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You are here: Home / Archives for Violence and Video Games

Violence and Video Games

This settles it.

August 6, 2005 by Tony 15 Comments

Although I didn’t want to continually harp on the topic of video game violence and violent crimes, it has played out that way. In an ongoing effort with other bloggers, I’ve tried to stem the tide of fear mongering and misinformation. I hope that in some small way, this information will find its way to the right people or perhaps some enterprising journalist, actually doing some legwork and background research, will find this searching for “violence and video games.” This is also ammunition for gamers. The next time some trash-clown tries to tell you how video games are making teenagers violent, this is for a “boo-yah” all up in their business.


First is an article from the Economist.com (I’ve included their graphics for convenience). The article is a fair and honest look at the video game industry and avoids a lot of knee jerking. From the article:

Amid all the arguments about the minutiae of rating systems, the unlocking of hidden content, and the stealing of children’s innocence, however, three important factors are generally overlooked: that attitudes to gaming are marked by a generational divide; that there is no convincing evidence that games make people violent; and that games have great potential in education. (emphasis mine)

Did I just read “no convincing evidence”? I believe I did, and I read that from a highly respected magazine. Not some two-bit blogger. Hear that, Mr. Thompson? I’ll repeat it for you: “there is no convincing evidence that games make people violent.” In fact, as we’ll see, the evidence actually points to just the opposite. But it’s understandable that the venerable members of our society don’t understand these “child playthings”.

“It’s just a generational divide,” says Gerhard Florin, the European boss of Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest games publisher. “It’s people not knowing what they are talking about, because they have never played a game, accusing millions of gamers of being zombies or violent.”

Again, this is something that should be brought to the attention of grubby lawyers and bloviating politicians. Play some GTA or Doom, let the storyline guide you and realize there’s something more complex than a “murder simulator.” That’s another great point the article makes:

What’s more, plenty of games, far from encouraging degeneracy, are morally complex, subtle and, very possibly, improving. Many now explicitly require players to choose whether to be good or evil, and their choices determine how the game they are playing develops.


This should could be a small factor into why violent crimes have gone down with video games are becoming more mainstream. The article also points to things critics hate to see — positive things being done with video games. My favorite was the teacher using Myst and its beautiful imagery to inspire kids to write better. Excellent. The article closes with some sobriety that video-game critics would do well to grok:

In June, Senator Charles Schumer held a press conference to draw attention to the M-rated game “25 to Life”, in which players take the role of a policeman or a gangster. “Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill cops,” he declared. True, but little Johnny should not be smoking, drinking alcohol or watching Quentin Tarantino movies either. Just as there are rules to try to keep these things out of little Johnny’s hands, there are rules for video games too. Political opportunism is part of the explanation for this double standard: many of gaming’s critics in America are Democrats playing to the centre.

The other stockpile of ammo comes from Gamer Revolution from its article, The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games. I’ve also used the graph to further illustrate the point I’m trying to make.


While it’s not as eloquently written as the Economist piece, the author Duke Ferris did some good research (and documented sources) and found some interesting trends.

Something must be missing. That first graph is the overall violent crime rate, and we’re talking about youth violence here. So I found the data sorted by age, and it turns out that through 2002, youth homicide actually dropped across the board, the only increase being among adults…

The lowest levels ever recorded. In other words, the Playstation era has, in fact, produced the most non-violent kids ever

And when peopl read the next quote, I hope that little light bulb pops up and they think to themslves, quite profoundly, “Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

To be fair, there have been about 300 studies on the effects of violent media, about 30 of which have been about video games. Most have found little to no connection, although some studies found a small, casual correlation between aggressive people and violent media.

Even if true, this does not necessarily mean violent media has created aggressive people. It is more likely that aggressive people are attracted to violent media.

And there’s more of being mean to the media —

The media in particular loves to bash video games, making sure to point out any time there’s an Xbox within 50 yards of a crime. This is because games are the new competition – every hour you spend interacting with a game is one hour less spent drooling in front of their fear-mongering programming.

Again, please read the whole article. It’s another good read with some excellent links for further knowledge.

So as I said, that settles it. You can look at the stastics anyway you want, there is no way you can say violent video games are leading to violent crimes. It’s a simple as the graphs and statistics bear out — video gaming is becoming more popular, with more and more gamers playing video games and yet violent crime is going down. Way down. So the print out one of those graphs. Tuck it away in your wallet. Next time some tells you that video games are causing the moral decline in our world, politely show them the business.

Update: Great. Now Thompson is going after Capcom for Killer 7. What does he base his reasoning on? An IGN review of the game. This is priceless. You can bet game review editors will be vetting all future reviews with Jack in mind. This man truly is an idiot.

Another Update: From this Slashdot article there’s a link to a long interview with Jack Thompson. I listened to the whole thing, and while I still don’t agree with him and he didn’t make any headway in convincing me, I’ll admit that he is well spoken and made some valid points. He’s a raging narcissist but he’s a lawyer, so that can be expected. Unfortunately, he’s still pointing to all this research linking video games with violence but he still can’t make the link with video game violence and violent crime. A lot of the research he points to (like this Indiana University study) involve adolescents that already have a predilection to aggresive (and violent) behavior. I mentioned this earlier. The link of brain chemistry and violent media can be shown but they still can’t link this to the actual increase in criminal activity. He’s still wrong.

If you have time, listen to it. It’ll make you frustrated and tear out your hair. It’s disturbing, it touches on a myriad of topics, including the GTA grandma, EA and the porn industry are in cahoots (huh?!), and many others.

(On a side note, I secretly thing Rockstar has something big planned for Bully. Everyone thinks it’s going to be a morally bankrupt game like GTA but I think there’s a big surprise waiting for us. We’ll see if that plays out, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately.)

Another another update: The Videogame Pundit has also commented on this. There’s a funny exchange with Scott from VGCats and Jack Thompson here. I believe this comic is what started it. VGCats makes me laugh.

Related Posts:
Cranial Menus
GTA should have been rated AO
Parents just have to be better parents
Bad News for Rockstar

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: Violence and Video Games

Not good…

July 20, 2005 by Tony 8 Comments

This is getting out of hand.

Oh, and Mr. Thompson — put this in your pipe and smoke it.

Update: Rockstar’s press release.

Filed Under: Asides Tagged With: Violence and Video Games

Bad news for Rockstar?

July 16, 2005 by Tony 6 Comments

Things don’t look good for Rockstar. GameSpot has confirmed that the “Hot Coffee” content was, in-fact, included on the PS2 disc of GTA:SA.

Cheat unlocks preexisting code in controversy-rocked Grand Theft Auto game, undermining Rockstar Games’ claims of hacker mischief.

This may be the proverbial straw that does in the camel. Rockstar has been wording its presses releases in legalese, making it hard to find a concrete admission or denial. Nevertheless, this is bad news for their case. But how bad is pixelated smut? GameSpot sums it up:

Given that the minigame is about as raunchy as an episode of Sex and the City, cannot be accessed without entering a long string of cheat codes, and takes several hours of effort to access, charges that San Andreas is “pornographic” may seem extreme to some. However, its existence does appear to contradict Rockstar Games’ carefully worded statement blaming hacker mischief for the existence of the Hot Coffee mod.

Related:
GTA should have been rated AO

Filed Under: Gaming, News Tagged With: Violence and Video Games

Parents just have to be better parents.

July 14, 2005 by Tony 8 Comments

First off, I never wanted buttonmashing.com to become a place for political statements, so I will try to refrain from such comments as much as possible. Also, I didn’t want to talk about GTA:SA anymore. I think the game has no redeeming qualities. I respect the opinions of people who think otherwise, but for my money, GTA:SA is a poor game. That said, I really don’t want to beat dead horses (Jack Thompson is an idiot and the GTA scandal) anymore but if you throw in another horse (Hillary Clinton) and I’m game. As it’s been reported, Senator Clinton has thrown her considerable political weight behind an investigation into Rockstar’s peccancies.

Mrs. Clinton asked the commission to determine “the source of this content,” especially since the game can fall into the hands of young people. The game industry’s self-policing unit, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, is investigating whether the maker of the game violated the industry rule requiring “full disclosure of pertinent content.”

Do we really need “federal regulators to investigate” this? Whether this game should have been rated M or AO by the ESRB it should never “fall into the hands of young people.” The NY Times also seems to be sketchy on the rest of the details, but that’s beside the point. It’s troubling that an influential Senator has taken interest in this case, because it gives credence to nut-jobs like Jack Thompson.

In fact, this seems to have been Jack Thompson’s dream come true, as he is literally slobbering in this letter he purportedly sent to everyone in the video game industry.

(On a side note, as a conservative Republican, I am sad to learn that Jack Thompson also belongs to my party. But that is neither here nor there.)

As I read this letter, I had to pause numerous times and pinch myself. Certainly I had drifted into a parallel universe where logic doesn’t exist and saying things crazy-stupid is the norm. As few choice quotes from the letter:

For a month Doug Lowenstein and his ESA pretended that there was no mod, that there was no scandal, that there was no need for any action whatsoever by ESA. How wrong he was.

No, how wrong you are Mr. Thompson! It’s the ESRB, not the ESA, that needs to take action. They rated a game based on content provided to them. It is neither Lowenstein’s nor the ESA’s fault that Rockstar may have held back certain content. This is just hot air.

Doug Lowenstein could have prevented what is going to happen today, but he preferred to shoot the messengers. It is his chronic style.

I wondered if he was trained to do that in Grand Theft Shoot-the-Media. Do you think he has an option of “Shoot the Messenger” in one of his cranial menus?

News organizations don’t trust ESA because Doug Lowenstein is its head. Why should they? He treats them like dirt.

After watching 60 minutes in March, I’d say it was the other way around. They gave whackos like you all the time in the world to spout your nonsense and then gave Doug the equivalent of a couple sound bites.

When Hitler invaded Russia, opening up an Eastern offensive on the eve of winter, Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted that “Hitler must have been rather loosely educated, not having learned the lesson of Napoleon’s autumn advance on Moscow.”

Your Doug Lowenstein is similarly “loosely educated” about the United States Constitution.

Whoops, Thompson has “jumped the shark.” When the “Hitler” comparisons are thrown around, it’s time to pick up your things and leave. Nothing to see here. If you made it that far in the article, you can stop there. Does anyone see the similarity between a madman who exterminated millions of people and a man who may have missed a simple bit of content in a video game where NO ONE DIED? I know you, smart buttonmashers, are familiar with history. I won’t belabor the point anymore. You’ve seen the diarrhea pour out of this guys mouth time and time again. There’s more of this garbage, you can read it if you are a glutton for punishment. You can make your own decision about this guy.

There is one nice little gem, though, from Mr. Thompson. It reminded me why I love George W:

The evening in January 2000 that I appeared on NBC Nightly News to talk about the link between violent games and Columbine, Tom Brokaw asked then Governor Bush about that link and what he as President would do about it? George Bush simply said “Parents just have to be better parents.”

Amen, brother! We can write all the legislation in the world, fine stores and their clerks for selling games to minors, whatever. In the end, if the parents will let little Tommy play GTA:Kill ’em All Rampage, who’s to blame, really?

Update: Here are two cents (which are actually worth more) from blogger JKL, in which he refers to Jack Thompson as Thumper. Anyone who would think of that is okay in my book.

Also keep checking out Kotaku for updates. Brian is on this case like white on rice.

Related Posts:
Cranial Menus
GTA should have been rated AO
Parents just have to be better parents

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: Politics, Violence and Video Games

Gamer Dads Rule!

July 11, 2005 by Tony 2 Comments

GamerDad is a great site with a lot of great information for the ill-informed parent to educate themself about video games. Josh at Cathode Tan has a great interview with The Gamer Dad himself, Andrew Bub. With all the undeserved attention that video games and violence are getting (maybe some is deserved *cough*Rockstar*cough). The interview is great, read the whole thing. Since I am a “Gamer Dad” myself, I can definitely relate to the issues he raises. My kids aren’t old enough that I have to worry about this stuff yet, but it’s great that Andrew has provided such a helpful resource. And don’t think that because Andrew tells it as it is that he’s a “prude”:

Of course after the kids go to bed I’m all about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Battlefield 2 baby. When the kids are away, then your friendly neighborhood GamerDad can really play!

Related:
Should GTA be rated AO?
Jack Thompson and “Cranial Menus”
Start them when they’re young!

Filed Under: Asides Tagged With: Violence and Video Games

GTA should have been rated AO?

July 7, 2005 by Tony 28 Comments

Worthplaying (via Evil Avatar) has an article up claiming that Grand Theft Auto San Andreas should have received an AO rating (the death knell for any video game’s financial success) because hidden, explicit, scenes have come to light. (On a side note, I thought that was a hoax? Or at best, a complex hack on the PC version. Whatever). Anyway, this legislator seems to think the video game industry and the ESRB are in kahoots. I’ll just let the quotes speak for themselves:

“Whether it is JFK: Reloaded, Manhunt, 25 to Life, or now Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the video game industry continues to demonstrate a sense of arrogance towards public opinion and a lack of responsibility in protecting our children,” said Speaker pro Tem Yee.

And

“The ESRB and the video game industry cannot police themselves and this is yet another example of why we need legislation to limit these types of games to children,” said Speaker pro Tem Yee.

I’m currently renting GTA:SA. This is my first foray into the Grand Theft World. Sheesh, this game is violent. But that’s not my point.

First off, I can’t believe the nerve of these “representatives”. Give us some credit, Mr. Yee. We’re grown adults that know right from wrong. We’re not little kids that need Mommy Government to tell us how to make right decisions. “Lack of responsibility protecting our children”? Sorry, Mr. Speaker Yee, the video game industry is not responsible for the protection of my children. I am. After five minutes of GTA:SA it was abundantly clear that this game was not intended for children. Parents should familiarize themselves with the entertainment their kids partake of. If I would have walked in on my kid playing this game, it would have immediately been removed from the Xbox and returned to the store, no questions asked. It’s violent, vulgar, and lacks any redeeming quality. It certainly would not be in my kids’ hands. I, along with my wife, are responsible for the protection of my children. I would never let my kids play an GTA-esque game until they were at least fifteen or sixteen years old. I don’t care how much whining they did about how “their friends all play it” and I don’t “get it”. I don’t think young kids are ready for this kind of imagery. If my kids want to play a game I think is questionable, I’ll make them play it with me. If they’re comfortable with that, then we can make an informed decision together. But I will never buy my kids games like this until their old enough to distinguish video game violence from the real thing.

So thanks, Speaker Yee, but no thanks. You don’t have to bring the heat down on the video game industry on behalf of us parents. We’re quite capable of taking care of our kids and we’ll be the deciding what is good for the kids and what isn’t. Maybe you can go pass some laws reducing taxes or something.

Update: This was picked up by games.slashdot. Also check out this piece on Gamespot (Thanks, Troy). Rockstar seems confident but it could be smoke and mirrors:

We also feel confident that the investigation will uphold the original rating of the game, as the work of the mod community is beyond the scope of either publishers or the ESRB.

If this “extra” content was included on the original disc, they’ve got no leg to stand on.

Normally the comments at Slashdot are usually so fraught with bickering and flaming that they’re not worth the time, but the thread going there is actually civil. Worth a read. The overriding theme I pick up is that Americans love their violence but get squeamish with their sex. I personally feel that violence and sex don’t occupy the same level of “content”, i.e. sex > violence on the “be careful meter”. Kids are much more influenced by the former. It elicits more of an emotional response than violence does.

One good point was made here with this comment. If Rockstar knowingly hid content from the rating board, they did parents a disservice. Everyone is calling on parents to monitor their children’s entertainment (which is exactly my point) but they are making decisions on mis-information. Regardless, five minutes of the game will convince any parent this game should not be in the hands of young teens.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: GTA 3, Violence and Video Games

Cranial Menus

March 6, 2005 by Tony 7 Comments

So I watched the 60 minutes episode this evening. I watched it with my father-in-law. Two things stuck out in my mind: 1) Cranial menus. What is a cranial menu, you ask? Read on for an explanation on that. 2) For all the things we say about personal responsibility, parental guidance, etc., the truth is people have been forever affected by this tragedy. That should not be sold short.

Now, on to cranial menus. This odd term can be directly attributed to that crazy old coot, Jack Thompson, Esq. In one of the comments by Thompson, he claims the kids (I mean killers) who play these video games (I mean murder simulators) form a type of “cranial menu” where they are able to pick and chose the moves they have done so many times in a video game, only this time in real life. This is supposedly what happened with Devin Moore (I thought his name was Devin Thompson). He grabbed the cop’s gun (why wasn’t that puppy secured?), looked at his cranial menu and his GTA-training kicked in. Here, I’ll just quote him from the transcript itself (which can be found here)

“The video game industry gave him a cranial menu that popped up in the blink of an eye, in that police station,” says Thompson. “And that menu offered him the split-second decision to kill the officers, shoot them in the head, flee in a police car, just as the game itself trained them to do.”

Puuhleese. Even my father-in-law, who watches us play video games but doesn’t play himself, saw through that pile of turds. Now, I know this has been discussed elsewhere, but there’s a big difference between seeing tetris blocks and killing other human beings.

I felt the reporter/commentator (can you be that old and still have an earring?) did a fairly good job of reporting. Things didn’t start out very good, though. Consider this intro:

Imagine if the entertainment industry created a video game in which you could decapitate police officers, kill them with a sniper rifle, massacre them with a chainsaw, and set them on fire.

Now that’s just not fair. I know that’s the allure of the GTA games. But to start a news story like that and you’ve already shown your hand. The viewers are already convinced video games are bad if you can “set them on fire“. But giving him the benefit of the doubt, Ed Bradley did a fair job asking the questions. A couple examples:

He asked David Walsh, a child psychologist (who did a study linking violent video games to physical aggression):

“You’ve got probably millions of kids out there playing violent games like Grand Theft Auto and other violent games, who never hurt a fly,” says Bradley. “So what does that do to your theory?”

Walsh respons:

“You know, not every kid that plays a violent video game is gonna turn to violence. And that’s because they don’t have all of those other risk factors going on,” says Walsh. “It’s a combination of risk factors, which come together in a tragic outcome.”

Other risk factors! It was glossed over that Devin was from a broken home, in and out of foster homes and most likely had very little parental interaction. The fact that he logged hundreds of hours playing the game was also only mentioned in passing. Where was the parent to tell him to turn off the game and do his chores, or his homework, or go outside and play? The kid was sixteen! Wasn’t he involved with school sports? Didn’t he have friends? Troubled, indeed.

Of course we need to ask the burning question, that of personal responsibility. We get it near the end:

But shouldn’t Moore, alone, face the consequences of his decision to kill three men?

Thompson responds with this doozy:

“There’s plenty of blame to go around. The fact is we think Devin Moore is responsible for what he did. But we think that the adults who created these games and in effect programmed Devon Moore and assisted him to kill are responsible at least civilly.”

I love that. There’s plenty of blame to go around. I’ll just end it with that. That sentence, those seven simple words sum up Thompon’s motivation. You can do awful, unspeakably terrible and despicable things, but since there is “plenty of blame to go around” let’s sue so people in the process. Nevermind the other people who are scarred forever by this tragedy (my second point). If we can make some cash in the process, let’s do it!

Update: You can read the Video Game Ombudsman’s reaction to the 60 minutes piece here.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: Violence and Video Games

Violence!

March 5, 2005 by Tony Leave a Comment

Tomorrow on 60 Minutes there will be a story about a case involving a teenager and violent video games. From CBS’s website:

GRAND THEFT AUTO – Can a violent videogame called Grand Theft Auto be responsible for an 18-year-old murdering three people? That’s what the families of the victims are saying in a lawsuit and to Ed Bradley.

I believe these families are being represented by Jack Thompson, attorney extraordinaire. Earlier this week, there was a great “Fisking” (I love these blogging terms) by Josh at Cathode Tan. He dismantles pretty much everything the attorney Jack Thompson has said. (Man it’s hard not calling that guy names. It’s been done so well, by so many other people). It’s an excellent read, as are most of the comments that follow.

This is a perfect example of the power of blogging. It takes some leg work to do this and I’m glad Josh did his homework. He responds to Thompson’s comments/opinions/rants with a level-head. He doesn’t resort to personal attacks and name calling, as Mr. Thompson has been known to do. He points out flaws in the argument and then has examples and counterpoints to reinforce his points.

There are plenty of examples of this in the political blogging community (too many to cite any one example in particular) but blogs keep the so-called “MSM” on their toes. This type of leg work is just now starting to show up in gaming blogs. One I remember, in particular, was the GBA Disney game that had a swear word in it. Gasp! The story was originally found on The Sun (the link to the story seems to be gone) but is quoted here. This was just some shoddy reporting and no real research on the part of the writer. Just a knee-jerk reaction to a swear word on a Disney game. Did he think a game with the Disney name on it could make it through their Quality Control without this being caught? That’s quite a leap of journalistic faith. Actually, the game turned out to be a pirated version (hat tip to Video Fenky) and the pirates had a little shout-out to their competition. But it was the bloggers (and other interested parties, namely, gamers with brains) that righted this wrong. Jack Thompson needed someone to right some of his “wrongs”. While we’ve previously seen some mentions of Thompson which prove this guy measures way high on the wackiness meter (here, here and elsewhere) but no one had really taken him to task until Josh analyzed some of the stuff he has said.

Once Josh posted this, gamers and gaming bloggers took over and this spread pretty quickly. Evil Avatar had it first, since Josh submitted it there but it immediately spawned comments and opinions from fellow EAers. Penny-Arcade picked it up from EA and even though Tycho doesn’t talk directly to the issue at hand, he does make some good points:

… However, the man is essentially building his legacy on the broken bodies of desperate teenagers. Countering the man rationally will serve no purpose, the imagery is too potent. I’m powerless to dissect a sermon like that, simply because the task is so vast. There are a hundred ways his piece dissembles, exaggerates, omits key points, or relies on flourish and appeals, but his motif is perfectly packaged for media. The man spins at ten thousand RPM.

The importance of exposure on Penny-Arcade (or a similar site like EA) can’t be underestimated. Whether they consider themselves bloggers or not, they have an audience of millions and a link from their news stories will drive big time traffic to a site, with thousands of eyes pouring over all your hard work. I’m sure Josh got a nice big jump in traffic from that linkage. This link spawns hundreds of little links (like buttonmashing) and others, like the ones found here, here, or here, here, here, here, and here. (If there are others, let me know). This puts the story in front of even more eyes, most importantly those that have never heard of PA. (I know, it’s hard to believe, but some people haven’t been enlightened.) Call it a meme, call it whatever, but it’s out there for more and more people to see. Hopefully it is enough to counterbalance all the tripe that was spewed out in the first place. This is the voice of the gamer. The voice of a group of people who care about this form of entertainment and desperately want it to be respected and not blamed for everything that’s wrong with society. There were sicko killers and criminals before video games and there will be many more after. We just want some equal footing when defending our hobby of choice. One side of the story really isn’t an argument.

This voice of the gamer probably won’t be heard on tomorrow’s show. I’m afraid it will be one-sided and biased. But the blogging groundwork has been laid and we can also be vocal and have our voice heard. Places like Penny-Arcade and Evil Avatar (among others) have loyal followers that can be mobilized to do great things. Gaming bloggers can also do their part. Heck, we could stoop as low as GoogleBombing Thompson’s “help site” with something like “Clinically Insane“. But we gaming bloggers are above childish tomfoolery, right? We can, however, point people to Josh’s post and let them make their own conclusions. We can watch the bit on 60 minutes and actually debate the points they bring up. It will make us want to scream obscenities at the TV and then get on our favorite forum to call Thompson names not-fit-for-print but we must restrain ourselves and not allow ourselves to be baited into that trap. We just need some even-handed comments and discussions. No name calling! We are Mature Gamers, remember?

I’ll be watching the 60 minutes episode hoping both sides of the story are shown. I know they don’t have the best record of doing that, but one can hope. But I’ll definitely be blogging my thoughts. Until then…

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: Violence and Video Games

Law & Order takes on Video Games

February 8, 2005 by Tony Leave a Comment

I’m a fan of the Law & Order franchise and I catch most of the Special Victims Unit (SVU) episodes. One thing that makes the series compelling is that the cases they deal with don’t always end up tied up with a happy little bow where the bad guy is caught and the victim can pick up and move on with their lives. Sometimes, the bad guy (or girl) gets away with murder. It something that bugs the heck out of my wife (she needs everything packaged perfectly) but I enjoy it. I don’t enjoy the fact that bad people do bad things and get away with it, I like the fact that life isn’t fair and sometimes really crappy stuff happens. So it was this reason that caused a little trepidation when I heard that tonight’s episode was about some kids doing a crime they have done over and over in a video game. I thought for sure they were going to hammer away the “violent video games make violent kids”. At first it seemed like that was the path they were going to take. It wasn’t looking good.

The officers come across a body of a hooker who’s been hit by a car, beaten and robbed. Det. Stabler’s son recognizes the M.O. as the object of a video game called “Intensity” (*cough* I mean Grand Theft Auto *cough*) where the object is to run people over and beat them up to take their money. Again, I don’t like where this is going.

Long story short, they catch the teenagers who did the crime, and their high-profile, ignorant-as-nails lawyer cooks up a plea of not guilty because they were addicted to video games and couldn’t distinguish right from wrong. My favorite character of the series, Dr. Wong lays the psychiatric smack-down on the lawyer and basically says the narcissistic adrenaline junkies knew exactly what they were doing. When the lawyer asks him if he thinks video games make the kids that play them violent, he basically says “No”. What’s this? They are actually saying the violent video game “Intensity” didn’t drive these kids to do a heinous crime? That they, of their own conscience, ran a girl over because they were sickos, not whacked-out video game players? Astonishing! I can’t believe it, but the “Main Stream Media” (the evil one?) is actually saying violent video games don’t make kids do violent things? I thought this was a no-no! Someone is gonna get it over at NBC! Didn’t they get the memo? But sure enough, there it was, laid bare for all to see. Complete with the guilty verdicts for the two teenagers on the count of 2nd degree murder. Amazing.

Overall, they did a pretty good job of portraying video games in the episode. The don’t just show them off as mindless entertainment and they definitely don’t make it seem like they’re a breeding ground for an army of killers. The company that made the game Intensity also made children’s games. The gamers weren’t nerdy looking teens, although of the game programmers did. I’d have to ding the kids who played the perps. They weren’t convincing gamers. The boy in particular seemed more like a frat gamer than a “real gamner”. But I give them credit, they did a lot of things right. The even had Stabler’s son playing a Tapwave Zodiac at the end of the episode (shameless product placement? Probably. My guess is the kid owns a GBA in real life). I thought the episode was well done, and I applaud the writers from avoiding the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the video game and getting to the root cause — these kids were just plain bad seeds.

Update (2/9/05) – It appears I wasn’t the only one who caught this episode. Andrew at Tales of a Scorched Earth posted his comments here.

Update (2/15/05) – Here are some more comments, by new-to-me Clubberjack. He also made some pretty good points.

Filed Under: Commentary, Entertainment Tagged With: Good News, TV, Violence and Video Games

Video games aren’t all bad!

September 16, 2004 by Tony 1 Comment

For a while there, video games only received bad press. GTA-inspired shootings and murders involving an Xbox were the headlines. Now stories of what good can come of video games are starting to come out. There have been stories of surgeons who play video games have more success. Now, Wired News has this story about a “Games for Health” conference where game makers and health educators are getting together to talk about games. There are games that can be used for training –

Rosser, who heads the Advanced Medical Technology Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, knows how he’d like to see games used. Since 2001, he’s worked with games like Super Monkey Ball, for Nintendo’s GameCube console, to train doctors in laparoscopic surgery. What Rosser found was that students who had played video games for more than three hours in one week — even once — had 37 percent fewer errors during the procedure, and got the operation done 27 percent more quickly.

And for treatment –

… which has used video games and digital worlds to treat more than 400 people with anxiety disorders. Patients there use the games to face their phobias. People afraid to drive play Midtown Madness, a racing game; those with fear of heights use a custom-crafted level from the Unreal Tournament shooter game, which features pixelated skyscrapers 50 stories tall.

Filed Under: Asides Tagged With: Good News, Violence and Video Games

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