Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

Gilda · 03-09-2005, 09:08 PM

Look at the numbers. 35 million copies sold. 1 player that we know of who killed police. That's a ratio of 1 in 35 million. Let's compare that to the general populace. If one person in 35 million killed a police officer, that would lead to a grand total of some 8 police officers killed. So far, in the US this year alone, 21 police officers have been killed in the line of duty, and that's in a little over two months. At that rate, over a hundred will die this year alone. At a hundred a year, that's something like 500 since 2000, or about 50 times the rate of police homicide in the general populace as in the population playing GTA.

This would seem to indicate that GTA players are less likely than the general populace to kill police officers, by a huge margin. Now this is correlative evidence, and not proof of cause and effect, but none of the experts cited in the 60 minutes piece have proven cause and effect, either.

Has there been a comparison study done? How many players of other popular games murder? I regularly kill people playing Sims 2, and I've noticed that this is a popular pasttime. Does this make me more likely to drown people in my pool or lock people in a dungeoun and starve them to death?

There's no way to predict what teens will imitate. Last year it was backyard wrestling in imitation of WWF. A few years ago, it was dimwits getting themselves killed laying down in the highway after seeing it in a football movie. In the late 70's, some teens in New York set a man on fire after seeing the same thing in the movie Fuzz on tv. Yes some teens will imitate things they experience in the media. Most games, movies, and tv shows never inspire anything but pretend. To expect artists who make these products to be soothsayers who predict the future is asking too much.

The person who chose to pull the trigger is the one responsible.

03-09-2005, 09:08 PM	#4 (permalink)
Gilda 32 flavors and then some Location: Out on a wire.	Look at the numbers. 35 million copies sold. 1 player that we know of who killed police. That's a ratio of 1 in 35 million. Let's compare that to the general populace. If one person in 35 million killed a police officer, that would lead to a grand total of some 8 police officers killed. So far, in the US this year alone, 21 police officers have been killed in the line of duty, and that's in a little over two months. At that rate, over a hundred will die this year alone. At a hundred a year, that's something like 500 since 2000, or about 50 times the rate of police homicide in the general populace as in the population playing GTA. This would seem to indicate that GTA players are less likely than the general populace to kill police officers, by a huge margin. Now this is correlative evidence, and not proof of cause and effect, but none of the experts cited in the 60 minutes piece have proven cause and effect, either. Has there been a comparison study done? How many players of other popular games murder? I regularly kill people playing Sims 2, and I've noticed that this is a popular pasttime. Does this make me more likely to drown people in my pool or lock people in a dungeoun and starve them to death? There's no way to predict what teens will imitate. Last year it was backyard wrestling in imitation of WWF. A few years ago, it was dimwits getting themselves killed laying down in the highway after seeing it in a football movie. In the late 70's, some teens in New York set a man on fire after seeing the same thing in the movie Fuzz on tv. Yes some teens will imitate things they experience in the media. Most games, movies, and tv shows never inspire anything but pretend. To expect artists who make these products to be soothsayers who predict the future is asking too much. The person who chose to pull the trigger is the one responsible.