Topic: Are Videogames Too Violent?

[Lelygax]

I think censoring things is a lazy way to adress a problem, educating the parents that they need to read the ratings before letting their kids watch or play something is the way to go. If some kid see it without a parent permission it only shows in the majority of the cases (not all) that the parents are relying more on censorship than educating their sons of what they can and cannot do without asking first, IMO (this means "in my opinion" right? I dont want to do as the others users without having sure that I know what this abreviation means lol).

[Pfil]

I completely agree with you Lelygax.

[Lelygax]

Thanks. ^^
Also, HOW my respect have changed from 184 to 211 in less than 2 hours? lol
Thanks for that whoever did that, someone knows from where these new +1 have come? It changed in a glimpse.

[Lone Wolf]

Are video games too violent? Or movies for that matter? I don't think so because they are a reflection of our world which is far more violent then any form of media could ever be. To see something on a screen is one thing, to experience it in real life would be a heart-stopper. If parents, governments, etc. complain these things are too violent then they shouldn't buy 'em. And if they still persist in getting rid of them then drag their sorry, ignorant asses out to the middle of a war zone and give them a taste of reality. Games and movies aren't as bad as they make them out to be. It is the reality that is far worse. I'd rather see violence on the screen rather then in real life.

Yes, that's a reason why you shouldn't waste your time worried about something that doesn't even come out of the screen and affects you. Unless you're brainless enough to just do whatever the videogames characters do in there, out of the screen. Maybe some liittle children could do it, IF that's the case, but doesn't mean they're crazy, still they're not so conscious of what they were doing. STILL dangerous, though... So a little bit of care is never too much, i guess.

[Abnormal Freak]

I dunno about the rest of you fools, but I was blasting away Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D when it came out in '92 when I was only six years old. :p And I've nary thrown even a punch at someone. (Save for that one time my brother and I got real mad at each other over stupid BS.) Then again, I grew up in a household where my parents actually cared about me and taught me right from wrong, and if I got a whuppin' it was only because they expected better out of me, not because I wasn't doing exactly what they wanted me to and wanted to throw a power trip.

'Course, that doesn't mean my dad wasn't wary of certain games. :p He always had trouble accepting the ones where you shoot/kill people. Turok 2 he was a little more forgiving of considering it's humanoid dinos, but he still disapproved of a young kid playing games with all this bloodshed but he never outright said not to play them.

So I dunno. I know it's a tired discussion, but I don't think violence in media affects or influences people in the real world. Some may add, "Unless they're mentally ill, that is." Well, not even... Sometimes you just have sociopaths who just don't give a fudge about their fellow human beings, but it's not as if a video game filled with sunshine and rainbows is gonna make such a person any less of a scumbag. One need look no further than Chris-chan for an example.

[Ratty]

What I would censor every time is games that promote crime, like GTA. Fantasy violence is one thing, that doesn't bother me a lot, though sometimes it's borderline with bad taste or even exceeds that line. But real violence is really disturbing, and letting it in the hands of younger gamers is not a good idea. They should grow up playing Mario, not GTA (in my opinion).

Yeah but what a kid grows up seeing is up to the parents, it's their responsibility to monitor what their kids see. It has to be. Can you imagine what chaos would reign if just the strong believers of different religions tried to decide what all children should be taught and exposed to? It's the parents responsibility, to this end we have the ESRB to quickly and easily give shopping parents an idea of what is in the game and if it is appropriate for their kids. Though a game like "Grand Theft Auto", which is named after a felony, should speak for itself anyway. The argument of it's interactivity being more dangerous is not new, when film first came out similar arguments were made for it's censorship just because photo realism in motion wasn't like anything that had been seen before and that scared some people.

But there haven't been any studies, at least not reliable, objectively funded ones I've heard of, that show a positive link in video games and an increased tendency to violence. All that has been shown is a short burst of increased aggression, which is probably brought about primarily by the competitive nature of the game (the strive to win that's as much a part of Tetris as Call of Duty) rather than any violence within it.

As for whether impressionable or mentally unstable kids should consume violent media, of course they shouldn't. But again that's the responsibility of the parents. Should we ban all over the counter sugar sales so the parents of kids with diabetes don't have to watch what snacks they get ahold of as much?

So I dunno. I know it's a tired discussion, but I don't think violence in media affects or influences people in the real world. Some may add, "Unless they're mentally ill, that is." Well, not even... Sometimes you just have sociopaths who just don't give a fudge about their fellow human beings, but it's not as if a video game filled with sunshine and rainbows is gonna make such a person any less of a scumbag. One need look no further than Chris-chan for an example.

I dunno how bad a person Chris-Chan is, he's certainly a very troubled individual with mental health issues raised by very backward people. But because of those preconditions I'm not sure I would call him a "scumbag". But I would agree that video games certainly don't seem to have caused his problems, and I don't think it's very likely he would have wound up much different without them.

[X]

Can you imagine what chaos would reign if just the strong believers of different religions tried to decide what all children should be taught and exposed to?

This has already happened with the Catholic church. That's why it's called the Dark ages (Medieval age).

[Ratty]

This has already happened with the Catholic church. That's why it's called the Dark ages (Medieval age).

That was just one church. I'm talking about if it was everyone's responsibility to judge what every child should see as they grew up, do you think the fundamentalist Hindu would agree with the fundamentalist Christian would agree with the fundamentalist Muslim would agree with the fundamentalist Jane would agree with the fundamentalist Jew? Obviously not, it would be total chaos trying to get those people to agree on the essential life lessons and perspectives. (And that's just one example.) For this reason we have to leave the judgement of what is appropriate or inappropriate entertainment and teachings for a child to their parents.

This sometimes means that kids who shouldn't get exposed to bad teachings/media by lousy parents, and even that they get indoctrinated into horrible racist or otherwise bigoted beliefs. (Like all the kids at the Westboro Baptist Church for example.) But it also helps minimize the ability of one group of adults to to dictate what all children and by extension all adults can or should have the freedom to see, discuss or question.

[Lone Wolf]

...do you think the fundamentalist Hindu would agree with the fundamentalist Christian would agree with the fundamentalist Muslim would agree with the fundamentalist Jane would agree with the fundamentalist Jew?

Whoa, so many agreements...

[Ratty]

Whoa, so many agreements...

Or rather, so many arguments.

[Mooning Freddy]

I'm talking about if it was everyone's responsibility to judge what every child should see as they grew up, do you think the fundamentalist Hindu would agree with the fundamentalist Christian would agree with the fundamentalist Muslim would agree with the fundamentalist Jane would agree with the fundamentalist Jew? Obviously not, it would be total chaos trying to get those people to agree on the essential life lessons and perspectives.

If you study thoroughly the moral-political foundations of the three monotheistic religions you'd find that the core values are quite similar, and I believe all or most of those theologies borrowed ideas from neo-platonism. That's why it's often called "Judeo-Christian values". The reason the religions fought each other for so long is because they were all like "screw you my religion is best God said I was the chosen one herp derp".
In Israel there is a great rage and hatred among the liberal community towards the so-called Haredi Ultra-Orthodox community because one of their core philosophies is rejection of modern values. What it means is that they refuse to study non-religious (correction: non-Jewish) subjects like history and geography and often even mathematics. People who decide to leave the community are absolutely ignorant and have no tools whatsoever to get a proper job and becoming productive members of society. What's most absurd is that unlike in the USA, many members of the community do not work at all and depend on government funding. Once people start protesting against them being basically leeches of the system, they give put excuses like "we are defending the nation by studying Torah" which is something you really can't argue with, but that's a situation which libertarians simply could not accept.
 

[Ratty]

If you study thoroughly the moral-political foundations of the three monotheistic religions you'd find that the core values are quite similar, and I believe all or most of those theologies borrowed ideas from neo-platonism. That's why it's often called "Judeo-Christian values". The reason the religions fought each other for so long is because they were all like "screw you my religion is best God said I was the chosen one herp derp".

But that's still just 3 religions. And the moderates and fundamentalists within those Abrahamic religions don't even agree about a lot of basic things that bear heavily on life, like the role of science. For example most moderate Christians are fine accepting evolution as a scientific fact crucial to understanding biology and modern medicine, and viewing the story of Adam and Eve as an allegory or at least not the whole story of creation. While this position is unacceptable to fundamentalist Christians who maintain that either every word of the Bible (usually the King James translation of the Bible in particular) is literally true or none of it is and therefore life automatically has no meaning.

So you would have difficulty even getting moderates and fundamentalists of the same religion to agree on an important issue in child rearing here (the role and importance of objective knowledge and secular learning) and that's not even getting into the whole sticky issue of denominations and their varying teachings.

they give put excuses like "we are defending the nation by studying Torah" which is something you really can't argue with

I could, but then I am not an Israeli.

[Lone Wolf]

Or rather, so many arguments.

Yeah, i just.. Noticed that.. lol

[Inccubus]

To all the haters that blames video games for violence: How do you explain the countries that have the same or worse violence in media, but lower rates of violent crime? Case closed.

[Kale]

To all the haters that blames video games for violence: How do you explain the countries that have the same or worse violence in media, but lower rates of violent crime? Case closed.

Logic, those people have none.