Desensitized to death?

[Dulisil]

Does anyone think video games desensitize people to death?
I thought of this while hearing two of my friends (Sorry, my two friends)discussing the various ways each would cause bodily harm to the other.
I suppose there are politicians who support war and the death penalty and such, but what happens when you grow up on violent games? When death is part of your daily life (Real or not) do you stop caring?

And is this why FPS junkies are such dicks?

 

[Irridium]

FPS junkies are dicks because FPS games are super-competitive. And competitiveness can bring out the dick in anyone, regardless of what they prefer playing/watching/doing.

And I say no. I play all kinds of games all the time, yet even the thought of really doing grievous injury to another person makes me feel awful. I'd say they have deeper issues.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Total fabrication.

I've ran my way through Killing Floor and butchered thousands upon millions of virtual monsters, yet I still get squeamish when I see blood IRL.

What it does do is enhance your coping mechanism to visual threats or fantastical threats.

What it doesn't do is strengthen your response to emotional threats, in fact it often weakens you to them as you unconsciously wish for a Phoenix Down.

FPS junkies are such dicks because they have a yardstick to measure their entire life through their greatest skill. Which is why they RQ so hard when you beat them.

Emotional response failure = Rage Quit.

 

[Dan E]

Yes games desensitize people of death. I have lost several family members and had no emotional effects pop up, or maybe I'm just a sociopath...
Also FPS dicks were dicks before they played those games.

 

[Zhukov]

Video games desensitise people to video game violence.

Real world violence and death are in a different league.

 

[aPod]

Oh yes, i barely even notice that death is slowly creeping up on me. Even if I do die, i'll just reload from a previous save.

 

[spartan1077]

Someone did a good article on the escapist about this. It's a good site you should check it out. I jest...but seriously violent people are led to violent video games, not the other way around. These "friends" are just violent masochistic dicks, or they are trying to seem cool. Either way, video games don't desensitize people...Society does.

 

[Novania]

I fucking hate people who can't tell the goddamn difference between violence in video games and real life. So if people are "influenced" in such a way that they go out and do some fucking stupid shit because of a game, then they need to get their head put on straight.

 

[Canid117]

There is a bit of a difference between this

and this

 

[Flying Pilgrim]

Does anyone think video games desensitize people to death?
I thought of this while hearing two of my friends (Sorry, my two friends)discussing the various ways each would cause bodily harm to the other.
I suppose there are politicians who support war and the death penalty and such, but what happens when you grow up on violent games? When death is part of your daily life (Real or not) do you stop caring?

And is this why FPS junkies are such dicks?

I think violent games desensitize us to violence and other things and I play a ton of them. I could kinda say that death is a common thing in my life (last year I went to 6 funerals and 3 of them were in the same week).

 

[Stalk3rchief]

I actually do think so, and I think Zombies are a good medium to proving this.
Those of you who are old enough, think back to the first resident evil, or the first dawn of the dead. Chances are that was a scary experience, at least at first.

Me and my friend actually had a conversation about being 'death-shock-immune' not too long ago. After being in the modern world so much, playing violent games and watching violent movies, you just kind of get used to violence.
I'm not saying that Jack Thompson is right mind you, just that people are obviously going to be less shocked about death or the injury of others. It definitely won't make us all killers and murderers or anything like that, but it should be easier for someone to become an EMT or to defend himself if someone attacks them or their home. Violence is human nature after all, we're just getting over society trying to hide it from us.

 

[the rye]

I think there are a lot more factors then just playing video games, it also depends in what context one thinks of death.
There was a time when people died of disease far more often then they do today, Also most of us will never see war in our own country. Anyway people can distinguish between fantasy and reality so death in a video game is not the same as death in real life.

 

[jamradar]

Video games Desensitize us to video game violence. I can play through some of the goriest video games but get freaked out when my finger gets cut.

If you think you are desensitized than go to google type in "offended" press i'm feeling lucky, then scroll slowly down the page.

 

[Thedayrecker]

You're thinking of the internet.

 

[vanthebaron]

Does anyone think video games desensitize people to death?
I thought of this while hearing two of my friends (Sorry, my two friends)discussing the various ways each would cause bodily harm to the other.
I suppose there are politicians who support war and the death penalty and such, but what happens when you grow up on violent games? When death is part of your daily life (Real or not) do you stop caring?

And is this why FPS junkies are such dicks?

its grade a bullshit, FPS's are competitive, and if you get taken out of a competition for any time you get dickish. I know when I play singularity online I get beastly.

 

[TaboriHK]

I think people are generally afraid of any kind of cultural shift, and our culture seems to be shifting in a direction that is less sensitive to certain stimuli. As a result, we tend to try to overcompensate in the other direction by pretending that we're outraged about issues that we don't really care too much about, because it's scary to think we can be the people that we are and we are becoming.

 

[Sinspiration]

This amuses me because I was once stuck in an X-Box live party with an under-aged kid claiming Dead Space wasn't scary. I, as an adult, am thoroughly freaked out by it and I imagine if in real life that kid encountered one of the Dead Space monsters he'd no doubt sh*t himself thoroughly.
Kids and other idiots online can be pricks as much as they want. Truth is in the real world they're nothing more than cowards and couldn't cope with reality, its perhaps this very failing that drives them to games so they can pretend they're something superior.

As for desensitization to death.. I've never really been afraid of witnessing it, or actual blood and gore in real life, at least to a certain extent. I fear death and my own mutilation, but the deaths of others would fall on me more as a pity and a sadness than something that would scare me or disgust me.

People die all the time, for many reasons, in many ways, its a fact of life that should long ago have been accepted considering the many generations of man there has been, but it always haunts the mind, perhaps there's a basic instinct or natural reaction we are born with that says death truly is a horrific thing, but its more the "how?" and "why?" that affects us and how we as unique individuals react to the answers of those conditions.

Some people can just handle it better than others. In their own way, sometimes it really is that you stop caring. But that doesn't make it the only reason.

 

[zfactor]

No, and I consider your arguement misinformed.