lunavixen said:
~To the people who are trying to bring up the Doom/Resident Evil argument, they are not realistic shooters (well, the early RE games are certainly not), MW and CoD are, you aren't shooting monsters or the undead, you are shooting people, there is a difference (at least in my eyes).
By your own words, the difference is entirely "in your eyes", as it were. Most people will look at a game like Resident Evil or DOOM and see the massive amount of violence going on. If anything, it's kind of worse than games like Call of Duty because of the visual gore. If you want a proper argument about violence in video games, go look at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. First friggin' area you have Bloody Zombies which look like knights and scream loudly in a raging torrent of blood when killed.
That is FAR more disturbing and graphic than shooting a dude in the nuts and watching them writhe about on the ground. Hell, shooting people is quite common in daytime television.
The fact is, my mother likes horror films, and I'd been forced to endure them since as far back as I can remember even though I'm not a huge fan of the genre. If I'd shown her a picture of DOOM, she's have probably been intrigued. My mother is not terribly violent, in fact she startles rather easily to our amusement. I myself am not violent, though I do have a few anger issues which are related to mounting frustration with the economy, my own health, and various other issues.
As has been said, games like DOOM, Goldeneye, and so forth were very helpful in reducing stress by allowing us to vent our frustration. Games like Call of Duty and the modern Resident Evil titles are still largely capable of falling into this. Hell, to go back to the "killing humans" idea, you could rationalize it away as "stopping bad people.." You know, like the police, military, and so forth do.
I think somebody else said it best when they remarked that whether or not a youth should be playing "violent" games is usually up to the parents and the child themselves. My mother knew I'd be fine, my cousin has an innately strong sense of real vs make belief so his mother was fine, too. Plenty of children who are.. well, not news worthy enough to be featured in internet articles all over the US and other countries are probably perfectly capable of handling such games.
I mean, yeah, if Little Billy giggles fiendishly while hacking the tails off of pet mice, he probably shouldn't be playing a CoD game. But then again, he probably shouldn't be anywhere near a blunt/sharp/heavy object period.
