The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games

[Maggi]

Hi All,

anybody else being sick and tired of all those wiseacres that claim violence in video games would actually raise violence in the real world ... have a look here:

http://gr.bolt.com/articles/violence/violence.htm

[Brian Ellis]

It's probably not as cut and dried as that -- either way. This has been discussed before. Can't find the ref as the Search function produces an error.

[Maggi]

of course, there's always at least two sides of it to look at, but still those statistic look pretty unambiguous to me

and the search function produces this error on my end:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 35 bytes) in /home/httpd/vhosts/murc.ws/subdomains/forums/httpdocs/search.php on line 975

[Sasq]

of course, there's always at least two sides of it to look at, but still those statistic look pretty unambiguous to me

and the search function produces this error on my end:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 35 bytes) in /home/httpd/vhosts/murc.ws/subdomains/forums/httpdocs/search.php on line 975

ya see, that error comes from you guys just having too many posts.

[Maggi]

pardon me ?

you gotta be on a kidding-spree ...

[Maggi]

on 2nd sight, I have the exact same post count as Brian ... coincident or server about to implode ?

[Maggi]

phew ... was a coincident ...

[Jammrock]

The guys at Penny Arcade are my hero. They've been having a PR war with Jack "I am the modern ambulance chaser" Thompson. Every time that man replies to an email it's "I'm going to sue you if you don't stop," or something profane. The guys a total ass.

As for the whole violence issue ... this is what happens when people try to fix something they don't understand (namely video games and technology).

Jammrock

[Brian Ellis]

of course, there's always at least two sides of it to look at, but still those statistic look pretty unambiguous to me

If I did a hunt (and I've better things to do, so I won't), I have little doubt I could come up with statistics that "prove" exactly the opposite. There are undoubtedly many countries where rising crime rates in youths correlate exactly with the number of youngsters playing violent video games (I can think of a couple that must be quite close, straight off).

There are far too many confounding factors to be categorical as to cause and effect (e.g., alcohol and controlled substance abuse, police suppression, unemployment, parents' divorce, incorrect reporting etc.). Unless ALL these and many other factors are taken into account, then there can be no way to obtain proper, valid information. This would be a near-impossible feat to give a valid answer. Furthermore, many statistical surveys are selective (bias among the data-gatherers or -givers to say that such-and-such data is valid or invalid, according to which way you want the survey to go.) For example, the police may tend to exaggerate the amount of violence if they seek extra funding, or they may say that the rates are more favourable to show they are doing their job better.

I've modelled too many statistical datasets to know just how easy it is to warp the conclusions, even inadvertently. Just a simple thing like a little skew in a normal distribution curve can be misinterpreted without a mathematical analysis.

[KvHagedorn]

Brian's right. Statistics like that don't mean much. What probably DOES mean something are people's individual strories and how those people might have been affected by specific things. It could be that certain "follower" personality types who are "on the edge" are encouraged in the wrong way by certain influences.

Before the killing, he told a friend he thought it would be "pretty cool" to go on a shooting spree as he had seen in the movie "Natural Born Killers."

http://www.sino.trellisinteractive.com/nfa/chronology.html

I believe movies like NBK and Pulp Fiction are more dangerous than Doom or Quake because real people are depicted, and certain young, unstable people who are looking for role models to follow in pursuit of their own niche of coolness could be misled by such stuff.

[Brian Ellis]

Phannnntastick

Brian's right. Statistics like that don't mean much.

Wow! Note the date, 19 October! We have agreed

[Jessterw]

Unbalanced individuals will always happen upon a trigger. If it wasn't video games or movies or D&D or AC/DC or *gasp* Elvis swinging his hips, then it would be something else. We see increase in the report incidents due to several factors, including: rises in population densities, more effective and persistent global communications, social changes unrelated to the aforementioned triggers, and the simple ease of placing blame where it's popular. This is ignoring all the other environmental conditions that have a play in shaping the mind and later instigating a potentially homicidal person.

Yes, there is sometimes too much violence in video games, at least of gratuitous nature. And there are some themes present that do much to undermine civic responsibilities. However, this violence and these themes are present in many other aspects of our various cultures and societies, and there are many more people that take them in stride rather then go off the deep end, so to speak.

As a whole, there is a shirking of responsibility on both a personal and civic level, but placing the blame on video games and their developers/distributors is an ignorant waste of time that could be better spent elsewhere. If a happy balance is to be had, then a dialogue must be started that does not involve the sort of attacks we see now.