AWKWARD ZOMBIE

The problem is this is completely ingrained into our culture. Every form of media since the dawn of time is soaked with this. Fortunately the counterculture to this that arose in the sixties still exists, but it doesn't seem they make much progress any more.

I agree with chin, and also add that, besides normalizing violence and desensitizing people (kids or otherwise), videogames can inspire violent behavior. Really it's a "monkey see, monkey do" sort of thing. You play a game that involves, say, some manner of martial arts as a kid, and the next day at recess when you're rough housing with the other kids, you decide to attempt that wicked drop kick you watched Sub Zero do or something. I really wouldn't say that if I hadn't seen things like it happen, or hadn't done stuff like it myself.

That being said, a healthy, well adjusted child will likely grow out of things like that when they start learning what to, and what not to do to other people. At the end of the day, it's up to parents to try to control what media their kids are consuming, because some stuff out there can really hamper your development.

Violence IS normal though, or rather, its an inescapable part of being a human. It can only have the room society gives it, but trying to supress it and pretend that people dont want to resort to violence is not going to help anyone either.

I think most rational people can get through the majority of their lives without performing too many extreme acts of violence. of course people sometimes give into base urges, but most people have self control and a sense of right and wrong that is (usually) taught at a young age. It's at those crucial developmental years that people must be taught what actions are acceptable and what actions are unacceptable. Not everyone wants to solve all their problems with acts of aggression and violence. Many people are above such one dimensional solutions, and have the rationale to find better ways to get things done and avoid conflict, but these things have to be taught. Children need to be taught to think beyond causing annoyance and pain to get what they want.

I think this would be a step in the right direction, and I've often lamented the fact that the ESA thinks that just having the ESRB is enough to educate parents when parents obviously don't look at it. Stores do okay in that many of them make sure they don't sell to minors (so that they don't get a lawsuit or in trouble by the ESA and the ESRB board), but there's still no education on the parent's side besides a clerk maybe asking if they're buying the game for the little kid standing next to them and making them aware of the rating. I know PA once did work trying to pitch a campaign to educate people in the differences of the various ratings years ago, and it's kinda sad to see that disappear (I think it was in Game Informer as ads for awhile, which doesn't really help because parents don't really read those).

At the very least, engaging the parents like this, even if they're the ones that care, give them the knowledge to spread to the people their kids interact with. Maybe when dropping little Timmy off at Bobby's house, Timmy's mom will talk about how she was surprised to learn that Call of Duty was so violent and how she didn't know the games she bought her son allowed him to talk to strangers online, and suddenly Bobby's mom has that information too. There will be a little bit of the telephone effect, but maybe with brochures and a link to a website for more information, it can get the interest of some of the parents that actually care and help them make a more informed choice about the games they let their kids have.

Hell, perhaps they'll figure out how to set the parent locks on the consoles and be able to regulate exactly what their kid plays in case they get the game from a friend or manage to buy it from a store without their parents knowing.

Maybe if the kid has to make a case for why the parent should unlock the console for the game, or prove that the game isn't as bad as maybe more notable types of games in that rating (perhaps with videos or trailers), then a dialogue spawns and the parent is able to make a more informed choice about the games.

And really, I think for the most part this really just applies to Elementary and Middle school aged kids and how certain T and M rated games shouldn't be getting into their hands in the first place. It's a bit harder to regulate high school students when they get to the age where they have more freedom and opportunity to buy games for themselves, but at that point, they're also approaching/already at the baseline maturity needed for these games where it won't affect them badly, especially with online communities.

In any case, something needs to be done to shift the perception to it being the parents that are in control. Society tsk tsks at parents who let their kids watch inappropriate movies all the time without blaming the movie itself, but the games are the ones that get blamed when kids play video games that aren't right for them, and that feels really backwards.



The problem is that studies that don't outright say that children are or aren't influenced by video games get shafted by the two sides in the debate. The ESA will allow nothing short of "video games are harmless" to come out because they have an industry to defend, and the anti-video game side can't accept that video games are not the be all end all of the problems for these violent kids.

Add in the funding and skewing of many studies and you end up with an area of research that isn't very highly regarded for factual evidence. Until we can get a source of credible information free of outside influence and have it repeatedly seen in a reproducible form, we're not going to get a solid foundation to support whether video games are a contributing factor to violence in kids or which kids are most readily influenced by them.



Ehh, there were things that were piss-my-pants scary to me as a kid that probably wouldn't have affected me as badly as an adult. Hell, one thing I was afraid of was an episode of A Haunting, and I refused to watch the series anymore until a year later. A few years after that, I came across the same episode, and felt a little bit of dread, but ended up being kinda let down that I got that worked up over something that my older mind thought was stupid. Granted, the surprise of the moment was gone because I remembered the episode clearly, but even then, it just wasn't the thing that would really scare me when I was 19 as opposed to when I was 15 when I first saw it.

Some things, however, linger. I still can't watch the star trek movie with the Borg because the opening scene with Picard's nightmare of being turned into Locutus with the needle going into his eye kinda scarred me from when I saw the movie in theatres as a kid. I certainly wasn't mature enough for the movie, and it still kinda affects me today with my bad aversion to eye damage (to the point where I couldn't dissect an eyeball in a college lab).

So I think there's a threshold of sorts that varies for kids, but generally, the older you get, the more you can handle emotionally. I'd imagine Slender would be scarier for kids more than it would be for adults, though sometimes these things are scarier for adults because of adult reasons (Slenderman is out to kill you/keep you from finding out the truth/whatever rather than him trying to stop you from beating the game or something). And I think that's the point that's being made.



In a sense, I agree. Suppressing violence just makes people find other outlets for that. Rather than throwing a punch at a kid at school, they instead bully them with words or, in the case of the bullied, internalize the anger until the point where it leads to unfortunate points of no return like shootings or suicides. Even things like controlling weapons can have the effect of making people fight harder to find SOME way to accomplish what they want to do. They can't have a gun, they'll use a knife. They can't have a knife, they'll use a pencil, can't have a crowbar, they'll use a baseball bat. The people who want to do harm will find a way. However, regulation of violence is a good thing that works better than the alternative, the main issue is focusing on what types of violence to manage.

I think people will all agree that they wouldn't want their kid to come home after getting into a fight on the playground, but maybe doing that once or twice and punishing them for doing it would be better than finding them dead or as a murderer because they had little ability to do anything before things got that bad because they weren't allowed that option as a realistic means to deal with the situation. This is why bullying has gotten to be so bad, because anything you try to do against a bully tends to be ineffective in the current system, and you're more likely to get in trouble yourself trying to do something to cool off or stop the situation than you would internalizing everything.

There's a difference between a sort of "petty" violence like a fist fight and murderous violence, and I think that distinction is important to note when discussing this matter. Petty violence should be discouraged, of course, but not treated with the same societal vitriol as murderous violence.

There are a few successful games that buck the stereotype (Phoenix Wright series, Professor Layton, Journey, etc) which gives me some hope that such things could be viable.

Even a lot of games with great themes and messages like Bioshock or Fallout have their primary way to move the story forward as mowing down dudes wholesale.

But yeah, they're in the super, super minority. It's not even really the industry's fault. People throw cheddar at these hyper-violent games. Most of the games that try and move away from this are super-niche indie games, which is sort of sad. If we could get a game based on, say, diplomacy or exploration with the same kind of attention to detail that the combat system in a lot of other games gets, I would play the shit out of those.

A big part of why a lot of people games though is instant gratification, which would be really difficult to implement in a non-combat game.

Well really I think there are a lot of choices for games that aren't high on realistic violence that have fun or interesting themes. There's obviously the slew of tried and true Nintendo franchises that are by and large very kid friendly (Pokemon, Mario, Legend of Zelda, etc)

I think it's important that people start to realize that "E for Everyone" doesn't just mean "E for little babies". I mean, there are multitudes of books that kids shouldn't read because they not only have situations and things in them not suitable for kids, but themes and characters that simply are too complex for little kids just getting into books. That's why there's such a curve from baby books to early reader books, to teen and young adult novels and onward. I think a similar system should be in place for games, and there are many games out there already that could help that along. Take games like Shadow of the Colossus or Ico for example. Those games have fantasy settings and feature some violence, but are not over the top and provide a thought provoking and gratifying experience for players of almost any age. I'm not saying every game should be just like that, but I am saying that there are many games that could be used as examples of how to engage people without shoving sex and violence into their faces. Make people think and open up some room for people to grow into more mature and gratuitous things.

Me and Sailor Moon talk frequently about the things we would and would not want our kids to get into while they're young and one of the biggest things has always been online gaming, or anything on the internet that could connect them to anonymous people on the internet in a highly non-regulated way. It's those kinds of online environments that foster bad behavior in kids. Just like you wouldn't let your kid hang out with another, older kid who is known to cause trouble and would introduce him to things you don't think he's ready for, you wouldn't let that kid talk to your kid online over a game like call of duty. Hell I even hear filth when playing against other people in fighting games and what not. Kids need mature themselves before being flung into communities like that, or they can absorb into themselves very bad traits and habits like excessive swearing, bad attitudes, short tempers, and stuff like that. Like I said before, it's a monkey see, monkey do kind of thing. Present children with GOOD examples of things, and they'll absorb those things as well.

I'm kinda iffy about online and stuff, I certainly wouldn't let them tinker with anything on their own before they were ten, and if they wanted online stuff (like going on a Minecraft server or something) I'd either set it up or make sure I was in on what happened when my kids were playing.

But, I would say that at one point, I started going on the internet without my parents really being wise to what I was doing exactly. They knew I was on, but they didn't necessarily know what I was on there doing. It was pulling teeth to get to go on my first forum, but after that, I had pretty much free reign to do or say what I wanted. There were creeps, there were assholes, there were people who discussed some more adult things, and in a way, I probably got into the internet a bit early. I wasn't mature enough (a lot of my problem was that I didn't get enough "recognition" from other people, and felt slighted that other people that had been on the forum longer were more well liked than me (to be 10 again~)), and really, I grew disinterested after my first taste of electronic freedom until a couple of years later. At this point I was much more engaged in things and I had a better understanding, but I still found those undesirable people and fell into some bad drama and stuff, and this was late middle school early high school kinda stuff. My first "girlfriend" (I'm not sure what to consider it, and she sure as hell thinks it was a joke, especially now that I'm gay) even tried stalking me from across the country and wanted to fly to my house and move in just because I gave her my full name and she could find all of that information. In a sense, I wouldn't want my kid to go through something like that.

But, a lot of those experiences made me grow up a bit more. My parents are kinda moderate, but stuck in their ways and protective of their ideals. I've had my booty handed to me a few times on the internet for some bullshit I've decided to spew in ignorance and learned a lot more by socializing with people on the internet than I would otherwise. I also met most of my long-time friends on the internet more than 6 years ago, and we still talk almost daily. Hell, some in our group are even planning on moving in together and sharing a house, at least until it's time to start a family or whatever else. I feel that there's a point where you have to let your kids go and hope you taught them well enough about what not to do and to be able to come to you if anything happens. Otherwise, you risk them losing out on some great experiences.

It's a tough decision. My niece is almost 8 and she's already starting to show signs of chafing under the control of her parents. My brother wasn't AS big into online as me (he had to deal with dialup his teenaged years), but he deals with the 360 multiplayer communities and knows what she's going to get into when she's old enough for the internet, especially being a girl. But, like me, he also grew up a bit on some forums and fan communities. She's always watched him play video games (only the ones he lets her watch), but she also wants to be able to play them, and play games with friends. She's also aware that he plays games online, so it's a matter of time until she begins to question whether he'll let her play online too. And that's not even considering her two younger brothers who are going to get in at an even later date, and who knows what technology will be like at that time. It's still sometimes crazy to me that you can fit a device with internet access in your pocket now when you could barely squeeze a cassette player in there as a kid.

So I know that usually the excuse for something is that "I did this, and I turned out fine", but I feel in my case I turned out better than the alternative, especially since I could express myself with words online and actually socialize rather than sitting around awkward and afraid in the real world, and it was this loneliness when I was away from the internet that helped me socialize in the real world too (and probably knocked me down a few pegs so my interactions wouldn't be me being a massive jerk). I think the internet can be an important part of someone's social and formative identity when used correctly, but it all depends on whether they're instilled with the right ideas.

But again, I think when our generation gets older, being one of the first major "internet generations" I think we'll find that the internet and online itself will be a bit different. Sure, trolls and idiots and a lot of things will remain, but online may become harder to keep out of our kids' hands, especially if they go to doing online assignments in schools and other things like that, and it'll be harder to equate our experiences with theirs. For our parents, the internet was this weird thing that maybe didn't make sense to them until they found things like eBay and Amazon and Yahoo and Youtube, but we understood it a bit better than them, and it might be a bit weird to think we'll grow up to be in that same kinda oblivious state.

It's really complicated, and I think, right now, I wouldn't have an answer as to "when" if I were ever put in that situation. Hopefully, when I have kids, I'll be able to determine the correct time to let them out and hopefully not get caught checking up on them.

I do also want to mention that the idea of "normalizing" violence doesn't just exist in videogames. It exists in all forms of media where blood and guts can be everywhere (especially while things like nudity are considered more graphic).

It exists in the news media coverage of wars, unrest, school shootings, crime reports, what have you. It exists in many people's very beliefs: some people believe that everyone should own a gun, and you can't tell me that guns are nonviolent. It exists in our very United States governmental and social system that glorifies soldiers, mythologizes wars to protect our ideals, and engages in more military activity than anyone else in the world.

We're taught from a very young age to fight, maybe not physically, but we compete, we defeat our metaphorical foes, and some people begin to think that the only way to fight for what you care about is to bodaciously fight.

This is true, but the scenarios in games are everything but a normal day in your life and clearly visible as that. Also you mostly use the violence in self-defense in them.

Oh no you misunderstand, I was saying that in response to what Stranger was saying about not suppressing people's natural urges for violence. I wasn't really talking about videogames at that point and I fully agree with your statement. I was refering more towards proper child rearing than the influences of videogames.

That is bogus and you know it. Most FPS/RTS and whatever games feature attacks started by you. There are usually two types of situations.

1. You walk along an area and enemies attack you. You defend yourself.
2. You find enemies in an area and attack them.

The second scenario is more or less just as common as the first. Think about all the games you use a sniper. I can't really see how you are not engaging first in those cases.

Who engages it is a bit irrelevant because you know they'd mercilessly shoot you down if you just walked up to them.

Seeing as you're usually a heavily armed dude walking into their base that's hardly self-defense.

They would shoot you no matter what cause they're terrorists/corrupt militia/hostile aliens/whatever the game is about.
If it's "hey there's some guys who want to/are killing us all" I think it's kinda self defense to shoot them back. Because it serves not dying yourself plus saving whatever people are endangered by them, which also falls under self defense in most countries, saving someone else that is.
But that's a moot point because in most cases where you actually attack, you're in a military operation anyway, meaning there's some war going on and everyone shoots everyone else so you're in a constant state of having to preserve your own life anyway. Which still is self-defense but isn't handled that way because military.