Violent video games are training children to kill

C.S.Strowbridge · Post by **C.S.Strowbridge** » 2003-11-26 11:06pm

This either belongs here or in SLAM.

Violent video games are training children to kill

Read it and weap. Then e-mail the author with your opinion.[/url]

Bill Door · Post by **Bill Door** » 2003-11-26 11:24pm

First impressions:

HeraldNet.com wrote:These video games are not spectator activities, like going to a violent movie. They use simulation techniques that are used to teach people to fly a plane, drive a car or fight wars.

So me using a mouse and keyboard trains me in how to fire firearms? The US army said differently IIRC.

HeraldNet.com wrote:The dead bodies are kicked and urinated on. The killer laughs at them and makes crude sexual comments. Sex and violence weave into deadly behaviors, over and over.

Just what twisted game did they find? I don't recall that in any games I've heard of...

HeraldNet.com wrote:Second, these games are not movies. Nor are they spectator games. Rather, they are simulations.

So thake Red Faction 2. Would you call that a simulation? Or how about Metal Gear Solid? These are both games where you shoot people (in RF 2 enemies can get blown limb from limb) and they are claiming it is a simulation. Using the word simulation implies to me that realisim is a major goal of the game design

HeraldNet.com wrote:They rehearse shooting police officers and urinating on them.

What is it with him and urinating on corpses?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-11-27 12:56am

Just what twisted game did they find? I don't recall that in any games I've heard of...

It's got to be postal 2, a short but very funny game, with corrupt catholic priests, islamic suicide bombers, cat-shotguns, pissing, just about everything to appaul everyone. Lol, one of the first missions is to find your dad's grave and piss on it, then some hillbillies whack you over the head with a shovel and dress you up as a gimp.

Bill Door · Post by **Bill Door** » 2003-11-27 10:10am

Rye wrote:
Just what twisted game did they find? I don't recall that in any games I've heard of...
It's got to be postal 2, a short but very funny game, with corrupt catholic priests, islamic suicide bombers, cat-shotguns, pissing, just about everything to appaul everyone. Lol, one of the first missions is to find your dad's grave and piss on it, then some hillbillies whack you over the head with a shovel and dress you up as a gimp.

Ah... Now I remember... That is one very twisted game...

Anyway, back to training myself to take over the world using Medeval-Total War

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-11-27 01:09pm

Of course they're right. After playing Knights of the Old Republic I've taken to Force Choking my enemies.

I'm planning to use Force Lightening as soon as I level up as well.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2003-11-27 01:37pm

neoolong wrote:Of course they're right. After playing Knights of the Old Republic I've taken to Force Choking my enemies.

I'm planning to use Force Lightening as soon as I level up as well.

Pfft amatuer.

With that game I have learned to use my Force powers in ways to speed my physical strengths to unheard of heights and able to block bullets with my lightstick!

Now I'm going to kill this beggar who's currently eyeing me, because I'll gain an evil point.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-11-27 01:39pm

I think this belongs in SLAM ...

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-11-27 02:58pm

Right and I will take over the world because I play Risk, and Sid Meir's "Civilization".

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-11-27 03:22pm

Well shit, whenever I play GTA or Half-Life I have this tendency to go and grab blunt objects and bludgeon anyone I come into contact with.

I also work with the SAS because my sniping skills were second to none on Quake II.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » 2003-11-27 03:28pm

The usual "video games are the root of all evil" shit. Don't worry about that. In the 60'2 and 70's they said the same about television. So it is actually nothing really new...

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-11-27 04:32pm

In the 1950's and 1940's it was comic books, in the 1920's and 1930's it was movies (yeah James Cagney is responsible for the increase in violence during the Great Depression)

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2003-11-27 04:51pm

Give ME a ticket will you?!?!?!?!?!?!
Well in that case...
*Luminaire!!!!!!

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2003-11-27 07:50pm

Funny, he talks about pissing on dead guys all the time, but he doesn't mention ONE game.

Heh.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2003-11-27 08:25pm

Oh my god you mean that Manhunt is the reason I know stabbing someone in the eyes with a knife will kill them? Or that you can castrate a man with a sickle? I would never have known this otherwise! DAMN YOU ROCKSTAR!

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2003-11-27 10:40pm

My god, it all makes sense now!

My interest in fantasy is not from intellectual desire, it's from playing Dungeon Keeper 1 + 2, Age of Mythology and Neverwinter Nights

My belief I could run the world is not from an ego, but from playing all the Civilizations games

My desire to beat the crap out of people is not from them being assholes, but from playing Punch Out!

My desire to bang girls is not from being a guy, but from pornography.

I was pure and soiled! AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whom do I sue?

[/End Sarcasm]

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2003-11-28 01:59am

After a good round of Super Smash Bros. Melee, I sometimes want to suck on my friends so I can steal their powers...

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-11-28 04:46am

I'm joining the military becasue of my great dice rolling ability grown from Risk.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2003-11-28 05:01am

Damn. I read comic books as a kid, I went to the movies, I watched television, i played computer games, I had toy guns (I'm sure somebody blamed them too, somewhere), and I can't remember ever having killed anybody.

I can only conclude I'm really a psychopathic mass murderer who only halluzinates he's just a regular guy.

I think I'm depressed now...

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-11-28 05:06am

join the club, you forgot listening to music and drinking coffee/eating choclate those were scapegoats too once and again.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2003-11-28 06:09am

The Yosemite Bear wrote:join the club, you forgot listening to music and drinking coffee/eating choclate those were scapegoats too once and again.

Hey, you're right. That propably makes me TWO psycopathic mass murderers.

SCHIZOPHRENIC psycopathic mass murderers, actually.

Weird.

Solid Snake · Post by **Solid Snake** » 2003-11-28 12:34pm

What he's trying to say is that the games will desensitize us kids to violence, so we should someday have no problem with shooting a guy in the face and fucking the bullet hole.

mauldooku · Post by **mauldooku** » 2003-11-28 01:04pm

StarshipTitanic wrote:After a good round of Super Smash Bros. Melee, I sometimes want to suck on my friends so I can steal their powers...

That's...not a nice image...

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-11-28 01:06pm

Of course given the numbers he has for kids that play videogames, America should be even more of a crime-ridden country than it already is.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2003-11-28 02:34pm

So basicly he's blaming the video game makers for things the parents or games stores are doing, ie. providing adult games to under age people.
If a cinema lets a kid into an 18 do you blame the film maker?

Also i'd since these games are meant to be simulations why aren't the major sporting competitons filled with nerds who have perfected their skills on computer games? Why isn't the army full of Counter Strike experts? Why aren't Command and Conquer players generals?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-11-28 03:15pm

Don't oversimplify their argument. They're saying that violent games and movies "desensitize" people to violence, and they have an assload of experiments and statistics to prove it. The problem is that no one has ever managed to show that desensitization actually makes someone commits crimes. In fact, no one even bothers to try; they generally consider it implicit that desensitization = incitement to criminal behaviour.