153: Killing Me Softly

[Benjamin Asbury]

Killing Me Softly

"'My son just shot an innocent old lady in the head!'" the blond woman shrieked as she flung the store's only door wide open. It was her second visit to the store that day, although in her previous visit she bore no resemblance to the beast that stood before me now. Where once there was a friendly smile, a well-groomed haircut and a pleasant inflection, there was now a snarling grimace, a tangled mane and a shrill, contemptuous tone. Then came the accusations: I had forced an awful, violent product on her innocent little boy. I was a corruptor of youth. Maybe even a criminal."

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[Melaisis]

Good article; thanks. Although I feel that the end part was simply 'tacked on' for the sake of it; y'know, the whole 'fantasy violence is less realistic than... real violence' sentiment? If anything, I would like to hear more about the retail side of gaming. I'm sure the majority of us have worked in some sort of store environment at some point, but due to the nature of games the dynamics change dramatically. Do you know that, for example, American videogames (region free ones!) cannot be sold in British stores, due to the legalities in the change of rating system? I think there is a novelty in videogame sales which requires a more delicate view on selling products; like the options brought up in the article ('you really shouldn't be playing this...') which makes it far more fascinating when compared to the shop floor in other industries. That may not have been the point of the article, but I still find it interesting.

 

[ccesarano]

When I was working at a GameStop, we had your average 30some year old mother come in looking for games for her thirteen year old son wanted. She stumbled upon Max Payne, don't recall if it was the first or second, and asked about it. We mentioned that it was rated Mature, that it was violent, there was blood, foul language, and we also mentioned it got an M Rating for drug use.

She flipped out. "DRUG USE?! Characters use drugs in this game?!" We hadn't realized what we had just said, since we were just used to giving the often ignored shpiel, and immediately went to correct it. "No, no, it's along the lines of chloroform or sleeping pills. They basically just use a drug to knock the guy out, and it pulls him into a hazy dream world". Unfortunately, the damage was done. She took her son and stormed out "Drugs. No wonder kids are shooting up schools! These games are horrible!"

I don't know how drugs equates to shooting people, but clearly there's a connection, and considering that it was the drug use that sent her overboard, you also clearly can't have one without the other.

What bothers me more is I had gone to Best Buy last week to purchase Ninja Gaiden 2, and they had asked to see my license. I was confused at first before realizing not everyone is 22 and old enough to meet the M-Rating requirements, but it got me wondering. "Out of curiosity," I asked her, "do you also check ID's for R-rated films and music with parental advisory stickers?"

"Nope," she replied, "we're only required to check M-Rated games."

*sigh* You can be 13 and buy Saw 3, but you can't be 13 and buy Halo.

 

[VeritasAequitas]

It's rather amazing that parents can ignore such blatant warnings plastered on the front of a package and continuously screamed in their ears. I believe our generation will be much more aware of the content of the games we let our children play, if only because we will have grown up with them. That said, parents nowadays should certainly be more invested in the things their kids are doing in their spare time.

 

[wadark]

As a former GameStop employee myself I often found myself spouting that spiel about, "this game contains this, this, and this. Are you sure you want to buy this for your 9 year old." Ok, that's not how I worded it, but you get the point. Anyway, the most disturbing response one can get in that situation is: "Yeah, whatever." Which I got more often than is comfortable. Its this complete lack of care in many parents these days. As said in the article, the video games have become this generation's TV, a simple pacifier meant to occupy kids' time so that the parents don't have to deal with them. Unfortunately, as a retail store, we can't just simply refuse to sell the game. even if we get that uninterested "Whatever" from the parents, we can't respond, "Sorry I don't think your child is mature enough for this game, we're not gonna sell it to you." Then the parents start yelling "WHO ARE YOU TO TRY AND RAISE MY CHILD!!" etc. Its funny, then, that when that child does get the bad idea and decides to shoot up his school, the blame goes as thus: first the developer, then the retailer, then the parent (if it ever gets this far). Developer is protected under Free Speech, end of story. And we as the retailer did our job. Why does the parent never catch any scrutiny in this. Why is the one person who is most often most at fault, the one who never gets questioned about it. I don't know, but its annoying and sad. Here's to hoping that the next generation is a little more informed.

 

[Novan Leon]

I would venture to say that the majority of society's issues find their root in bad parenting. To me this is all about being a responsible parent. Instead, what's more likely to happen is some politician will try to play the parent and begin making laws limiting freedom for the rest of us.

 

[Crusnik]

As a former GameStop employee myself I often found myself spouting that spiel about, "this game contains this, this, and this. Are you sure you want to buy this for your 9 year old." Ok, that's not how I worded it, but you get the point. Anyway, the most disturbing response one can get in that situation is: "Yeah, whatever." Which I got more often than is comfortable. Its this complete lack of care in many parents these days. As said in the article, the video games have become this generation's TV, a simple pacifier meant to occupy kids' time so that the parents don't have to deal with them. Unfortunately, as a retail store, we can't just simply refuse to sell the game. even if we get that uninterested "Whatever" from the parents, we can't respond, "Sorry I don't think your child is mature enough for this game, we're not gonna sell it to you." Then the parents start yelling "WHO ARE YOU TO TRY AND RAISE MY CHILD!!" etc. Its funny, then, that when that child does get the bad idea and decides to shoot up his school, the blame goes as thus: first the developer, then the retailer, then the parent (if it ever gets this far). Developer is protected under Free Speech, end of story. And we as the retailer did our job. Why does the parent never catch any scrutiny in this. Why is the one person who is most often most at fault, the one who never gets questioned about it. I don't know, but its annoying and sad. Here's to hoping that the next generation is a little more informed.

Don't stores generally reserve the right to refuse service?

 

[wadark]

Yes, we reserve the right to, but that is typically only enforced if the customer is doing something inappropriate. Making a mess in the store, using inappropriate language, things like that. We can't simply say, "I don't like your parenting style, so I'm not gonna sell you this game." We'd get fired.

It may be written that we can refuse service to anyone, but in practice its not so black and white. When it comes down to it, retail is about making money. And while I noticed from working at GS that they are a corporation that at least seems to do more than usual to take the "high road," at the end of the day, they are still there to make money. And turning away customers of M-rated games simply because they seem completely uninvolved in their child's life is unacceptable.

 

[Crusnik]

Fair enough, although it might solve some issues if parents were required to understand what they're getting for their kids, ie a short test to check understanding.

 

[Beery]

This all screams 'non-issue' to me. I mean the game isn't at fault, the people selling the games aren't at fault. It's the people buying the games that bear the responsibility. That woman has no business complaining that her son shot an innocent old lady. Firstly, no one really got shot. Secondly, the person responsible for the fictitious old lady getting pretend shot is the person who bought a game that everyone who stops for even a second to try to understand the issue knows involves such pretend violence. If anything, the store employees should be the ones complaining to the lady for wasting their time with complaints when the woman's poor parenting is 100% to blame. If she doesn't want her son pretending to shoot old ladies she shouldn't buy him games that allow him to do it.

 

[CanadianWolverine]

This article disgusts me, wadark's post disgusts me.

Despite evidence to the contrary, there are links being made between murder and digital game media.

Yes, its annoying when someone ignores the clearly marked descriptors and then blames someone else for their ignorance but it blatantly perversely wrong to link murder and entertainment the way I am seeing here.

As a parent, I'm disgusted at the lack of responsibility that is being taken here against pervading bull shit like movies/music/books/comics/games/the devil made him/her do it. Seriously, STFU already, unless you plan on actually admitting people young or old are responsible for their own actions and the consequences of those actions.

Shoot up a school? Murder simulator? Grr... Get real, its a game, not military boot camp with live fire exercises... If you want to blame anything for violence in children, look to the parents to turn a bind eye. That splinter in someone else's eye seems pretty fucking small compared to the plank in your own.

 

[wadark]

This article disgusts me, wadark's post disgusts me.

Despite evidence to the contrary, there are links being made between murder and digital game media.

Yes, its annoying when someone ignores the clearly marked descriptors and then blames someone else for their ignorance but it blatantly perversely wrong to link murder and entertainment the way I am seeing here.

As a parent, I'm disgusted at the lack of responsibility that is being taken here against pervading bull shit like movies/music/books/comics/games/the devil made him/her do it. Seriously, STFU already, unless you plan on actually admitting people young or old are responsible for their own actions and the consequences of those actions.

Shoot up a school? Murder simulator? Grr... Get real, its a game, not military boot camp with live fire exercises... If you want to blame anything for violence in children, look to the parents to turn a bind eye. That splinter in someone else's eye seems pretty fucking small compared to the plank in your own.

Woah, woah, woah...you're setting foot on a totally different issue here...

No one is blaming the games...geez, I'll be the first to cry foul when people like Jack Thompson start scapegoating the video game industry. You're commenting on the wrong issue here. This isn't a discussion of whether violent videogames cause real violence. Its simply a discussion of who's at fault when a violent video game ends up in a child's game console. Whether that child commits real violence is irrelevant to this discussion.

All we're trying to say is that this woman raising hell about her child killing in a video game is way out of line because it was her fault in the end, that he ended up with it at all. You're fighting the wrong people here, my friend, we're all on your side.

You are correct, links are being drawn unfairly between acts of violence and video games. But you can't deny that the columbine shooters played violent video games, that's common fact. My usage of words in saying that the kid who played a violent video game shot up a school wasn't meant to draw a link between them. It was simply meant to give a context to show where the blame always gets place. Obviously the shooter draws some serious fault, but after that, the developers get scrutinized, then the retailers. No one ever looks at what part the parent plyed.

 

[Novan Leon]

People who are entertained by violent or criminal lifestyles generally don't have as much of a disgust for these things (real or not) as those who aren't entertained by it. The more you indulge yourself in entertainment filled with violent or criminal behavior, the more acquainted you become with such acts and the less repulsed you are by them. In extreme cases some individuals have or develop little or no disgust for such acts. These people that don't have the "limiter" that most people have (ie. a conscience) or have that "limiter" removed by way of mental illness tend to be the ones taking part in the really terrible acts of violence like columbine. I don't think anyone could say that video games or movies or music can cause someone to do anything, but I think these things can play the role in a larger picture showing the lifestyle of an individual who is enamored by violence and crime. You have to understand, we can't draw generalizations in this case. Violent forms of entertainment are merely one of many possible signs that an individual is obsessing over something that isn't healthy.

The same example could be said for the gangster lifestyle. If people are attracted-to and entertained-by the gangster lifestyle, the more likely they are to emulate various facets of that lifestyle. They may do this by dressing gangster, speaking gangster, playing gangster games and watching gangster movies. Most people have a conscience that keeps them from performing violent acts, but the more they expose themselves to those kinds of lifestyles, the more they dumb down their conscience, and the more likely they are to take part in a drive by shooting without feeling the disgust for it like most of us would.

I guess the moral of the story is, you can learn a lot about someone by observing what they're attracted to and entertained by.

 

[CanadianWolverine]

Don't tell me what to take issue with in this article, casual links between this generation's media pariah and murder just infuriate me to no end.

That said, I already stated that I agree with the issue that those deliberately stay ignorant of violence, real or imagined, then blame others for their ignorance is very infuriating as well.

Want another common fact? Most teenagers play video games that have some degree of conflict and violence, yet we don't see them committing violent acts on the level of murder. Heck, even with degree of error and sample sizes, sources of statistics of violent crime divided by age groups, such as Statistics Canada (not sure what it is in the states or other countries) have been showing a drop in violent crimes for teens and young adults since the advent of video games in the 1980s! ("In comparison, the overall violent crime rate in Canada declined 4% between 1997 and 2006." - http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080516/d080516a.htm)

Well, we are looking, and I for one intend not to be one of those ignorant parents, which shouldn't be too hard since I am a passionate gamer myself. But casually linking real violence and games does not help anything, least of all the sad memories of school shootings.

 

[Arcadia2000]

To say that video games don't have *anything* to do with violence today means nothing to the kinds of people that play the 7 degrees of separation game. Even a nobody from suburban midwest America like me can get to Kevin Bacon in 8 steps. But I'm of the opinion that violent games are a symptom, not a cause, of violent behavior and the acceptance of violent behavior. The world is a bigger place than it used to be. We keep saying that the world is getting smaller, but in many ways it is getting bigger, and both directions of growth are due to technological advances. It's easier to get lost in a world where the fundamental shift in ethics and values is only increasing, not decreasing. America has been changing radically ever since its creation as a country, and was changing quickly even before that. Even the physical boundaries haven't been stable for a century yet; we've kept on growing for quite a while. The way we eat, sleep, and even breathe is being questioned on a daily basis; even the basics are under fire. With a shift in thinking from the community to the self, you stop having a way to regulate behavior. The "What's good for me isn't good for you, and what's good for you isn't good for me," kind of thinking is what destroys what we value. Individuality is what we praise and conformity is what we demonize, but what we want really is for others to conform to what we think is the good and right way to live.
Violence sells; everyone knows that. You could argue about what it says that we scream and rage about sex and drugs, but maiming innocent old ladies is more or less okay, in the grand scheme of things... but at that point you're just debating the symptoms, not the problem. The more that we become desensitized to what makes us squirm, the more that it becomes okay to play with it. It's time we stopped thinking only about ourselves. It's not about what your neighbor thinks of you, it's about how you would feel in their place. A great deal of "what's wrong in this country" goes away when we think of others before ourselves. And where do we learn these values? Why, in the home of course... that's where it starts. We need to stop blaming parents and start educating them. You can't fix what you don't know is wrong, and even when you know something's wrong doesn't mean you know how to fix it. My car might clunk when it shifts gears, and I know something's wrong, but that doesn't mean I know how to fix it. Best I can do is take it to someone who might. Someone educated about the problems that cause cars to clunk when it shifts gears. Hypothetically speaking, there might or might not be links to and from video games to violence, but who cares? That's not the problem, and all of us here know it, so why are we arguing about it, again?

 

[wadark]

Don't tell me what to take issue with in this article, casual links between this generation's media pariah and murder just infuriate me to no end.

That said, I already stated that I agree with the issue that those deliberately stay ignorant of violence, real or imagined, then blame others for their ignorance is very infuriating as well.

Want another common fact? Most teenagers play video games that have some degree of conflict and violence, yet we don't see them committing violent acts on the level of murder. Heck, even with degree of error and sample sizes, sources of statistics of violent crime divided by age groups, such as Statistics Canada (not sure what it is in the states or other countries) have been showing a drop in violent crimes for teens and young adults since the advent of video games in the 1980s! ("In comparison, the overall violent crime rate in Canada declined 4% between 1997 and 2006." - http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080516/d080516a.htm)

Well, we are looking, and I for one intend not to be one of those ignorant parents, which shouldn't be too hard since I am a passionate gamer myself. But casually linking real violence and games does not help anything, least of all the sad memories of school shootings.

I still don't understand why you are so upset about the original post and my own. No one ever tried to link violence to playing video games. I don't know where you got that from. Not once, ever, in my post or the article did we try and make that link. From the beginning, this discussion has simply been about parents being upset with retailers when their children end up playing violent games.

I won't presume to tell you what you can and can't take issue with. However, I find it strange that you are speaking of this in a thread devoted to something else entirely. I especially don't like being personally attacked for it.

 

[ReverseEngineered]

I still don't understand why you are so upset about the original post and my own. No one ever tried to link violence to playing video games.

While I won't speak to your post specifically, the original article did imply, perhaps even assume, that violent video games lead to real-life violence. To begin with, they specifically referred to GTA: San Andreas as a "murder simulator" with which the woman's son was going to "cut his teeth". This implies that the game teaches people to murder and that he will be using it to learn how to murder.

That said, it also didn't push the issue much. It focused on parents ignoring warnings, only to be outraged when they actually see it, accusing the retailers as if they tried to sneak it by the parents. The gist of the article was that, even with these safeguards in place, it's up to parents to limit their children's access to these games, with the implication that many parents are too complacent to do so.

So CanadianWolverine, though I share your sentiment that too many people are placing the owness on the otherwise unproven theory that video game violence leads to real-world violence and ignoring the parent's responsibilities, I wouldn't persecute Wadark or the article's author just yet. I don't think they were trying to argue the view that you abhor.

 

[wadark]

"Murder simulator" as a phrase has almost reached the status of inside joke within the gaming community. I don't know the author or anything, but when I read that, it came across to me as merely a sarcastic slam on those actually calling it a murder simulator. He wasn't actually calling GTA:SA a murder simulator, he was being sarcastic...again, that's just what I perceived from reading the article, I suppose its open to interpretation. And, as I said, my reference to shooting up a school was simply a context in which to point out that the responsibility gets placed on developers and retailers before parents.

 

[ccesarano]

Don't tell me what to take issue with in this article, casual links between this generation's media pariah and murder just infuriate me to no end.

That said, I already stated that I agree with the issue that those deliberately stay ignorant of violence, real or imagined, then blame others for their ignorance is very infuriating as well.

Want another common fact? Most teenagers play video games that have some degree of conflict and violence, yet we don't see them committing violent acts on the level of murder. Heck, even with degree of error and sample sizes, sources of statistics of violent crime divided by age groups, such as Statistics Canada (not sure what it is in the states or other countries) have been showing a drop in violent crimes for teens and young adults since the advent of video games in the 1980s! ("In comparison, the overall violent crime rate in Canada declined 4% between 1997 and 2006." - http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080516/d080516a.htm)

Well, we are looking, and I for one intend not to be one of those ignorant parents, which shouldn't be too hard since I am a passionate gamer myself. But casually linking real violence and games does not help anything, least of all the sad memories of school shootings.

The US Government's website has such statistics as well, and it is also a downward slope. I did the check a few years ago just to see, and overall violence is decreasing, despite the media loving to reference "gang violence". Most teen violence in America occurs in cities, and in the rather downtrodden slummy areas at that. But those people are just victims of circumstance, as a million and one movies like that Gangster's Paradise flick portrayed in the 90's. :/

The problem is trying to pinpoint causes for violence to begin with. The first is, honestly, human males do have a propensity for violence. A friend of mine and his brothers were raised without violence. Pretty much no TV but Sesame Street and no stories that portrayed acts of violence. Kids had never seen swords in their lives. They hit around the age of five, look at the kitchen knives at the dinner table, and start fighting each other with them. It is a natural instinct for kids to play fight, just as it is a natural instinct for puppies and kittens to do the same. Our natural instinct is to hunt animals for food, and probably to fight for territory and other very base things.

Of course, our brains are more developed than that of animals, so our instinct doesn't have as much influence as it does over animals, but it is still there. I have no problem with kids getting into fist fights at school, as you can learn a lot by fighting, but unfortunately we are going the way of the complete pessimist. But that's a discussion for another time. The point more or less is, we can rationalize that violence is harmful, and therefore we can cause harm that we shouldn't. However, if you rationalize that other people deserve to be harmed, well, there's a lot that can go into that, and you can pinpoint it to just one thing, be it video games, how a kid was raised, how a kid was jeered in school, or even if they are psychotic. Hell, a kid could be jeered at school simply because they are psychotic, or being made fun of could turn them insane.

The best that can be done, however, is try and minimize the potential causes of problems. A rating system on games should be the ONLY responsibility the games industry has, and they've done an excellent job with it. The next step lies on the parents to teach their kids, and if they do a good job, their kids will recognize the difference between fantasy and reality, and their kid will also recognize that making fun of others isn't right. Of course, they may still lose control and do these things anyway, as they are kids.

*sigh*...see? It's just too damn complicated.

 

[CanadianWolverine]

I still don't understand why you are so upset about the original post and my own. No one ever tried to link violence to playing video games. I don't know where you got that from. Not once, ever, in my post or the article did we try and make that link. From the beginning, this discussion has simply been about parents being upset with retailers when their children end up playing violent games.

I won't presume to tell you what you can and can't take issue with. However, I find it strange that you are speaking of this in a thread devoted to something else entirely. I especially don't like being personally attacked for it.

Not meant as personal attack, thinking of your post, here, let me run through it there again and highlight what was irking me so:

Its funny, then, that when that child does get the bad idea and decides to shoot up his school, the blame goes as thus: first the developer, then the retailer, then the parent (if it ever gets this far).

It seemed implied that the bad idea came from a game, which a parent neglected to make the effort to educate them self about and censor, my apologies if I read it wrong.

And as far as the the article goes:

"Nope. It's for him," she said, smiling at her young son who boiled over with excitement at the thought of cutting his teeth on the newest murder simulator.

Seifert said. "They never stop to think that the pacifier could be the cause of trouble."

The pacifier being cited being games, it pretty much says it blames games as the cause, not just an influence, the cause of the trouble.

Ugh.

So, its not that I have anything personal against any particular poster, I just see red when I see the viral meme 'games = violence' perpetuating itself. I saw it in the article and some posts, perhaps it was wrong to use wadark's post as an example, and I did not explain myself clearly enough but hopefully this post will clear that up some.