"killer games"

[Chaos]

In the aftermath of school massacre in Germany a few days ago, the usual suspects around here are back preaching the same old sermon about "killer games" (i.e. "violent" video games) being the cause for all this. Well, I guess you are all familiar with the gist of the argument; I´m pretty sure similar complaints were once lodged about rock music and, before that, about secular literature.

Before I continue, I should say that, even though I do play plenty of computer games, I have never played any of the specific games that have been called "killer games", which for this discussion is a good thing because it gives me the same experience with them that all the "outlaw those killer games" crowd has.

Anyway, besides the can of worms of what actually constitutes a "killer game", there´s something else that bugs me - the question of causality. We all know the claim that people who play violent will become violent in reality. Even if we leave out the possibility that there is no causality at all (which is not all that unlikely), how about the third possibilty?

What I mean is, what if the causality is the other way around? What if the tendency to be drawn to the more brutal and explicitly violent games of a genre, or to the more violent genres in general (say, to prefer Ultimate Chainsaw Bloodbath over My Little Pony 3D) is a symptom of the same condition (I hesitate to call it a disorder or illness just yet) that also causes people to react to a certain set of environmental conditions, such as years of nonstop bullying at school, with an explosion of violence rather than in a less wantonly destructive way?

This hypothesies has several advantages, among them explaining why school killers apparently tend to be assiociated with "killer games" without requiring an explanation while most people who play these games do not go berserk in real life.
It also has disadvantages, the most striking of which is destroying the basis for the polemics of politicians who wish to be perceived as adressing a problem without having to do anything inconvenient, such as actually solving the problem.

So, what do you think?

 

[Polaris]

"Killer games" is just a convenient scapegoat for demagogue politicians and activist attention whores to get votes/money/publicity for free when something like this happens. When you compare the number of people who play violent games with the scant few who actually murder their classmates (current or former), it's hard to see it any other way, let alone some kind of trend requiring any bans or legal action.

What else is there to discuss?

 

[Uncayimmy]

I have a copy of PC Gamer from a few years ago that shows that the overall trend in violent crimes has steadily decreased as the popularity of video games has increased over the last 15 years.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

I have the same reaction whenever someone complains about a movie or play or piece of music or book or TV show or whatnot being racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, prejudiced against Muslims, homophobic, etc. and "expresses concern" it might lead to real life violence.

No book or movie or game or song or show ever made anyone attack anyone because they were black, Latino, a woman, Muslim or gay.

If you assault or murder someone unlike you, you already had that in you. That's why you were drawn to the material in the first place. Maybe the message was the spark that ignited the fire but, going with the analogy, you were already a ready campfire soaked with kerosene.

Even with outright propaganda like the films the Nazis made or passion plays, it only served to fire up an already prejudiced public. It wasn't the first time the audience had heard those messages.

Same with violent video games or movies- disturbed people might use them as an outlet or be drawn to them or they might be an overall indicator of how little a particular society values people. Blaming real violence on the games, however, is confusing cause and effect and the symptom with the disease.

 

[dudalb]

Violent Video Games have become the Whipping Boy for the Do Gooders, whose "doing good" involved taking away somebody's freedom, all in the name of "the Good Of Society".
Shades of the great comics controversy of the 50's.

 

[GreNME]

What if the tendency to be drawn to the more brutal and explicitly violent games of a genre, or to the more violent genres in general (say, to prefer Ultimate Chainsaw Bloodbath over My Little Pony 3D) is a symptom of the same condition (I hesitate to call it a disorder or illness just yet) that also causes people to react to a certain set of environmental conditions, such as years of nonstop bullying at school, with an explosion of violence rather than in a less wantonly destructive way?

If I had to play My Little Pony 3D, I'd probably want to go killing stuff.

 

[rwguinn]

Violent Video Games have become the Whipping Boy for the Do Gooders, whose "doing good" involved taking away somebody's freedom, all in the name of "the Good Of Society".
Shades of the great comics controversy of the 50's.

Elvis is evil/ Rock and Roll is the work of the devil--you name it, somebody is going to find that it is forcing people to kill other people.
We can insist on good, solid evidence, which will not be forthcoming. We can keep pointing this out, but:
Arguments from emotion are seldom subject to change by logic. All we can do is try.

 

[Bikewer]

I am always fond of pointing out that human beings have been capable of the most horrific violence long before there were any video games.

There is an innate tendency to violence in human beings. It could as easily be argued that playing sports, video games, or whatever is cathartic and is as likely to decrease this tendency as it is it promote it.

We also know that violence has been portrayed in entertainment and the arts for as long as there have been such things.
Cave paintings portray scenes of hunting and warfare. Surviving stories from the earliest civilizations include tales of war, murder, and violence.
Shakespeare was quite fond of killing folks in his plays, complete with spattering blood. Sometimes he killed off most of the cast....

And so on.

 

[Chaos]

If I had to play My Little Pony 3D, I'd probably want to go killing stuff.

But according to my hypothesis, this is only because you are not the kind of person drawn to games like My Little Pony 3D, but the kind of person who is predisposed to violent games and violent actions.

See? I win. I always win.

 

[big-E]

A minor point, but in Germany you can generally only buy toned-down versions of most 'violent' games, with blood/carnage edited out. This causes a great deal of disgruntlement among German gamers fed up with being treated by children - and apparently made no difference to this latest failure of a human being.

Perhaps if the games had been more realistic, he would have been less keen to shoot people, knowing how bloody a mess it makes? Who can tell...

Spree killings are so rare you couldn't possibly make a meaningful correlation them with anything that people do. Clearly the vast majority of all people who do X do not become spree killers, whatever X is, be it play video games or eat porridge for breakfast that morning.

 

[Hittman]

Don't forget comic books. In the 50s they were the cause of all Juvenile Delinquency.

How many kids play those games? How many are violent in the real world? Case closed.

 

[tyr_13]

If I had to play My Little Pony 3D, I'd probably want to go killing stuff.

I just vomited a little bit, in my mouth.

 

[gumboot]

It's sad that people pull out these stupid arguments, because it does actually detract from a legitimate point.

There's a good case that FPS-style computer games condition people to kill. Now, conditioning someone to kill has no bearing whatsoever on their desire to be violent or to kill, but what it does do is disables a natural safeguard that prevents most people from killing.

So it doesn't make them more violent or aggressive, but if they get violent and aggressive and decide they want to kill someone, it means they're more likely to be able to do it, and more likely to be able to take down multiple victims.

 

[GreNME]

But according to my hypothesis, this is only because you are not the kind of person drawn to games like My Little Pony 3D, but the kind of person who is predisposed to violent games and violent actions.

See? I win. I always win.

Curse you and your impenetrable logic!

-----

I just vomited a little bit, in my mouth.

At my hypothesized killing spree, or My Little Ponies in 3D?

 

[Chaos]

It's sad that people pull out these stupid arguments, because it does actually detract from a legitimate point.

There's a good case that FPS-style computer games condition people to kill. Now, conditioning someone to kill has no bearing whatsoever on their desire to be violent or to kill, but what it does do is disables a natural safeguard that prevents most people from killing.

So it doesn't make them more violent or aggressive, but if they get violent and aggressive and decide they want to kill someone, it means they're more likely to be able to do it, and more likely to be able to take down multiple victims.

But then, who´d want to be conditioned to kill? Who´d enjoy it so much they keep playing? Certainly, those people who lean towards violent solution to begin with would be more likely to do so,

 

[tyr_13]

At my hypothesized killing spree, or My Little Ponies in 3D?

Years of video games have disabled my ability to be outraged by the thought of violence. So it was at the My Little Ponies in 3D.

 

[fuelair]

In the aftermath of school massacre in Germany a few days ago, the usual suspects around here are back preaching the same old sermon about "killer games" (i.e. "violent" video games) being the cause for all this. Well, I guess you are all familiar with the gist of the argument; I´m pretty sure similar complaints were once lodged about rock music and, before that, about secular literature.

Before I continue, I should say that, even though I do play plenty of computer games, I have never played any of the specific games that have been called "killer games", which for this discussion is a good thing because it gives me the same experience with them that all the "outlaw those killer games" crowd has.

Anyway, besides the can of worms of what actually constitutes a "killer game", there´s something else that bugs me - the question of causality. We all know the claim that people who play violent will become violent in reality. Even if we leave out the possibility that there is no causality at all (which is not all that unlikely), how about the third possibilty?

What I mean is, what if the causality is the other way around? What if the tendency to be drawn to the more brutal and explicitly violent games of a genre, or to the more violent genres in general (say, to prefer Ultimate Chainsaw Bloodbath over My Little Pony 3D) is a symptom of the same condition (I hesitate to call it a disorder or illness just yet) that also causes people to react to a certain set of environmental conditions, such as years of nonstop bullying at school, with an explosion of violence rather than in a less wantonly destructive way?

This hypothesies has several advantages, among them explaining why school killers apparently tend to be assiociated with "killer games" without requiring an explanation while most people who play these games do not go berserk in real life.
It also has disadvantages, the most striking of which is destroying the basis for the polemics of politicians who wish to be perceived as adressing a problem without having to do anything inconvenient, such as actually solving the problem.

So, what do you think?

Having watched/listened to innumerable rounds of Halo, my firm belief is anyone who uses it as a model for assaulting real people will go down by the first weapon holder he runs across.

 

[Morrigan]

So it doesn't make them more violent or aggressive, but if they get violent and aggressive and decide they want to kill someone, it means they're more likely to be able to do it, and more likely to be able to take down multiple victims.

 

[luchog]

There's a good case that FPS-style computer games condition people to kill. Now, conditioning someone to kill has no bearing whatsoever on their desire to be violent or to kill, but what it does do is disables a natural safeguard that prevents most people from killing.

This was hashed over ad nauseum the last time this issue came up, and the upshot was that there was absolutely no hard evidence to support such a conclusion. The fact that violent crime rates have continued to drop while games have continued to be violent, and have grown in popularity. You can throw in all the qualifications you want, realism or whatever, but the fact remains that there is simply no correlational link to be found, let alone a causative one.

The US military has been trying to find a link between violent video games and desensitization since at the early 1980s. It has commissioned multiple studies, and developed several combat simulators (I've actually used one of them) in an attempt to build a tool that would let them increase the effectiveness of soldiers on the battlefield, and minimize the psychological backlash. They even went so far as to develop a violent Counterstrike-style mass-market game intended to serve as a training and recruitment tool -- America's Army -- which was launched in 2002.

Every single effort has proved a failure, and America's Army was a flop. Games are good for teaching tactics and situational awareness; but completely worthless as psychological manipulation. Ability to kill enemy soldiers has not been improved, and psychological backlash is still every bit as much of a problem as it has ever been. The only thing that has been effective in accomplishing either goal is a strong reliance on one's peer group and cultural hierarchy for identity and support. This has been demonstrated not only in the military, but also in law enforcement.

The only way that has ever been demonstrated to reliably increase a normal person's ability to kill is to dehumanize the person. Not the target, but the person himself. Put him in an environment where not only is the enemy dehumanized and portrayed as worthless, but where the killer is also taught to have little or no respect for his own life. The killer needs to be brought up in an environment that portrays violence as the most desirable solution to a problem, and puts a greater value on material goods, reputation, and image, and much less on human life. This is why street gangs are so violent. Not poverty, not being somehow "subhuman", not whatever sociopolitical soapbox is popular at the moment; but because they're raised from children in a culture of violence that values almost everything more than human life. It is something that must be taught at a very early age; and requires constant reinforcement from one's society and peers.

People are able to engage in killing behaviour in video games precisely because they're not real. Because they know explicitly and intuitively that their targets are not real, that they are in no danger themselves, and that, ultimately, there is no actual harm being done. With the exception of sociopaths and the mentally ill, humans hold a very strong demarcation between fantasy and reality; and a strong disinclination to kill another humans. It's something that's hard wired into us. The only way to overcome it is serious psychological stress (such as becoming the target of a violent crime), or close identification wtih a supportive group (eg. military units, or street gangs).

 

[luchog]

But then, who´d want to be conditioned to kill? Who´d enjoy it so much they keep playing? Certainly, those people who lean towards violent solution to begin with would be more likely to do so,

Interestingly, the social and economic groups who have the greatest exposure to violent video games also have among the lowest violent crime rates. Likewise, those with the highest violent crime rates have the lowest exposure to such games. Video games, violent or otherwise, are most predominant among the middle and upper classes. Crime rates are highest among the lower (working class, working poor, welfare) classes; which are also the same classes where gang membership is highest.

Peer groups and culture have a far, far greater influence on one's ability to kill than video games could ever have.