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So, here's another controversial topic I wanted Dakka's opinion about.

But let's start at the beginning, shall we?
4 weeks ago, a 17-year old ran amok (can I say it like that?) in his old school here in Germany, in a place called "Winnenden", a small town in Baden-Württemberg, the state I live in.
He killed 15 people with a gun he took from his father, 9 students, 3 teachers and 3 random people while fleeing from the scene. I guess some of this must have even reached the American news.

Now, why am I telling you this? It's because of the debate it started back here in good ol' Germany, a debate about violence in the media, or to be more precise, the "killergames". PC- and Videogames where you "kill" "humans" on the screen "without mercy". These are the terms most gaming critics (the ones who hate gaming, not the proffesional ones, who write reviews) use most often. And as with the underage gun-runners before, a bunch of politicians made it their personal goal to rid the market of these games. We have a bunch of people here who are a lot like Jack Thompson, with the difference that they are members of a major political party in Germany and not just some nutjob layer. One of those politicians (Bavarias secretary of inner politics) even went as far as comparing the "Killergames" with childpornography and Drugs.

Now, where am I getting with that?
In case you didn't know, Germany already has the strictest rules on violence in the media, there's a law which prohibits the sale of media which "glorify violence" and the national bureau which "rates" the games for Germany, the USK, is much more sensitive then their European counterpart Pegi. For example: Valve's Orange Box has a 15-rating in Britian (where I got my copy from) and is uncut. The German version has green blood in half-life and in Team Fortress, if someone dies through an explosion they their blood is replaced by rubber duckies, I am not kidding!!! And this game has a "no youth" rating in Germany, which is kinda the same like an 18-rating, but not quite. Nobody really understands the difference.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. To make it short, I talk to a lot of people about this topic (violent games and movies) and I frequently write letters to politians, journalists and other people who keep blaming games when a teen starts shooting his old classmates. I recently had a discussion with my (very conservative) aunt who said that society "should have evolved to a point where we don't need violence to entertain us". This is a statement shared by many people who are against "violent" games and movies, and so far, they didn't get very good responses to that.

Which brings me to my question:
I know that pretty much every user on this board "enjoys" fictional violence on a certain level. Otherwise you wouldn't play a game in the grim/dark future where people put skulls on their skulls to shoot better.
So, why do you think people enjoy (fictional) violence so much? Why do you enjoy it? Where is your limit? And what would you say to a person who claimes you're a savage for enjoying a good action film/game?

The violence in tabletop wargames is abstract.

I mean, when Unit A 'shoots' Unit B, you don't see little bullets hit little men and blood spurt out. You can imagine it if you like

I am interested in wargames as an exercise in strategy and tactics, not violence.

same as killcrazy, I do feel there is a thing as too much.

Fictional violence:


As a 13year old I quite like playing Xbox 360 games and the games that involve shooting people with guns. I also enjoy tabletop "wargames".
I think that you need to be intelligent enough to know the difference between reality and violent video games.
What I mean like this is that: if you are weak minded/stupid you would think that killing people mercilessly is really no problem at all considering they can just "respawn" like in video games.

I am sure everyone on this forum likes the models they paint- models that carry weapons of war.... but they are just playing with them as a strategic hobby not because of the violence it involves.

I think that people who blame video games for the German homicidal teenager are ignorant ass holes.
That kid was twisted and obviously stupid- otherwise he would know that violence isn't the way to sort things.

Jack.

I know that these people are full of gak.
But still, 40k is a very violent setting and most players don't seem to be scared off by it. And it's not just about 40k, how many of you can say that they don't enjoy a good action movie, not matter how violent. The critics don't seem to know where to draw the line here, so we can approach the topic a bit more shallow too, just for starters.

@Anung: What's the reaction to Fallout 3 bei dir? I hear it's controversial elsewhere -- for obvious reasons they had to cut the detonation of a nuke by the PC in the Japanese version, but I would be surprised it the German censors didn't touch it.

Peace & love.

sA

@ AUR its impossible for us to judge tbh.

a)There are types like me that wont be effected by any amount of violence i know its fake.

b)Yet there are types that learns from it and claims
to copy video games and go on a shooting rampage.

Because both exist, i still think its better be safe then sorry because B type exists.

What about LARPers?

According to this they can shoot lightning bolts... I hope the kids in Germany don't decide to try that!

Best.

Video.

Ever.

Have you seen the one with the SFX? It's hilarious.

sA

I have a question.... whats the girl in yellow and green doing? 0:19- 0:21

Clapping the manly men.

sA

smiling Assassin wrote:@Anung: What's the reaction to Fallout 3 bei dir? I hear it's controversial elsewhere -- for obvious reasons they had to cut the detonation of a nuke by the PC in the Japanese version, but I would be surprised it the German censors didn't touch it.
sA

I think the destruction of Megaton is still in it. But there's almost no blood and no flying limbs, no matter with what weapon you attack waht body part. The bloody mess perk has no visible effects, just the +5% on damage. And some of the more graphic things are not in it. You don't see the skinned leg during your return to 101 and the fleeing slave in paradise falls doesn't loose his head.
I got all this info from a german website, I play the UK version

LunaHound wrote:@ AUR its impossible for us to judge tbh.

a)There are types like me that wont be effected by any amount of violence i know its fake.

b)Yet there are types that learns from it and claims
to copy video games and go on a shooting rampage.

Because both exist, i still think its better be safe then sorry because B type exists.

I think the problem here is, that guys like that might have just as well gone on a driving rampage or something else. He could've taken a car and drive over the schoolyard and might've killed more people. Banning violent videogames doesn't help anyone.

Well I personallly am fine with the setting of 40k as it is not reality,I think though that there are certain people who cannot see the difference between the "real" world and fantasy.Yet I think the reason so many people go after violent games is that we to a certain extent still have primal violent urges,I mean take a look at alot of sports to a degree almost all are violent in some shape or form.Oh well the main reason why this becomes such an issue is that politicans can use it to thier advantage and use it as a stepping stone to get ahead in the political scene.

Tell me about it. We have elections coming up

Anung Un Rama wrote:Tell me about it. We have elections coming up

Us as well and unfortantely every freakin politician is superman promising to fight crime,corruption and basically make the world all smiles and rainbows.


Edit-spelling corrected

Anung Un Rama wrote:
I think the problem here is, that guys like that might have just as well gone on a driving rampage or something else. He could've taken a car and drive over the schoolyard and might've killed more people. Banning violent videogames doesn't help anyone.

THIS.

This issue has been brought up in the US media ever since the Columbine incident ~10 years ago here in the US.

What's ridiculous about the argument that violent videogame => violent activities in real life is that it confuses correlation with causation. Yes, often times, people who commit these sort of violent rampages have played video games. Chances are, they've also watched lots of violent movies/television and probably (no definites, but there tends to be a very heavy correlation) listen to heavy, violent music. The thing is, these deranged people constitute such a small percentage of the people who enjoy these things, that it's ridiculous to judge the whole by the group. At such a minority, I would only classify the people who go on violent rampages to be anomalies - and would lead me to believe that there's something more behind their violent behavior than videogames/movies/music/etc.

I feel like in certain cases, the problem is with parenting (note: I'm not claiming all the time, just _some_ of the time). The child doesn't learn the proper rules of conduct in society, or is exposed to violence in media at too young of an age without being taught that there is a disconnect between behavior in videogames and real-life. Take for example that kid in the UK several months ago who ran away from home because his parents grounded him for playing on his xbox too much - clearly someone who hadn't learned how to moderate himself. Or the kid in the US, I believe, who shot his parents one morning after they took his xbox away from him (in this case, it seems very much like there was something "off" in the kid himself, from my understanding). These aren't normal adolescent behaviors. I'm sure most of us at some point have been punished by our parents for something bad that we've done, and I'm certain we either just took it, or threw hissy-fits and then dealt with it while complaining about how unfair it was (I know I have ), But we didn't go out and killing people for it. Given the modern population of video-gamers, these cases can't possibly be a true reflection of the average gamer. Rather, it's an issue of a few gamers who have certain mental/emotional issues to begin with.

Again, I hate the argument that anti-video-game advocates give about video-games promoting violence in people. They seem to imply that just because some individuals may be inspired by the games they play to be violent in real-life that ALL video-games will cause this behavior in ALL people. Such rubbish. In these cases, I really enjoyed Gary Gygax's rebuttal to similar attacks made by lawyers with regard to Dungeons & Dragons many decades ago:

Gary Gygax wrote:The idea that a game is anything more than a game… You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, 'There's golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning!' You can overdo what you really like, and if you're unbalanced you go overboard.

Gygax also said something to the effect of, "Theoretically, I could beat you to death with this chair - so are you suggesting that we ban all chairs as well?"

Correlation != Causation.

The problem I see is that some parents don't give a rat's behind about the video-game ratings. I've seen parents walking into a Gamestop and buying their little "precious snowflakes" games like Halo/Half-life/what-have-you - and even with comment from the clerk that the game is rated mature, go ahead and purchase the game for the little bastard who's running around the store and making a lot of noise. Probably the same little brats that run around other stores screaming to high-heavens while their parents slowly walk around the store. Same issue with parents who take their kids into an R-rated movie. Some of them just don't care, and it's a shame, 'cause it tends to create a lot of irresponsible people in the process.

I'm babbling like an old geezer now. I'll stop.

Nope, you're right Jin. Every parent should at least know some basics. I recently saw a mother at a store with a kid who looked about 12 years old max. and she went to the counter with the new GTA for DS, which also has a 18+ rating here. I was considering to talk to her about that, looking back, I don't know why I didn't.

I think it's a bit more complicated than saying it's just a game and it has no effect. Anyone who's hopped in the car after a couple of hours of GTA will likely have noticed their driving getting a little more casual. It certainly has effect to some level. There's also a fair argument that a dangerous fantasy can be fed by stimulation. If someone has violent fantasies and access to violent media it isn't that much of a stretch to say it might contribute to them doing something very horrible.

But that alone isn't enough to censor, giving control of our media over to regulation is far worse, so don't think I'm saying GTA should be taken off the shelves. Maybe there's a third way, I don't know. But claiming violent media has no effect simply isn't true.

Escapism is prevalent in every case of violence perpetrated by a mentally unstable person that has occurred for the past 2000 years. Unstable people almost always have some form of creative input, whether its books, television, games, movies, or things they make up themselves. The videogame is a scapegoat for a system of bad psychological examination and checking, just as violent movies were before videogames, and unchristianlike books were before movies.

I think what we need to examine here is the mindset that allows us to enjoy things like violent games and movies and works of fiction. Its clear that we do, and its clear that the vast majority of people can utilize these things without shooting up a school. But is it right of us to take enjoyment from things like serialized horror films? Or the bizarre and often sickening levels of violence made easy in many games?
I enjoyed GTA4 quite a bit, though for most of the game hitting pedestrians with the car was something I liked to avoid. It meant I was a better driver and it meant that the people I was missing got to live out their lives. I know my mindset in that game places me in a minority and I would like to know why.


Also yes, parents need to pay attention to game ratings if they are going to whine about games. I believe plenty of children are mature enough to enjoy violent games, but I strongly dislike the nature of complaining about something you are guilty of.

But that alone isn't enough to censor, giving control of our media over to regulation is far worse, so don't think I'm saying GTA should be taken off the shelves. Maybe there's a third way, I don't know. But claiming violent media has no effect simply isn't true.

I would argue that a single instance of violent media (like say, violent videogames) is not enough to change a person. It is a personal level of addiction to violent play that eventually causes one to begin to lose touch with commonly accepted forms of behavior. This can happen to the man that watched every SAW film just as easily as a man that played grand theft auto. It can just as easily happen to a person that lives around gang violence as well. Or watches too much wrestling. Media and real input influences behavior in individuals no matter its format.

Those that complain about how video games - or whatever else - is ruining society, are mistaken in thinking they are helping society. It is possible to help society, but not merely by complaining or banning negative stuff. We have sufficient laws in place at this point, it's illegal to kill, steal etc, but other 'wrong' things like extra-marital affairs, violent porn etc should not be controlled by law. If those complaining really wanted to help people, they'd become counselors or child therapists or whatever. But of course that is a lot harder than just sitting back and complaining, trying to make others lives more booring

I love that people who do not play violent games are often the first to blame them. But playing violent games, listening to heavy metal and watching horror movies are all methods of entertainment. That's it.

You can't tell me that you REALLY think that if I give you a deagle that you'll be able to take out the entire russian army single-handedly. No one can save and reload once they take a bullet in the head in real life. If anything, the censored version of team fortress is MORE damaging than the uncensored version. Your action have no consequences, you shoot your friend and duckies pop out. The limbs and blood SHOWS that a grenade will feth. YOU. UP. If you find one, DO NOT TOUCH!

But the fact that many of these kids who kill people play violent games, watch violent movies and listen to angry music is NOT an indicator that they cause violent behaviour. Lemme tell y'all a little story.

I have a drug problem. It appears on and off and so far I'm completely clean (again) for 2 months now. But I've relapsed many times and not once has it been because of the drugs themselves. It's because I've been angry, sad or something I couldn't deal with happened and I ran away to the only thing I could control: how goddamn high I could get.

I've been to Narcotics Anonymous. I've seen the people that sit in those church halls, saying the little Serenity Prayer and clutching their coffee mugs. They're lawyers, doctors, prostitutes, clerks, masseuses... These are people that are of various levels of "success" in their lives, all are seriously unhappy. All of them LOVE to get high. Does this mean drugs make you unhappy?

Unfortunately, no. Drugs are the only thing that makes people like us happy, but they feth us up. So we try to stop using by finding the happiness inside ourselves. I did not start getting high because I was happy.

These people don't become messed up because they play violent games, they play violent games because they're messed up. They feel better because they're killing the enemy, the evil that they're killing is a substitute for the evil in the real world that they can't affect. But in the end it's not enough, the pixels that die don't take the pain anymore. They lash out at the real world and then people wonder what went wrong.

Violent games are designed to be fun. Enjoying them does not mean you're a psycho waiting to explode. The ratio between people that play games and have "normal" lives compared to people that play violent games and kill people is monsterously out of proportion to get upset about. Those fething politicians are just using a new bandwagon to forward their own selfish agendas.

Like with everything (well pretty much everything) it's perfectly fine in moderation.

But once you start pretending that you're chainsawing people like in GoW (like some people at my school) then it's gone a bit too far.

The best are people who argue that video games didn't affect people 10-20 years ago and conclude that today's video games won't have an effect either. It's as though they don't realize how far graphics have come since then.

of course, 20 years ago many of the same people were telling society that D&D would turn their children to satanism.

I'd say that by the time of Mortal Kombat (roughly 15 years ago), graphics were good enough show a good disemboweling or decapitation.

There are some psychological and sociological studies that seem to verify a correlation between intake of violent media and the expression of violent ideas or even violent actions themselves. We all know that correlation isn't causation, and it's likely that there is some root cause to both liking to watch violent and being violent oneself, but I don't know.

I'm against banning things, but increasing the amount of Info that parents have in terms of buying games for kids would help. As always, parental choice and supervision are key.

We all know that correlation isn't causation, and it's likely that there is some root cause to both liking to watch violent and being violent oneself, but I don't know.

I'm not so certain here that the correlation isn't in fact the causation. I know that after a good marathon of power rangers as a child I just wanted to go out and beat the crap out of things. I get similarly charged now at 22 after watching a good martial arts film. The same can be said personally for many violent video games, after a good amount of counterstrike I act slightly differently. I believe that peoples behavior is simply attuned to best fit their environment, and when one goes from an interactive simulation of extreme violence a little bit of that environment carries into the next in their behavior. Problematically I can easily see how a mentally disturbed individual would have a hard time separating acceptable behaviors from one to the next (not citing specific illnesses here, just a generalization), and I can see how an addictive personality could find it difficult to cope outside the game when a large portion of his/her life experience is made inside of it. This of course isn't really an issue with videogames so much as it is with escapist forms of media. In the past people simply fell into books or films. Though I can certainly see how with escalating levels of realism and social interaction the environment of the "game" could progressively become harder and harder to separate from the environment of reality. They are designed to be hard to put down after all.

In my opinion, after a good game of team Fortess 2 I sometimes go around saying KAAA-bOOOM! and thinking of the best way to get a grenade over a wall(i play demoman) but i dont act out, because violence isnt an answer. Yes, gaming make you feel a little different afterwards but so do movies and books. The people that want to end all violent video games are wrong. There are many people who just enjoy doing new things and seeing new worlds within video games, me included.
As to your question of wheres you limit, Anung, when I play Fable or Fable 2 I always play as a good guy, because I feel bad about killing innocents. So, for me the limit is killing people that are not involved with my character at all. My grandmother agrees with the "end everything violent" people, and whenever I go around her, she tells me about how games and violent movies are bad. So I've just given up explaining to anyone why violent games are so much fun, instead I just nod my head and then walk away before getting angry at them for judging me. My opinion. Who's next?

And Phloop, congrats on staying clean for 2 months.

The only conclusion we can come to in this thread, is that team fortress 2 is awesome. I like Engineer the best, 2nd best is soldier.

namegoeshere wrote:The only conclusion we can come to in this thread, is that team fortress 2 is awesome. I like Engineer the best, 2nd best is soldier.

I love the scout, spy, engi, pyro, and soldier. In that exact order. Scout is kredit to team!

Engineer, Medic, Pyro, in the that order.

Polonius wrote:of course, 20 years ago many of the same people were telling society that D&D would turn their children to satanism.

I'm against banning things, but increasing the amount of Info that parents have in terms of buying games for kids would help. As always, parental choice and supervision are key.

QFT.

The links between imaginary violence and real violent tendencies is something which I think will be debated until the end of time. I think the Key, as Polonius states, is parental supervision. After all an 18 certificate on a game is all very well and good in the eyes of the law but lets face it Parents buy their kids the 18 cert games anyway. Perhaps we should be looking at new ways to enforce this?

The really Ironic thing is that the critics of the games (usually right wing tabloids) most often direct their anger at the makers of the game (who didn't make it for children), the shops that sell the games (Who, quite rightly, refuse to sell them to children) or the BBFC (Who give the game a certificate making it illegal for child to buy it!) But very rarely criticize the true guilty party, which are the parents that buy the games for their children.

Now in Germany many violent games are outright banned. I certainly don't want to see this anywhere else and with good reason. Mainly that I don't think the State should have any right, at all, to tell an adult what media (Be it Games, Books or Films) they may or may not have access to. No matter how well intentioned they may be in restricting me, the day Big Brother decides that I shouldn't be allowed to play GTA, is the day I live in a police state.