Here in germany some guy went mad and ran amok in his school. Again.
And exactly like last time they blame computer games and want to ban violent games.
What happened is a real horrible thing, but I think blaming computer games is going the easy way.
I mean, just because one of the guys had some bloody computer games, it doesn't mean it's the cause for their actions.
A high percentage of killers eat bread in the 24 hours before the act.
So, should we ban bread?
Those games are very popular, but not everybody who plays them walks around and shoots at people in real life.
Before the guy went amok he anounced his actions in the internet and stated, that he was unhappy with the money-controlled world and the fact that already in school everything is just about the money and such stuff.
So, how the heck do they come to the conclusion, that it had anything to do with computer games?
People blame what's easiest to blame.
For example, Thomas, you are ignorant, pathetic and moronic, therefore i shall come to the random but simple conclusion that it was your school.
See?
Cheers,
Fluke.
PS: I don't really think you're ignorant, pathetic or moronic...too much ;D
Blame the parents.
Blame Canada.
Should we blame the matches?
Should we blame the fire?
Or the doctors that allowed him to expire?
Heck no!
Quote from: the vict0r on Wed 22/11/2006 08:48:01
Blame Canada.
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!!!!!
Blame Hitler.
But don't blame it on the sunshine!
Don't blame it on the moonlight!
Don't blame it on the good times!
Blame it on the boogie!
Quote from: Thomas Voà Ÿ on Wed 22/11/2006 05:46:14Before the guy went amok he anounced his actions in the internet and stated, that he was unhappy with the money-controlled world and the fact that already in school everything is just about the money and such stuff.
So, how the heck do they come to the conclusion, that it had anything to do with computer games?
When they (the politicians without a clue) blame the "killer-games", they don't see them as his motive but as the main factor leading to the guy going from just thinking about shooting innocents to actually doing it. (Which is still wrong, of course.)
And why? You've already answered the question yourself: because it's the easy way. Plus, it's exactly what the ignorant masses want to hear.
Think about BSE or the bird flu. As long as the people are being convinced that the government is going to do something about it, they'll lose interest rapidly, even if the actual danger is far from decreasing.
Blaming gory games is a classic case of mistaking correlation for causality. There are countless other examples, and it's not going to change unless politicians are forced to take an IQ test before partaking in important decisions.
Apparently these politicians have never heard of catharsis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis).
didn't the guy leave a suicide note saying that it was basically school that made him do it because it taught him he was a loser and that he hates people?
blame the school bullies and arrogant teachers.
plus as far as i know he didn't actually kill anyone, and no game rewards you for just wounding people.
Blame whoever you want, and ban some violent games. They're just a modern form of brainwashing for some unfortunate morons. Why are we on this forum? Because adventure games made an impression on us. Luckily they're adventure games.
Porn quest said that I can't sleep. And now I can't!! It brainwashed me!! Ban it!!
Blame the moron that gave him the gun.
It's far easier to blame computer games then the school and the education system. For one, most people are willing to believe that violent video games cause aggression, so it's an easy way for politicians to say, "It wasn't our fault, blame the entertainment industry." It's always funny that they go right for video games, but violence in movies and television isn't nearly attacked as much. The truth of the matter is that there were people who killed people long before video games. I'm not arguing that video games don't cause aggression, I don't have enough information to back up the claim that video games have nothing to do with it. Perhaps video games affect people who are already mentally unstable to do things that they wouldn't have done otherwise...I don't think so, but it is a possibility. People should have to take some sort of psychoanalysis before being allowed to play any games...including tetris.
There's obviously a problem somewhere...and I don't see how banning video games will solve it. The population is growing, and the ability for people to get weapons that cause far greater damage in the past has grown. I wouldn't care so much if they banned violence in video games, as long as they banned it in other forms of entertainment too. Not that I think that would solve anything, but at least it would apply to all forms of violent entertainment rather than just picking on one medium.
-MillsJROSS
a ban on videogames wouldn't stop people from playing them anyway, it would just prevent them from being published, then the goverment just invents another illegal trade.
plus they can't go around to everyone's home and ask them to hand over all their videogames and remove all games from their computers.
Heh, if we were influenced by Adventure games like they think violent games made people kill, then how come we don't go around picking up everything not glued to the floor and stuffing it all in our pcokets and walking around with two huge bulges in our trousers. (And maybe a third bulge depending on if you played a lot of Leisure Suit Larry.)
Who says we don't.
-MillsJROSS
Exactly, Mills. After seeing Gone in 60 seconds I was really tempted to steal a car. Because I'm a fairly rational person I realised it would be a very bad idea, but that doesn't mean it wasn't put on my mind. I don't think that was because of my parenting, as my parents are strict and proper, and they've taught me to be like that. It was definitely the influence of that film.
Plus, after watching super size me at college in lesson, half the class wanted a macdonalds after it. Heh! I'm pretty sure instances of being influenced through the media, games etc is relative in all our lives.
But your parenting and upbringing or what have you created a fairly rational person that doesn't do everything a movie shows them.
Therefore you can watch violent movies and play violent games with no fear of becoming a murderer.
Quote from: ManicMatt on Wed 22/11/2006 18:22:17
Heh, if we were influenced by Adventure games like they think violent games made people kill, then how come we don't go around picking up everything not glued to the floor and stuffing it all in our pcokets and walking around with two huge bulges in our trousers. (And maybe a third bulge depending on if you played a lot of Leisure Suit Larry.)
Or RPG's, why don't people go around wearing minuscule amounts of leather and nothing else, while killing dire squirrels and breaking into peoples houses, all the while screaming "quest!" I admit I like many violent video games, Perfect dark is on my top 10 list games, along with doom and quake. I never had so much as fun as when I “chunked” the monsters in “quad” mode in quake.
There's too much to RPG's rather than "cock gun, aim, shoot". Something that can be mimicked IRL preeetty easily ;)
I would say kleptomania can be replicated easily, but we don't do that, do we?
[edit] course, maybe why rpg'ers don't go on there own brand of rampages is that rpgs ARE their RL.
I blame the grammatical errors in this thread. :P
Also, I blame Pluto.
I don't blame them for blaming the incident on violent video games. If I was facing a life sentence or death I'd find the easiest thing to blame too.
Skyfire, this is about officials/laywers/governments blaming videogames, not the murderers, in this case.
What nags me is that it's always mis-done by the same sources. I'm from germany too, and heck, we have some of the hardest censors ever. We can have as many nipples in a game as we like, but one drop of blood and it's all over. The event was terrible, sad, a real tragedy. And suddenly we learn what a terrible power the media has.
There were two big events that changed a lot here, both were "school rampants", as our faithful Bild Zeitung (rainbow press, big style) nicknamed them. Both times it was blamed on "killer games". And while nobody cared for stuff like Counterstrike so far, suddenly it was THE killer game. The media fell over to show how cruel and sick this game was, silently reasoning that all games are like CS.
In fact they must've hired some experienced players and pay them well, for most pics shown in the Bild were pics of mods that allowed shooting grannies. I've played my fair share of clean CS matches. Never saw a granny there. It was even claimed that the game allowed you to mug people in the street.
And the broad mass will always fall for such reports because they don't know the games and it's a relief to have someone decide that some strange hobby of some strange outsiders is to be blamed. It's not your fault, parents. It's that evil GAMES that made your kid go mad.
After that first school shootout, we ended up with games that had no USK (age recommendation) being suddenly rated "18 years". This included, and still includes, Mario Land. In my home city, several Internet Cafes had to close their doors. For about two months my mum came over to my place to see if I maybe had a gun (kidding here...)
Now another sad guy wants to shout out his anger, tapes some rather dramatic video of himself saying what a *** his life is and that's the fault of the universe that he's gone over the rim, and we have it all again. And again, the papers are rattling their chains and light their torches. Witch hunt again.
I am 31 years old and have played video games from when I was old enough to grab an Atari joystick. For more than 18 years I have shot alien bastards, killed Strogg and Hellspawns, caused some heavy damage on several warfields. I have seen the rise of the first person shooter genre. I've actually been there when you couldn't find a game's shop where someone played Doom in the back room. I'm prime killer material.
But: I've also build cities, made some dozen Sims lead happy lifes, rescued a wagon of princesses, solved many an adventure with nothing sharper than an insult to the sword masters or a slice of cheesecake, and I've created several generation of Creatures. I've been a pretty contructive, protective, creative player.
All this, however, means nothing to the broad mass. They're happy to have a scapegoat. Once it was rock'n'roll music, now it's "killer! games!".
And it makes me sick that no-one ever seems to think a bit for himself.
It's just plain silly. Yeah, blame the games. The kids will go around buying laser guns or battlewalkers and squish each others to pieces with them. Sure. Games are really too easy to blame, but with a bit of reason those accusations can be - to some extent - overcome easily. Like for some people games are a way of unloading agression. So, where in this scheme do they gather more and more of it to the point where they get a gun and go actually shoot real people? I don't see it.
And there's no left mouse button on a gun, neither can it be remapped to one. Atleast not on the current ballistic weapons, I don't know about the stuff Bush's guys have locked up over at the 51... :=
Quote from: ManicMatt on Thu 23/11/2006 11:11:34
Skyfire, this is about officials/laywers/governments blaming videogames, not the murderers, in this case.
I was refering to the lawyer/client relationship of the matter.
My thought about violence in games is "You can kill in the pc so you dont have the need to get a gun and kill someone" but people are so amazing that they do both. Here in brazil they banned "mad dog mcgree" because you use a gun to shoot "real" people. I think that is stupid, but as I said before, people can be amazing sometimes...in both sides.
Lo_res_man: Who said we dont do? 8)
A big problem here in Germany is censorship. All those "killer-games" don't really involve "killing" or the causes of violence. If you shoot people, they don't bleed, they don't die. In the german version of HL, the (human) guards and scientists took a seat when shot, and they began to cry, in other games they just vanish, when they are shot. No wonder, reality can easily be misunderstood.
There was a poll, on the intra net at work today. It asked, whether or not banning sweets and other junk food at schools would stop child obesity...
The sad part was 38 % of people thought yes it would.
At the end of the day its the parents giving children money to buy what they want, and lets face it most working parents (both working) get home and often enough buy take aways or microwave dinner or something.
It seems to me everybody wants to blame everything else these days for everything else.
Your Child is
Obese - Blame the school tuck shop
Killer - Blame the computer games
@ Manic Matt - Kleptomaniac - blame adventure games!
I think the issue here isn't so much should violent games be banned. Video games are a form of artistic expression, right, in the same way as movies. There are plenty of violent movies. Some violent movies are crap... like End of Days. Some violent movies are good, like Kill Bill. Same goes for games.
What SHOULD happen is that it should be harder for kids to get their hands on material that's not suitable for them. In the UK, most places I know don't sell these types of games to minors. You wouldn't sell an 18 rated movie to a kid, so don't sell them an 18 rated game. And that way it's up to the parents to decide whether their child is mature enough or not to play an 18 rated game, or watch an 18 rated movie.
There was an incident about a year ago, where a Hitler fanatic shot up a bunch of jews in a synangogue. He'd read all the anti-jew literature he could get his hands on and screamed "HEIL HITLER!" while shooting people, and yet video games got the blame. Video games, and not books. Books full of information on Hitler which he had studied painstakingly prior to his attack. His attack and motives were linked directly to literature, but that did not get the blame!
That is because you cannot blame books for people killing other people, and that is common sense.
I was at a panel with Peter Molyneux a couple months ago and (I think it was Molyneux anyway, actually maybe it was an EA guy...) made an excellent comment. He asked us to imagine if books had only been invented within the past ten years, but video games had been around for a century. Imagine what people would say:
"Children waste away while sitting in corners of their room, straining their eyes to see the tiny print, lost in the world of the book. It is a solitary and anti-social practise, not like playing video games, where the child is participating actively and often with friends or online. Children feel trapped as they cannot change the course of the book, they cannot prevent bad things from happening, they must accept what the book tells them has happened. Not like video games, where the child is free to be the hero, to save the day, to choose his or her own course of action."
That kind of thing... I believe he was quoting from elsewhere and if anybody else could find that actual quote I would be much appreciative...
Video Games have still to mature greatly. You still can't have sex in a video game, right, without causing an uproar. Even tastefully done, like in Fahrenheit (I've not actually played Fahrenheit, I'm sorry, but I heard it was tastefully done, do correct me if I'm wrong...). That scene was removed from the US version, right?
It's ridiculous. Games have the potential to be a really powerful form of artistic expression. In fact, a lot of games already are. But they're still being held back by this ridiculous notion that games are just for kids.
I agree it'd be great if somehow people who were underage couldn't get their hands on stuff they shouldn't, it'd reduce some of the criticism, encourage investment in more subtle games, and still allow for artistic expression, however... I can't think how that could realistically happen. For all the restrictions, not many teenagers have much trouble finding horror movies and porn, even alcohol and drugs are pretty easy to get. I think the guy that prompted the last round of complaints was over 18 anyway.
People see games as different to books and movies, not only because they aren't familiar with them, or because books and movies are more artistically mature forms, but also because there are significant differences that they can read issues into. Games aren't a stream of information from the text to us, we're part of a feedback loop. The rewards and punishments stemming from our actions seem to be mentally conditioning us to perform certain tasks, something a book can't do, and something that seems potentially dangerous to some.
Hopefully games will evolve towards respectability before they get cracked down on. So far it seems ok, politicians have been bringing this issue up since the 80s and nothing significant has been done, so we probably have plenty of time.
The sex issue is the funniest thing. Fahrenheit's sex scene was... not distasteful, but it's hilarious (move the controller up and down to commence humping) and pretty much superfluous (it's the optional reward for completing a guitar minigame...). It's unfortunate that it needed to be cut out for America, but the fact that that is up there with the best usage of sex in games is kind of sad.
Quote from: scotch on Sat 25/11/2006 15:25:45
So far it seems ok, politicians have been bringing this issue up since the 80s and nothing significant has been done, so we probably have plenty of time.
I think that's the nature of scapegoating. If we ban video games and juvenile violence continues... what then? Blame rock and roll?
Anyway, everyone knows it's immigrants who are inculcating violent tendencies into our youth.
Been said many many times before by many many people, but be said once again. Sure the kids can play games where they see more blood than the EU regulations allow, but if there's even a bit of a hint towards anything sexual, it's a disaster. What if the kids got influences from such material? They might even REPRODUCE!
I'd concider a few extra abortions a fair trade for a few hundred lives...
Another recently witnessed scene...
Place: GAME, Dawson St., Dublin
Players: SALES ASSISTANT, MOTHER, SON.
(Fade in...)
(MOTHER is buying a PS2 for SON. SON appears to between 10-12 years old.)
SALES ASSISTANT: "Okay, PS2's come with a free game of your choice. Have you picked one?"
(SON places "SCARFACE" on the counter.)
SALES ASSISTANT (to MOTHER): "You know that's rated 18?"
(MOTHER shrugs)
SALES ASSISTANT: "It's very violent, and it contains swearing, nudity, and..."
(MOTHER looks at SON, who also shrugs)
SON: "It's no more violent then other games I have."
MOTHER (to SALES ASSISTANT): "He has other ones like it."
(SALES ASSISTANT shrugs. Transaction is completed.)
(Fade to black...)
Parents are to blame. Punish the parents. Any crime commited by a child under 16? Retribution should be visited upon the parents.
Broken home? Don't care.
"We can't control him/her?" Don't care.
Draconian? You bet your ass! >:(
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b32/turtle342/pacman.jpg)
That's just silly. No one is going to do like pac man because it doesn't look any good. I think kids will get violent from realistic games earlier.
Lots of good points brought up in this thread.
"Society" has generally looked for an "easy to blame" source for any bad things that happen.Ã, Either it's been Rock'n'roll music, Movies, T.V., Books, and now Video-Games.
"My little Johnny is good as gold and would never do anything bad! He must have went crazy because he was brainwashed by playing that aweful Doom video game!"
What I think it really comes down too is when someone "goes crazy", i don't think it can really be blamed on any of those things, rather the person very much likely has a "screw loose" to begin with and there's probably a much deeper cause to the problem than simply jumping on the band-wagon and pointing a finger to blame music / books / games / TV / The Phase of the Moon, etc...
When I was young (ooohhh, so long agoÃ, ;) ), kids used to love watching the ultra-violent Bugs-Bunny / Daffy Duck / Elmer Fudd / Tweety & Slyvester / Road Runner, etc... type of cartoons, with depictations of usually some character being blown-up, shot, anvils and pianos dropped on heads, being pushed off high cliffs, stabbed with swords & knives, set on fire, etc.. etc.. you get the idea.Ã, Ã, But rarely would you see kids who watched these cartoons try and repeat and do in real-life any of those types of violent actions. Or if they did, then chances are there's a much deeper behavioral / disciplin / mental problem going on inside the kid's head rather than simply blaming it on "He watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon! That's why he did it!".Ã, Of course even then sometimes "society" would try to blame the problem on the "cartoons", when of course we know it's foolish and unrealistic to blame a violent action someone does in real life on because they seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
It's just the same thing over and over, and unfortunately we'll always have the Jack Thompsons of society screaming and ranting and raving to blame the ill's of society's problems on something other than the real cause and root of the problems. But hey, "The squeeky wheel gets all the grease." right?Ã, Ã, :=
Should we ban violent video games? No. But we should remember that kids are pretty dumb and easily influenced, and some things are simply not appropriate for them. In the end, as has been pointed out before, only the parents can enforce that.
Also, isn't the underlying problem that we live in a culture of violence? I mean people make violent movies/games/whatever because people buy them...
That doesn't make the culture violent, Janik. If people made violent games because there was violence in the street then maybe.. But even so, I feel it'd be hard to proove that. Especially when violent games rarely take place in the streets or in contemporary times.
There's also a huge market for romance novels but I never see people saying because we live in a romantic society.
"Oh god it's horrible, there's romance in the streets! Hide the children!"
I've always been fascinated by this debate, not only with violent/controversial video games, but also movies and music and so on.
It's hard to deny that media has an influence on you. It does. Which is why it's so powerful. That, of course, includes video games.
After first discovering Duke Nukem 3D, for instance, I noticed that I had become more interested in guns and weapons.
Keyword: Noticed.
I understood that the game was influencing me, and I also understood that it was a GAME, and trying to mimic the action in real life was no way to solve real problems.
Kids who go and shoot up their schools aren't doing so because of aggressive music, violent video games or movies. They are, however, drawn to the harsher games, music and movies due to an already bad attitude. At most, the media irritates the situation.
The Ranting Gryphon did an awesome job summarizing this debate.
Here be adult langauge and thought-stimulation:
http://www.ranting-gryphon.com/Rants/2rant-movie_violence.mp3
(This one's about movie violence)
http://www.ranting-gryphon.com/Rants/2rant-military.mp3
(It starts out about violent videos on the net, and the military, but it becomes more relevant to this topic towards the end.)
After playing a Tony Hawks skateboard game for sheer hours on end, I went on a bus to town. During the journey without thinking about it, I was looking at the buildings and things to see where there are potential skating lines I could achieve. Before thinking I can't actually skate so why am I thinking such things.
But thinking and doing is two different things.
Still, I've never found myself actually mimicking games, except maybe saying "Fo 'sho" like CJ does in GTA for a laugh. (No, not THAT CJ!)
When I first discovered Quake I played it nonstop for hours...
Once.. ONCE! I almost... ALMOST! straffed around a corner a hallway in my house...
When I play Tetris, I play Tetris hard. After hours, I go to sleep and have Tetris matches in my dreams.
The thing about violence in games is that you never see the downside or the after effects.
I thought about doing a 1st person shooter once, that would take violence and gore levels to their extremes. On kills, enemies wouldn't simply fall to the ground, but literally explode in cascades of gore, that splattered and stuck to the player 'camera', like this:
(http://itu.dk/people/hermund/PNGS/160219_full-002.jpg)
There would then be a control dedicated to wiping gore from the screen (or the 1st person goggles or whatever), like this:
(http://itu.dk/people/hermund/PNGS/160219_full-003.jpg)
Gore obscuring the FOV would set a natural limit to the amount of killing in the game, since half the time the player wouldn't be able to see a thing, missing enemies while frantically wiping the blood from his eyes and face. So the more violent the player, the more he (or she) would have to wipe. And the more gore, the less actual killings.
All anyone could ever ask for, right? :D
Hehe, interesting idea! But it would get a little annoying after awhile, not being able to see. I think it would be better if the gore only splattered on the camera every now and again, say from a powerful weapon, or close range kill.
Kind of a cool idea. But you might as well go all the way with it: the floor gets slippery from the pools of blood, or you lose your footing as you step through/over/on piles of bodies, etc. :)
Could you contract aids as well?
There was a game for the Phillips CD-I I believe called PO'd where you killed a bunch of... things... and when you used a violent weapon it left blood on the screen that a hand wiped off.
Just throwing that out there because someone has to mention the CD-I at least once a year. Or it will come back and kill us all...
First:
QuoteIn the german version of HL, the (human) guards and scientists took a seat when shot, and they began to cry
LOL
second:
I understand where people are coming from when they're against violent video games. It doesn't affect people who play it for fun and can differentiate between reality and video games (i.e. 99.99999% of gamers) but we forget the 0.000001% of gamers who can't make that differentiation (sufferers of schizophrenia). I read statements of people who 'went crazy' who reportedly thought they were playing Postal 2 and drove around clubbing people to get points. These people go on a rampage and kill... they're loony. You can argue that a sufferer schizophrenia inclined to kill people would do so without the help of video games, but I'm still saying that the violence is THERE and it's interactive. Of course banning video games isn't 'the answer', there's no such THING as 'an answer' for manic rampages when somebody goes crazy.
Quote from: Dmitri on Mon 04/12/2006 14:50:07
I read statements of people who 'went crazy' who reportedly thought they were playing Postal 2 and drove around clubbing people to get points. These people go on a rampage and kill... they're loony.
Do you have any sources for this?
Sounds highly suspect.
Isn't this (video games make kids violent) mixing up cause with effect? Is the kid violent because of violent video games? Or likes video these video games because he's violent? As well, I object to Janik's statement that
Quote from: Janik on Sun 26/11/2006 18:09:47
Kids are pretty dumb and easily influenced,
I agree kids are relatively easy to influence, but kids are not dumb. At least, no more dumb then any adult. Ever read those, kids say the darndist things-type stories? The kids are piecing fact together, they just don't have all the information. And if having access to information equaled smarts, with the web, we should all be geniuses. I think a child's native intelligence is probably determined either genetically, or very early. Say kids are east to influence if you want, but don't ever call them dumb.
Quote from: MrColossal on Mon 04/12/2006 15:50:33
Quote from: Dmitri on Mon 04/12/2006 14:50:07
I read statements of people who 'went crazy' who reportedly thought they were playing Postal 2 and drove around clubbing people to get points. These people go on a rampage and kill... they're loony.
Do you have any sources for this?
Sounds highly suspect.
unfortunately not, I read that in a bbc news post on the interwebs years ago, I'd be hard pressed to dig it up.
If you want something better, here's something I found
Quote from: wikipedia link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy
Critics of video game violence generally agree that violent video games are at least as bad an influence on children as are television shows with the same level of violence and cruelty, and most seem to believe that video games are more threatening to a child's well-being, because the video game player uses the controller to make an on screen character act out the violence personally. It was widely reported that the killers in the Columbine High School massacre were, like many teenagers, fans of first-person shooter games. They had recorded a videotape before the massacre in which they said they looked forward to using their shotguns just as in the game Doom.
Also from 10 most infinite WADS
Quote
No point in beating around the bush: Eric Harris made some Doom WADs, and then he killed people. One of the Doom community's greatest trials was in April 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire in their Colorado high school and created a new culture of fear and paranoia. After it was discovered that the pair played Doom, many avid Doomers found their computer gaming habits placed under scrutiny. The WAD itself, Harris' most elaborate, is unremarkable except for a few now-chilling features. The monsters have brand-new death graphics, doused in added blood and gore. And the text file's admonition of "KILL 'EM AAAAALLLL!!!!!," which would normally be nothing more than adolescent juvenilia, carry a certain premonitory weight. (Ling)
I have to stipulate though, I don't think video games are RESPONSIBLE for columbine. Columbine happened because Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were arsewipes. I'm saying that video games clearly condone gorey violence that can influence people who don't know the meaning of 'fantasy'.
QuoteNo point in beating around the bush: Eric Harris made some Doom WADs, and then he killed people.
Is this serious?
I suppose the fact that these kids were clinically-diagnosed sociopaths with apparently little or no parental involvement in their lives had nothing to do with them going on a murderous rampage.
Or how about the fact that they were able to stockpile shotguns and semi-automatic weapons with relative ease?
Or the fact that they displayed warning signs as early as 2 years prior to the incident - evening publicly posting death threats to other students on their website - yet no one took notice or intervened?
The fact is that these kids were seriously disturbed, deliberated and planned a massacre of their fellow students for years in advance, and after carrying out their plan turned their weapons on themselves and committed suicide. And we won't ever know the reason why or what set them off. From the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre):
QuoteA thorough study of all U.S. school shootings by the U.S. Secret Service warned against the belief that a certain "type" of student would be a perpetrator. Any "profile" would fit too many students to be useful, and may not fit the potential perpetrators. "The researchers found that killers do not 'snap.' They plan. They acquire weapons. They tell others what they are planning. These children take a long, planned, public path toward violence. And there is no profile. Some lived with both parents in 'an ideal, All-American family.' Some were children of divorce, or lived in foster homes. A few were loners, but most had close friends." Instead of looking for traits, the Secret Service urges adults to ask about behavior: "What has this child said? Does he have grievances? What do his friends know? Does he have access to weapons? Is he depressed or despondent?"
Pointing out that these kids played a video game and then killed people is about as useful as pointing out that they poured milk on their cereal and then killed people.
Quotevideo games clearly condone gorey violence that can influence people who don't know the meaning of 'fantasy'.
I don't see how killing fantastical creatures in a fictional environment is giving me permission to go out and kill people. And I don't see how getting rid of violence in video games will solve the problem of sociopaths who can't distinguish fantasy from reality. By this reasoning, we should get rid of anything fictional for fear that people who can't separate it from reality may somehow act out.
Allow me to rebut most of what you said by quoting myself
Quote from: Dmitri
I have to stipulate though, I don't think video games are RESPONSIBLE for columbine. Columbine happened because Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were arsewipes.
Also, I don't advocate banning or getting rid of the violence in video games.
Quote from: Dmitri
Of course banning video games isn't 'the answer', there's no such THING as 'an answer' for manic rampages when somebody goes crazy.
I'm definately not saying "everyone who plays video games is gonna take a glock and shoot his boss in the head for points" I agree if I wanted to take the line of reasoning that "banning video games will fix it" then we'd have to ban every kind of fiction. But I'm not saying that...
I'm saying that videogames of this sort are dangerous influences on people with schizophrenic or sociopathic behaviour (or young children who also have trouble distinguishing reality and fantasy). Hence, I understand why people are against such violence.
Can someone remind me? I could probably just wikipedia search it but I'll ask here.
What were the violent video games that Hitler used to play? Was it GTA? I can't remember. Help!
That's because it was painting flowers that made him evil! Paintings are to blame! They are the cause! BAN FLOWERY PAINTINGS NOW!
Not at all! It was Nietzche's Super-Human theory. BAN PHILOSOPHY!
Remember in the 50s? The comic book code being introduced? All because of the book 'seduction of the innocent'? That was the beginning of this crap. And people still buy it today (the theory not the book). In the book the author, Fredric Wertham "M.D.", stated inconclusive evidence that juvenile delinquents read violent comic books therefore violent comic books were a direct cause for the delinquency. He also stated that Batman and Robin were homosexual lovers but that's another story.
The children he neglected to report about were the
A) Stable children who read comics and
B) Delinquents who didn't read comics.
The former being obviously millions greater than the amounts of his reported influenced delinquents.
We have the exact same god damn thing happening now. Have you guys read some Tales from the crypts? Some are just as violent as most video games! But that's not the issue! Any child that is willing to act out scenes from a video game is unstable to begin with and without the influence of video games they could draw from films, books, music or flowers!
What I'm trying to get at is lets ban child molestors. Why haven't we done that yet?