Games Make Me Rape, Kill, and Steal

[tjbyrum1]

I am about ****ed off with all this nonsense I keep hearing.

So when I was a child, we received our Sega plus Sonic 2, and a horde of other games. From there, my gaming collection grew, and we loved the games. Now, though I am not yet old enough for games M+ Rated, I play them anyway. My family doesn't care, what's a bunch of guns, sex, and violence going to do to me?

Not a damn thing.

In fact, I can go to my XBOX 360, turn it on and have sex with a women right now. Or I can even take a machine gun, put it up to a fat guy's head and blow his brains out. I can also take a chainsaw and chainsaw a Locust in half. I could stab someone in the face with a hidden blade, then shoot through him and kill the person behind him.

If I did not own sports game, every game I own would be rated M. Everyday I am exposed to guns, violence, sex, swearing, death, murder, and more. Everything in a rated M game, I have seen.

Here's a list if you want to know of some of my games:

AC Brotherhood
CoD 4
CoD Black Ops
UFC 2010
UFC 2009
Gears of War 2
GTA IV + GTA TLaD + GTA TBoGT
Red Dead Redemption
(more)

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So, I am sure every single one of you, this being a Fable Forum, have a Rated M game - if not more than Fable.

Well, I have a serious question here:

Have you ever thought about raping, murdering, or stealing a car because of these games?

Cause I swear it seems like everyone I know believes that I will one day shoot a guy in the face with a gun, steal his car then bang 50 hookers.

It's like saying I'm satanic for listening to rock music.

 

[Arseface]

It's just bullshit mindlessly spewed out by the right wing fascists as an excuse for censoring material which they consider to be immoral.

I wish all these Morality police would do us a big favour and KEEP OUT OF OUR ****. It's one thing if you don't want to play a game because you think it's immoral, that's your choice, and no one's forcing you to. Even if you want to raise your kids that way, thats fine by me. But when you start pushing your inane beliefs and values on the rest of society, then you're just being a massive dick.

I think raising your child around guns is much more psychologically damaging that raising them around games which depict guns.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

no... in fact it does desensitize you to violence. what does that mean? it means that seeing extreme gore and violence will have a lesser effect on you than someone else.

some people consider that to be a bad thing... whether or not it actually makes you commit violent actions, i tend to doubt.

i heard a quote that i can't remember where it was from, but it went something like "Everyone gets crazy thoughts, it takes a crazy person to act on them." that's more or less how i see it. exposing a crazy person to violent video games is a bad idea.

 

[Arseface]

no... in fact it does desensitize you to violence. what does that mean? it means that seeing extreme gore and violence will have a lesser effect on you than someone else.

some people consider that to be a bad thing... whether or not it actually makes you commit violent actions, i tend to doubt.

i heard a quote that i can't remember where it was from, but it went something like "Everyone gets crazy thoughts, it takes a crazy person to act on them." that's more or less how i see it. exposing a crazy person to violent video games is a bad idea.

But no more of a bad idea than it is to expose them to a crazy book.

 

[Tsuyu]

no... in fact it does desensitize you to violence. what does that mean? it means that seeing extreme gore and violence will have a lesser effect on you than someone else.

That it should somehow desensitize you to violence is the most successful bullshit theory spread by the anti-gaming nutjobs. I'd wager it is one of those things most people accept as truth whilst there is no actual proof of it.

Any sane human being can tell the difference between fiction and reality and the fact that violence in games is fictional and has no ties to actual violence apart from the imagery. Shooting someone in the head in a game is so much different than shooting someone in the head in reality. It is a sterile experience, clicking the mouse/pushing a controller trigger lacks any emotion you'd get if you did so in real life.

If I took a class hostage and started to systematically execute the people there, the gamers would be equally horrified and scared at the sight of their dead class mates as their non-gamer counterparts. Also, if gamers did indeed become desensitized wouldn't the military capitalize on it? No, they don't. That's because violent video games doesn't make you Rambo.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

That it should somehow desensitize you to violence is the most successful bullshit theory spread by the anti-gaming nutjobs. I'd wager it is one of those things most people accept as truth whilst there is no actual proof of it.

Any sane human being can tell the difference between fiction and reality and the fact that violence in games is fictional and has no ties to actual violence apart from the imagery. Shooting someone in the head in a game is so much different than shooting someone in the head in reality. It is a sterile experience, clicking the mouse/pushing a controller trigger lacks any emotion you'd get if you did so in real life.

If I took a class hostage and started to systematically execute the people there, the gamers would be equally horrified and scared at the sight of their dead class mates as their non-gamer counterparts. Also, if gamers did indeed become desensitized wouldn't the military capitalize on it? No, they don't. That's because violent video games doesn't make you Rambo.

i wasn't saying that they gave you some kind of superhuman ability to not react negatively to seeing your peers murdered. i'd validate it in simple difference of generation. i look at my dad and i see a guy who would probably lose sleep if he sat through half of the films i've watched, and he's completely and utterly disgusted when he see's what i do in my video games.

i think it's irrefutable that it at least desensitizes you to virtual violence (since as you said it's hard to simulate the real thing with no emotional ties), which leaves the question, does being desensitized to virtual gore and violence affect how you might regard the real thing?

look at natural disasters and casualties, how bad do they make you feel really?
sure, they're terrible. i do what i can to help and if i think about it i feel bad. but there's no emotional attachment. do you know what my reaction would be if i found out that Vesuvius erupted again (which it may pretty soon) and claimed the lives of the surrounding towns?
in all honesty, i would feel nothing. i've never been to Italy, i don't know anyone who knows anyone who lives there. the only thing that would evoke sympathy would be a graphic news report designed to.

unless you're going to say that 50 years ago that was still typical thinking, i'd logically conclude that video games, television, movies, all of it has made drastic changes on our society.
(by our society, i mean any country with access to those things.)

 

[Tsuyu]

i wasn't saying that they gave you some kind of superhuman ability to not react negatively to seeing your peers murdered. i'd validate it in simple difference of generation. i look at my dad and i see a guy who would probably lose sleep if he sat through half of the films i've watched, and he's completely and utterly disgusted when he see's what i do in my video games.

Of course you are desensitized to virtual violence, but that's irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not it desensitizes you towards actual violence. I think it is pretty safe to say it doesn't, the difference in experiencing the real deal is so vastly more powerful.

look at natural disasters and casualties, how bad do they make you feel really?
sure, they're terrible. i do what i can to help and if i think about it i feel bad. but there's no emotional attachment. do you know what my reaction would be if i found out that Vesuvius erupted again (which it may pretty soon) and claimed the lives of the surrounding towns?
in all honesty, i would feel nothing. i've never been to Italy, i don't know anyone who knows anyone who lives there. the only thing that would evoke sympathy would be a graphic news report designed to.

How is that relevant to this discussion? It is a well-known journalising phenomenon that the further away geographically(and culturally) the location of an event is, the more it loses the interest of the reader. Which is why natural disasters in Asia, which is geographically far away, as well as the violence in the middle east, which is culturally "far away", has a relatively low impact on us. It has nothing to do with desensitizing towards violence; if these events took place in your back yard they'd matter to you.

 

[Firis]

Well, I have never wanted to rape anyone BECAUSE of a video game....

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

Of course you are desensitized to virtual violence, but that's irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not it desensitizes you towards actual violence. I think it is pretty safe to say it doesn't, the difference in experiencing the real deal is so vastly more powerful.

no, the relevant discussion is whether it desensitizes you to violence. period. the only thing i see unresolved here is whether or not being so exposed to it affects your mind and transcends the virtual reality in ways, and i would say "how could it not?". i think it affects your reactions to real world scenarios where you are not emotionally attached, and i think that it affects the way you think (even if you don't act on your thoughts... since that's what i define as someone who's crazy).

How is that relevant to this discussion? It is a well-known journalising phenomenon that the further away geographically(and culturally) the location of an event is, the more it loses the interest of the reader. Which is why natural disasters in Asia, which is geographically far away, as well as the violence in the middle east, which is culturally "far away", has a relatively low impact on us. It has nothing to do with desensitizing towards violence; if these events took place in your back yard they'd matter to you.

it's relevant because of the entire point of my post. the first and last paragraph. you are desensitized to violence without an emotional attachment, which transcends virtual violence. evidence: generational differences. people who are even just 30 years older than you or i have a much lower tolerance for violence, in my experience at least.

put simply: the use of violence in video games, television, films, etc goes up. this "journalistic phenomenon" as you describe it does as well. i have yet to see the same amount of active resistance to the war in Iraq as Vietnam. people are more apathetic today than they were in the 60's. you can trace this back as far as 1920 for my country because if you go much further than that, we were highly isolationist and excluded from international affairs (aside from our bloody warpath into the philippines and central america).

 

[Drew2686]

Very, very few people are actually desensitized by any form of violence, be it virtual or real. One may tell themself that they are, but in reality they just haven't been put in a situation that would truly test them.

In a long-running psychological survey of active-duty soldiers, results have shown that they are not at all desensitized to the violence; in fact, they are more susceptible to the horrors of violence and war, especially the more times they deploy. So, if real people participating in real combat getting shot by and shooting real bullets aren't desensitized, you haven't a chance.

I think raising your child around guns is much more psychologically damaging that raising them around games which depict guns.

This is also not very true, though I suppose it depends on the upbringing.

Teaching your children firearm safety, how to use it, and all that jazz properly is far more beneficial than dumbass parents "showin' dem dar kids to shoot dur rats and furrrrr..." From a very early age my dad taught me how to handle a firearm, check the safeties, make sure it was empty, always point at ground or sky and never at people, etc etc. Only after I had shown I was ready for the next step did he teach me to load, aim, and fire. Now, I'm a proficient marksman, own three firearms, play oodles of deliciously violent and horrible video games, and have absolutely zero intention of pointing the barrel at anything but an inanimate target on the range. I don't even go hunting! All life is precious to me (well except mosquitos) and I respect the gun and it's associated dangers, yet it's totally satisfying to hit that nickel at 100 yards when I know so many others can't.

Improper training, on the other hand, is a joke and should be made illegal as far as I'm concerned. All gun buyers should go through thorough pyschological examination before any purchase can proceed.

 

[Tsuyu]

Yet all your argument becomes invalid when you point out that virtual violence =/= actual violence, cheezy. The generations of gamers have a clear picture of what is virtual violence and what is real; older generations do not.

Apathy to real-life events do not apply to only events of a violent nature; people just don't give a hoot in general.

 

[ssjcb1186]

I have to agree with Cheez, here. When something happens in real life, we associate it to a similar occurance we have experienced and go from there. This experience being video games. I know I'm particularly apathetic ever since my Grandmother died. I'm actually more squeemish with video games than real life. My friend almost got shot from a robbery and I don't feel anything at all, granted I wasn't there. But that's really close (her place of work is down the street from me.

But, due to my shooting and killing human-like creatures and such in video games, I feel nothing when I hear about someone dying or being killed. I understand how it's supposed to be "sad" but the defense mechanism in me tells me not to cry because it's not worth it.

Tsuyu, you may be correct also. Different people react differently to the same things. However, the majority of people in our generation wouldn't flip out if a war broke out in our back yards.

All of these points are equally irrelevant to each other because they are hypothetical scenarios and no one can say for sure how people would react.

 

[Purple Nurple]

Throw this in the mix - when I saw the images on TV of 9/11 I didn't think it was real, and to be honest for the first 20 minutes I didn't care. Why? Because I've seen that sort of thing hundreds of times in Hollywood movies. I know movies are a vastly differently entertainment medium to games but the principles are still there.

Drew - you said everyone should have a psychological evaluation before allowing them the purchase of firearms. What about videogames? I know there have been cases of people killing other people over video games. There was an American kid that killed his mother because she took his Halo away.

 

[Angel]

Viva Piñata makes me want to beat multicoloured animals to get sweeties.

 

[Drew2686]

But, due to my shooting and killing human-like creatures and such in video games, I feel nothing when I hear about someone dying or being killed

This is a common misconception. It's not at all due to your playing video games, though certain individuals will tell you so. The reason you don't feel sad or anything is because you have no emotional attachment in the first place. Think about it; someone you don't know dies. You go "aww their poor family if they had one" and move right along to talking with your friends again. Society tells you you should be sad when someone dies, but that's just not feasible nor logical when you had no connection in the first place. We as humans are emotional about things that we are connected to, and not for things we are not, it's that simple.

However, the majority of people in our generation wouldn't flip out if a war broke out in our back yards.

I'd bet that they would flip out, actually. War gives cause for concern for anything we care about. While we may not be as caring for/why the combat is in our back yards, we look to keep that which we love safe. This is why so many people flee from warzones; they have no reason to get caught up in it, so they pack up their family and a "few precious things" and move to where there isn't fighting so that their family or whatever they love is safe as can be. I'm sure if some country invaded yours and war material was moving through your yard you wouldn't at all just chill and continue to play games or whatever.

 

[Tsuyu]

This is a common misconception. It's not at all due to your playing video games, though certain individuals will tell you so. The reason you don't feel sad or anything is because you have no emotional attachment in the first place. Think about it; someone you don't know dies. You go "aww their poor family if they had one" and move right along to talking with your friends again. Society tells you you should be sad when someone dies, but that's just not feasible nor logical when you had no connection in the first place. We as humans are emotional about things that we are connected to, and not for things we are not, it's that simple.

Exactly. Refer back to my "journalistic phenomenon".

Drew - you said everyone should have a psychological evaluation before allowing them the purchase of firearms. What about videogames? I know there have been cases of people killing other people over video games. There was an American kid that killed his mother because she took his Halo away.

And how is that video game-based violence? That kid's obviously ****ed in the head, he would've snapped over something else if his Halo wasn't available. It is like the bad rep Marylin Manson got over Columbine; the kids would've snapped one way or another, whether or not they had listened to his music. People are just looking for scapegoats because they refuse to believe people can be inherently evil/****ed up.

 

[Drew2686]

There was an American kid that killed his mother because she took his Halo away.

He wasn't old enough to play it yet; it's rated M for a reason. The game wasn't directly blamed either, but served as a catalyst for the action. The point is that we don't know everything about a case like that. Somebody let him play when they shouldn't, and who's to say how the rest of his upbringing went. The vast majority of people on earth don't behave this way, so in addition to the rest he probably does have something wrong with his brain.

However, the majority of teenagers and such do behave erratically or rashly, which is simply caused by the changes of hormone levels and such. The same reason someone with all a jumble in their brain shouldn't have a firearm applies to certain video games, and that's why they get the rating they do. Our brains don't truly settle down until we're 18-22 or older, so when one considers we're generally allowed to start motoring large chunks of metal and plastic at high speeds when only 16, it's rather terrifying.

Safety first, play second.

when I saw the images on TV of 9/11

I thought two things: wow, this is really happening! That's so cool because we're under attack and something big is going to happen and this is pretty historical! The second was just reflection on how horrible the whole shebang was in every respect. We kinda started ignoring the art teacher when we were able to watch what was going on...she protested at first but we protested louder, as it was more important to us at the time.

 

[HobbeBrain]

After playing GTA 4, I always have the incredibly strong urge to jump out of a car travelling in excess of 120 mph... but apart from that, my young mind has not been polluted by such things.

 

[D3m190d]

Medieval times, those were f****d up. Public executions? What the-?

 

[HobbeBrain]

Medieval times, those were f****d up. Public executions? What the-?

Everyone drank beer.

Srs.