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I have to say I wasn't greatly impressed by playing the demo, but I know people who thought it was great

It should be good - excellent team of people behind it

SilverMK2 wrote:
Hey, I know! Lots of people die in road accidents every year, let's ban all motor transport! That way we will all live forever!
I grew up in a house with plenty of adult themed videos (no VCD's/DVD's back then ). Various horror/thriller/action films etc. What you seem to be suggesting is that entire generations of people are being turned into worthless individuals because they are exposed to violent, or otherwise "unsavoury" material.
Really?

Try again without the hysteria please.

SilverMK2 wrote:
Society has always contained people who are essentially "do nothing" parents. Children have been growing up for generations in this kind of environment. Entertainment has very little to do with it in my eyes. Go back a hundred years and look around a working class slum - kids everywhere doing pretty much whatever they wanted to and could get away with. It is common for streets of kids to essentially mob into gangs and take on other streets/areas.
I bet they were all exposed to too much sex and violence in the music halls!
All we have now is a modern expression of the same problem - kids filling their time however they want so long as the parents get a bit of rest.

SilverMK2 wrote:
I, as an adult (of over 18 years), with no children, living in a house where no children visit, present absolutely 0 risk to mentally or emotionally impressing on a child anything with the media available in my collection (which ranges from Disney movies to supergore^3!!!!1111pi and everything in between).

Why should I have to pay more for something because it has been deemed "too morally questionable" or because of "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"? In what way is it appropriate to tax certain types of media because they display violence, or adult themes?

You wont have to pay more for most media, the concept targets media designed to include needless gratuity as a selling point. Ratings dont work with that material, because the driving force is economic.
Plenty of games out there, and comedy too thats doesn't cross the line.

Also this isn't a 'think of the children' mindset, censorship and ratings effect everyone. Some media is ordered to be cut before release, and thats is for anyones benefit not part of a child protection dogma. Also by its nature a tax system would not drive shock media off the market, if it wasn't taxed it wasn't marketed. Instead its a counter-incentive for shock media to clean up.

SilverMK2 wrote:
Warhammer allows players to commit genocide on a massive scale, historical games allow you to play as the Nazi's, or crusading knights... all topics that people could feel were "inappropriate" to expose children to. Should they be taxed as well?

Look at the argument calmly and you will see this has not been advocated. Most nations also have exemptions within the classification rating, mostly for educational purposes. This has already been thought of.

SilverMK2 wrote:
How about books? Lots of blood and gore in fantasy books and science fiction. Hell, there is a lot in factual books about war as well. Should they be taxed on this entertainment taxation system as well? After all, they are entertainment, and some people may find them offensive, and some kid, somewhere in the world may be offended by their contents.

No mention of books.

SilverMK2 wrote:
I just don't get any part of how such a tax would be fair or justified. The ratings system already provides protection for children. If anything, give more power to enforce that, rather than simply pricing innocent customers out of the market.

Well, anything you experince any time of any day in any format will affect you in some way. The point is that taxing something for being "morally wrong" is not only extremely subjective, but extremely unfair for the exact reason that it is entirely subjective.

Its very easy to justify actually, we have a censors office, and it is busy. The already classify things, a tax surcharge would only his the top end, beyond a normal 18 certificate. There is already a number a thresholds at which perental guidance labels are attached.

SilverMK2 wrote:
The ratings system currently in place in many nations establishes relatively agreeable limits as to what people can and cannot be exposed to at various ages. It allows someone to go into a shop with $25 and pick up that new childrens animated film, or the latest SAW, depending on their age and preferance. Someone wanting to watch SAW (though why you would I am not sure ) should not have to pay, say, $50 because "oh no there is blood and children might see it".

I think you miss the point. 'Because children might see it' is only a small part of the issue, we already have what safeguards in play that we can. The tax would apply to counterbalance excessive (which can be classified) gratuitousness as a market tool. Most titles affecting a 'normal' 18 rating would and should not be touched.

Responsibility for video games is being transferred from the BBFC to the PEGI system this summer.

So what in particular is supposedly so offensive about this game?

Specific content?

I looked at the game's website and it seems like pretty standard fair:

1. an innovative and intriguing name that suggests both guns and violence? Check

2. Loud music? Check

3. A female character with big guns? Check

4. An overly dramatic storyline and forced voice acting? Check and check

5. main charcter who nicked Wolevrines hair-do and raspy voce? Check and check


Seriously it seems pretty typical, so what is the fuss specifically?

Not to mention the fact some of the content is rather comical such as a trick shot that make your target breakdance, etc. Seems a step back actually from seriousness and grit of some previous games...

sebster wrote:Whereas the people at the top levels of industry make informed and rational decisions at all times.

Kilkrazy wrote:Responsibility for video games is being transferred from the BBFC to the PEGI system this summer.

In the UK yeah. In the US, it's the ESRB, and the ESRB is why there's no government regulation in the rating system. There's no need for it when the gaming industry regulates itself and rates its own games. A lot of games have content removed to drop them from AO (Adults Only 18+) to M (Mature 17+), as part if this self-regulation.

I can hardly see the problem with this game. It's just Borderlands meets Unreal Tournament. I enjoyed the demo, and have it pre-ordered... suppose I should really be picking it up... meh...

I'm guessing it was a slow newsday in the entertainment office.

Kilkrazy wrote:Responsibility for video games is being transferred from the BBFC to the PEGI system this summer.

I thought it had already changed? Most new games are rated by the PEGI system.

BRAINFART: Unless it's one of those slow transition jobs...

I'm making the point in response to Orlanth, who is concerned with the UK market.

I work in the videogames industry and submit titles for rating, so I am familiar with all the systems.

Article wrote:“If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm's explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant,” Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute in Southern California, told FoxNews.com.

I love how the anti-video game activists keep railing with 'THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!' pretending that these things are just being handed out for free for everyone.

I also notice that these same people have no problems with R rated movies. Hyprocrisy much?

Orlanth wrote:
I think you miss the point. 'Because children might see it' is only a small part of the issue, we already have what safeguards in play that we can. The tax would apply to counterbalance excessive (which can be classified) gratuitousness as a market tool. Most titles affecting a 'normal' 18 rating would and should not be touched.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_tax


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, the universe survived Postal 2. That was almost ten years ago.

ChrisWWII wrote:

Article wrote:“If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm's explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant,” Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute in Southern California, told FoxNews.com.

I love how the anti-video game activists keep railing with 'THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!' pretending that these things are just being handed out for free for everyone.

I also notice that these same people have no problems with R rated movies. Hyprocrisy much?

They used to. Look up the Hays Code.

Also see Tipper Gore's campaign against explicit lyrics in records, which has been extended to explicit boobs in comic books.

Back in Victorian times there was much worry about the pernicious effects of Penny Dreadfuls on weak, working class minds.

TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR THIS gak???

I know ya were, I was just clarifying it.

Oh, I know about the Hya's Code, however since it had passed on, I viewed it as irrelevant. I was more referring to the current anti-video game movement.

Medium of Death wrote:I can hardly see the problem with this game. It's just Borderlands meets Unreal Tournament. I enjoyed the demo, and have it pre-ordered... suppose I should really be picking it up... meh...

I'm guessing it was a slow newsday in the entertainment office.

It's because many people in the news media who don't specifically specialize in video games are pretty consistently out of touch at best or completely clueless at worst when it comes to games and the gaming industry. It doesn't matter that there have been many other games in the past with similar levels of violence, profanity, nudity, adult themes, or whatever else, this is just the most recent one the news media has gotten a hold of. Since it's "new" to them, they act like it's actually something new to the rest of the world. Like daedalus already said, the universe survived Postal 2.

The Duke of Wellington was against railways because he thought it would encourage the lower classes to move about the country.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Roman Catholic Church was against bibles and services not in Latin until the 1970s, because they thought it would give the people the wrong ideas.

Orlanth wrote:
I would like to know where you got those figures from, in the UK this is precisely what has happened.

I'm specifically citing US juvenile crime statistics from the OJJDP. I'm having trouble finding similar statistics for the UK, but as I recall there is a great deal of debate as to whether or not the recent increase in juvenile offenses is the result of a more delinquent youth, or a more restrictive code of justice.

Orlanth wrote:
Though I would be reluctant to place the blame directly on the shock media it does have an effect. Outside of rare cases the problem is not a direct translation to violent crime the problem but more a detachment from any communal responsibility and the causes of this are far wider.

I honestly don't see how that is a problem at all as "communal responsibility" has always been a dicey idea in the Western world, at the very least. If the crime rate is relatively low, and social services are not experiencing a great degree of fraud, then there does not appear to be an issue with responsibility so much as, perhaps, budgetary concerns with respect to the overall expenditure on aid to the poor.

Orlanth wrote:
Humans pick up their moral values before they are 10, the media is dispelling innocence at far younger ages and the societal effects are very much evident. Every generation blames a cultural decay on its youth, but there has been a sea change in recent years with violent and anti social behaviour effecting younger and younger age groups. The last big youth revolution in the 60's and each preceding normally occurred in a much older age group,

Marcuse made that argument years ago, and it hasn't gotten any better in the ensuing period. The family unit was never an impermeable barrier, its simply that socialization was naturally constrained to those people in the immediate vicinity of any given child. Now, with the ubiquity of media, kids are exposed to a highly diverse set of influences that naturally expand their sphere of awareness, and so serve to detach them from classical communities. I, personally, see no problem with this. If the "old village" dynamic is lost it will be replaced by something else, and most people won't weep for its loss, and those that do aren't likely to be around for much longer anyway.

Orlanth wrote:
I do not blame video games for this, I can see the influence of shock media in general, of which gaming is a very small part. Modern 'comedy' is far more a threat in this case, as with some games the shock value is there to mask reduced overall quality, raise publicity through controversy and thus raise capital. Fine a shock jock for breaching broadcasting standards and you have made his career jump, place a surtax on his materials and he will have a genuine incentive to clean up a bit.
The thing is you would have to do this across the board.

Bottom line here is that would there be a difference in a family setting that does not swear from one that is blue mouthed in terms of the values of the children raised. Time and again the answer appears to be yes, shock media and its prevelence all but ensures that the latter is all we can have.

I disagree with everything that you've just written and, quite honestly, it sounds like absolutely nothing beyond an old man ranting about how the youth aren't like what he remembers from his own juvenile period. You're talking about nothing more than aesthetic judgment without any sound backing in statistics, or even a reasonably objective understanding of what constitutes "decay" or "clean". This is most evident, perhaps, in your last two sentences where you seem to use "difference" as a substitute for qualitative differentiation.

Ultimately though, that's fine insofar as you recognize the argument that you're making for what it is: a desire to impress your own preferences on the world at large. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, its something that most of us attempt to do at one point or another.

dogma wrote:
I'm specifically citing US juvenile crime statistics from the OJJDP. I'm having trouble finding similar statistics for the UK, but as I recall there is a great deal of debate as to whether or not the recent increase in juvenile offenses is the result of a more delinquent youth, or a more restrictive code of justice.

While the code of justice has been increasingly restrictive of late, it has also been quite toothless in dealing with juvenile behaviour.

dogma wrote:
I honestly don't see how that is a problem at all as "communal responsibility" has always been a dicey idea in the Western world, at the very least. If the crime rate is relatively low, and social services are not experiencing a great degree of fraud, then there does not appear to be an issue with responsibility so much as, perhaps, budgetary concerns with respect to the overall expenditure on aid to the poor.

Community is always going to be a nebulous quality because it generally refers to a mass attitude, which is not something that can easily be measured.

dogma wrote:

Orlanth wrote:
Humans pick up their moral values before they are 10, the media is dispelling innocence at far younger ages and the societal effects are very much evident. Every generation blames a cultural decay on its youth, but there has been a sea change in recent years with violent and anti social behaviour effecting younger and younger age groups. The last big youth revolution in the 60's and each preceding normally occurred in a much older age group,

Marcuse made that argument years ago, and it hasn't gotten any better in the ensuing period. The family unit was never an impermeable barrier, its simply that socialization was naturally constrained to those people in the immediate vicinity of any given child. Now, with the ubiquity of media, kids are exposed to a highly diverse set of influences that naturally expand their sphere of awareness, and so serve to detach them from classical communities. I, personally, see no problem with this. If the "old village" dynamic is lost it will be replaced by something else, and most people won't weep for its loss, and those that do aren't likely to be around for much longer anyway.

Human society is still coming to terms with the chaos that is the information revolution. The 'old village' as you put it need not be replaced by anything wholesome, decay rather than re-balance is the historical norm when a social order is overturned.

Orlanth wrote:
I do not blame video games for this, I can see the influence of shock media in general, of which gaming is a very small part. Modern 'comedy' is far more a threat in this case, as with some games the shock value is there to mask reduced overall quality, raise publicity through controversy and thus raise capital. Fine a shock jock for breaching broadcasting standards and you have made his career jump, place a surtax on his materials and he will have a genuine incentive to clean up a bit.
The thing is you would have to do this across the board.

I disagree with everything that you've just written and, quite honestly, it sounds like absolutely nothing beyond an old man ranting about how the youth aren't like what he remembers from his own juvenile period.

Well nice for you to reduce my arguments to a charicature so as to avoid dealing with them.

You also omitted to quote by backing for my argument: if you really do disagree explain advertising, explain political rhetoric, explain the mass media in all its forms since the printing press. They all boil down to this time tested truth: people are influenced by what media they receive, for better or worse to some extent or another.

dogma wrote:
You're talking about nothing more than aesthetic judgment without any sound backing in statistics,

A sound backing in statistics is something hard to come by, especially when regarding to something as egg-in-the-face as crime statistics under the previous decade. Do not make the mistake of over-relying on statistics they are easily doctored and often are, at least over here. Statistics from the Blair era in partuicular are highly suspect, especuially when there is political mileage in misrepresentation. A good example where official statistics have proven horribly inadequate is over immigration, because its a soft subject, crime statistics have similar problems. Oner report I read indicated that reported crime statistics only included certain types of reported crime, IIRc crime phoned in rather than reported at the desk. By applying 'tactics' like this crime figures could appear lower than they actually were.
I would like accurate crime data from the UK, but I don't trust I will be able to get any. Point remains even with the doctored evidence crime and youth crime in particular are going up. This is not an aesthetic judgement.

dogma wrote:
or even a reasonably objective understanding of what constitutes "decay" or "clean". This is most evident, perhaps, in your last two sentences where you seem to use "difference" as a substitute for qualitative differentiation.

Who does? Are you fit to authenticate the standards , no? We all have our individual judgements we can feed into the consensus, which is the only real way to determine these sorts of questions as they are human factors. Such questions as is society getting worse or better cannot easily be established except by a poll as these values are not quantifiable outside of human opinion.
The main difference being that the 'pulse' of society tells me there is cause for alarm, so I make the comment. Maybe its different around your home region.

I use difference to refer to differentiation, what of it. Big words eh.

dogma wrote:
Ultimately though, that's fine insofar as you recognize the argument that you're making for what it is: a desire to impress your own preferences on the world at large. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, its something that most of us attempt to do at one point or another.

Are you trying to imply you have 'got over' the stage where you apply your own preferences by the way. Because you have appeal of authority.
Has not every point in this thread been a personal opinion, there is no weighting you can apply to that of itself.

Violent crime statistics in the UK can be and are cross-correlated from three sources

1. The UK Crime Survey.
2. Police reports.
3. Hospital emergency admission records.

It would be worth looking into this.

Orlanth wrote:
Human society is still coming to terms with the chaos that is the information revolution. The 'old village' as you put it need not be replaced by anything wholesome, decay rather than re-balance is the historical norm when a social order is overturned.

There's no distinction between the two outside of individual preference. What is decay for one person is progress for another.

Orlanth wrote:
Well nice for you to reduce my arguments to a charicature so as to avoid dealing with them.

You didn't make any arguments. You said X is bad, and then moved on. Making an argument would involve citing statistical evidence, or indicating why your qualitative description was motivated by something other than personal preference. I'm not interested in what you do, or don't, like.

Orlanth wrote:
You also omitted to quote by backing for my argument: if you really do disagree explain advertising, explain political rhetoric, explain the mass media in all its forms since the printing press. They all boil down to this time tested truth: people are influenced by what media they receive, for better or worse to some extent or another.

I didn't disagree with that idea. I disagreed with the idea that it is problematic such that something like a sin tax is either necessary or desirable.

Orlanth wrote:
A sound backing in statistics is something hard to come by, especially when regarding to something as egg-in-the-face as crime statistics under the previous decade. Do not make the mistake of over-relying on statistics they are easily doctored and often are, at least over here.

WE've had this conversation before, and I imagine that it will not be different this time, so I'll cut to the chase. If you understand statistical methodology, then they cannot be doctored insofar as the source is honest. Honesty, of course, is an issue regardless of the type of information being considered.

Orlanth wrote:
Statistics from the Blair era in partuicular are highly suspect, especuially when there is political mileage in misrepresentation. A good example where official statistics have proven horribly inadequate is over immigration, because its a soft subject, crime statistics have similar problems. Oner report I read indicated that reported crime statistics only included certain types of reported crime, IIRc crime phoned in rather than reported at the desk. By applying 'tactics' like this crime figures could appear lower than they actually were.

That's not a tactic, its a methodological choice. But, ultimately, the problem there is not a problem of the measure, but of the reader. If the person reading the statistics is begins to equate what is being measured, with what the measure is intended to indicate, then they will obviously arive at a fraudulent conclusion. This hearkens back to my comment above.

Orlanth wrote:
I would like accurate crime data from the UK, but I don't trust I will be able to get any. Point remains even with the doctored evidence crime and youth crime in particular are going up. This is not an aesthetic judgement.

As far as I know youth crime in the UK has trended upward for ~80 years, which indicates a problem that extends well beyond mass media, and one that may not have anything to do with the youth at all.

Still, again, you're confusing inaccurate statistics with your own inaccurate readings of them. An inaccurate statistic is one that involves an actual miscount of the thing being measured (at least insofar as we're only concerned with simple statistics), not one in which what is being measured is counted accurately. What you're talking about is non-representative statistics, which is something predicated on either aesthetic choice, or necessary separation from the subject on inquiry (eg. reported rapes as a measure of all rapes).

Orlanth wrote:
Who does? Are you fit to authenticate the standards , no? We all have our individual judgements we can feed into the consensus, which is the only real way to determine these sorts of questions as they are human factors. Such questions as is society getting worse or better cannot easily be established except by a poll as these values are not quantifiable outside of human opinion.

You missed the point completely. The question "Is society getting worse?" is meaningless because it is nothing more than a question of preference with respect to the continual process of change. Government would be interested in the result, as they have a necessary interest in determining the desires of their population so as to effectively control them, but from the perspective of the individual citizen (who essentially controls nothing) the matter of what others prefer is as close to irrelevant as is possible.

Orlanth wrote:
The main difference being that the 'pulse' of society tells me there is cause for alarm, so I make the comment. Maybe its different around your home region.

Why do you allow other people to determine for you whether or not there is cause for alarm?

Orlanth wrote:
I use difference to refer to differentiation, what of it. Big words eh.

If you were using it in that fashion there would be no cause for alarm. Unless difference itself is alarming.

Orlanth wrote:
Are you trying to imply you have 'got over' the stage where you apply your own preferences by the way. Because you have appeal of authority.

Of course not, though I do my best. I'm interested in understanding the world, and largely indifferent to impressing myself upon it.

Orlanth wrote:
Has not every point in this thread been a personal opinion, there is no weighting you can apply to that of itself.

Has it? I've not really been expressing any opinion, merely making arguments regarding those of others, I'm honestly indifferent to sin taxes, video game regulation, or anything else similar. If something I like doing is taken away, I'll find other ways to amuse myself.

Ugh, "sin tax". Why does that make me think if religious nutjobs trying to penalize anyone who doesn't act like they want them to act (but not actually how they DO act)?

Sin tax makes me think of sentence structure.

Catholics already have 'sin tax' its called a tithe.

In other news, the 360 edition of Bulletstorm comes with an invitation to the Gears of War 3 beta.

Melissia wrote:Ugh, "sin tax". Why does that make me think if religious nutjobs trying to penalize anyone who doesn't act like they want them to act (but not actually how they DO act)?

Not my words just dogmas attempts to twist them. So no excuse to go on a church burning, this thread isn't religious or about religion.

From google references to the term we have rather a lot of 'sin taxes' already, the levy on tobacco and alcohol. They aren't refered to as sin taxes as such, just 'duty'.

So there is a precedent for such taxes, and it isnt religion based. Happy now?

No.

Melissia wrote:No.

+1 It's still a tax on what some body has arbitrarily decided is a a bad thing adn needs to be stopped.

I don't know if I disapprove of it. I just don't consider smoking, drinking, etc the same as playing a game.

Its a choice that has the potential to ruin your life while making you look cool, I would consider it the same.

halonachos wrote:Its a choice that has the potential to ruin your life while making you look cool, I would consider it the same.

So could going to college. Or having sex. Or taking a drive down the highway. Or sunbathing. Or attempting to cook your own food. Or a thousand other common things.

My god... my fellow Dakkaites we have created a solution to the economic depression, tax everything.