Violent games, a good thing after all?

[Morat20]

I love your argument.  Throw in lots of curse words and exasperated italics and it will make your point oh-so-much clearer.  

Obvious misreading irritates me.

Yeah, I find correlative evidence weak in general. (Which is logical, insofar as it IS a weak form of evidence. Correlation isn't causation and all of that). I find the evidence for video games lacking. However, if we're going to talk correlation, well -- like I said, violent crime is at a serious low. It's been trending down steadily for a long, long time.

Trying to get rid of other causative factors (lead based paints, incarceration rates, etc) to study video games and violence in isolation is all well and good and understandable, but frankly the experiments underwhelm me to begin with (as noted, you get the same results from kids playing basketball or football, which no one seems interested in trying to blame for society's sins) and seem like a bitch-session in search of a problem.

I mean, really, we're going to spend our time screaming "What about the children" and "OMFG, VIOLENCE!" in a society where actual violent crime has been falling dramatically?

This is nothing but the usual generational distrust (it was rap, rock-and-roll, and hell even comic books in the past) for "shit that's different than in my day" coupled by blind nostalgia by a generation that was remarkably crime free only because the most criminal demographic had spent their time being shot at in Europe. (The 50s. It's what happens when you draft all the idly young men and send them overseas to shoot at Germans when they'd otherwise be bored, idle, and impulsive).

[ghost]

Okay.  We all know that correlational evidence is at the bottom of the statistical food chain, but it's a shitload better than anecdotal evidence. 

Violence being at an all time low doesn't play into this, really, unless you look at the correlations statistically.  I don't think that has been factored in, so it probably isn't applicable.  They may have controlled for the crime rates statistically in the studies, but I'd have to look at them closely to do so (and have no intention of doing this ). 

I am of the personal belief that violent video games do not cause kids to run out and shoot up the 7-11.  However, I do believe there is probably a link between aggressive kids and an interest in violent video games.  In any event, I seriously doubt that curbing the purchase of violent games is going to decrease violence at all and the link would purely be academic in nature. 

[Morat20]

Okay.  We all know that correlational evidence is at the bottom of the statistical food chain, but it's a shitload better than anecdotal evidence. 

Right. Which is why I pointed out that, you know, crime rates for every category of violent crime have dropped like a stone over the last several decades.

Violence being at an all time low doesn't play into this, really, unless you look at the correlations statistically.  I don't think that has been factored in, so it probably isn't applicable.  They may have controlled for the crime rates statistically in the studies, but I'd have to look at them closely to do so (and have no intention of doing this ). 

I am of the personal belief that violent video games do not cause kids to run out and shoot up the 7-11.  However, I do believe there is probably a link between aggressive kids and an interest in violent video games.  In any event, I seriously doubt that curbing the purchase of violent games is going to decrease violence at all and the link would purely be academic in nature. 

Yeah, I have a hard time with "video games cause violence" because I've:

1) Seen a game of football.
2) Seen a game of dodgeball.
3) Seen a game of basketball.
4) Seen parents at youth baseball.
5) Turned on the TV....

You get my drift. Our sports are violent and often hypercometitive. Our TV is violent and sex-soaked. Our children's sports are often remarkably violent and hypercompetitive.....

Somehow, I don't think it's Doom.

[Lantyssa]

Violent video games wouldn't be popular if people didn't like violence.  It's self-perpetuating.

In any given individual, anything could be a trigger for violent acts.  But on the whole it's a symptom of the human condition, not a cause of it.  Of course it's corrolated, because humans are a violent species which tries to curb the negative effects of being violent with civilized behavior.

[Morat20]

In related news, SCOTUS upheld (7-2, Breyers and Thomas dissenting) that California's rigid ban on selling video games that include depictions of violence to children was unconstitutional.

The opinion was rather interesting -- basically that Constitutionally you couldn't equate violence and obscenity, so that while you CAN ban obscene material or restrict it from children, you can't do so with violent games. Most interestingly was a statement whose gist was "Yeah, it's hard to claim we don't like exposing children to violence. Have you ever read Grimm's Fairy tales? Yeah, if it's kosher for books, it's kosher for games. Same thing."

[ghost]

Oh well, I guess some folks are actually going to have to start parenting their kids.   

[tgr]

Ban violent children's stories!

[Malakili]

The vote was close to 5-4 though.  2 of the judges said it was unconstitutional because the term "violent video game" was too poorly defined or something, but because they didn't think in principle it couldn't be restricted.  Still, I think its the right decision over all.  The comparison with obscenity really has to be made though.  It says so much about our country that when it really comes down to it, in our absolute highest court, boobies bad, blood and guts eh whatever.

[ghost]

I personally wouldn't have had a problem if they would have restricted the more violent games like they do with movies.  There's a ton of stuff I play that my kids won't see until they are at least middling teenagers or later. 

[Malakili]

I personally wouldn't have had a problem if they would have restricted the more violent games like they do with movies.  There's a ton of stuff I play that my kids won't see until they are at least middling teenagers or later. 

I think violence as the key term had a lot to do with it.  There is loads of violence in PG13 movies.  Hell, just off hand (because there is so much SW talk going on here lately) Star Wars Episode 3, in which a guy had his limbs cut off and was burned alive all fully shown on screen, was PG13.  R movies usually have nudity and/or lots of cursing.

[Teleku]

The key difference there is 'graphical violence' vs 'violence'.  In your example, you see a guy have his limbs fly off in a totally bloodless manner, then he sort of catches on fire without actually seeing what that does to your skin.

In R movies, you see peoples heads explode and brain matter splatter on the camera, etc.

[Malakili]

The key difference there is 'graphical violence' vs 'violence'.  In your example, you see a guy have his limbs fly off in a totally bloodless manner, then he sort of catches on fire without actually seeing what that does to your skin.

In R movies, you see peoples heads explode and brain matter splatter on the camera, etc.

[ghost]

I think violence as the key term had a lot to do with it.  There is loads of violence in PG13 movies.  Hell, just off hand (because there is so much SW talk going on here lately) Star Wars Episode 3, in which a guy had his limbs cut off and was burned alive all fully shown on screen, was PG13.  R movies usually have nudity and/or lots of cursing.

This is a pretty good point.  Again, it comes back to parenting.  I like that the G/PG/PG-13 scale at least gives me some pause in choosing what the boys watch. 

[Ingmar]

Ban violent children's stories!

But then how will children learn to not suck on their thumbs?

[tgr]

I personally wouldn't have had a problem if they would have restricted the more violent games like they do with movies.  There's a ton of stuff I play that my kids won't see until they are at least middling teenagers or later.

If there's one thing I really have to giggle at, it's how books like the early Harry Potter books were children's books, but (and it's been a while, so I may be misremembering a bit) it was the most schizophrenic book I've ever read. The description of magic, the broom etc, was literally insultingly childish, yet later on in the book there were murdering and to a certain extent visceral descriptions of the effects of various spells. Far from what I'd expect for a teen or pre-teen book. In fact, I don't really give a fuck if something's hilariously violent (since I don't have kids, nor do I plan on having kids, fuck that noise), but that book annoyed me with its inconsistency.

Fake edit: Ingmar, that's hilarious.

[Morat20]

FWIW, I believe Rowling's deliberatly aimed the writing at Potter's "age". The first book was written for 11 year olds, the last was written more at 17 year olds.

As for the game -- the 5-4 split, maybe, but one of the things noted that would have come up with a more tailored ban is that video game makers already voluntarily label and generally refuse to sell. Even under a somewhat looser standard, that would have likely to have been a carrying point. (Just because a concurrance says "Under other circumstances I might vote another way" doesn't mean it's binding on the author. Under 'other circumstances' other points of law or fact would come into play).

I notice that someone -- Alito or Thomas -- just HAD to reference Custer's Revenge. Thankfully for whomever did that, the internet has several lists of "Most violent" and "Most digusting" games ever, so their 'own research' consisted of 'Google'.

[tgr]

FWIW, I believe Rowling's deliberatly aimed the writing at Potter's "age". The first book was written for 11 year olds, the last was written more at 17 year olds.

Just to be clear on this, I was talking about the absolute first book, I didn't read much more than the first book. I assumed the rest of the books would be pretty much the same, so I saved myself the annoyance.

[ghost]

The later Potter books certainly become much more mature in topic.  The first one just hints at some of the stuff going on.  Morat's right.  She tailored the books to match the maturity level of the people she was writing about.  As Potter, et. al., age the topic becomes darker. 

[Evildrider]

The Potter books definitely start being more towards the older crowd after the second one. 

[Morat20]

I find it funny that Harry Potter fanfiction seems to often focus on, specifically, "How badly was Potter abused?" (There's also a "Dumbledore: Evil Chessmaster/The Real Dark Lord?" variant).

It ranges from "Oh, he just lived in a cupboard and they hated him, but ha-ha, isn't that just how every unwanted orphan lives?" to "He was beaten, starved, and came out looking like a Holocaust survivor".

Stepping back from the books and really looking at them from an adult perspective, there's a few head-scratchers there.

[tgr]

So, what you're saying is that the latter books got even worse?

Oh dear.

[Ingmar]

No, he's saying "fanfiction writers are fucking crazy", which is not exactly the deepest insight ever expressed.

[tgr]

I should start quoting people more reliably; I was asking ghost.

[Morat20]

No, he's saying "fanfiction writers are fucking crazy", which is not exactly the deepest insight ever expressed.

They truly are. Although some of them have a keen sense of humor. Sadly, they're a bit tough to find -- although the TV Tropes collection of recommended ones is pretty good. :)

Then again, TV Tropes and Wikipedia are the best things on the internet that don't involve naked people.

[ghost]

"Worse" meaning darker?  Well, in the movie Cedric Diggory dies (played by Robert Pattinson, so it can't be all bad  )

[Azuredream]

The first book is just odd, when I went back and reread it there was definitely a lot of variation in how it read. The other books don't really do that, at least not to the same degree. I chalk it up to inexperience or maybe she just wasn't sure what kind of book she wanted to write at first.

[Goumindong]

I think that more important than the act of violence is how the violence is portrayed and who commits it.

We don't get worried about kids playing knights or cowboys and indians, or cops and robbers.

Because they know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. They know that they're only pretending to be bad guys and so they don't need to emulate what they see. [but we are talking about young kids here] in a way that has that effect.

Things get more iffy in other contexts where the violence might be seen as something to emulate in and of itself. Or where they relate with the character that does the initial violence.

By the time most kids are teens though I kinda feel that they are mature enough to understand societal depictions of violence and some types of glorification. They don't know who they are in society yet, but they understand who others are to an extent that they won't be taking cues from media as much.

Worrying about how graphic something is is besides the point. Hell, if we really wanted our kids to be graphic then violence would be as gory and terrible and horrible as we could reasonably make it. Violence traumatizes you and any chance we can get to say "holy shit violence traumatizes you" without actually causing trauma seems like a net positive rather than negative.

What happens at the end of Star Wars Ep3 is "gory", but its presented as the result of the actions of Anakin. Look at that person that we don't want to become like and how bad it turned out. Look at all the people he hurt including himself. Look at how he made his friend hurt him. This makes it less socially problematic. [though frankly the description of what the scene should covey compared to what it does leaves a lot to be desired]

This is an entirely uninformed view

[Morat20]

The lesson I took from Episode Three was "Whiny little bastards get what's coming to them, which is NOT endless sex with Natalie Portman, but instead a lava bath. Don't be so goddamn emo and go fuck your secret wife instead"

[Khaldun]

The study that's referenced at the beginning this thread is not exactly convincing, but the basic point behind it is something that applies to most media effects research. Namely, the vast amount of it rests on controlled studies carried out by social psychologists, much of it not particularly carefully designed and with fairly clumsy definitions of what constitutes "violent" and "non-violent" content in media. Within the severe limitations of those studies, there's good evidence that the representation of violence can have an immediate or short-term tendency to increase aggressive impulses. The most carefully conducted studies tend to show that the effect size of this tendency is small, but that never gets reported in the mainstream media and frankly few of the people who do this research tend to highlight that point because most of them have their research funded by institutes or groups that have a very strong vested interest in the argument that violent representations cause violent or antisocial actions. (George Gerbner, for example, who has relentlessly pushed this conclusion for the whole of his career and pushed considerable research funding towards anyone willing to confirm his treasured arguments.)

The basic problem with this work (and with a certain amount of similar studies in social psychology) is that for their findings to be of any real use whatsoever, they have to be seen as a prediction of social action or trends at a larger scale. And as predictions, they're self-evidently shit to anyone with even a bare modicum of sociological knowledge. By the metrics defined in most studies, the amount of violent representation in all media forms has increased markedly over the last forty years in the US. The amount of total media consumption, especially of visual and interactive media, has increased markedly over the last forty years. The experience of consuming violent representation has added a major new interactive component (gaming). Violent representations are far more common in media consumed primarily by children and adolescents.  If you follow the laboratory studies (some of which have pursued extremely modest or limited sociological add-ons) this together should have meant a corresponding increase in SOME form of measurable violence: violent crime against strangers, violence within families, hell even aggressive interpersonal styles within everyday life. None of which is even remotely documented over the same time period in which representations of violence have been increasing. Violent crime, with some interesting local variations and exceptions, has gone the other direction.

There are various bullshit escape hatches from this trap. The one I find most annoying when I've gotten into debates with the media effects mafia is that the controlling factor is middle-class lifestyles and parental guidance, that violent representation has a more negative impact on poor households with poor parental guidance. Sure, let's see you control for that one, guys. I really want to see the thorough, comprehensive study that manages to regress "poverty" and "parental guidance" out of the picture so that we get a completely clear look at the effect size of "violent video games" independently of those rather fucking huge issues. And if you could (you can't) I want to know why George Gerbner and his posse want to spend a bunch of time and money trying to make sure that only well-educated white people with sensitively attentive professional-class parents get to play Call of Duty when those researchers could be spending time and money trying to think about how to deal with poverty and broken homes.

Another favorite escape attempt is that we DO have a lot more people made aggressive by violent media who would be less aggressive otherwise, but they're in jail. Or their aggression isn't expressed in quantitatively measurable ways: what a marvelous time to suddenly discover that hermeneutics matters. Or that there's a delayed effect and that people who grew up after 1970 are all ticking time bombs who are going to murder everyone somewhere right around when they need dentures and get Alzheimer's.

Culture influences us all, of course it does. It's what we fashion selves, dreams, ideas, and imagination from. It matters what the content of culture is, it's never neutral. But the media effects researchers have had it wrong from the beginning, continue to get it wrong, and they get away with it year after year after year and continue to influence what a lot of people imagine to be rock-solid expert consensus.

[Morat20]

Don't you have to also factor in the fact that, over the last several decades, we took some steps to prevent kids from eating so much lead?

No more lead-based paint, no more lead pipes for drinking water....