The case aginst 'Manhunt'

[Jagos]

"Spare the rod, Spoil the child"

Yes, some children can fear you for geting whipped. But there's a way to do almost everything. Ex. My sister barely gets a belt to the butt. But when she does, she knows why it's being done and what lead up to it. She's smart for an 8 year old. Yes, she plays violent games. But that's not the only thing she does. She loves to play Stepmania and playing games with her other siblings (ie me) like Jet Set Radio.

I don't know if the game was the only one this kid played. Great, he had Manhunt in his collection. But I don't know the whole picture. Just putting a game on view like that seriously slants the story without a full background and history check. Is it just me or are more journalists getting lazy?

Just putting a game on view like that seriously slants the story without a full background and history check. Is it just me or are more journalists getting lazy?

Think about what you said here. It "slants" the story? Really? I don't think a journalist would do such a thing except out of laziness.[/sarcasm]
I think that the "slant" of the story was the entire purpose of the journalist. Maybe his/her boss wanted him/her to make the video game industry look bad. Remember, even those who we gain information from will taint that information for their own purposes.

Also, I think that it would be the lawyers who are trying to "slant" the story here. They are the ones who are performing said lawsuit.

[Sithdarth]

You know I remember hearing about this strange concept called being objective. It was supposed to be something that journalist followed; we all know thats a bunch of crap though.

Yes the games can have an effect on more impressionable children. That doesn't give cause to ban the freaking game because some stupid parents go out and buy it for there 8 year old. There are ratings on those things for a reason. The rest of us should not be punished because a few lazy parents can't keep track of what their kids watch/play.

As for the people saying they see how games can have an effect and then saying it couldn't be the games you simply misinterpert. Games have an effect that doesn't mean they're the root cause. That and there is actually three sides to this debate. Those that blame games, those that admit to some influence, and those that think games don't do anything. The last two positions are so similar it's easy to confuse them as being on the same side. However, this is not really the case and is the source of this percieved inconsistancy. Although, there are a few people that seem to share both views but they are a minorty not the majorty.

[Archbio]

I think saying that videogames are no influence at all is an overcompensation against what is felt to be part of an attack against all representations of violence. The response is illogical because the attack is seen to be as well, why seek to ban games for how they can influence children, since the only thing keeping the already existing restrictions from functionning is a lack of adult responsability?

Videogames would be inciting to violence only if they called or condoned it outside of their fictional confines (like any other representation of violence). Since they don't, it's a matter of how much they can misinterpreted in that way, and not the level of violence that they show, that matters. Oddly, I thought of citing GTA as the worst kind of game, but then I remembered that the gratuitous mayhem in that game only happens through a free choice of the player.

Videogames are an influence, but they aren't an "overriding" influence (and not exceptional), and they should be counterbalanced by a lot of things, including parents, in the case of children.

There's two things I don't buy: citing events where a more or less distinctive method of killing is pulled from fiction and used in real life (just shows a lack of creativity on the killers part: if they were that unbalanced, they might have done it anyway, only in a duller way*), and the famous "this videogame made me do it", which is obviously a very unsincere way of trying to shift the blame. Why would someone that would have let themselves be swayed that much by fiction suddenly become so lucid?

[Speechless]

See, this is what hitmen are good for. Theres no truth behind "Omg the video game made me do it" its all lack of resposiblity and cheap excuses to get in less trouble. Also who stabs and beats there friend for no reason...either he did something that pissed him off like took his girlfriend, otherwise he just snapped and deserves the before mentioned Hitman, or a mental institute.

fixed, mr.english teacher...

[Viper Daimao]

from http://www.techcentralstation.com/072804C.html

Last week, I responded to James Glassman's observation that American teenagers are doing better than they've done in decades by trying to figure out why that might be. Teen pregnancy is down, along with teen crime, drug use, and many other social ills. There's also evidence that teenagers are more serious about life in general, and are more determined to make something worthwhile of their lives. Where just a few years ago the "teenager problem" looked insoluble, it seems well on the road to solving itself. But why?

After that column came out, it occurred to me that I had the answer: Porn and videogames. That's what's making American teens healthier.

It should have been obvious.

After all, one of the great changes in teenagers' social environments over the past decade or so has been far greater exposure to explicit pornography, via the Internet, and violence, via videogames. Where twenty or thirty years ago teenagers had to go to some effort to see pictures of people having sex, now those things are as close as a Google query. (In fact, on the Internet it takes some small effort to avoid such pictures.) Meanwhile videogames have gotten more violent, with efforts to limit their content failing on First Amendment grounds.

But -- despite continued warnings from concerned mothers' groups -- teenagers are less violent, and they're having less sex, notwithstanding the predictions of many concerned people that such exposure would have the opposite effect. More virtual sex and violence would seem to go along with less real sex and violence.

The solution is thus obvious -- we need a massive government program to ensure that no American teenager goes without porn and videogames Let no child be left behind!

Well, no. Not even I'm ready to argue for that kind of legislation, though I suppose that candidates interested in the youth vote might want to give it a thought…

But the real lesson is that complex social problems are, well, complex, and that the law of unintended consequences continues to apply.

When teen crime and pregnancy rates were going up, people looked at things that were going on -- including increased availability of porn and violent imagery -- and concluded that there might be something to that correlation. It turned out that there wasn't. Porn and Duke Nukem took over the land, and yet teenagers became more responsible and less violent.

Maybe the porn, and the videogames, provided catharsis, serving as substitutes for the real thing. Maybe. And maybe there's no connection at all. (Or maybe it's a different one -- research indicates that teenagers, though safer and healthier, are also fatter -- so perhaps the other improvements are the result of teens sitting around looking at porn and videogames until they're too out-of-shape and unattractive for the real thing…) Most likely, the lesson is that -- once again -- correlation isn't causation, despite policy entrepreneurs' efforts to claim otherwise.

But regardless, the fears of the doomsayers were proven wrong. People can continue to claim that psychological research suggests that videogames lead to violence and that porn leads to promiscuity, but in the real world the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. That's an argument against regulating videogames -- and it's an argument for taking other claims of impending social doom with a grain of salt.

And maybe it's an argument for surfing porn and playing shoot'em-up games, too. After all, as the activists say, if it saves just one child, it's worth it…

[MP37a]

Hahaha I can see some parent magazine article now. Porn and violence is good for your children make sure it is easily accessible.

I think the ppl that go out and do something they saw in a movie or videogame had something wrong with them to begin with. It wasn't this videogame that all of the sudden put a crazed rage into the child. They had it to begin with. And let's face some ppl are really stupid also.

[Otaku Son]

What the bloody hell was a child doing playing a M-rated game to begin with?

Originally Posted by Toastburner B

I think the vast, overwhelming majority of people can tell the difference between a bunch of pixels on a screen, and a real person. If a player can't, then he has more serious problems that playing violent video games.

Games rarely use pixels anymore; we've evolved into polygons. And polygons provide a more realistic look to video games than do pixels.

I personally think the parents need to take responsibility for their children, and adults need to take respinsiblity for themselves. If they can't control their own damn actions, that's their fault. People should know whether or not the(y/eir children) are "influenced" or not. But personally, people are probably using this as a way to escape punishment. I wrote a research paper on this subject, too[for that not in the know, I'm (in)famous for writing research papers and later using the material in these debate threads].

Originally Posted by Otaku Son, Mary 4, 2004

Dr. Craig A. Anderson is a professor at the Iowa State University. In his article, “Video Games and Aggressive Behavior,” he divides the video game evolution into three eras: “[t]he first era (1977-1985) was dominated by the Atari console video games,” “[t]he second era (1985-1995) was dominated largely by the Nintendo console games,” and “the third video game era (1995-present).” However, Anderson studies the effects of violence on human behavior.

“Anderson’s work also helped reduce the sentences of two separate juvenile killers who’d played videogames just prior to shooting their playmates to death,” says Noah Robischon(37.) “‘What I was able to do,’ says attorney Ray Jackson, who helped his defendants beat first-degree murder charges, ‘is make the jury believe the first shot was in fact an accident because of the videogames.’”

Not all video games with guns are meant to be violent, either. The popular Metal Gear Solid series and newly-released Splinter Cell games focus on stealth over brute force. As a player of Metal Gear Solid, I know the purpose of the game is to nullify your enemy with tranquilizer darts, not blast their skulls open with the deadliest weapon you have. This is a game which encourages a high score if you don’t kill your enemies, and demotes the score if you do.

Sources

Anderson, Craig. A. “Video Games and Aggressive Behavior.” Kids’ Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America's Children. Eds. D. Ravitch and J.P. Viteritti. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 143-67

Robischon, Noah, et al. “Head Games” Entertainment Weekly 6 Dec. 2002: 36-37

[The Mirror Emperor]

Games only make really crazy or unbelievably stupid people kill people. A couple examples: A kid who stabbed and killed his sister long ago cause of FF7; I think I heard somewhere the D.C snipers (Oct 2002) said they killed so they could free their minds from the Matrix; two kids acting out a Grand Theft Auto scene; some reporter said that a video game had something to do with the Columbine thing; that Halo thing the original poster mentioned; because of lousy parents and lesser school teachings, all that and some more happened. But like I said, crazy or unbelievably stupid people think life is Halo or GTA.

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by JC123

"Spare the rod, Spoil the child"

"Happy will he be that grabs ahold and does dash to pieces your children against the crag of david." That passage is speaking of the illegetimate children of a babylonian whore, but I believe the point stands that perhaps two thousand year old books are not better sources of knowledge for child treatment than, say, modern psychology.

Particularily when you take what you Darkblade said about this generation being the first, or one of the first, to go without the 'rod', as it were, and combine it with the statistics that Viper gave showing that pre-marital sex, murder, etc. etc. are all dropping amongst teenagers. Meaning that, without the rod, the moral fiber of our country is actually strengthening.

And, to say something relatively on-subject, there are some psychologists who believe that violence and pornography in media ARE replacements for the real thing. I've read a few studies done, in which they've found that people who watch more porn, and play more violent videogames are actually less likely, on average, to commit violent or sexual acts. Granted, the studies aren't conclusive, because you can't really get a good control unless you kidnap people and watch them every moment of their life... but they're about as conclusive as you can get.

Besides, it's somewhat common sense. If you've just gotten off, you feel much less inclined to have sex than if you've been pushing back sexual feelings for years... same goes for violent feelings. You release them in a video game instead of bottling them up until you beat the crap out of someone for bumping into you when you're having a bad day.