ARTelevision

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in678261.shtml

Can A Video Game Lead To Murder?
March 6, 2005


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.

Think anyone would buy such a violent game?

They would, and they have. The game Grand Theft Auto has sold more than 35 million copies, with worldwide sales approaching $2 billion.

Two weeks ago, a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to go on a rampage and kill three men, two of them police officers.

Can a video game train someone to kill? Correspondent Ed Bradley reports.

Grand Theft Auto is a world governed by the laws of depravity. See a car you like? Steal it. Someone you don't like? Stomp her. A cop in your way? Blow him away.

There are police at every turn, and endless opportunities to take them down. It is 360 degrees of murder and mayhem: slickly produced, technologically brilliant, and exceedingly violent.

And now, the game is at the center of a civil lawsuit involving the murders of three men in the small town of Fayette, Ala. They were gunned down by 18-year-old Devin Moore, who had played Grand Theft Auto day and night for months.

Attorney Jack Thompson, a long-time crusader against video-game violence, is bringing the suit. "What we're saying is that Devin Moore was, in effect, trained to do what he did. He was given a murder simulator," says Thompson.

"He bought it as a minor. He played it hundreds of hours, which is primarily a cop-killing game. It's our theory, which we think we can prove to a jury in Alabama, that, but for the video-game training, he would not have done what he did."

Moore’s victims were Ace Mealer, a 911 dispatcher; James Crump, a police officer; and Arnold Strickland, another officer who was on patrol in the early morning hours of June 7, 2003, when he brought in Moore on suspicion of stealing a car.

Moore had no criminal history, and was cooperative as Strickland booked him inside the Fayette police station. Then suddenly, inexplicably, Moore snapped.

According to Moore's own statement, he lunged at Officer Arnold Strickland, grabbing his .40-caliber Glock automatic and shot Strickland twice, once in the head. Officer James Crump heard the shots and came running. Moore met him in the hallway, and fired three shots into Crump, one of them in the head.

Moore kept walking down the hallway towards the door of the emergency dispatcher. There, he turned and fired five shots into Ace Mealer. Again, one of those shots was in the head. Along the way, Moore had grabbed a set of car keys. He went out the door to the parking lot, jumped into a police cruiser, and took off. It all took less than a minute, and three men were dead.

"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."

After his capture, Moore is reported to have told police, "Life is like a video game. Everybody’s got to die sometime." Moore is awaiting trial in criminal court. A suit filed by the families of two of his victims claims that Moore acted out a scenario found in Grand Theft Auto: The player is a street thug trying to take over the city. In one scenario, the player can enter a police precinct, steal a uniform, free a convict from jail, escape by shooting police, and flee in a squad car.

"I've now got the entire police force after me. So you have to eliminate all resistance," says Nicholas Hamner, a law student at the University of Alabama, who demonstrated Grand Theft Auto for 60 Minutes. Like millions of gamers, the overwhelming majority, he says he plays it simply for fun.

David Walsh, a child psychologist who’s co-authored a study connecting violent video games to physical aggression, says the link can be explained in part by pioneering brain research recently done at the National Institutes of Health -- which shows that the teenage brain is not fully developed.

Does repeated exposure to violent video games have more of an impact on a teenager than it does on an adult?

"It does. And that's largely because the teenage brain is different from the adult brain. The impulse control center of the brain, the part of the brain that enables us to think ahead, consider consequences, manage urges -- that's the part of the brain right behind our forehead called the prefrontal cortex," says Walsh. "That's under construction during the teenage years. In fact, the wiring of that is not completed until the early 20s."

Walsh says this diminished impulse control becomes heightened in a person who has additional risk factors for criminal behavior. Moore had a profoundly troubled upbringing, bouncing back and forth between a broken home and a handful of foster families.

"And so when a young man with a developing brain, already angry, spends hours and hours and hours rehearsing violent acts, and then, and he's put in this situation of emotional stress, there's a likelihood that he will literally go to that familiar pattern that's been wired repeatedly, perhaps thousands and thousands of times," says Walsh.

"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?"

"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."

Arnold Strickland had been a police officer for 25 years when he was murdered. His brother Steve, a Methodist minister, wants the video game industry to pay.

"Why does it have to come to a point to where somebody's life has to be taken before they realize that these games have repercussions to them? Why does it have to be to where my brother's not here anymore," says Steve Strickland. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about him."

Strickland, along with Mealer's parents, are suing Moore, as well as Wal-Mart and GameStop, which sold Moore two versions of Grand Theft Auto. Both companies sent us letters insisting they bear no responsibility for Moore’s actions, and that the game is played by millions of law-abiding citizens.

Take-Two Interactive, the creator of Grand Theft Auto, and Sony, which makes the device that runs the game, are also being sued. Both declined to talk to 60 Minutes on camera. Instead, they referred it to Doug Lowenstein, who represents the video game industry.

Lowenstein is not named in the lawsuit, and says he can’t comment on it directly. "It's not my job to defend individual titles," says Lowenstein. "My job is to defend the right of people in this industry to create the products that they want to create. That's free expression."

"A police officer we spoke to said, 'Our job is dangerous enough as it is without having our kids growing up playing those games and having the preconceived notions of "let's kill an officer." It's almost like putting a target on us.' Can you see his point?" asks Bradley.

"Look, I have great respect for the law enforcement officers of this country.... I don't think video games inspire people to commit crimes," says Lowenstein. "If people have a criminal mind, it's not because they're getting their ideas from the video games. There's something much more deeply wrong with the individual. And it's not the game that's the problem."

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

"There's plenty of blame to go around. The fact is we think Devin Moore is responsible for what he did," says Thompson. "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.

Thompson says video game companies had reason to foresee that some of their products would trigger violence, and bolsters his case with claims that the murders in Fayette were not the first thought to be inspired by Grand Theft Auto.

In Oakland, Calif., detectives said the game provoked a street gang accused of robbing and killing six people. In Newport, Tenn., two teenagers told police the game was an influence when they shot at passing cars with a .22 caliber rifle, killing one person. But to date, not a single court case has acknowledged a link between virtual violence and the real thing.

Paul Smith is a First Amendment lawyer who has represented video game companies. "What you have in almost every generation is the new medium that comes along. And it's subject of almost a hysterical attack," says Smith. "If you went back to the 1950s, it's hard to believe now, but comic books were blamed for juvenile delinquency. And I think what you really have here is very much the same phenomenon playing itself out again with a new medium."

Why does he think the courts have ruled against these kinds of lawsuits?

"If you start saying that we're going to sue people because one individual out there read their book or played their game and decided to become a criminal, there is no stopping point," says Smith. "It's a huge new swath of censorship that will be imposed on the media."

Despite its violence, or because of it, the fact is that millions of people like playing Grand Theft Auto. Steve Strickland can’t understand why.

"The question I have to ask the manufacturers of them is, 'Why do you make games that target people that are to protect us, police officers, people that we look up to -- people that I respect -- with high admiration,'" says Strickland.

"'Why do you want to market a game that gives people the thoughts, even the thoughts of thinking it's OK to shoot police officers? Why do you wanna do that?'"

Both Wal-Mart and GameStop, where Moore purchased Grand Theft Auto, say they voluntarily card teenagers in an effort to keep violent games from underage kids. But several states are considering laws that would ban the sale of violent games to those under 17.

....................................................


It does seem to me that it is indeed time to try cases like this in courts of law. As you may know, my opinion is that we are the sum total of the media we are exposed to. I'm aware that there is a strong tide of opinion in opposition to the implications of this. I find that fascinating - in a psychological sense. I am always interested in the thoughts of those who deny strong causal connections between media and behavior.

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ziadel

Sadly enough, I think they can prove this to a jury in alabama

Why do I think so?

because you can convince a jury in alabama that you had a really good reason to drag that black man behind your pickup truck for three miles in alabama...


this is absolutely ridiculous tho. Mebbe I should sue J.D. Sallinger because I read The Catcher in the Rye in the 8th grade, then dropped out of high school in the 10th grade?

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Ace_O_Spades

He was a minor, he was playing a game rated M

How is this the video game's fault? They have a rating for a reason... They did their part, the owness is transferred to the public to make sure people aren't playing these games when they're not supposed to be.

Doesn't this provide a slippery slope to other media such as movies and *GASP* the evening news?

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Gilda

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.

IC3

I can't believe this, This is the same as people filing lawsuits against McDonalds because He/She blames them for the weight they gained from the food..The only person responsible is the person who does it too himself/herself.

This is just a lame excuse that parents use to place blame anywhere but where it should be directed. I have played every GTA series they have released and i played it for hours & hours. I believe that if this game has some kind of power to take control over your mind to make you go out cop killing then there would be a shit load more incidents like this..But thier isn't. This kid is just fucked in the head.

If this family is so against this game, Then why was this kid playing it day & night? No one made him play it and nobody sure as hell made him pull the trigger except himself.

I will admit that this game is violent, It's an open world and you can pretty much do whatever you want to anything or whoever you want..But if somebody can't tell the difference between reality and entertainment then this person shouldn't be playing these types of games or taking in anything violent, Be it..Movies, Music, TV or whatever.

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moot1337

Furthermore, why in the hell are they suing Sony? For making a device on which violent media can be played/viewed? Why don't we take it one step further, then, and sue all DVD player manufacturers, movie corporations, and broadcast channels for letting us watch such deplorable acts on their creations? Why don't we sue the TV companies, and any other companies that helped contribute to all the violence in production of the media, and all those people involved in any way to those projects?

The answer is simple. People are responsible for what they see as real, not the people that put it out. As has been said before, the most important part of free press is not that it be benevolent, but that it remain free. I would argue the exact contrary of the point these people are trying to prove. I think violent video games provide an outlet for violence in those people who have some pent up anger. Without games like GTA, Halo, Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Resident Evil, etc, etc, etc... many people would lose a way in which they vent their frustrations, and would probably turn to real life acts of anger to unleash their rage.

As far as this kid getting the game underage, and playing it to the point of obsession, it's on the heads of the parents, because they didn't do anything to prevent it. They didn't take enough interest in their kid to realize that something wasn't right with his behavior, nor did they take enough interest in the material he was taking in to do their part to censor them from it. People arguing that it's the media's fault for programming people a certain way will eventually cause such widespread censorship that we will become sheep, and the media will be able to control us more fully due to our inept senses of danger and freedom. Once we see only what (an organization) wants us to see, we'll be the puppets of that organization.

Imagine if that kind of censorship spread to the internet.... 403: Tilted forum project is Forbidden!

Da Munk

I like how they gloss over the fact that he had a troubled upbringing and instead focus on the fact that he played a video game. Hmm, I wonder which one is more significant?

Kalnaur

I think that media is one piece of the puzzle, but that the lagest pieces are our upbringing and how we are treated in the social situations of work, school, etc. Media is not as huge a piece as some people want us to believe, unless that is the upbringing we are given. A child raised with notions that life is a TV placed in front of them will have more problems than one who is raised with a TV as one avenue to the world around them.

And then of course there is always going to be the nuts who snap no matter what. . .

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kid astronaut

even if you believe that we are the sum total of the media we see, each individual sees a huge, vast amount of media. pinning the blame on one game, or even one medium, such as video games, seems to me like blatantly trying to find something to finger.

moot brings up an interesting point. these people are suing sony for creating a game system which had a possibility of running violent games, which had the possibility of "training" people to kill, which had the possibility of causing something like this. we might as well have sued ben franklin for figuring out this whole electricity business.
(i am ignoring the fact that sony bought the title, just for now. it doesn't mean i'm not aware, i'm just making a point.)

the reason GTA was made was because there was a huge demand for it. the people that bought it spent a large sum of money for the privelidge to shoot police officers and start fires, etc. they knew what they were buying, and they expressed interest in it before the game was even made. so i hardly think it's fair to hold rockstar/sony/take-two responsible for training people who otherwise would never have thought of it.

ironman

We can't deny that media affects us, that's a fact. I know a lot of people who has made life decisions based on the media, some of them have decided to become lawyers because of Grisham's novels/movies, some others have decided to join the armed forces because of war movies and others have decided to become police officers because of tv series like Kojack, TJ Hooker, etc..., at least that's what they say. Anyway, some of them are happy with their CHOICES and other aren't, but i have never heard those who feel that made the bad CHOICE blame it on the media. All that the media did ws present them with a way of life, an alternative to waht they were doing and different careers, you know, OPTIONS, that they, in a personal way decided to take.
I always insist that we are lving in a society that doesn't take blame for anything, we have beeing thought to blame our flaws on other people, the circumstances, the alcohol, drugs, addictios, traumas, THE MEDIA, etc... Somewhere i once read that given the money and the time, almost anything can be proved to be "true", we love linking violence wth movies and video games, infidelity with sitcoms and soap operas but we are unable of discovering that the real responsibles for all that is wrong in this world is ourselves.
Let's stop searching for guilties for our own flaws and errors, and start asuming responsibility for what we do.

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Coppertop

I am always interested in the thoughts of those who would legislate away personal responsibility. This is no different than saying "The devil made me do it."

edit - The article also seems to imply that the sole purpose of playing the game is to kill cops. Obviously it is not. God, I hate people sometimes.

ARTelevision

Yes, the comments are appreciated.

I have no reason for attachment to a piece of media, nor do I shy away from advocating measures that may be called "censorship" - by those who wield a broad rhetorical brush - as if it implied a slippery slope in which we lose the nebulous concept of "freedom" in the end. Personally I'd prefer to see obstructions put in the way of firms that peddle socially deleterious material and even their slow dismantling to being awash in antisocial messages - as we are.

In any event, I do think that having the rubber meet the road in courts of law will do two things: It raises the level of serious discourse regarding the near-inviolate rule of not blaming media for anything and it also raises the risk for purveyors of anti-social material. I have no great affection for companies that peddle material that has quite little redeeming value.

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ironman

AMEN BROTHER!

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kutulu

I'm so sick of this Thompson asshole. He needs to have his bar certification taken away for bringing this bullshit into the courts. He's filed several of these lawsuits against game manufacturers and has yet to have won a single one of them.

This douchebag is the guy who got 2 Live Crew's album to be declared obscene. He also teamed up with fellow asshole Charlton Heston to have "Cop Killer" removed from Body Count's album. The man has no problem trying to trample all over our 1st Amendment rights and has no concept of personal responsibility. Everything is someone elses fault. It's total bullshit.

The media may influence to some extent, Art, but there is a lot more to what a person is than what they get from the media. If I was the sum total of the media I'm exposed to I'd be a satanic cannibal that starts kills everyone around me (except, of course when I'm engaging with group sex with every breathing female). Somehow, I've managed to avoid all of that.

Coppertop

Well said. I've been playing videogames for pretty much my entire life and yet I've somehow managed to become an adult that has a full-time job, pays his taxes and bills and has yet to kill anyone not rendered by a machine. And apparently I (or my hobbies at least) have little redeeming value. Thank god this case will be blown out of the water as it should be, lest we have other people dictate how we as adults spend our time, presumably in a socially redeeming manner.

kutulu

The same shit has been tried against every new thing. Eventually it blows over but in the meantime there are confused retards out there that believe everything some asshole in a suit tells them.

ARTelevision

It's hard finding redeeming value in the above post. Be that as it may, it is always illuminating to discuss such matters. Some things are revealed by discourse.

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radioguy

"it's not my fault, it's somebody else's"
"i'm not responsible for my actions, it's somebody else's fault"

responsibility is rarely taken today. somebody always wants to blame somebody else for their problems. i hope they lose and the makers and distributers of this game go back and sue these people for defamation and slander. maybe that would teach people not to bring up stupid lawsuits.

Xell101

If the game is what resulted in his actions, then the fault lie in an inability to properly deal with the environment, and not what is in it.

I don't believe we are mindless products of our environemnt. Input is had, processing is done, and a response is made. I am the summation of my life experience as that is what has led me to become what it is that I am, but I came to this through decision not mindless assimilation. Anyone who is sufficiently unthinking that a video game could prompt behavior so contradictory to the general guidelines for civilized living as far as I'm concerned has failed at life.

kutulu

Ok, maybe I should have spent more than 5 seconds on that last post. What I meant was that our society has a track record of blaming media sources for our failures as a society and as parents. Look at the previous targets:

Rap music (NWA, IceT, 2 Live Crew, etc.)
Metal music (Slayer, Metallica, Ozzy)
Rock music
Comic books
TV
R rated movies

I'm sure there are many other generes that have been vastly blamed at one time or another, that's all I care to list right now. For the most part, people (with the exception of the etremists, of course) have stopped blaming those old targets. Currently, video games are the fun target. Eventually people will move past video games and find a new target.

The problem is that in the meantime, we have people like Jack Thompson out there spreading lies and misinformation.

Cynthetiq

books, film, tv, radio, videogames.... any future media....

the content is content, not reality. it's those that cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality that have the issue, not the medium.

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flamingdog

You're taking the media you ingest a little bit literally there, aren't you? Then I look at the first part of your post, namely (emphasis mine)...

...plus the post you make a couple above this one, and I start to wonder what the affect of the media you're exposed to might truly be...

Not that I agree with the lawsuit, in any sense. I think we owe it to society to be held personally responsible for our actions, it's part of the 'social contract' you have a citizen of a particular country. Whether this kid was 'trained' with a 'murder simulator' is irrelevant, the reasons he committed this crime were his own, and he alone bears the responsibility of restitution.

Even a cursory reading of this news story says to me that he was failed by those around him long, long before he ever got a PS2, and telling, is it not, that the fact he was from a broken home, and bounced around foster families is buried midway in the copy? Personally, I think we have a duty to censor such hysterical and unbalanced 'news' reporting before we start blackening the name of simple entertainment.

Art, I wonder how you apply the judgment of what is 'antisocial' media and what is not?

kutulu

I swear a lot, big deal. I think those words are a lot more colorful than the boring language I have to use in my professional workplace.

I swore a lot way before I started listening to music with explicit lyrics or R rated movies. My parents did pretty well at not swearing around me and not letting me watch R rated movies till I was a teen. By that time I was quite the potty mouth.

My guess is that I picked up my foul mouth from my friends, who knows where they got theirs. Hell, maybe I just knew they were words I wasn't supposed to say so I used them whenever I could get away with it and gave my friends their foul mouths. Most likely we influenced each other.

FngKestrel

Many good posts on this thread. I don't doubt that media affects people. I also don't doubt that many people are affected by media much more than they should be.

Personal responsiblity should be exactly that, and for minors, it should be the responsiblity of the parent. But media gets a lot more facetime for the minor than Sunday dinner with the parents ever will. Parents have it hard in this day and age and if I ever have kids, I'm sure it won't be any easier.

Paul Smith quote definitely holds weight with me.
Every form of media has its growing pains. The video game industry is no different. And the video game industry also doesn't take this lightly. At the Game Developer's Conference (which is going on this week), topics such as this are regularly addressed. The IGDA routinely discusses the ramifications of events such as this. This is a young, prosperous industry, but it's also working to be a responsible industry.

la petite moi

Personally, I think GTA is pretty damn violent, and that it should probably be taken off shelves. There are plenty of other cool bloody games to play that don't involve in directly killing people and stealing their shit.

In this case, however, why should the video game industry be sued and blamed?! Where were the damn parents when the kid was playing all these hours and hours? And with WHAT MONEY did the kid buy the video game?- obviously, probably money his parents gave him. His troubled upbringing most likely affected him more than playing that game would.

Another point I thought of: At 18, you can be trained to shoot and kill other people. That's called being in the army. Those young men that get trained in the army could have the same potential of killing police officers as the ones that are trained by video games. Is it that much different?

flamingdog

Point is, you don't know do you? How much media you consume, I don't know, but if you're anything like me, you probably listen to music with explicit lyrics, you watch movies rated R for violence, sex or language, and you play violent videogames, and think nothing of it. Thing is, we spend hours and hours over the course of our lives swallowing these particular messages.

The effect of that cannot necessarily be measured, just like the effect of hearing your friends around you swearing, or they hearing you, cannot be accurately gauged. You're a melting pot of your experiences to date, in my view. They can be viewed as 'causes'. Your behaviour in the here and now, and all behaviour in the future are their effect.

Basically, I'm saying the impact of media cannot be accurately charted, and as such, we can assume (we can just as easily assume the opposite point of view, though I think it makes no sense to do so) that it has an effect on our personalities in direct correlation to the priority we give to spending time immersing ourselves in it. In exactly the same way we have a colloquial and scientific belief that behaviours can be inherited and learned from our peers and social contemporaries, we can extend this to media without too much of a cognitive leap.

I think if we assume this is the case, the question posed by the lawsuit becomes one of how we assimilate these 'causes' into our lives, how we act upon them. Those acts, again, are not necessarily choices, but based on 'causes' (experiences) of their own. To single out one cause for one particular human behaviour is simplistic, naive and dangerous, in my opinion.

The kid needs to be judged on his actions. He killed some cops. The facts and the circumstances need to be tried for their veracity, and the societal punishment should be meted out. The reasons why are irrelevant. His exposure to GTA might have just as much bearing on the situation as his troubled family background. He did what he did, and now he's being punished for it.

Fourtyrulz

Personally I think that is the most biased piece of journalism I've ever seen: ...because street gangs need a video game to tell them to rob and kill people.

The article is crap and the lawsuit is crap. Sure people are influenced by the media, but one look at Gilda's awesome statistics gives you the unhyped truth.

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FngKestrel

Well, in one case, it's government mandated. It's like the joke, "What the difference between the Boy Scouts and the Army? Boy Scouts have adult supervision."

But you do bring up a good point, and in fact, the Army itself commisioned a video game for recruitment purposes several years ago. America's Army, anyone?

MooseMan3000

I think we should sue science, for inventing the television, computer, and handguns. No joke. Sue science, then outlaw it.

And the Chinese, who invented printing. Too many books out there that mention killing. So let's sue the Chinese. Fucking bastards.




No, no, no, no, no... I was thinking way too small. Let's sue God. He invented everything. All crimes, from petty theft to murder are ultimately His fault, because He created the very idea. So I say we sue Him, then outlaw Him. I think we can prove this to a court in Alabama.



What, you think I'm kidding?

FloydianOne

I think video games can lead to killing if you are already a little bit messed up in the head. I dont think any normal person can be driven to kill by anything though... unless its waranted in a life or death type situation.

On a sidenote, does anyone remember that news awhile back about a kid killing like 5 people or something with a baseball bat over an xbox? Whatever happened in that case?

ARTelevision

Another thing that could be discussed in a thread like this is whether there is any point at which the sheer quantity of negative and anti-social messages that fill our society can be seen as detrimental. And if there could be such a point, it would seem worthwhile discussing what sort of action might be acceptable in terms of reducing the amount of very powerful socially corrosive forces at work within the society at large.

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MooseMan3000

I just noticed this now.


So I take it you believe Grand Theft Auto has "little redeeming value?" I'm curious, then, what your definition of redeeming value is, and why it is that you feel you can impose your ideals of value on everyone. I'm not going to tell you that "I play the game, but I'm not a psycho killer," because that's obviously not the point. The point is that our opinions of what has value are, obviously, quite divergent.

I generally won't reply to your posts, not out of malice, but because things that you find interesting I frequently find trite or useless. Clearly, you don't think the same thing, or you wouldn't write about them. I responded to this one because video games, particularly violent games, are dear to me, as I've grown up playing them.

I partially agree that we are a sum of the media we consume - as long as your definition of "media" includes family and group interactions. The fact is that violent games are a very large part of me. The key word in that sentence, however, is "game." In much the same way that many people associate themselves with watching, say, football with a group of friends, I enjoy playing games with my friends. It is simply part of my social interactions, not a definitive guide for my behavior.

I was prone to aggressive behavior as a child, but only since about age 15 have I been very heavily into games. According to that article, which provides vague references to "studies" (see: science, above), that is theage that playing violent games would have the most detrimental impact on me as a person. That is the time I joined my first online gaming clan, playing a game in which you shoot the other team to win. Since then, online gaming has been an important part of my life.

Speaking from experience, I know that playing a video game can be every bit as rewarding as winning a state championship. Being selected to play on an elite team is every bit as gratifying as learning that I've been accepted for a national honor choir. More important than all that, however, it's just plain fun. I've never had a better time than staying up all night eating junk food and playing games with a few of my close friends. Claiming that games of this sort have little or no redeeming value discounts their entire purpose - to entertain.

To me, nothing is more important than being happy. Without violent video games, I would be a lot less happy than I am. That's really all there is to it.

Coppertop

I am reminded of these words:

Here's a comic, also related, posted by bernadette is another thread:



These pretty much speak the same thing. It'll be a sad day in our society when legislation like this is successfully prosecuted. And don't be fooled: if it is tried often enough, it'll eventually succeed.

flstf

While I agree that media exposure does have some (maybe a lot) effect on people's actions, I do not believe we can allow people to use this as a defense. As stated in other posts eventually no one will be responsible for anything.

As far as censorship goes this is always a judgement call. Our country's track record on censoring things is IMHO not very good. It is probably better for society to send a clear message that no matter what media you are exposed to, it does not relieve you of personal responsibility. Even Bundy tried to blame his murdering ways on his early exposure to pornography, I think he even mentioned Playboy magazine.

I know there are some media that should be censored and some lines need to be drawn. The problem is that polititians will draw those lines far differently than most of us. If there is any question it is almost always better to err on the side of not censoring.

BigBen

I try to avoid killing the cops and army guys in GTA. They bring Stars (wanted lvl) and then the shit storm begins... I would rather kill my fellow bad guys.

What about the Hooker Health Steal? It goes like this, Ed Bradley:

Find a prostitute.
Pull your car up beside her.
She walks up to the car, and starts to chat.
She gets into your car.
You drive to a secluded place.
The car starts 'rocking'. (you need to be 6 yrs old NOT to get this)
Your health meter starts to rise, your money meter starts to fall.
When your health meter is at the top, the prostitute gets out of the vehicle and says something corny.
You then drive over her or get out and kill her.
She drops the money you just 'paid' her.
Hence, the Hooker Health Steal.

Fucking morbid. Really bad mojo. Doesn't mean I'm going out and doing it...

Oh, and by the way, I got addicted to Tetris when I was a kid, and arranged blocks for hours on end. I dreamt about them, I drew pictures in my school book. I guess that is why I went on that murderous BLOCK RAMPAGE where I killed those people with leggo. You read about it in the newspaper, I'm sure.

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Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

Sleepyjack

Exactly, i think it'd be kinda stupid to kill the cops on purpose (when playing the missions normally), cause it just makes the game unescessarily harder and more frustrating. Which is interesting, cause this doesn't advocate the killing of cops, cause you get fucked over for it, just like you would in real life. I believe there are no missions in GTA where you have to assainate cops; it's all up to the users discretion.


As for little redeeming value,i think Mooseman3000 has shown there can be a lot of redeeming value in playing games of this or any nature.

Gilda

This sequence was the inspiration for last week's episode of Law and Order: SVU, including the video gaming made me do it defense.

I personally find GTA way over the top and find the content of the game play morally reprehensible. If I had a teenage son, there's no way I would buy this game for him or allow him to play it in my home.

But I don't think my values, and my desire to protect my children from inappropriate material qualifies me to judge what is right for other adults or their children. I also don't think that individual responsibility is absolved as a result of media influence. People should be held individually accountable for their actions.

Stiltzkin

Amen.
We need to consider everything. However, GTA sucks, and it should never have sold as many copies as it did. I KNOW this is irrelevant... or IS it? I never understood how anyone could play this game for more than 30 minutes; it's just so damn boring. It seems to me that anyone (not everyone) who obsessively plays this game automatically has issues already.

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The most important thing in this world is love.

boothisman

GTA is . blaming any video game for real life actions is irresponsable and idiotic.
no one gets in a street fight and when arrested said oh mortal kombat made me do it, for good reason: they would sound like an idiot.

analog

In my opinion, the only links between the videogames and people who "act out" what they saw are isolated cases of people who made poor choices or were mentally weak and would have snapped anyway. When you're that age and into videogames, EVERYTHING IS LIKE A VIDEOGAME.

I remember one time I was in a Denny's resturant with a group of friends and we'd just gotten done playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater on XBOX for several hours. We were laughing about how we were looking at the parking lot and making commentary on how we could "nose grind" on this, and jump on that, just like in the game. Anything can be like a videogame. Does that mean I go do something stupid like grab a skateboard and jump into traffic, planning to ollie (skateboard trick) off of a car like in the game?

Fuck no.

A choice is a choice. A game or TV show cannot make that choice for you. YOU have to. It's the same lame argument that guns lead to violence. It still comes down to choice.

If you want to sit there and tell me there's influence, then i'd say there's no more influence than seeing Taco Bell commercials several times a day for years upon years. But one day, I may decide to go ahead and eat something there... or maybe on the way, I'll make a CHOICE to go to Burger King instead.

It's all personal choice.

We still have a military, despite the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of professionaly trained murderers created by the military. THEY don't all suddenly act out Operation Iraqi Freedom or Desert Storm on their neighborhood, stalking through the streets with a gun and killing people at random because that's what was drilled into them.

People are always willing to ignore the power and significance of choice in lieu of blaming someone else.

Populations may be influenced in a very general way by mass media, but individual instances of some fucktard going apeshit in a police station cannot be attributed to mass media influence.

And did anyone bother to remember he was already in there for STEALING A CAR? Some posts in here make this person out to be an innocent byproduct of the videogame industry, and that's ridiculous.

If you're the parents of one of the dead, are you going to accept an explanation of "he just RANDOMLY SNAPPED and went crazy" or "there is a (perceived) rational explanation for his behavior". People don't like to believe that people kill at random, and they REALLY don't like to believe that their loved one died as a result of a random act- it somehow "cheapens" their life (or death).