Video Games Cause Kids to SNAP!

Hypnotron · 2013-01-12T22:09:52

Violent games cause violent behavior is a no win position. There are alot of very smart people working in games. But I think too many defense mechanisms kick in on this issue particularly when the argument is worded in this typical way. "Violent games cause violence" is designed to cause a bunch of wheel spinning and goings to nowhere. I prefer to look at the influence of games in the same way as I do the influence of all mass media. There are not only opportunity costs to consuming frivolous media. There IS a learning of concepts that are of dubious value or worse. Money and guns give you dominance and power. Violence solves problems (no blowblack, no real consequences). Diplomacy has little to no value. Empathy is for sissies. Shortcuts ftw. It's not about how you play the game. Winning is all that matters. Points! High scores! The opposition is one dimensionally evil, they are dumb and they are inferior. Civility is weakness. Females are sex objects. Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like Lara? Being and behaving in an intelligent manner is lame. Getting drunk, high or stoned is cool. Turning your brain off and learning to enjoy stupid tv/games/films is good. Get a Roku. Debate is another word for a yelling match where the last man standing wins. Torture gets results. You're not stupid, everyone else is. Stupid only counts if you're broke and powerless. If you're as unsophisticated and stupid as the bum sitting the in the gutter but you have a fat bank account, you are winning. Vice is exciting. Virtue is for idealistic morons who don't understand how the real world works. Etc, etc, etc. The games industry will never have anything to fear reguarding the "violent games cause kids to snap" argument. It's one of those arguments that will channel us all down a pointless dead-end series of conversations. Go us. Much of the media we consume, much of the media we make will not result in the betterment of humanity nor the world we live. That's just a fact. Indeed it has helped us all become masters of hypocrisy. Hey brother and sister, consume my mind shaping garbage but if you forget to check in with the personal responsibility region of your brain (you know, that region we were all born with) and you end up ignorant, saddled with vices, mental health issues, etc... well that's on YOU. BLAME YOURSELF AND YOUR PARENTS because that is who I will be blaming. I had nothing to do with it. Our marketing department didn't hold a gun to your head making you buy our product even though we denied that it would cause you any harm whatsoever and even though we fought tooth and nail against legislation that would force us to label it as such. (Although if we have to, we'll settle for PG-13, R, M for Mature because they don't adequately describe the depths of the harm and the ratings board will just tally up tits and swear words which are heavily discounted because we've all seen and heard them anyway!!! WHeeeeee!) We just wanted to give you enjoyment and this is how you repaid us? Now excuse us while we brush our teeth without gazing at our own reflections in the mirror. Alas, if only we had all eaten from a tree of knowledge of good and evil and we magically understood in the deepest sense, what made good beneficial and evil destructive. No joy. We have to teach each other.

GDNet Lounge Community

Started by Hypnotron January 12, 2013 03:43 PM

31 comments, last by ApochPiQ 11 years, 3 months ago

L. Spiro

25,818

January 12, 2013 09:06 PM

proanim, don’t get drawn into his circular logic. As with religion, he has already made up his mind and you will never get your point across.
He is the type of person who believes the Bible is true because the Bible itself says it is true.

You can point out 10 obvious flaws in his logic and you will only get met with 10 ridiculous excuses. Excuses tailored towards letting him believe the last 10 years of his life (the approximate amount of time it takes for one to begin an idea and then solidly believe in it) were not the waste that they were.

I am only going to point out the most obvious among them: How his point-of-view defeats itself.

Hi, I am L. Spiro, and I played violent video games as a child. I grew up with Mortal Kombat and I put more of my life into Killer Instinct than I will openly admit.
I have only met my father a few times and I never really saw my mother much as I grew up. I was raised by video games. Violent video games.

And here I am today, traveling the world making video games. In fact I have just gone through my worst days in recent times, as the person I intended to marry for the last 2 years just got married. And not to me.
I am going through the normal grieving process through which everyone else goes. I have been consumed by tears for the last few days.

But did I do a 12-hit combo on that person? Did I take up guns and start shooting people?
In fact I didn’t even post about it on Facebook, and if you have seen my GameDev.net posts during the last 3 days you would not have a clue that this kind of drama was happening in the background.

It has nothing to do with how I was raised. Nothing to do with the games I played.
Nothing to do with my parents.
The only factor at play is my frontal lobe. If life deals you a good one you can grow up to be a great person no matter what hardships you face as a child.
If life deals you a bad one you really don’t have much of a chance. Whether it be games or something else, you only gain satisfaction from the bad experiences.
That is how his point-of-view defeats itself. Your frontal lobe can get just as much good out of games—and everything else—as it can bad. Games are an easy target so these kinds of people target them, unable to muster anything more. But ultimately:
#1: Once games are eliminated and you see the same rate of crime, what will your next target be?
#2: Why acknowledge only the bad that people gain from games? Why never acknowledge the good? Someone seems biased!

Instead of telling developers what to do why don’t you tell kids to get better frontal lobes? Frontal lobes will chew on any experience and magnify either the good or the bad.

Bad people will be bad without video games.

Good people will be good even with bad video games.

Deal with this reality check instead dragging your drama into our forums.

L. Spiro

I restore Nintendo 64 video-game OST’s into HD! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtX_wedtZ5BoyQBXEhnVZw/playlists?view=1&sort=lad&flow=grid

MarkS_

3,509

January 12, 2013 10:03 PM

What I have noticed about the recent mass shootings is that the people responsible, regardless of age, had mental issues that were either known and ignored or not known at the time. Most of the children who have committed these acts were tormented by other children in school. The fact that most played violent video games or watched violent movies is irrelevant. They had issues that were not being addressed and snapped.

I am ever amazed at how we are so willing to point fingers at something else when the actual issue is too difficult to address. "Violent media is the issue! NO, guns are the issue! No, guns and violent media are both equally the issue. Ad nauseam."

The actual issue is that parents are no longer closely monitoring the well being of their children. Children are allowed to live their lives in secret. Parents often know little about the personal lives of their children. Bullying is practically ignored and responding to a bully will typically get the child that is bullied in more trouble than the bully. The end result is a situation where a bullied child has no choice but to repress the hurt and anger. This is terribly unhealthy. When mental issues get involved, all the worse. Mental health is of virtually no importance in today's society. People are walking the streets criminally insane because no one is willing to do anything about it. We don't want to force them to take medications. We don't want to institutionalize until they commit a crime. We let them slip through the cracks.

The people that commit these acts are going to commit these acts regardless if we stop violent media and destroy all guns.