Banning Violent Games Tops Conservative's To Do List

[Thyunda]

The things in GTA exist in real life. Guns kill. Drugs are harmful. People are dangerous. There is no advantage to 'protecting' children from this kind of thing. I would far rather my children grow up with games like GTA to give some warning about what life can be like. I think you'd agree, that you'd rather sit down and let them play GTA, after telling them that what's fun in the game, is fatal in real life.
I'd rather let them simulate life like that in a videogame than learn that guns kill from experience.

First off, I just want to say that I don't think GTA is very good model of the real world especially for a child (similar to how I don't think Scarface would be either). That's not to say I think a child should only be exposed to sugar and candy and unicorns, just that running over pedestrians on a sidewalk or killing hundreds of police officers or picking up prostitutes and choosing sexual acts or beating people with dildos isn't exactly a pure example of the world. The real world should be lived, not watched or played or read. Media is escape not a giant lesson machine.
I wouldn't want to expose a child to guns or drugs or sex before a child could handle and I believe most children can't (I'm not against letting say a 14 year old play a mature game like GTA, but anything younger is territory I wouldn't enter). That's exactly why I mentioned games that can be fun and teach something real to children under 14. There aren't real lessons to take from GTA, especially any lessons that can't be taught in another game with a T rating that will just as easily teach a child that guns can kill people (of course that as a lesson is pretty easy to teach a child with any media).
A child who learns what sex is from a video game is a child who would have no understanding of sex. Video games do not treat sex maturely enough to really show sex as what it is (at least not most games). Same goes for sex from movies or television or books (although books tend to get the closest in all aspects).

As a note: 14 isn't a magic number, just a generalization. Age would depend entirely on the child.
My entire point is that any child old enough to understand a lot of what happens, but not old enough to handle adult situations (ages 7-14 in my opinion, someone who could say understand what a bad touch is without understanding how molestation can affect a victim for the rest of the victim's life) isn't a good fit for GTA or any adult series. Although the definition of adult series isn't entirely dictated by rating (some M games, like Mortal Kombat, aren't all that serious with how they are portrayed so I don't see that as mattering as much. I let my niece and nephew play Mortal Kombat and they're both 8 while their 2 year old sister watches, that's more comically exaggerated than anything).

Example of what I mean: A girl goes through puberty and believes she's sexually ready. Until she has sex, gets pregnant and her boyfriend dumps her. This can be remedied by telling her to use a condom if she wants to have sex, but if she doesn't understand the consequences or just isn't mature enough to care about them (this is a problem with a lot of teens, they know pregnancy and STDs can happen, but they just don't care or don't believe it will happen to them), she isn't ready for sex.
Same goes for exposure to sex, drugs, guns, murder, etc. A child can understand these, but a lot of children can't deal with them properly as they just aren't mature enough.

The thing you miss is I'm not saying leave a kid in a room alone with GTA. It will need properly explaining and introducing. Now I avoid running over pedestrians in the game. I just don't see point to it. Of course, kids will find it hilarious. But those kids tend to notice a huge difference between the virtual puppets onscreen and people outside. Kids that have violent behaviour linked with videogames are in fact just little bastards with lenient parents.
Let me give you examples of these kids that are supposedly damaged by videogames. I always got bullied by these obnoxious little twats. And when I was young, videogames weren't quite as mainstream. There were arcade games. Consoles were limited to the Sega Megadrive and such. Nobody my age owned one. These kids were still malicious little shits.
My little brother is going through the same. But the big difference is his bully played GTA. Now that's the cause of the violence.

No, it really isn't. Violent videogames are completely unrelated. Mature videogames are the same. As long as you teach the kid it's not real, and as long as they don't go repeating it - that's easily solved. Just tell the kid to never speak of it to anybody. They tend to listen to that.
Don't let the neighbour's kids play them. Your child is your responsibility. Let him play them. No issues at all. There is absolutely no harm that can possibly be done by letting a kid play a mature game.

 

[lovest harding]

The things in GTA exist in real life. Guns kill. Drugs are harmful. People are dangerous. There is no advantage to 'protecting' children from this kind of thing. I would far rather my children grow up with games like GTA to give some warning about what life can be like. I think you'd agree, that you'd rather sit down and let them play GTA, after telling them that what's fun in the game, is fatal in real life.
I'd rather let them simulate life like that in a videogame than learn that guns kill from experience.

First off, I just want to say that I don't think GTA is very good model of the real world especially for a child (similar to how I don't think Scarface would be either). That's not to say I think a child should only be exposed to sugar and candy and unicorns, just that running over pedestrians on a sidewalk or killing hundreds of police officers or picking up prostitutes and choosing sexual acts or beating people with dildos isn't exactly a pure example of the world. The real world should be lived, not watched or played or read. Media is escape not a giant lesson machine.
I wouldn't want to expose a child to guns or drugs or sex before a child could handle and I believe most children can't (I'm not against letting say a 14 year old play a mature game like GTA, but anything younger is territory I wouldn't enter). That's exactly why I mentioned games that can be fun and teach something real to children under 14. There aren't real lessons to take from GTA, especially any lessons that can't be taught in another game with a T rating that will just as easily teach a child that guns can kill people (of course that as a lesson is pretty easy to teach a child with any media).
A child who learns what sex is from a video game is a child who would have no understanding of sex. Video games do not treat sex maturely enough to really show sex as what it is (at least not most games). Same goes for sex from movies or television or books (although books tend to get the closest in all aspects).

As a note: 14 isn't a magic number, just a generalization. Age would depend entirely on the child.
My entire point is that any child old enough to understand a lot of what happens, but not old enough to handle adult situations (ages 7-14 in my opinion, someone who could say understand what a bad touch is without understanding how molestation can affect a victim for the rest of the victim's life) isn't a good fit for GTA or any adult series. Although the definition of adult series isn't entirely dictated by rating (some M games, like Mortal Kombat, aren't all that serious with how they are portrayed so I don't see that as mattering as much. I let my niece and nephew play Mortal Kombat and they're both 8 while their 2 year old sister watches, that's more comically exaggerated than anything).

Example of what I mean: A girl goes through puberty and believes she's sexually ready. Until she has sex, gets pregnant and her boyfriend dumps her. This can be remedied by telling her to use a condom if she wants to have sex, but if she doesn't understand the consequences or just isn't mature enough to care about them (this is a problem with a lot of teens, they know pregnancy and STDs can happen, but they just don't care or don't believe it will happen to them), she isn't ready for sex.
Same goes for exposure to sex, drugs, guns, murder, etc. A child can understand these, but a lot of children can't deal with them properly as they just aren't mature enough.

The thing you miss is I'm not saying leave a kid in a room alone with GTA. It will need properly explaining and introducing. Now I avoid running over pedestrians in the game. I just don't see point to it. Of course, kids will find it hilarious. But those kids tend to notice a huge difference between the virtual puppets onscreen and people outside. Kids that have violent behaviour linked with videogames are in fact just little bastards with lenient parents.
Let me give you examples of these kids that are supposedly damaged by videogames. I always got bullied by these obnoxious little twats. And when I was young, videogames weren't quite as mainstream. There were arcade games. Consoles were limited to the Sega Megadrive and such. Nobody my age owned one. These kids were still malicious little shits.
My little brother is going through the same. But the big difference is his bully played GTA. Now that's the cause of the violence.

No, it really isn't. Violent videogames are completely unrelated. Mature videogames are the same. As long as you teach the kid it's not real, and as long as they don't go repeating it - that's easily solved. Just tell the kid to never speak of it to anybody. They tend to listen to that.
Don't let the neighbour's kids play them. Your child is your responsibility. Let him play them. No issues at all. There is absolutely no harm that can possibly be done by letting a kid play a mature game.

That wasn't my point. My point was simply that GTA doesn't come close to a clear picture of the real world, ergo it will not teach a child what the real world is. And I certainly am NOT saying violent video games damage children (in fact, I said I let my sister's children play Mortal Kombat, a game that their mother owns and lets them play, at age 8). I am NOT saying violent video games make children kill people. >>

My point in all of what I said, wasn't about GTA being violent. It's the idea that GTA encompasses a lot of adult content all together. A lot of adult content that most children cannot handle emotionally and psychologically.

 

[gabe12301]

In about 15 years we wont have to worry about this crap anymore.

 

[RN7]

That "..without parental consent..." part is the kicker. Sure, it may keep a Call of Duty and God of War out of the hands of a few kids, but young kids that don't need to be playing the games rarely, if ever, have the means/motivations to get the games themselves. Parent-buyers are in the majority. Even if such a ban was constituted, it would change little. Parents would still buy children the "harmful" videogames, then turn back around, and blame the videogame

 

[Stevepinto3]

As far as I know, the only atheists who were stripped of their Eagle honors in the US were those who were atheist when they obtained their Eagle badge, which would mean they were tacitly lying to maintain their membership, which requires faith in the United States.

So I'm good then I guess. Maybe. I was probably borderline agnostic/deist when I got my Eagle Rank. I never thought too much about it really, but now I'm just agnostic atheist.

On a related note, I hate the fact that there have to be about a million ways to say you don't necessarily believe in a God and if you pick the wrong wording people automatically assume you're either a prick or an idiot.

 

[WOPR]

*snip*

Let me put this in terms even a republican can understand

THERE ARE NO BAD GAMES CORRUPTING SOCIETY
ONLY BAD PARENTS THAT EITHER HAVE POOR JUDGMENT OR DON'T KNOW THEIR ABC'S ENOUGH TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN E AND AN M

Solution: Stop blaming the games and start telling parents to do their job

and yes I will drop the next parent that says "Oh he's just playing; Timmy that's a no-no" to their kid after I got kicked in the nuts by a 4 year old yelling "MORTAL KOMBAT!"

 

[DirgeNovak]

Here are some Phyllis Schlafly quotes, just for fun:

"Gender is envisioned as a hierarchal ordering with God and Christ at the top, followed by men, and then women".
"It is ludicrous to suggest that [other jobs] are more self-fulfilling than the daily duties of a wife and mother in the home."
"The very idea of women serving in military combat is so unnatural that it almost sounds like a death wish for our species."
"By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape."

The old fart is obviously batshit crazy. Does anyone even still listen to her?

and yes I will drop the next parent that says "Oh he's just playing; Timmy that's a no-no" to their kid after I got kicked in the nuts by a 4 year old yelling "MORTAL KOMBAT!"

Please tell me that didn't really happen to you.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

I hope you realize that this was first instilled by Liberal mothers in California...

 

[UberNoodle]

Fine in concept, as long as games are treated no different than other media. Stores don't go selling Hostel or Cannibal Apocalypse to minors do they? Oh wait, the conservatives are old enough to have forgotten their parents' fear of film. The new devil is the Video Game on the Computer accessing the Internet and playing the Hard rock music!

The devils of the modern conservative world:

Satyrical books -> minor keyed classical music -> comic books -> cars -> still comic books -> rock and roll -> movies -> hard rock and metal -> television -> still comic books -> tabletop role playing games -> video games -> still all that music and comic books -> the Internet -> still all that music, comics and games -> Everything.

 

[UberNoodle]

Videogames: "There shall be no sale, rental or arcade-playing of extremely violent videogames by children without parental consent." Explanation: Videogames are increasingly graphic and harmful.

What's wrong with that? Violent games can't be sold to children without parental consent in England and it works fine, stop making a fuss >.<

Learn the basics of the American justice system before commenting in such a manner mate. Had tons of these posts during the Schwarzenegger vs EMA debate as well, really, research a bit before you post.

That wasn't very helpful. Is that an American thing too? Why didn't you just tell him the basic gist of the Constitutional rights pertaining to the topic, instead of coming off like a puffed up, gatekeeper d****.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

I don't see a problem, you already can't sell M rated "violent" videogames to kids without parents buying it for them.

Yet parents buy it and the kids play it. It just doesn't happen in the stores, you know the kids play it anyway.

Irresponsible soccermom-ing should be illegal. THAT would clean up the world by several large increments.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

I'm talking about the Boy Scouts of America, which is the only Scouting organization relevant to this topic, since the conservative representative in question is an American representative, and obviously has no jurisdiction over the UK, or any other sovereign nation.

No, i get that it's only for America. But that's the thing, it shocked me because this seems like an arbitrary addition. The Boy Scouts of America IS an accredited part of the World Organization of the Scout Movement. and that organization has absolutely no rules about religion. So the fact that America does, for it's scouts, seems bizzare to me. and can i say again without emphasis, it seems antithetical to the scout message "as a whole" which the American scouts HAVE to follow regardless of their autonomous stature.

So you're saying no one could be atheist before they join scouting, or before they get their Eagle badge? That's a pretty limited world view. I know plenty of atheists who were atheists their entire lives, or converted before they turned 18. In fact, people are born atheist. Religion is a learned behavior. A child has to be taught religion: he doesn't understand Christianity, for instance, simply by instinct.

Okay you misunderstood me there: Yes, Humans are born without faith; and then assimilate into the faith and culture of their parents and society. I sense that you're saying "without faith" is the same thing as Atheism. If that's true, then I'm sorry, but you're kind of wrong. Atheism IS a belief system, a religion, if not a "state recognized one". It's the belief that "There is no Higher power.end of discussion." I'm also assuming that you're lumping Agnostics into the same bin, which i believe is wrong, but whatever, that's not the point of this discussion. The ones who you refer to when you say

It would be silly to say all atheists are converts: plenty of atheists simply never went to church, as they had an atheist upbringing.

I would say that people who grow up never going to church; are just more likely to choose Atheism in their later life. Is it a must? I'd be hard-pressed to believe that. It ALL depends on experience; what you see, what you hear. If your experience tells you there is a God, then you become a Theist. If it tells you otherwise then you become an Atheist. simple as that in my books. Although, I'll admit that Family plays a big part in it as well, in that, if the parents are atheist, they'll probably guide the child into atheism. but the child can still break out of it and become a theist, just like how a christian child can "lose faith in God." I've seen the former happen. It's not even uncommon. Lots of ahteist children switch over to benefit from the surety and "warmth" of organized religion.

As far as I know, the only atheists who were stripped of their Eagle honors in the US were those who were atheist when they obtained their Eagle badge, which would mean they were tacitly lying to maintain their membership, which requires faith in the United States.

As far as i can see, the key words there are tacitly lying. Let me explain: so a child grew up an atheist, never really buying into God NOT because he has experience to tell him otherwise, but because he doesn't....really care. So he never tells anyone about it, and joins the scouts to have some fun and learn new stuff like camping and hiking.
When asked if he believes in God, he just says "yes" not to crate a hustle. yes, he is lying. he is "sinning" or whatever..... but A) he is harming ABSOLUTELY NOBODY with his lie and B) He's only doing it so that he can have fun, be around friends and learn new things. Is there any better example for the Epitome of "white lie". And can you honestly look me in the eye (metaphorically speaking) and tell me that this boy doesn't deserve to have fun, make friends and learn things SOLELY because he doesn't care enough about his faith to make any solid commitments?

In conclusion, School and Scouting are two of many ways that children can learn. Neither should be religion specific. It is narrow-minded, and inhibits freedom of thought. It forces kids to lie, which, you can say is their fault......but it really isn't. They wouldn't tacitly lie if they didn't have to in the first place. it creates within them a fear of segregation which btw isn't supposed t happen in America in the first place. So i believe that the way old white men run the Boy Scouts of America (don't pretend) is wrong.
If that offends you, then i apologize profusely....but this is my opinion and it stands.

 

[acosn]

I don't see a problem, you already can't sell M rated "violent" videogames to kids without parents buying it for them.

Yet parents buy it and the kids play it. It just doesn't happen in the stores, you know the kids play it anyway.

Irresponsible soccermom-ing should be illegal. THAT would clean up the world by several large increments.

Right. Which brings us to the age old issue that there's no standard for what makes a good parent. Oh, sure, there's a lot on what makes a bad parent, but generally people tend to forget how they themselves acted as a kid.

No, your kid doesn't want you to buy GTA for him so that he can play the racing part of it, and only that.

Alright, I'm going to nip this in the bud here: ONE CRAZY ***** DOES NOT REPRESENT ALL OF CONSERVATISM. STOP DOING THAT ESCAPIST.

I just came from Teamliquid where evidently all Texans are crazy because we don't like a fairly abusive new statute the EPA is trying to cram down our throats, I've had enough of political misrepresentation and ignorance today.

Probably because the term doesn't mean anything, and I'd wager that if you really pick someone's brains on their politics you will find something about their opinions that is very liberal, and if you kept digging you'd find some pretty conservative sentiments.



And the OP actually means very little. It's another attempt from those who don't play video games, never have, and probably never will to regulate it. And before anyone has to ask why that's a problem think about who writes laws, and who decides they're fair? Right- people with vast reserves of knowledge on the subject. Senators and congressmen might push the laws but it's someone who went through law school to actually do that very job who writes the laws, and its other experts in the field who decide if it's constitutional.


Letting someone completely outside the field try and tailor laws for video games is like letting Larry, that one guy you met in the bar last Friday, onto the Supreme Court. When this same idea put similar laws into motion for the comic industry it crippled it for years after the McCarthy era and it didn't adequately recover till the 80's.

 

[MaVeN1337]

Okay... So she's a Conservative Anti-Feminist.

The fuck is she doing in politics?

Found that weird, since from her stance it seems she'd like to see women in the kitchen rather than doing anything else other than cooking or taking care of kids.

(Sorry if I offend anyone, just pointing out something I found odd)

Because power hungry Fuck-nuts like her inject themselves into places they shouldn't be in an attempt to feel a little self worth, Even though the only people who care about there opinions have no valid understanding of what's actually good or bad for everyone.

 

[jboking]

Call me a terrible gamer, but I slowly care less and less about this sort of thing. It's so god damn impossible to properly enforce without banning the entire market (which, given that it is one of the biggest markets in the US, will never happen) that I really can't see any legislation about this stopping parents from buying games for their kids if the parents are...I don't know, good parents who have raised their kids well enough to tell the difference between video games and reality.

Then there is the advent of digital distribution that throws another wrench in this issue. How easy is it for a kid to set up an account with a DD system under their parent's name and then get permission to buy games that way? Pretty easy.

Of course, maybe I don't care much just because I'm not a minor anymore.

 

[toastmaster2k8]

They MIGHT have bought the headset with the $50 allowance their spoiled little brat ass gets every week, but they didn't buy the game himself.

You dame straight, some of the kids I have around here get 100 dollar allowances then get 30$ for mowing the "Huge" lawn once.

 

[SamHughes]

oh, hooray, a political conversation. I COME HERE TO GET AWAY FROM THAT SHIT.

 

[JWRosser]

Tsk silly Conservatives. They're going the right way about making us youths angry, eh?

 

[spartandude]

i actually dont have a problem with limiting the sale of violent games with out parental consent, quite frankly i think thats the way it should be, it would also show that parents are the problem here and not the games