Adult Content Warning

This community may contain adult content that is not suitable for minors. By closing this dialog box or continuing to navigate this site, you certify that you are 18 years of age and consent to view adult content.

Violent Video Games: 1, Paranoid Suburbanites: 0

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Juice, Jun 27, 2011.

  1. Juice

    Juice
    Expand Collapse
    Moderately Gender Fluid

    Reputation:
    1,382
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    13,397
    Location:
    Boston
    So it looks like the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2, lifting the ban on violent video games being sold to minors in California, citing it as a violation of the 1st Amendment. Of course, this will have a quick ripple effect and will be the law of the land across the US in no time.

    Link to the story

    Im all for this, as it will surely boost the gaming industry and will force parents to parent their children over what games they feel are suitable, as they should already be doing.

    Focus: Do you agree with this decision? Why? Why Not?

    Alt. Focus: The flipside argument of course is, that violent video games and movies can lead to real-world violence and aggressive behavior in children. Agree? Disagree?
     
  2. lostalldoubt86

    lostalldoubt86
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    20
    Joined:
    May 23, 2010
    Messages:
    1,031
    Location:
    Earth, The Universe
    Alt-Focus: I always thought this was a bullshit cop-out. Let me know if I'm totally wrong, but if your kid is too stupid to know the difference between movie/video game violence and real world violence, that says more about poor parenting than the moies and video games themselves.
     
  3. PIMPTRESS

    PIMPTRESS
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    79
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    3,239
    Location:
    Denver-ish
    I believe parents should be parenting already. They have to learn to tell their kids "NO." They should be involved in their kids lives enough to moderate.

    Violent games expose us to stimuli that has a negative impact on our perceptions. There aren't alot of reprecussions in games, you die and start over.

    I believe that as long as you are teaching kids and are aware of this, kids will still respect life.
     
  4. Kubla Kahn

    Kubla Kahn
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    710
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    11,278
    Im alright with it, about 9 years to late for me to give a shit if I could get a violent video game. Still the double standard of violence being A-OK and a nipple is SATANIC morally was put on clear display. Selling insanely violent (for violence sake) video games to minors is ok because of the dark morality tales that have been white washed to death by Disney. My brain hurts.
     
  5. Dmix3

    Dmix3
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    1
    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2009
    Messages:
    643
    Location:
    In the four-toed statue
    I love gory horror movies, and violent video games. I have for a long time. For as long as I can remember I have, some of my earliest memories are watching scary movies, I remember freaking the fuck out the first time I saw The Thing, or the terrible tequila monster Craig T. Nelson barfed up in Poltergeist 2.

    I think the crux of this argument comes from "parents" who use video games/movies/tv as a substitute parent/babysitter. If you leave a kid alone with only Grand Theft Auto 4 and the Friday the 13th series to watch while you are working or trying to find yet another in a long line of embarrassing substitute daddies then the odds are good that you're kid will become a little delinquent. If you took the time to actually parent and explain what context is and how trying any of that shit in the real world will end up with you having a swollen asshole or planted six feet under, then your kid will most likely have a chance at a stable future.
     
  6. mazian

    mazian
    Expand Collapse
    Experienced Idiot

    Reputation:
    26
    Joined:
    Mar 12, 2011
    Messages:
    131
    Location:
    Germany
    I think it has always been more of a parenting isse, at least in my experience.

    I often see parents buy their children any game they want without even looking at the box or the ESRB rating, so they basically have no clue what their kids are playing.

    I think that sums it up pretty well.

    Video games could be a factor leading to real-life violence, but I don't think they turn otherwise normal kids into aggressive murderers, there's always a lot of other factors coming into play.

    Every time there's somebody running amok over here in Germany and they so much as find a video game everybody cries for stricter rules on the sale of games.
    Things like it being the job of the parent's to see what their kids are playing and/or their general shitty parenting or excessive bullying at school that was known to parents and teachers are ignored, as clearly the evil video games must be the sole reason.
     
  7. Juice

    Juice
    Expand Collapse
    Moderately Gender Fluid

    Reputation:
    1,382
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    13,397
    Location:
    Boston
    I loved how after Columbine a huge point was made that the shooters played Doom and Quake excessively. Doom and Quake?? Really??
     
  8. StayFrosty

    StayFrosty
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    0
    Joined:
    Apr 4, 2010
    Messages:
    1,149
    I'm just glad to see a win in the column of parental responsibility (we can mark it on the gravestone thereof).

    I'm not a supporter of heavy regulation, especially for something as trivial as video games.

    Do they make kids more violent? I doubt it. I'm sure we all remember the crucifixion of video games in the media following the Columbine shooting, and the following evidence that Klebold and Harris had plenty of non-game related issues.

    Moderation and environment are key. There's a big difference between living in a relatively healthy environment and playing violent games, and spending 12 hours a day playing them while your parents spend the night arguing, to give a hastily constructed example.

    What it comes down to is a combination of various factors, and violence in video games and television are only two of countless.
     
  9. D26

    D26
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    110
    Joined:
    Oct 21, 2009
    Messages:
    2,305
    When I started my job at a video store, one of the first things they told me was that if the "check age" thing pops up on the computer, and it is someone under 18 (without a parent) I have to call the parents to ask if it is okay for their kid to rent that. Why? Lawsuits. They don't want to be sued by the one parent that gives a fuck enough to get mad that their kid rented Grand Theft Auto 4. 99 times out of 100, it is a kid renting Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto 4 (or, recently, Duke Nukem). We're talking 10 year olds who ride their bike to the video store to rent this stuff. On very rare occasions, it is an R rated movie.

    So I call the parents and say "Hi, this is D26 from RST Video, and I have your son. He wants to rent Duke Nukem, a game that is rated Mature, and we need parental consent to rent it to him." Every single time, the parent says yes without even thinking about it. I have never had a parent say no. The only real variable is how pissed they are going to be for interrupting their time without their kid. Half the time, the parent is fucking pissed that I called and tells me, in no uncertain terms, that I have disrupted their precious time with my 'stupid question.' The other half, they only sound mildly annoyed.

    What is the point of this little tale? It seems like the majority of parents (not all, but the majority that I have encountered in my time as a social worker and in my current video store job) really don't give a fuck what their kids do, as long as it isn't bothering the parents. If a kid does something dangerous and gets hurt, parents really only get mad because it means it is more work for them to patch their kid up. If a kid gets arrested, it is more work for the parents to bail the kid out and deal with the police and court systems. That is why this law would be a bad thing: if this law is in effect, it is less work for the shitty parents. With this law, they don't have to worry about the guy from the video store calling to ask if it is okay that little Timmy rent the most recent violent video game. They know Timmy can't rent it, so it is a non-issue. It is less work for the parents who already seem to want to do as little work as possible to raise their kids.

    I realize this is an incredibly pessimistic view, but I haven't exactly had the best experience. I know there are good parents out there that watch their kids and keep an eye on what their kids are doing and who they're hanging out with, and kudos to those parents.

    The irony is that it is those super-involved parents that are pushing for these laws, which really only serve to protect the lazy parents who don't give a shit what their kids are doing.
     
  10. MoreCowbell

    MoreCowbell
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    14
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    4,185
    I think we'll see a decline in this soon, because the parents will be of the video game generation. To our parents and Tipper Gore, violent video games are weird, foreign, scary things.

    However, the first Resident Evil game came out in 1996. Someone who was 15 at the time is now 30. Ten years from now, parents will have played GTA4 in their youth. Sure, maybe the games will get more violent (although I'm not sure if it's really possible. More realistic or more disturbing perhaps, but more violent would be hard). But it'll only be a matter of degree, rather than a whole new thing.


    D26's post makes me wonder, though: this debate is usually framed as protecting our children from video games. What if it were rather framed as protecting the rest of us from poorly raised children?
     
  11. iczorro

    iczorro
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    107
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    3,541
    Location:
    The Island
    This is my post from last week on the subject.


    The link in there has excellent summations of what the bill was and the positions taken by each side.
     
  12. ghettoastronaut

    ghettoastronaut
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    70
    Joined:
    Oct 22, 2009
    Messages:
    4,917
    Talk about first world problems. Throughout most of human history, children have been exposed to violence and gore far more than any adult is nowadays. If you wanted to eat meat, you were very heavily involved in turning Norman the Woolly Mammoth Rampaging In Your Direction into hot dogs. You saw people and animals die horrible deaths from disease and violence. In a slightly more modern day, you saw war; you lived in crowded slums without a modicum of indoor plumbing; instead of hearing about the boogeyman from newspaper headlines, you went into town and saw the local witch being burned on the stake, or criminal beheaded. You saw your mother or sister or many female relatives die in childbirth; and as a prelude, you and your family lived and slept in the same room, and your parents obviously kept procreating during that time. Physical violence and hardship was visited upon you in ways that would make the current generation of "Back in my day..." geezers shit their pants. Even today, there are vast swaths of the world where children see the bodies of murder victims in the street on a rather regular basis, and there are vast swaths of the world where parents just wish the worst things their children saw from day to day was a dead body.

    I hope nobody is so stupid as to claim that humanity would actually be better right now if, for the entirety of existence, people aged 0-18 had been raised in a world entirely devoid of all of this and then introduced into reality on their 18th birthday.
     
  13. iczorro

    iczorro
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    107
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    3,541
    Location:
    The Island
  14. toddamus

    toddamus
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    396
    Joined:
    Oct 21, 2009
    Messages:
    5,312
    Location:
    Somewhere west of New York
    Violent video games have been around since the 80's. The crime rate has steadlily declined since the 80's. Based on the obvious assumption that correlation means causation, I therefore conclude that violent video games have made society and kids safer.

    Seriously though, people assumed violent video games would turn my generation into axe wielding, blood thirsty maniacs. It didn't happen.
     
  15. bewildered

    bewildered
    Expand Collapse
    Deeply satisfied pooper

    Reputation:
    1,199
    Joined:
    Oct 26, 2009
    Messages:
    10,949
    I am glad that the Supreme Court made the decision that they did. It is up to parents to decide what their children will be exposed to. Shitty parents will keep making shitty decisions, and good ones will make good ones.

    I agree that children in our history have lived with far more horrible things than the stuff of video games.

    This being said, being exposed to violence in real life is different from being exposed to it in a video game as a form of entertainment. Of course then people can make the argument that people have been harmed for entertainment in the past, like gladiators in ancient Rome. Personally, I'd rather raise children who did not enjoy seeing people harmed as a form of fun.
     
  16. Nom Chompsky

    Nom Chompsky
    Expand Collapse
    Honorary TiBette

    Reputation:
    68
    Joined:
    Dec 23, 2010
    Messages:
    4,706
    Location:
    we out
    Would it be worth it to encourage games to put more disclaimers in before you can play? Sure, for the vast majority of people it'll just be another annoying screen to load, but it'll be much harder to argue that a 10 year old had no conception of the wrongness of a game if they have to read:

    "The following game is a work of fiction. The acts depicted should not be carried out in real life, and the situations reflected do not correlate with those around you.

    In other words, don't try this at home kids."

    That was just off the top of my head, but it could at least add another little buffer to those afraid that kids won't be able to segregate the ideas.
     
  17. iczorro

    iczorro
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    107
    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    3,541
    Location:
    The Island
    That's what the ERSB's M rating is for. You should already understand these things if you're playing a game rated "Mature".
     
  18. ghettoastronaut

    ghettoastronaut
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    70
    Joined:
    Oct 22, 2009
    Messages:
    4,917
    Please tell me you aren't being serious here. "Don't attempt this at home" has gone beyond trying to be a legitimate warning and practically parodizes itself. Kids already see this message multiple times per day: tv shows, movies, and advertisements that interrupt tv shows and movies are chock full of it. It's not going to make kids wake up and think, "oh, fuck, I'd better not steal a car / go off to battle / turn into a hobbit and fight a giant fucking dragon because that shit is dangerous and unrealistic!" just because they had to stare at a message like that for five seconds.
     
  19. Nom Chompsky

    Nom Chompsky
    Expand Collapse
    Honorary TiBette

    Reputation:
    68
    Joined:
    Dec 23, 2010
    Messages:
    4,706
    Location:
    we out
    Probably not. But it would eliminate even the hint of an issue, wouldn't it? It doesn't hurt anybody, and it allows the video game companies plausible deniability when it comes to the correlation. It might affect 0 kids, but unless I'm mistaken, it's a low cost buffer to the argument that a kid won't be able to distinguish between the game and real life.

    What's the downside? Some 14 year old is annoyed for 5 seconds before playing Duke Nukem Forever? Sure it's tedious and dumb in the abstract, but so is the label that warns you that your coffee is hot. Or that toddlers could swallow little plastic pieces.


    Those ratings are never contextualized, and don't really mean anything if kids can buy any game they want.
     
  20. ghettoastronaut

    ghettoastronaut
    Expand Collapse
    Emotionally Jaded

    Reputation:
    70
    Joined:
    Oct 22, 2009
    Messages:
    4,917
    Don't the jackass movies have the exact same warning? And has that entirely eliminated jackass from ever being considered a bad influence on youth?