing were on one christmas time, I watched both, I must have been 12 or 13, and it put me off horror films completely, so now I don't watch them any more, simple as that.

Seriously, though...

I've been playing videogames since I was eight, and they've always been violent. I've also been watching violent/horror films since I was about 12.

I won't condone letting under-age people see/play such things, but personally speaking, it's done me no harm at all. I do have a very bad, almost violent temper - but it is very well controlled; I am generally a very caring and giving person, and have to be extremely strongly provoked in order to really lose my temper. Even being bullied at school never provoked me to losing my temper.

Usually my attitude is just "yeah, whatever". I've only ever really 'lost it' three times, and the last was when someone attacked my fiancee.

In fact, if not for the outlet of videogames, I probably would lose my temper a lot more often. I often get home after a bad day at work and take it out on a game.

I suppose it depends on the individual; games may act as a catalyst for some people who do harm to others, but if people can be tipped over the edge by a game, then there's something wrong with them anyway. If not a game, it would be something else.

It would be much better to look at the cause of that persons problems so that others can be prevented from going down the same path, but blaming something after the event is much easier and less costly.

if you really wanted to nick a plane, all you would have to do is to let the real pilot get it in the air, then lock him in the bogs, find the turn failsafes off switch and then move the stick about to get it to go where they wanted. (In their case, they diddnt need to land it or anything...)

They could play a flight sim to death, but because it doesnt have a full cabin recreation it's not really all that much help for their purposes. Do you think that from playing a game on your pc that you got for £40 would giveyou the ability to fly a real plane? You'd be faced with a planes dash instead of a monitor and keyboard and from the game you would know what youre doing?

It's insane! Games are not responsible for this, and if the news people could come up with a more plauseable option before they started having a go at gaming, we'd appreciate it a lot more.

I watched american psycho this weekend to get a few pointers....

Slaveunit wrote:
> GTA3 is coming soon, that'll be fun...

I bought a baseball bat at the weekend in preparation.

Turbonutter wrote:
> Yes, they may have said MS Flight Simulator could have trained pilots, but the
> fact is it COULD HAVE trained pilots. It's a simulator. That's what it does. It
> simulates flight, hence the name.


Yeah I can see it now.

"Capt. what do we do now."

"Look in the manual."

"We don't have time for that."

"Pause the game, press F10"

"Capt. we can't pause the game, there is no F10, in fact there's no bloody keybaord! This is real!"

"Oh, well, try pressing both mouse buttons?"

"THERE'S NO MOUSE YOU STUPID FOOL, THIS IS REAL!"

"Ah. Well, er, we're stuffed then."


See? There's no way flying a plane on a PC can train you to fly a plane in real life.

They're just too different.

GTA3 is coming soon, that'll be fun...

Ben, you damn right!

yea i get annoyed everytime i see some jumped up MP say *oh *insert game name here* incites violence among children*

erm no they don't i've played alot of violent games and they don't make me want to go and kill everyone in my street. i've played resident evil yet i don't go round trying to bite chunks of skin out of people (well cept for that one time but that's a police matter and can't talk for legal reasons lol) i've played metal gear solid yet i don't creep up behind people and snap their necks.

these people who do such things after playing games aren't right in the head in the first place so it can't all be blamed on games it's just a useful excuse usually for the parents who don't want to admit they screwed up raising their precious child