Whats happening to gaming?

[Copycon]

jv103 said:

Well, I'm gonna argue one thing another poster said. Violent crime is decreasing. It's been going up since 2004,(2007 figures aren't in yet), but property crimes have gone down. Anywho, whether you like it or not violence isn't caused solely by videogames. There's many more socioeconomic factors involved. In fact, the vast majority ( upwards of 80%) of death row inmates are illiterate. There's more of a correlation between education/ and economic status, than video games. I'll admit that I'm a violent video game fan, but the fact is video games are a scapegoat, for the real issues. Besides, I don't think it is possible to play a video game without any violence or sex. I use both terms very loosely, more in a freudian sense. Because even mario is violent, just much more subtle. Same thing with games where you create things. On a very primordial level, destruction and creation seem to be very basic human desires. I think would leads to many of the problems in this society is the supression of natural human things and the taboos that come from making people feel guilty. "Ooooh Johnny you have a playboy, you're going to burn in hell!" <-- these type of things are more detrimental to society than video games. Although, I think that current esrb things are good, I think people should actually read them. I don't think games like manhunt 2 should be censored, just make it 18+.

 

Oh and also, the reason women are seen more as an object. I'll take a wild guess at it but maybe from Judeo-Christian values? If violence in media is the real underlying cause, how come I haven't seen one significant study validating that claim. The only evidence that I've seen has been anecdotal non-sense, (post hoc ergo propter hoc shit) Because he played grand theft auto, he went and shot those people. You know why that's convenient? It's convenient because it doesn't adress the gap and the emergence of classes in our society. Here's some figures

 

Population below poverty line:	12% (2004 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:	lowest 10%: 1.8% highest 10%: 30.5% (1997)

That's from the cia world fact book. The economykeeps growing so I'm assuming that the wealth gap is increased as well.

 It's always easier to blame videogames than trying to address the root causes of social problems. Why complicate things if you can blame it on videogames, Satan, Muslims or H5N1.

 

I'm not a paleocon or anything but at the same time as I encourage freedom of expression I still see some kind of moral borders or limits. Which level of violence can we as a society accept? Can we accept games where you gang rape and slowly murder little girls and say "hey, it's just a game, and its not for kids, its for grownups"?  Where does that freedom end? Does it or should we be allowed to publish anything?

 

 On the other hand; its really disturbing though, to see the extreme titties debate, that you can see in the US. You could almost think it's Saudi Arabia or something . How do people think about this? "It's okay to drive a car, own a gun, go to war but NOT LOOK AT TITTIES, because you are supposed to believe that it is the stork that brings the kids"