NJ governor joins violent game debate

We've made that decision because we think it desensitizes our children to the real effects of violence."

You could argue Road Runner cartoons have the same effect, or wrestling, or virtually any television program aimed at children.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Alex O'Dwyer on 9th January 2013 4:02pm

Posted:4 months ago

And some American's wonder why the rest of the world views them as completely fruitcake :-(

Posted:4 months ago

500 million violent video games have been sold since 1996. Did we all suddenly become violent murderers?
400 million guns are registered in the US. Are we all suddenly violent murders?

The numbers speak for themselves.

Time to start blaming the killer for his actions.

Posted:4 months ago

Funny thing. Canadians play the same games we do and in fact make a good number of them these days.

But they don't shoot each other.

Posted:4 months ago

Based on their logic it's hard to imagine why games developers aren't all homicidal maniacs.

Posted:4 months ago

In Holland, we had a member of parliament (Christian Democrats) propose a ban on violent games in 2010. Everyone had a good laugh and then went on to serious business.

Posted:4 months ago

@Jeffrey Kesselman: I suggest you come out from under your rock:

http://www.thestar.com/topic/eatoncentreshooting

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/crime/article/1202006--toronto-shootings-up-in-2012-but-deaths-are-down

"There have been 99 shooting incidents as of Monday, compared to 69 the same time last year (a rise of 44 per cent.) The number of gun victims has risen from 76 to 121 (a 59 per cent increase)." That was through May 28.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/17/world/canada-shooting/index.html
Headline: Two killed, 23 wounded in shooting at Toronto party

Posted:4 months ago

@Jeffrey I've read (but been unable to confirm) that Canada also has the same number of gun permits per capita as the US, although the US still has more than twice as many guns per capita.

I'm glad the governor mentioned mental health, which I think is a far larger part of the equation than video games or even guns. For all the mass shootings where the drug history is available, all the perpetrators were mental health patients taking psychiatric drugs. These drugs are known to cause violent behavior in a small percentage of patients..

Posted:4 months ago

I suggest you come out from under your rock

The point isn't that there are zero shootings in Canada, it's that shootings per-head of population are much, much lower in Canada and many other countries, than they are the US.

As an aside, those high-profile shootings in Toronto were the result of gang activity targeted at specific individuals, not shooters opening fire on random people without motive, which are two very different problems.

Posted:4 months ago

@Jim Webb

I wonder if you're able to spot the fault in your logic.

Let's see, only 17 years have passed since 1996 so we only have 17 years worth of data.

Video games were a much smaller niche in 1996 and have been steadily gaining in mass market appeal since, so we're talking about a moving target in terms of exposure.

The moving target also encapsulates age groups - if we're discussing the effects of video game violence on human beings you can't lump fully developed adults in the same category as undeveloped children.

So starting out in 1996 the graph would be low market penetration and probably an older age group penetration. As the years went by the curve would have started to include younger and younger groups with larger and larger exposure levels.

You also can't leave out the abstraction scale - games getting more and more realistic each year.

Nor the violent escalation scale - publishers pushing more and more violence each year to trump last years "shock moment" sales pitch. (Shooting up an airport one year, Rape the next.)

To put it simply, there's no way to know how violent video games and their increasing realism and violence levels affect the generations that starting playing them at an early age. Yet that doesn't stop your argument from popping up every chance it gets. Feel free to explain why i'm wrong in pointing out why this particular argument - that violence in games has no effect on people because we all haven't turned into violent murders - isn't an argument at all.

Posted:4 months ago

The fact remains that there is no evidence that video games cause people to be violent.

Violent crime has, in fact, been falling since the invention of video games. That doesn't mean that video games are responsible for a reduction in violent crime of course, but if they do cause people to become violent then clearly they're not very good at it.

The only reason video games are even being mentioned as a cause is because scapegoating videogames is an easy way to sell papers and get viewers. It's also a very effective manner of diverting people away from the debate on gun control. And because the majority of people don't understand that correlation does not imply causation.

The fact that younger shooters have played video games isn't particularly significant, given that a very large proportion of people in their age group also play video games. If the majority of young shooters have also eaten chicken, does it imply that eating chicken is responsible for mass murder?

You also can't leave out the abstraction scale - games getting more and more realistic each year.

Realistic or not, video game violence is not comparable to real world violence. Video game characters are not real, they do not have thoughts, feelings, wants, families.

I think most video game players that have killed thousands of video game characters would still find it very difficult to hold even an unloaded gun to a real person's head. Why? Because people have empathy for living creatures, they don't have empathy for video game characters for the aforementioned reasons.

The counter argument is based on nothing more than "they must cause violence, I mean, look at them, it's just common sense innit"

Posted:4 months ago

I would say the counter argument is that our brains are computers and video games are inputs (programming) which can change outputs.

And please, let's not compare eating chicken to playing Manhunt or other similar video games. One is eating the other is a simulation for hunting people down and murdering them.

And where do you think empathy or the lack thereof comes from? Go ask the Jews if they felt any warm empathy from the Nazis. Our brains are computers. They can be programmed to do anything - good or bad. That, i believe, is the argument against 'when ultra-violent video games meeting impressionable children's' minds'.

Posted:4 months ago

Our brains aren't computers. They are similar to computers in some ways, but they are not computers. Our brains are also similar to ant hills in many ways, but they're not ant hills.

While it is true that inputs to the brain change its state, it does not automatically follow that the input from violent video games changes its state in such a way as to cause someone to be violent. Which is what is generally assumed to be automatically true when the "inputs change the state of your brain" argument is made.

This incidentally is very similar to the following argument:
1) Video games as a medium affect people emotionally.
2) ?
3) Therefore video games affect people in such a way as to make them violent.

Which assumes that 3, automatically follows as a result from 1, which it doesn't.

And where do you think empathy or the lack thereof comes from? Go ask the Jews if they felt any warm empathy from the Nazis

Human beings can certainly display a lack of empathy towards their fellow human beings. My point is that video games are not an effective manner of reducing your empathy towards other human beings, because killing video game characters is not even remotely comparable to harming a real human being.

As I say, anyone who thinks that killing a million video game characters even remotely compares to the act of even just threatening a single human being, never mind actually following through, is either so utterly lacking in empathy as to be a fundamentally broken human being, or they've just not thought the issue through at all.

Posted:4 months ago

My point is that video games are not an effective manner of reducing your empathy towards other human beings, because killing video game characters is not even remotely comparable to harming a real human being.

And you know this how? Point me to the proof. The 20 year long studies devoted to determining the veracity of that statement. Without that your arguments are kind of ridiculous. My position is not that video games definitely can cause someone to be violent, but that we don't know because that data either doesn't exist or hasn't been studied enough. Show me where i'm wrong, since you're so sure you're correct.

Posted:4 months ago

Studies have repeatedly shown no meaningful correlation between video games and violent behaviour.
As I said before, violent crime has actually been falling steadily since the invention of video games.

If video games cause violence, then they're really not very good at it at all, however much people might want that to be the case.

If people want to infringe on freedom of speech and censor violent video games, then the burden of proof is on them to show conclusive proof that video games are, in fact harmful.

The only reason we're even having this discussion right now, is that video games make a convenient scapegoat and blaming them is an easy way to sell papers, just as blaming comic books was not that long ago. And because unfortunately, most people are easily convinced by arguments like "person who did bad things took part in <popular common scapegoat activity>, therefore <popular common scapegoat activity> is clearly to blame!"

Also, just to come back to this for a second.

And please, let's not compare eating chicken to playing Manhunt or other similar video games. One is eating the other is a simulation for hunting people down and murdering them.

If Manhunt is a simulation for hunting people down and murdering them, then Grand Theft Auto is a flight simulator.

Posted:4 months ago

Studies have repeatedly shown no meaningful correlation between video games and violent behaviour.

What studies are those?

If Manhunt is a simulation for hunting people down and murdering them, then Grand Theft Auto is a flight simulator.

Here is the definition of simulate: To have or take on the appearance, form, or sound of; imitate.

Here's the wiki of manhunt: Players survive the scenes by dispatching enemy gang members, known as "Hunters", occasionally with firearms, but primarily by stealthily executing them.

I'm not sure the point you're trying to make.

The only reason we're even having this discussion right now, is that video games make a convenient scapegoat and blaming them is an easy way to sell papers, just as blaming comic books was not that long ago.

Nah, the only reason we're having this discussion is that the Games industry (this means you) points at guns and screams: IT'S THE GUNS. Or, as in your case, you point and say "it's the media trying to sell papers". Or as Jim Webb said, it can't be the games - it's the person pulling the trigger (i'm paraphrasing that).

Then governor Christie points at the games and screams IT'S THE GAMES. (and unless you're a mind reader, i don't supposed you know his motivations for that)

That's what sparked this thread, and that's what sparked this debate.

If people want to infringe on freedom of speech and censor violent video games, then the burden of proof is on them to show conclusive proof that video games are, in fact harmful.

It's not about censorship, at least for me. It's about acknowledgment that you don't know the effect your product has. But apparently you do know, cuz you're like the master sociologist and psychologist all wrapped in one.

Posted:4 months ago

Mass murders have been happening since there were human beings attempting to live within rock-throwing distance, so attempting to find direct causal proof one way or another is a losing proposition unless you can go back in time and ask Cave Tribe A why the hell they annihilated Cave Tribe C, but walked past Tribe B without laying a hairy finger on them.

The mental health issue seems to be a prime factor here along with the accessibility of types of weaponry and the lack of sensible means to keep those who mean to do harm away from "tools" that allow them to do so in a rather rapid manner. The only sort of common sense solution I'm hearing is calls for some sort of mental health screening, but even then, it seems that both sides want potential NEW owners of guns to be screened and not those who already own them.

I'd love to find out how you get people who own firearms to take a mandatory test to see if they're in fact, mentally capable to safely keep them. I'd probably suggest that gun owners who are deemed "sane" should be the ones to break the news to the ones deemed "not so sane" by any "official" testing, as I'd hate to be the bearer of bad news to someone who's not about to give up anything they consider sacred without a fight. Medication would be a good solution.... except that adds potential side effects to the mix. In the US, we have a ton of ads here for antidepressants with all sorts of warnings about "suicidal thoughts" and "strange dreams" and the like... Yikes.

As I noted elsewhere, Andrew Kehoe (look him up) never played a video game at all, but he killed a few dozen people back in 1927 using quite a bit of planning some would call "crazy" today. Charles Whitman went up into a bell tower and killed a bunch of people and video games were a few years away. And so forth and so on, et cetera, et cetera...

The debate continues, i guess...

Posted:4 months ago

I don't claim to have absolute knowledge of the future. If strong, conclusive evidence eventually shows violent video games to be a problem then I will re-evaluate my stance. However, the fact remains that at present, decades of research on the subject have shown no conclusive link between violent video games and violent behaviour, and violent crime has been falling steadily since their invention.

As always in science, it may well be possible that in the future our current understanding will be shown to be incorrect. It may well also be the case in future that in the future, Wifi access points are shown to cause cancer, however it's my understanding that at present no such link has been discovered, despite significant research into the subject. Unfortunately that doesn't stop hysteria about Wifi routers in public places, just as lack of evidence in favour of video games causing violence doesn't stop hysteria about video game violence.

If we are to take action against violent video games, or even to blame them, we should do so based on actual sound scientific evidence, and not blind hysteria.

I do not claim to speak for my industry, I am simply an individual that happens to work in games. I have no real stake in violent video games, beyond the fact that I like to work on games that I like, and I happen to like video games of a mature nature. If they disappeared tomorrow I wouldn't be out of a job, I'd just be making different games. My position is based on the fact that I'm a strong believer in freedom of speech, and in making policy decisions rationally, based on the available evidence, rather than on logical fallacies, populism and hysteria.

I don't believe that the solution is as simple as "ban guns", the real world is a complicated place and many factors are at play here, amongst them may be poverty, lack of social mobility, ease of access to weapons, lack of access to mental health and other forms of healthcare. All of which are arguably more prevalent in the United States than in other western nations, where violent crime is much less of a problem.

Here is the definition of simulate: To have or take on the appearance, form, or sound of; imitate.

Your original wording could be interpreted that Manhunt is a killing simulator, in the same way that a flight simulator simulates flight. i.e. That playing Manhunt is realistic enough to teach you how to kill in real life.

Posted:4 months ago

@Andrea, try and keep an open mind and read through some of the studies linked via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversies#Crime_and_violence

Posted:4 months ago