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Well, I live in a country where violence in games is met with extreme skepticism. Particularly the conservative party lobbies against "killergames" such as Gears of War, Dead Rising, and the flagship example CounterStrike. Gears of War isn't sold in Germany because it was denied a rating, Dead Rising is actually banned (brutally killing hordes of people, despite being already dead, is a no no here), and CounterStrike regularly gets misrepresented in the media to stoke the outrage of concerned parents. Last year, conservative members of the government and the then Minister of the interior, now Prime Minister, of the state of Bavaria considered a blanket ban of "killergames," which would have meant the end of the world to Crytek, which is based in Frankfurt am Main.

From what I've seen and read, the vast majority of gamers that play such demonized games aren't violent. I don't doubt the politicians advocating bans know this, since I doubt they'd be so brave as to piss off a group of people that would actually engage in massacre's out of revenge. Games like that can serve as a catalyst for violent behavior and fuel a desire to find out what it would be like in real life. But they can also serve as a socializing factor to a community of like minded people.

Then again, there's also experiments like America's Army, which was meant as part PR, part recruitment tool for the US Military. I hear it worked rather well, though I never really felt the urge to join up after playing it.

phact0rri wrote:there was an article a few years ago in a videogame magazine I read about, desenstizing one with videogame violence. The guy was commenting on when you see someone shot in real life. not matter how many skulls you've smashed in the virtual world, still doesn't come close to seeing the real thing.

Most gamer nerds playing their manhunt2 would still pee themselves if they saw a guy being gutted in front of them.

Well of course. In a game *splat* you shoot a guy in the face a few pixels shoot out.

But in REAL life? The gun just goes BANG the guy gets a little hole in his head, then suddenly WHAM we have an exit would the size of a baseball. Little chunks of skull and brain matter flying out, along with a nice couple of pints of blood. You have the smell, the look, everything.

The first kill in History of Violence? Where you zoom in on the guy's face after he was shot in the back of the head? I was in the cinema with a couple of hardcore gamers, and I dont think there was ANYONE in the theatre who didn't go "Jesus fuck what the HELL IS THAT!?"

At the end of the day, real life is just more graphic.

Out of some kind of idiotic morbid curiosity, I decided one day to look up a video of Budd Dwyer's suicide.

For those of you not familiar, Dwyer was a politician who was accused of accepting bribes. After it all became a rather nasty mess (as these things sometimes do, of course), he called a public conference, read a speech protesting his innocence, pulled out a pistol, and shot himself in the mouth on live television.

I do not suggest watching it, and I'd almost rather I hadn't myself. Nothing I've seen in any movie or vidgame or anything else - even the most violent of the violent, with blood spraying everywhere - really compares.

And this is coming from a guy who grew up in the country, shooting and skinning all sorts of animals. The most violent of vidgames doesn't match up with even that relatively mundane bit of violence.

*shudders* Oh man, that video was something

Kwill brings up an interesting point I think. Germany is a prime example of a country that bans certain games. I'm not sure why Germany does it exactly, but sometimes as far as different cultures go it might be more justified.

I agree again that real life will always be more... real. And I think that's a point of Jim's too. The hunting thing.

All the negative vibe-merchants talk about violent entertainment desensitizes people towards real violence, of course, but it's my own personal experience that the opposite is the real truth. I've actually personally slit and pulled the skin back from a dead deer's chest, cut open its belly, and yanked all of its guts out. The other day, I sat down and watched the opening scene of Saw IV where they basically do the same thing to a dead human being.

My reaction to the latter after having done the former?

"Wow, cool!"

I really think that if more people had to kill, clean, and cook their own food, they'd have a much more relaxed and reasonable attitude towards violence in entertainment.

Killbert-Robby wrote:*shudders* Oh man, that video was something

Did you watch it before or after I mentioned it? 'Cause if after, I warned ye! I warned ye!

After you mentioned it I thought "Never seen it... gotta see it", THEN I read your warning, but my mind was already set -_-

Yeah, the fun thing about that is they broadcast it live in PA.

Luckily the channel I was watching cut away... other channels weren't so PC.

what others said.

mcDuffies wrote:what others said.

Cheater!

personally, i think the mass media coverage of violence and spectacular murders and serial killers does more to promote a violent mentality than video games or movies.

that being said, i think that there is something wrong when american cinema penalises nudity to a greater extent than violence, when, if the susceptibility of young minds often quoted by the Mothers against everything(hereafter known as mae) is true, then nudity would and sexuality would be far less harmful to developing minds than the heroism made out of violent and bloody characters, whether in movies, stories, or games.

in conclusion, mae sucks.

834n wrote:Kwill brings up an interesting point I think. Germany is a prime example of a country that bans certain games. I'm not sure why Germany does it exactly, but sometimes as far as different cultures go it might be more justified.

The deciding criteria are how realistically are human beings killed and whether the game can be considered glorifying violence. It's somewhat subjective, and has changed a bit over time. The original C&C games don't have infantry in the German versions; they've been replaced with cyborgs. They changed everything from the noise infantry makes when run over (instead of a squishing sound, you hear a can being crushed) to how soldiers look in the cinematics. The newer installments in the series use human infantry.
And not all violent games get banned either. Some receive a "no sales to people under 18" label instead and companies aren't allowed to advertise them. I think there's a higher rating, which means you can't have it on display in the store, and can only sell it to customers that ask for it.

Jim North wrote:

mcDuffies wrote:what others said.

Cheater!

What you mean this isn't a "happy birthday" thread?

I wouldn't let any kid under my care play GTA or even WoW. sorry, until you're at least 12 and I start to see some signs of adult maturity, you're stuck playing with a box in the backyard. (or, y'know, children's games I approve of.) when I was a kid, my parents always sent me to bed when they watched R-rated movies or violent TV like Law and Order. same thing.

these rules about entertainment have always been around, they just gotta adapt with the times and the new forms.

What I think is funny is that GTA is always in the news, but, as an example, in Fallout, right at the start of the game you see a whole family slaughtered : Mother, father, kid. GTA may be violent, but it doesn't do kids. You can become a slave trader, bla di bla di bla loads of evil stuff, but nobody EVER brings that up. Its only the new games which get the flak.

With the exception of DOOM

DOOM is only the best game ever! Demon worship, killing Marines, and in the second one a dude's head on a spike! Excellent!

Killbert-Robby wrote:What I think is funny is that GTA is always in the news, but, as an example, in Fallout, right at the start of the game you see a whole family slaughtered : Mother, father, kid. GTA may be violent, but it doesn't do kids. You can become a slave trader, bla di bla di bla loads of evil stuff, but nobody EVER brings that up. Its only the new games which get the flak.

Actually, in the non-US versions of Fallout, there were many content cuts . . . the most common of which was taking out all of the kids from the game. Even though this actually screwed some of the missions up a tad, the children were all taken out so the players wouldn't be able to kill any of them. 'Course, players are tricky bastards, and somebody eventually made an unofficial patch that put the kids back in.

Anywho, some versions had the violence option set at the lowest level, others had the language filter stuck in the ON position, that sort of thing. Trust me, Fallout got plenty enough flak in its time.

Oh, dear. I predict the debate on game violence is going to pick up again:
Two late teen boys planned a massacre at their school (and were luckily caught before they could do it). Once people find out that they play computer games like most boys their age the game-banning crowd is going to speak up again...

Down Here they've even banned superhero dress up costumes from kindergartens because they incite violence in the kids. But then... Victoria is a nanny state.

Jim North wrote:

Killbert-Robby wrote:What I think is funny is that GTA is always in the news, but, as an example, in Fallout, right at the start of the game you see a whole family slaughtered : Mother, father, kid. GTA may be violent, but it doesn't do kids. You can become a slave trader, bla di bla di bla loads of evil stuff, but nobody EVER brings that up. Its only the new games which get the flak.

Actually, in the non-US versions of Fallout, there were many content cuts . . . the most common of which was taking out all of the kids from the game. Even though this actually screwed some of the missions up a tad, the children were all taken out so the players wouldn't be able to kill any of them. 'Course, players are tricky bastards, and somebody eventually made an unofficial patch that put the kids back in.

Anywho, some versions had the violence option set at the lowest level, others had the language filter stuck in the ON position, that sort of thing. Trust me, Fallout got plenty enough flak in its time.

Thats the thing : In its time. But now-a-days nobody brings it up. I just thought that its interesting that if you're a few years old you're exempt from the violence argument. For example, Postal 2 gets mentions, but Postal 1 seems to have just diappeared. You'd think the Jack Thompsons of this world would be looking for every instance of game violence they could find. People would react a lot stronger to "Child killing" than "Getting your money back from a hooker", or at least I'd think.

Also, about the massacre, they were going in with a crossbow? And they found a plastic bottle and assumed they were going to use it as a silencer? Forgetting the kids probably didnt own subsonic rounds, a bottle doesn't work well, and lasts for, well, one shot. Anyone who plans to kill a horde of people with a crossbow is just ill prepared. Back in my day kids used shotguns and explosives, and they got the job done. I'm not glorifying school shootings here. If anything, I'm saying that these kids saw the news and thought "Ooooh school shooting, look, we can do better, and get more famous!", because ANYONE who plays videogames wouldnt have used that kit-out...