All the World's Wrongs: Games At Fault!

[randombs]

I don't know which Home Alones you watched but in my ones, the guys who robbed a bunch of houses experienced negative consequences for their actions. And, while burglary in and of itself isn't necessarily violent, Harry had a gun in the second one and threatened to kill Kevin before all the swift retribution took place.

So nerrr.

[fishbowlhead]

For f**k sake not this tired old b******s again.

[Sketcz]

So from what I've read, Trump has invited the National Rifle Association, the group which advocates gun ownership and is the real "evil" which is preventing stricter gun laws, and has invited them to discuss violent videogames, which he blames the school shootings on.

My prediction:
Trump will appoint the NRA to govern videogames and their content. Cue all games games having an evangelical redneck bent to them!

[charlesr]

Anyone seen that craziness with the US church blessing people's assault rifles?
Religion and money need to go away as soon as possible. Human's can't be trusted.

[fishbowlhead]

Anyone seen that craziness with the US church blessing people's assault rifles?
Religion and money need to go away as soon as possible. Human's can't be trusted.

With litterally anything at all.

[gunrock]

I was certainly influenced by TV and cinema when I grew up in the 70s (an era prior to common access to videogames in the working class neighbourhoods I lived in). I threw pretend grenades )or water bombs in summer!) and shot cap-guns in endless Cowboys & Indians and WWII street games. I may have punched other kids on occasion when a re-nenactment of The Six Million Dollar Man got out of hand. I jumped off the top a 10 foot high climbing frame onto a grass embankment believing I was Spiderman and I bruised and bashed my cocyx, my shins and god knows what else, numerous times flying off of home-made ramps on my Raleigh Chopper thinking I was Evel Knievel or Eddie Kidd.

So, I have to wonder what kids, aged 5-14 who have access to GTA, COD, Battlefield etc. make of it all. That's not even thinking about all the misogynistic, racist and homophobic drivel that gets spouted from headsets in online "communities" around the globe and how that informs the under-age kids playing, who have parents who ignore age ratings and buy it for them 'cos it's "only a game".

I have no problem with violent video games (I love to let loose on Hitman or GTA to get the frustration out!) but believe that adult content should be only available to young-adults and up.

[QualityChimp]

Anyone seen that craziness with the US church blessing people's assault rifles?
Religion and money need to go away as soon as possible. Human's can't be trusted.

Agreed that those actions are crazy, but I feel blaming all religion is as productive as blaming all video games.
Plenty of good is done in the name of religion, so I don't think you are helping this specific debate.

The issue at hand is whether violent videogames and films adversely affect those who watch them.

Personally, I believe they do. Companies wouldn't advertise if things people see didn't influence them.

Do we need X-RAY replays of headshots in Sniper Elite, for example? I'm sure there are things we could do without.

However, the frustration here is the shifting of blame to anything other than the proliferation of weapons, especially military-grade weapons in America.

Chaz, you posted that Twitter picture that illustrated if two toddlers are hitting each other with sticks, you don't start by assessing what they've been watching and being influenced by, you take the sticks off them.

It's interesting that there is at least some movement, especially from America's teens, against assault weapons.

Chris Rock had a great solution in 1999 to stop mass shootings and it's not gun control...

[charlesr]

Having a conversation with my son about this. He's wondering how to decide which games are ok to play above his age rating. He reckons he would be ok most violent stuff, but Just Cause 3 and BF4 online (not the campaign) has been the limit of his experience. He's not seen all the nasty stuff in Deadly Premonition for example, which I'm sure would revolt him. Even I had dreams about the ending.

So I was thinking Gears of War - it's an 18, but wasn't that bad as far as I remember. I looked it up - er yeah, the whole chainsawing people in the chest thing and the marines swear a lot. My memory of game's suitability is definitely not honed!

[gunrock]

[MENTION=25]charlesr[/MENTION]: how old is the lad?

My daughter who is 14, asked if she could play GTAV as she had watched some funny youtube vids (ones where people try to drive safely and within the law). I said ok, so long as we played together and started a new game. She was shocked at the opening scenes and the language used by Trevor but had some fun just driving around. She accidently ran over a pregnant woman and didn't want to play any more. She asked me to load up my save game and check how many innocent kills I had and (as I was only 7% in) only had a few. However, she was shocked (as Michael) to receive a call from a stripper called Infernus. Akward conversation to be had then and there.... :/

[QualityChimp]

I'm pretty strict with what my son watches and plays, so you may find Common Sense Media a bit stuffy, but it's a great start for an overview of a game's (or film's) content to help you make a decision:

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/game-reviews

[QualityChimp]

I've said before that GTAV would be amazing if there was a kid mode.

No swearing (including the radio), you can't kill pedestrians (like Driver/Stuntman) and a few other tweaks would make it loads of fun exploring the map, playing the minigames and mooching around.

I'm guessing Lego Undercover does all of that?

[gunrock]

yeah, she likes Lego City Undercover (me as well) but the driving is a bit slow and at 14 she's looking a bit wider in what she wants to play.

Living in Denmark where everyone is super-relaxed about age ratings (the teacher lets them watch 18-rated horror movies in their free-period), it's a bit of a minefield and she's very respectful of the rules we have (hence she asks if she can watch certain movies or series on Netflix), but I reckon her school friends think I'm a crazy dictator from the 20th century!

[QualityChimp]

We've been over this ourselves before.
I remember dataDave saying he'd show his kids most things as he enjoyed watching RoboCop as a kid with no side effects.

However, we've all got stories of supposedly kid-friendly stories that scared the hell out of us that we still remember now: The disfigured wrestler in Dramarama; Artax the horse drowning in The Neverending Story and that bloody woman getting sucked into the computer in Superman III.

I love films and can't wait to share that passion with my son, but I was happy to watch Wreck-it Ralph with him today, rather than subjecting a 6 y/o to Aliens or something.

[gunrock]

[MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION]: my daughter and her friend asked for a good horror to watch so I let them watch "John Carpenters: The Thing"! As soon as the dog turned out a bit alien(!!), they switched off!

[Dogg Thang]

You’re right, QC. And you simply can’t say there were no effects without a control to test, maybe a twin who didn’t watch the same things. Well you can say it but you’d be wrong. One of the things with all the studies over the years is that a lot of them looked for very specific things. For example, I remember one looking to see if watching media outside our age group made us stronger (the ‘life is hard’ or ‘they teach us our demons can be killed’ idea) - they did not find this to be the case. One looking to see whether shielding us from media would make us weaker, the thinking being that we would then be overwhelmed by more adult media or the world - the opposite was found. Those who stayed with age appropriate media were better able to handle things like stress. Can’t remember what the speculation was there but I’d guess it was related to what happens when kids (and adults) watch too much dark or violent media (including the news): mean world syndrome. Basically we greatly overestimate how dangerous the world is, how much of a threat others are, and so it can make people fearful, defensive, twitchy or more prone to ‘strike first’ violence. Whereas I guess those who are brought up with more age-appropriate media are less fearful and so more confident - although admittedly that’s my own interpretation because I can’t remember the end of that study.

It’s actually a really interesting area and there has been a lot shown over and over again. I think I recommended it here before but there is a book from about a decade ago that collects the results of more than 50 years of kids and TV. A lot of it is applicable to gaming and other media. It’s here: https://www.amazon.com/Children-Tele...ision+research

Also if you’re curious about that end of things and the positive side, there is a similar book about Sesame Street research called G is for Growing. Both books are written by academics and are very dry and not written to be entertaining but the actual content is interesting.

Edit: Scrolling back through the thread a few years, I realise I am repeating myself. I am now an old man who says the same things many times. That’s what I have become. It’s the fault of the media and especially Ozzy.