Video games and Violence

Caution: Children at Play

Nice write up on disputing the Jack Thompsons of the world.

What a radical concept, looking at actual aggregated data when trying to make up your mind on a subject.

Looking at those graphs, by the way, I'm sure you were struck by the sharp and very scary rise in youth violence from about 1985 to about 1992, followed by an equally sharp decline. Now, there is a connection between that and Grand Theft Auto. That's the crack epidemic... and GTA: San Andreas is *about* the crack epidemic! Need I say more?!?

Now, I wonder what would happen were you to look at similar data on, say, the assimilation rate of immigration waves, and relate that to the frothing about the Hispanic threat to the American way of life/the Muslim threat to the European way of life...?

Come now PJ there is no room for satire in games you know that, and GTA caused all of that and more! It's the sole reason society has declined into the anarchy of the dark ages!

Video game violence statistics (the ones used to distort that data) usually go something like this:

1) Crime committed by teenager (or there abouts)
2) Did perp ever own a video game?
3) If answer to 2 is no, did he/she know anyone that owned a video game?
4) Answer is yes 99% of the time and BAM! It's a video game related violent act.

It's eerily similar to the way MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for those of your fortunate enough not to have a clue who this is) makes up statistics about "alcohol related accidents."

As an example:

1) My wife and I go to dinner. She has a glass of wine. I have water
2) I drive us home. On the way another driver, who has not drank one drop of alcohol, runs a red light and hits us.
3) According to the statistics that MADD (and many govt agencies thanks to their draconian tactics) use, that is an alcohol related accident because at least one person involved had used alcohol within the past few hours.

Me, I'm rather thinking on the implications violence has on the unconscious part of us.

And that is a field that is highly difficult to master. I'm sure there's almost no data on that.

Although I'm personally quite sure that it *has* an impact on our unconsciousness.

I have more problem with virtual simulation of urban kids/middleaged males doing crimes than I have with an ultragore game with obviously supernatural content (Mortal Kombat, Fallout etc). I believe the good amount of popular, mainstream and well-advertised/praised crimegames have a greater negative impact on youth's morale than every red pixel ever painted on screen. People of that age is experimenting with the world and copy whoever they look up to. Violence in itself is not a role-model that can be copied, but when the life of crime is made to look attractive and cool, that's what they will copy. The statistics on that website is quite convincing though.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Me, I'm rather thinking on the implications violence has on the unconscious part of us.

And that is a field that is highly difficult to master. I'm sure there's almost no data on that.

Although I'm personally quite sure that it *has* an impact on our unconsciousness.

Click to expand...

What does it matter, if it doesn't have an observable, negative impact on our behavior?

Prime Junta said:

What does it matter, if it doesn't have an observable, negative impact on our behavior?

Click to expand...

It does matter if it HAS an observable, negative impact on our behaviour.

One that we cannot see because we don't know where to look for it.


The problem is that human behaviour is so incredibly complex, that you just can't say that there's a single source of bevaiour.

This is one of the lessens I learned from reading this book.

I don't let myself be convinced by the illusion that human behaviour might have simple rasons. If there were any, then we wouldn't need psychatrists.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/articles/shooting-holes-in-game-theories/2008/07/09/1215282891184.html

A new research shows some correlation, but nothing drastic. 12-14 year olds...

Alrik Fassbauer said:

It does matter if it HAS an observable, negative impact on our behaviour.

One that we cannot see because we don't know where to look for it.

Click to expand...

That leads straight to insanity. If we can't see the effect, how can you claim it's observable? I might as well claim that the smell of roses causes rape, therefore we must ban roses. And if you were to ask for evidence, I could just say that the effect is kinda hard to see because we don't know where to look for it.

I believe that freedoms should only be proscribed if there is very strong and very unambiguous evidence that the behavior we proscribe is severely harmful. This is because limiting freedom is inherently costly. To my knowledge, this is not the case with video games, or artistic/entertainment expression in general.

Yes, we should make a reasonable effort to communicate what the art and entertainment we produce contains, so that people can make an informed judgment about whether to experience it, or let their children experience it, but no further. IOW, rating games by age is perfectly fine by me -- as long as it doesn't mean that it becomes impossible to produce or sell unrated, adults-only games.

Pladio said:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/articles/shooting-holes-in-game-theories/2008/07/09/1215282891184.html

A new research shows some correlation, but nothing drastic. 12-14 year olds...

Click to expand...

And, most importantly, no causation.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's a correlation between antisocial behavior and spending inordinate amounts of time playing violent video games. Why? Because parents that let their kids spend inordinate amounts of time playing violent video games aren't doing a very good job of parenting, and kids with parents like that are more likely to be fucked up than kids with parents that do do a decent job of parenting.

Prime Junta said:

If we can't see the effect, how can you claim it's observable?

Click to expand...

If we can't see radiation, how can we claim it's observable ?

Koinrad Röntgen didn't know a thing about Radiation. All he knew at first was that certain stones blackened a photograpy film, and that this thing produced funny results.

You might not have heard of this, but in earlier times the use of this kind of radiation was used to make kind opf "photos" in shoe shops just to see how good the shoes fit.
No-one knew about the dangers. How could they ? It was not observable.