Home Forums Soap Box your help is needed – violence in video games

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    • #4211
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      from Gamasutra news:

      Harvard Medical School Quizzes Game Developers On Violence

      The Harvard Medical School Center For Mental Health and Media has announced that it will be conducting a survey of video game professionals.

      The introduction to the survey explains: “Much of the published research on video and computer games is agenda-driven or limited in practical utility. Our goal is to help academics, politicians and the public move beyond blanket condemnations and anecdote-based arguments, and to improve the level of discourse about video games and their potential benefits and risks. The perspective of game developers is not widely understood and deserves a place in the public dialogue.”

      Therefore, the center has set up an anonymous survey on the perspectives of individuals involved in game design and development, asking about the role of violence in video games, and the relationships between game designers/publishers and game rating boards.

      Questions asked include the purpose of violence in games, how a company decided to make a game violent, and developers’ opinions of the ESRB or other ratings systems, and the survey will be open until July 8th, 2005.

      http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB224AEQ3XCDJ

    • #21971
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I just did that survey, but frankly, as biased as some surveys are asking questions that lead to giving negative answers, I think this one is somewhat biased into asking questions that lead to positive answers about violence.
      There are a lot of obvious questions that aren’t asked.

    • #21972
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      i notice that under the rating questions nobody seemed to ask the question. is the ratings fine, but the ppl in the stores\parent ignore them because the store owner wants to sell lots of games and the parent wants to keep their kid out of their hair for an hour. so they buy the kid san andreas. yet johnny\mary are only 6

    • #21974
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Yup, blame is never passed onto the retailers, the marketeers or the consumers, its always about the developers. What ever happened to free speech and freedom of will and parents actually doing some parenting (whacky idea, i know! )
      Censorship doesn’t work, its never really worked with films and its not going to work with games…

    • #21977
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Exactly, all the retailer has to do is ask for a bit of ID if a kid is looking to buy a certain age rated game a simple enough task otherwise money is being wasted on on the bodies rating the games, and parent’s buying games should be made to sign a thing that says I will not be hypocritical and complain about these games after buying it for my kid

    • #21983
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      A certain space movie is a BIG hit in the late seventies.
      Tonnes of space films\TV shows follow. (‘me toos’)
      Sequels follow.

      A Violent Sandbox game is a BIG hit in the late nineties.
      Tonnes of violent games and follow.
      Sequels follow.

      If people didn’t want and buy violent games, god knows we wouldnt be making them.

      That survey didnt really have anything about retailers on it. They let parents buy violent games for their kids. Personally I dont think that violent games\films effect kids that much (based on me as a testcase).

      /at least my game concept isnt violent

    • #21987
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I’m assuming some of you saw the articles in the newspapers when GTA:SA was first released? Reporters went into shops and looked for people buying the game and found that most retailers were refusing to sell it to minors. Then they noticed the parents were then buying it for their kids. One father was asked why he was doing so given that it has an 18 cert, his reply was something along the lines of “well its only cartoon violence, I have enough faith in my child that he can tell the difference between reality and a virtual world”. Now its this kind of behaviour that fuels these groups calling for them to be banned outright…. :?

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