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Anyone hear the item on Dave Fanning show on 2FM this morning. I only came in at the end but it sounded like the usual debate; Some game or other blamed for violent death. In the UK I Think?
Anyone hear the full story? At least Dave appeared to be neutral/reasonable on the issue.
Peter
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Manhunt, this time. Already being banned from some stores.
Sigh.
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Not banned, but voluntarily dropped.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=ret&aid=3890
Appears the murderer was looking for money to fund his drug habit. Though, as another online article pointed out, why would the press pick up on that (one tabloid screamed: Death By Playstation), when drugs are already banned?
L.
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Of the 10000 Irish people surveyed who died last year, more than 90% visited hospital in the last 1 month of their life.
This shows conclusively that going to hospital is the number 1 cause of death amoung Irish people.
No, it doesn’t. Perhaps the reason they went to hosptial was because they were sick, and going to die?
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Fred plays violent videogames. Fred killed somebody.
This shows conflusively that playing violent videogames makes you a killer.
No, it doesn’t. Perhaps the reason Fred plays violent videogames is because he is sick, and going to kill.
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I’m not trying to turn this into a laughing matter – it’s not, and some people take this very seriously, and demand video
I’m not arguing about whether violent videogames either do or dont cause violent behaviour.
I am simply stating that a correlation between people that commit violent acts, and people that play violent videogames, is not sufficient to establish a casual relationship.
I’d be interested to here other people’s take on this issue.
There were a good few posts on gamedev.net about it, many of which seemed a bit knee jerk. -
Originally posted by boadle
one tabloid screamed: Death By Playstation[/quote:8cea3f9330]Not quite as sensational as ‘Nintendo killed my son’ at the height of the 16-bit era.
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As in a singular organism???
Nintendo is by definition a hulking great beast made of fire and mortor…..
just kiddin?
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The main problem is that people, mainly parents, don’t understand that video games are no longer just toys and actually have a ratings scheme for a reason. Retailers can’t do much about an adult buying a game for a kid.
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Devils Advocate for a moment;
Why does the games industry produce such violent games knowing full well that they will find their way into the hand of minors?
Peter
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Peter,
are you rhetorically asking
a) That they regulate themselves?
or
b) Do they have a conscience?
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Why does the games industry produce such violent games knowing full well that they will find their way into the hand of minors? [/quote:b44820c498]
Games are an art form, it will suffer the same trials as all recognised artforms before it.
It is understandably ‘wrong’ to want to censor artistic expression.
I think it is apparant that some just want to shock, and I do believe that Rockstar and Acclaim are particularly guilty of going out of their way to ‘sex-up’ their output to attract a mature audience while consciously knowing it was attract a young audience too.
Do games need to be so violent and portrayed in a real world context? Well there is no doubt that GTA3, Vice City and Manhunt have been well received by both the mass market and the respected gaming press. They’re good games.
While I don’t want to censor games, keeping it away from minors is an issue, and there is little enforcement of the rating mentioned. I was in GAME once where an employee refused to sell some kids GTA3 but told them to get their dad to come and get it :(
Censorship in films, well does it even really exist anymore :confused: I know the head of the BBFC said he believed there would be no classification in 10 years.
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Why does the games industry produce such violent games knowing full well that they will find their way into the hand of minors?[/quote:569b8a6dd7]
What does the film industry produce such violent / sexually explicit /etc films knowing full well that they will find their way into the hands of minors ?
Explain the difference to me ???
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Yes indeedy, the answer is the same. What is it?
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<Lefty outburst>
There is also a wider Civil Liberties issue here.
There is a problem with minors being exposed to adult games. Everyone here, I assume, is agreed on this.
It seems that outside of the gaming fraternity, responsibility (for allowing minors to view it) is not being directed at parents and outlets. Instead there is growing pressure on the State to outlaw the content.
We are then faced with a situation wherein we have a government dictating what types of entertainment we can and can’t digest. Why outlaw ‘Manhunt’ and not ‘Monster’, ‘Mein Kampf’ or ‘Magdalene Sisters’? Because, the theory goes, the former is interactive (therefore the ‘player’ is assuming the characters identity, within the realms of suspended disbelief, BUT – in the case of minors – is occassionally unable to recognise that those same actions have infinitely more serious implications in the real world)?
I think Manhunt is a malicious, calculated, little piece of cynical hand-rubbing marketing. But then again, so is most business.
Games must accept that they put ideas in the heads of impressionable types that might otherwise not be there. But then again, so does Cinema, Art, TV, Comics and Music.
Does that mean these mediums should be banned? No.
More careful about who they expose their wares to? ABSOLUTELY.
The State will not tell me what I can and cannot do in the privacy of my own home.
</Lefty outburst>
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So where does responsibility for this control lie? As developers, do we wash our hands of all responsibility. “It’s not our problem, we only make the stuff”. Do we blame irresponsible retailers?
Who will they blame? (most likely us and irresponsible parents!)
It’s a circle of blame but no one is willing to put their hand up. In such cases, and in the face of public pressure, the usual response is heavy-handed govt. intervention.
Peter
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I agree Peter. It would be great to see the Industry impose some type of self-regulation, and retailers impose much stricter controls on who they sell to.
However, as you point out, that is not too likely, and like a kid who watches to much TV, there is a real risk of having it taken away for good.
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I find violent games and films to be enjoyable. Unfortunately the output of violence from hollywood has dimished a great deal.
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As developers I do think we do need to take some of the blame. We are the people making these games, albeit its Joe Public who is buying and therefore wants these games. My worry is that as developers we are finding ways of making things more realistic and as such putting in ‘cool features’ because we can. However alot of these features are jsut gratuitous, violent eye-candy.
Until people start accepting that games NEED to be properly regulated and its harder for kids to get 18s games, maybe this should be curbed a bit.
But the greater blame lies in the ignorance of people…..
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So, some kid beats another kid to death with a hammer, but whats this! He was “addicted” to a violent game in which you beat people to death…. conclusion: it must be the game that made him do it!!
….not the fact that he is obviously a complete sociopath.
So how many units of Manhunter have been sold in the world? I don’t have a balls, but lets say its 250,000. Thats 250,000 people who have played this game……if this game causes people to commit murderous acts, surely there should be some sort of worldwide epidemic of vicious murders with claw hammers and plastic bags?
This is just another example of know nothing idiots who can’t even begin to fathom that this kid killed someone because he was a drug addict and an obvious psycho, because if they did, then it would mean them facing up to the fact that its their fault and societies fault that the kid is dead. So they take the easy way out and blame a game the murderer was playing before the killing.
“Death by Playstation”
I can’t believe the British tabloids, probably the most ruthless, unthrustworhty and immoral media in the world, feel they have the right to point the finger and blame the murder on something which they obviously haven’t got the slightest bit of knowledge about.
I have played countless “violent” videogames and watched even more violent movies, and I haven’t gone out and commited any crimes.
This is down to people who were mentally unstable in the first place. Maybe playing a violent game or watching a violent movie can infuence such people, but it cannot be attributed the blame for it, the blame lies with the people who should be dealing with such mentally unstable people and with society as a whole. -
I am just reviewing a load of literature on what we call media effects for something I am writing. There is a lot of psychological research which has failed to establish any causality between playing digital games and violent behaviour but it does point to certain ‘high risk’ players who are vulnerable because of their psychological and/or social situation and who therefore may be more influenced by certain entertainment content. It is a very complex issue and the Japanese government are I believe funding a large scale study of the issue.
Clearly it is wrong to single out the playing of games as the only cause when something like this happens. At the same time I believe we must all take responsibility for the production of violent or other extreme games. Developers make em, publishers bring em to market, parents buy them, people pass them around and give them as presents, academics write about them.
Taking responsibility might mean admitting that all media have effects, they are designed to. Taking responsibility might mean critically analysing the particular game and trying to see what violence means in the context of this game and why this kid was drawn to it. Taking responsiblility means pointing to the other things in his life that led him to these actions.
Henry Jenkins spoke rather well on this topic after the Columbine shootings ..see here
As to the particulars of this case, I don’t know much and ManHunt I only know through reputation..although I am not sure it is one I want to know better..
Aphra.
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but it does point to certain ‘high risk’ players who are vulnerable because of their psychological and/or social situation and who therefore may be more influenced by certain entertainment content. [/quote:683c19611f]
Exactly. They can’t exclusively blame a game for someone commiting a crime. The videogame may have triggered such an action, but if it wasn’t the videogame something else would have, like a movie, or a song, or someone on the street passing a remark or countless other “triggers”. People like this are timebombs waiting to explode, and we shouldn’t blame the cause for such an “explosion” on the trigger, but rather the root cause, ie: how the “bomb” came to be in the first place.
[/metaphors]
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i heard this story ..uk 16 year old killing his “mate” on sky news yesterday..
the newreader was giving it the huge headline.. games violence to blame.. blah blah bla
then they got this “expert in” good man he was too… he basically told the newsreader that there was no proof in this case and to stop gossip mongering.
the game had been only slightly mentioned.. manhunt i think it was.. and then the media just rolled it out the ball park..
it shut the guy in the studio right up.. no more theory behind the story :D
tragic case..
but it’s amazing how they point the finger that quick
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Its a case of games hitting the realism level that more people are taking notice. Its not just violence like this case, there’s also the cases like religion (hitman – level using a sacred temple as a shooting ground, had to be changed),sex (playboy game, partners game), and others. Violence in games is easy to program and easy to comprehend to a casual gamer and so is the previlent case-study. Its a point where, if we want to get video gaming completely recognised as the industry it is, we need to thread lightly in the present climate as bureaucrats can help or hinder it quite easily right now….especially for ireland where the industry hasn’t kicked in yet, it could very easily have the carpet pulled from under its feet before any roots are sown.
With the likes of Sony, Microsoft and EA able to throw vast amounts of money into the industry, I don’t think its in jeopardy, but caution should be observed by smaller fish in the sea.
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Sky News can be very sensationalist……
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apparently, the VICTIM had bought and played the game, not the MURDERER!
kinda changes things, don’t it?! Let’s see Sky News and the Daily Mail follow that one up…
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=3918
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that makes me so mad!
y i ought da……
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Let’s see Sky News and the Daily Mail follow that one up…[/quote:7866dbe77b]
Yeah right! The damage has been done now anyway, they’ve done their job! As in: Sold papers during the silly season ;)
Maybe R* will force them into a public retraction? hmm.. Then again the sales of Manhunt have escalated significantly since the story ran, so maybe they’ll just keep quiet too.
y i ought da……[/quote:7866dbe77b]
Well put! :D
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As far as the police are concerned its a clear cut case of a drugs related murder. The perpetrator is a crack addict and he mugged a friend for his money.
Let me be a tad unreasonable and point out some sort of parenting issue here, where a mother lets her child play Manhunt in a room with his best mate an older crack addict, then claim its a game that the murderer owned that caused it all.
Still, rockstar gain no kudos from me for pushing the boundaries in this unnecessary way; its a pity that the industry hasn’t slapped them on the wrists for dragging games into the lime-light in an undersirable fashion. This whole shock and scare concept is sooooo old hat, has been dealt with several times now in the past with Movies, Comics, TV – its just a cheap blow to try cash in on a very predictable outcome. The more standard forms of entertainment have acknowledged basics like the unspoken karma system – every bad act must be shown to have bad consequences and so on; This was blatently avoided for Manhunt. Bah humbug.
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