Game ratings vrs Morality.

[werepossum]

Unfortunately both parties are moving toward the government-as-mommy model - is John McCain fundamentally any different from the Hildabeast? Both have a disdain for the common man and his judgement and capabilities, both have never seen a problem that government doesn't need to fix, both want amnest for illegals, both want higher taxes... Vote for me I'll keep your taxes slightly lower. No, vote for me, I'll give you slightly more stuff (taken away from other people, of course, since government has nothing it doesn't first take from someone else.)

Hey, that's the beauty of democracy; we get what we deserve. When Reagan was elected we wanted tax relief. We got tax relief, now we want more free stuff. And we don't care who it's taken from.

All candidates have promised to regulate video games "if necessary". Because a majority of the electorate want a nanny state.

Edit: I don't think Dr. Ron Paul did, or would. If that inspires you to join the 6%, congrats.

 

[felltablet]

Why is everyone so nostalgic of the past?
Almost all studies I have seen point to a dramatic drop in violent crime over the century. This is all because more people have access to what they need/want. Other than drugs the modern world has seen an obvious increase in leisure and entertainment. Satiate the masses with whatever opiate you choose.


But where did this idea of a Societal Moral Fabric that must be regulated come from?
The idea that if left to our own devices we our bound to create a society that drowns in chaos.
Government is a regulatory system created by humans for humans. Most of us are not Nihilists, we want there to be a system, but just because you have a BELIEF doesn't mean it should be a law.
Is anyone here from the U.K.?
In regards to the entertainment/gaming industry, what is the national perspective?

---------------Yes I supported Ron Paul but was unable to vote for him (registered Dem).
---------------Utopian ideals that may never get enacted.......but they are still what I ---------------believe we should aim for.

 

[Anarchemitis]

For fear of the [Proven true] 'Garbage in garbage out' I avoid violent video games. I almost exclusivly go on servers that condone swearing and I have yet to play a rated M game for longer than 15 minutes. I hated GTA:SA. Call me a wuss, I don't care. I'd much rather watch The Sting than play Manhunt and get paid for it. Seriously!

 

[felltablet]

For fear of the [Proven true] 'Garbage in garbage out' I avoid violent video games. I almost exclusivly go on servers that condone swearing and I have yet to play a rated M game for longer than 15 minutes. I hated GTA:SA. Call me a wuss, I don't care. I'd much rather watch The Sting than play Manhunt and get paid for it. Seriously!

Bad examples,
Especially when weigh them against a classic (If you are talking about the movie with Redford).
San Andres was ridiculously disjointed and Manhunt, in my opinion, is simply a poor excuse for a game.
Go play Black Isle RPG's

 

[Girlysprite]

well I'm all for better laws to keep minors (I mean esp. those under 12 then) from buying M rated games. If no one does anything with it, the ratings loose a bit of their strength.

 

[Lightbulb]

At the end of the day a 10 year old shouldn't be able to buy/play a game thats rated M for Mature or whatever you call them over in the USA. We have 12, 15, 18 and thats the age you have to be. I assume M is 18?

Why should you legislate to protect children? Because if parents aren't doing it someone should.

A legally binding age limit for games will not affect anyone - expect people playing games that the state judges as too mature for them.

 

[Kikosemmek]

Man, I remember my childhood quite clearly.

Video games became my main hobby shortly after my discovery of them, and not too long after I turned 8 or 9, I'd been blasting all sorts of enemies away with games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3d, and Duke Nukem 3d. I was never told by my parents that video games are different from reality, even when the graphics improved and their likeness to reality intensified (later on, with Red Alert, Diablo, Half-Life, Soldier of Fortune, Max Payne...). I didn't need to be told, and my behavior showed this to my parents. They didn't take me for a fool. I'd attribute this to no divine intervention, but to the workings of a mind similar to any other's.

If we have to tell our kids that there is a difference between a monitor's projection and eye-sight then we might as well tell them that if they jump up in the air, they will drop back down. I think they already know, and I think it is more damaging to a child to be treated like a half-wit who is not to be trusted to be responsible for one's own actions. Perhaps if we let the kids know that they are trusted with their own judgment they will simply judge as we would? They aren't all that different from adults, you know. All children lack is knowledge. Ignorance is no grounds to imply a lack of intelligence. Tell them, and they'll remember and decide on their own. I don't think young age makes you intellectually impaired. I don't ever recall simply turning smarter with age. I merely learned more facts about the world to help me negotiate things better.

Why, in these wise and benevolent debates of ours about the purity of our children's minds, do we never ask children for their opinions? We might learn something- that they are, after all, human beings with working minds.

I enjoy violence in games, literature, movies, and many other forms of art. I always have, and I always will. I have never considered killing somebody. What a miracle...

 

[Haliwali]

I assume M is 18

M=17 in the States

Now, speaking as a minor at 16, I've made my opinions VERY clear. Since middle school (maybe even elementary) every chance I could I made it clear that video games never had an effect on my behavior. I've written several papers for my classes on the subject, with credible evidence to back it up. In the US, Crime is at the lowest it's been in 50 YEARS! And more kids now play games than ever before. So that's why I hate hearing about "violent youth" and "crime waves."

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a hooker in my trunk who I need to show a good time with a knife...

 

[Count_de_Monet]

If you're disconnected enough from reality to assume a video game is a good moral barometer then you're going to be a screwed up adult no matter which video games you play as a child. Video games are entertainment just like movies are entertainment and I have encountered few, if any, people who think that what they do in games or see in movies is morally acceptable. I don't care how young or old you are as long as you don't have the kind of requisite mental handicap which allows you to think it's ok to pick up hookers and chop them into little bits video games and movies will not harm your mental state.

I have no idea how young I was but when I got the PS1 it came with a Spawn game (as in the comic book character). In said game you could tear off someone's arm and beat them to death with it and neither myself nor my brother grew up thinking that it was ok to tear someone's arm off and kill them with it...

Most people's minds are fairly set in stone by the time they reach an age where they are physically capable of handling a keyboard or controller. Even if your understanding of specifics changes over time your general moral sense is instilled in you from a very young age and it's very difficult to spontaneously change those beliefs. I'd even go so far as to say that by the time your parents are telling you to share, not to hit other children, and to be polite it's too late to effect your general mental state.

 

[Cooper42]

Hilary Clinton' comments aren't about doubting parental ability. She clearly thinks all parents are capable of keeping Adult-only DVDs away from them, else she'd be fighting the need for control over all forms of electronic media?

It seems they're a mix of
a) Lack of knowledge about video games - the assumption that they are only for kids, and that kids easily play adult-rated ones.
b) A nice sound bite which feeds well into general popular fears over video games (which come from said lack of knowledge)

 

[Dectilon]

"Any child that goes out and injures another did it of their own means, not because some game told them to."

That depends on how young they are. They might not do it again after seeing the effect in real life (throwing a stone at someone for example), but before that, sure. I do think small children might very well try to mimic game and TV-characters. Putting some kind of legislation in the way however, would probably only make things worse. Children would still find and play violent games and watch violent movies (for the reasons Yathzee stated more or less) while creativity in games would be hurt considerably.

 

[LisaB1138]

What's your opinion of Mass Effect? if you're kids are old enough to play it that is.

My kids really don't have any interest in RPGs. I take that back, my 13 year old does, but not the big MMORPG. He's happy with Runequest, but his interest waxes and wanes with his friends interest.

I myself have never played the game, but I did some quick and dirty research on Wiki. Are you thinking of how one picks "morality" for the character? This really isn't a concern for two reasons: One--ethical alliances have been around since D&D when you had to be in the same room with people to have a game. It's not some new threat. Two--it's ROLE PLAYING. Once chooses one's characteristics in part to "make an interesting game." I mean, if everyone had to be good, it'd be a yawner. Someone has to throw a little spice in.

I would probably save a game like that for 16+ (barring lots sexual content) due to complex nature and the amount of time MMORPGs take. No 13 year old should spend that amount of time playing a game.

And that brings up another point: playing video games instead of other things. There actually are physical reasons why folks shouldn't play video games for hours on end. It really is physically addictive. So it seems to me, if the government is going to save our children *cough* there should be some regulation in the amount of time children are allowed to play them.

 

[EzraPound]

Censorship is ridiculous. In the whole of human history, not a single society has become any more depraved because of its intake of 'immoral art'. Death and violence are recurring themes in every medium - from the Greek tragedies to the early paintings of Christian martyrs to the Japanese poetic tradition - why are video games SO damaging towards society? They're not. If anything, they're constructive. But combine America's neo-Puritanical need to censor in every instance with the discrimination games endure as an art form because they're new (Shakespeare was censored; jazz was censored) and the result is the insipid political banter that unfurls far too often inside the US Congress.

Get rid of the ESRB, it's a waste of money. Let kids buy GTA III. None of these things matter - if a country has problems, the politicians shouldn't blame them on the artists (and I assure you, saying Doom corrupts youth is as superflous as saying Marilyn Manson caused Columbine) but should instead REFORM the facets of government which cause social deprivation - i.e, the U.S. tax system, the U.S. lack of federal healthcare, the U.S.'s perpetration of a military culture, etc.

EDIT: The 'addiction' factor is a moot point, too. In a nation such as the United States (god bless it for its vices), where the average television intake is perversely high, it seems ironic to criticize video games when statistics show that most gamers play them only occassionally after they cross the threshold of age twenty. And if science is now beginning to demonstrate that video games improve improve problem solving skills, who cares anyway? What the hell is the importance of playing chess or soccer? These are just throwbacks to older values, not examples of things that in actuality are better for you (though occassional exercise is a neccessity).

 

[werepossum]

There was a recent study "proving" that teenagers can't tell the difference between reality and a video game. Now, certainly if your game engine is good enough you could make a cut scene indistinguishable from a film of a real event. But if the teenager loads the game into his or her computer or console, I think only the very screwed up would fail to make that distinction. Personally, if a kid can't tell the difference between murdering an actual person and killing yet another short-bus AI Nazi with a well-aimed mouse click, by all means let's keep him playing a video game rather than running around in the real world killing homeless men and torturing animals. Or for that matter, watching Saw II for the fortieth time.

Now, as to whether the people who do these studies can tell the difference between reality and a video game, I think that's still an unresolved question.

 

[ComradeJim270]

To be honest, I think it's naive and irresponsible to go to either extreme. Saying that violent video games will not do things like increase aggression, cause desensitization to violence, etc. is foolish, but it's also ridiculous to think that they will turn healthy people into killers, or even that they would have that effect on unhealthy people without other contributing factors.

 

[propertyofcobra]

Violent videogames do not in themselves desensitize against violence. That today's youth, whenever mommy watches the news, gets a daily dose of CIA torturing people because they have funny last names and worship a different aspect of god, people worshipping said aspect killing themselves and generally rows upon rows of faces of American soldiers who were killed in duty, as well as loving close-ups of accidents at home completely unrelated to the war.
THAT causes desensitization to violence.

I firmly believe that FEWER people on earth engage in physical violence because of videogames. If you can siphon your anger into turning human-sized human-looking targets into tiny gibs with ridiculous firepower instead of go and punch the guy who made you pissed in the face...well, that's one punch in the face that videogames averted.
Don't tell me nobody aside me has ever played a REAAAAAL violent game to let some agression out (God of War was great for this, ripping the skulls off of Medusas and tearing the spines of undead troopers apart like nothing helps immesurable when you're pissed off), instead of doing more classic things like punch the wall/inflatable clown/mean guy who called you a tosser.

 

[ComradeJim270]

Violent videogames do not in themselves desensitize against violence. That today's youth, whenever mommy watches the news, gets a daily dose of CIA torturing people because they have funny last names and worship a different aspect of god, people worshipping said aspect killing themselves and generally rows upon rows of faces of American soldiers who were killed in duty, as well as loving close-ups of accidents at home completely unrelated to the war.
THAT causes desensitization to violence.

I firmly believe that FEWER people on earth engage in physical violence because of videogames. If you can siphon your anger into turning human-sized human-looking targets into tiny gibs with ridiculous firepower instead of go and punch the guy who made you pissed in the face...well, that's one punch in the face that videogames averted.
Don't tell me nobody aside me has ever played a REAAAAAL violent game to let some agression out (God of War was great for this, ripping the skulls off of Medusas and tearing the spines of undead troopers apart like nothing helps immesurable when you're pissed off), instead of doing more classic things like punch the wall/inflatable clown/mean guy who called you a tosser.

I think they do desensitize against violence, but the thing people fail to realize is that being desensitized to something doesn't neccessarily increase the likelihood of doing it.

 

[Minhef]

Pff as soon as my kids can hold a spade it's out in the fields with 'em.

 

[Copter400]

Apparently Obama is meant to be pretty tech savvy.

I'm fourteen, which makes me one of the youngest people on the site, and while I play violent video games day in and day out, I recoil at the very idea of a violent movie. I think that makes me sane.

 

[entropy3ko]

To blame it all on Video Games, comics, movies or books (well for the few who read...) is just a way to create a 'scapegoat' instead of looking at the real problems.

If a kid viciously kills a playmate the way he saw in a game or movie, it seems to me that there are other factors involved. The game or movie might 'inspire' the way to commit a crime, but the reason that a person commits such crime is rooted elsewhere and the crime would have occured even if the youngster played Hello Kitty Adventures.

On the other hand people, and especially young people, are impressionable. To really accuse a game to lead to crime and violence is certainly excessive, but to say that a game that shows violence (o murder, or bad role models, etc) is totally innocent and has no effect on someone's psyche is also nonsense.

Ok Shooters like Medal of honor might at best inspire the kid to go to the army when he's older (and he's an idiot), are yes violent, but I doubt they can really lead someone to crime at all.
On the other hand games like Manhunt, or GTA, that give positive feedback at anti-social and violent behaviour, wellthat is another story.

Of course the game alone is not the cause of a future crime, yet many young people (and, alas, also adults) cannot always tell what is right and wrong and it is up to the parents to guide a child the right way. If a kid is well educated by his/her parents then the game will not lead to bludgeoning murder in the future. If the parents are 'fuckbags' (as some parents are) then the violence in the game is the least concern. The game might inspire future violence but the blame is elsewhere altogether.

I think it is wrong to ban a game, and useless to, since you can probably still get it anyway. It's like pretend to ban porn or prostitution. In many countries they are illegal, yet the business for both is thriving.

It is the parents job to educate a child and monitor what they do and how they are growing up, and this does not only concern the video games they play. Perhaps that is one of the last worries a parent might have...