How disturbed where you when you saw todays Jimquisition?
- Thread starter Ironbat92
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I was a bit unsettled to see that it didn't affect me much. When I saw it a second time, I felt more of a pang of remorse for the guy. Perhaps I wasn't paying full attention the first time. Still, I know what Jim is talking about. My acclimation to video game violence has turned me off to both real world guns, and real world fighting. I enjoy watching fighting games and playing FPSs, but I get bored fast while watching Ultimate Fighting or shooting a real gun. Guns are so inconvenient, and fighting just isn't as fun without those "thwack" sounds.
Read his wiki page, its not graphic and the end suggest he might have actually been framed.ProtoChimp said:
One of the witnesses used to convict him admitted to lying after the guy shot himself.
I haven't even watched it, and I feel chilled just reading through this thread.
A few years back I discovered ED and the infamous "Offended" page... unlike most, it didn't desensitize me. If anything, it made me more sensitive to violence. One of the gifs I saw, which I shan't describe, chills me to the very core every time I remember it. Thinking about it now makes me feel ill. I'd seen other shock images and videos before, but after Offended, I just couldn't bear any more. I know that I don't want to see that footage, or any of the others mentioned in the thread.
Conversely, video game violence doesn't bother me. I happy murder the hell out of towns in Fable or Morrowind, beat people to death in Saints Row, splatter someones head in Condemned and laugh as their teeth go flying in a cloud of gore. I'll burn whole families in their houses in The Sims. I can walk unfased through the scenes of medical torture in Sanitarium. I know its fake.
There's something about seeing REAL death and REAL violence that... games just can't prepare you for. Like how fast blood moves, or how quickly a person can switch from living to dead (compared to the "dying" animation a lot of games have where the person sort of stumbles to the floor). The horror and panic in a real creature terrified for its life seconds before it ends. In a game you know you can load your last save and they'll be back, but when it's real... knowing that the blood and the body are all that are left of the whole of a person or an animals life, the sum of their experiences snuffed out, irreversibly, in an instant. That chills me.
A few years back I discovered ED and the infamous "Offended" page... unlike most, it didn't desensitize me. If anything, it made me more sensitive to violence. One of the gifs I saw, which I shan't describe, chills me to the very core every time I remember it. Thinking about it now makes me feel ill. I'd seen other shock images and videos before, but after Offended, I just couldn't bear any more. I know that I don't want to see that footage, or any of the others mentioned in the thread.
Conversely, video game violence doesn't bother me. I happy murder the hell out of towns in Fable or Morrowind, beat people to death in Saints Row, splatter someones head in Condemned and laugh as their teeth go flying in a cloud of gore. I'll burn whole families in their houses in The Sims. I can walk unfased through the scenes of medical torture in Sanitarium. I know its fake.
There's something about seeing REAL death and REAL violence that... games just can't prepare you for. Like how fast blood moves, or how quickly a person can switch from living to dead (compared to the "dying" animation a lot of games have where the person sort of stumbles to the floor). The horror and panic in a real creature terrified for its life seconds before it ends. In a game you know you can load your last save and they'll be back, but when it's real... knowing that the blood and the body are all that are left of the whole of a person or an animals life, the sum of their experiences snuffed out, irreversibly, in an instant. That chills me.
I was quite disturbed by it. To be honest, even if games were that realistic (some films have been fairly close actually), I wouldn't be as disturbed, because I still know it's not real. Knowing that that's a real guy really blowing his brains out was pretty shocking. When I saw it my brain had a hard time thinking that was actually what a guy shooting himself looks like.
I wasn't disturbed, but I've spent far too much time on the internet for shock content to do anything.
Really? I mean seriously? I do not think the issue is games have desensitized us to violence, with these reactions it seems clear they havent desensitized us enough.
All it is is a guy shooting himself in the head. Yet responses of horror and revulsion? come on now, grow a set already. Its not like its a live beheading with a pocket knife or seeing someone reduced to jelly in slow motion loosing the bout of man vs 18 wheeler.
The responses are so comical I feel like im being trolled.
All it is is a guy shooting himself in the head. Yet responses of horror and revulsion? come on now, grow a set already. Its not like its a live beheading with a pocket knife or seeing someone reduced to jelly in slow motion loosing the bout of man vs 18 wheeler.
The responses are so comical I feel like im being trolled.
I have no feelings on it either way. Of course having seen that same scene before, including being edited down and used as part of other videos (including close ups of the guy's head being emptied with the gun being used as a forum signature) it's not something that paticularly disturbed me.
To some this would make the point about being desensitized to violence, but as I said in response to Jim's video, humans are inherantly violent, predatory creatures, we wouldn't have survived or continued to thrive without these impulses (if your curious, read my response in response to The Jimquisition). Someone who gets deeply upset by something like this is unusually sensitive to violence, probably due to being conditioned by first world morality and living standards, being largely isolated from the rest of the world and reality. Your typical "Ivory Tower" liberal which goes along with the general political and moral sentiments in these forums, people will hate this point of course, but the bottom line this is exactly one of those forums where I'd expect an unusually strong reaction, which comes more from the crowd, than video games making people more sensitive.
That said, I did have a stronger reaction to things like this when I first ran into real violence and death. Time living in the real world and dealing with the kind of crap the majority of people on forums like this try and convince themselves aren't issues or don't exist, has however desensitized me to this type of thing, and lead to my "the world sucks, and it's actually going to have to be made to suck worse for it to get better" attitude which has made me (in)famous in non-gaming discussions on these forums.
That said, none of my sentiments came from video games or the media. If anything I tend to criticize "mature" gaming material for not going far enough, because of how unreal and one-sidedly idealistic it usually is.
Arguements by academics also tend to misjudge the sheer jump needed to go from fantasy, to actual action. It's not a simple matter of "I see people being shot in a video game, so I'm going to go shoot them in real life" or "Grand Theft Auto makes crime look fun, so I'm going to try it in real life" as soon as you stand up from your chair you can see how differant reality is compared to the way people move and the ease with which they do things in video games. Not to mention the numerous steps needed to get a gun, learn to shoot accuratly (which isn't that hard to achieve basic proficiency with, but it does take time), and other assorted things that these arguements don't consider. Then there are the realistic bits of planning something like this that don't come up in video games, since in real life you can't say walk down the street with an assault rifle slung over your back, and enter buildings with the same level of imputiny you can in video games and other works of fantasy. Not to mention even if you argue people become desensitized to violence and the suffering of others, even total sociopaths put value on their own life, unlike video games YOU do not come back with a simple "reload" or selecting "continue", it's that kind of immortality that makes a lot of what you see in video games work... if you think about how many times your character dies in a video game, they are hardly something that encourages this kind of thing in real life where there are no second chances. People who citicize crime games for example tend to look at the violence, not how pursuit magically disappears when you enter the right kind of business, or how often these rampages result in the death of the protaganist character.
Speaking for myself I think a much bigger "threat" if you want to go there are books and various terrorist training manuals like "The Anarchist's Cookbook", "The Black Book Of Dirty Tricks", and "The Poor Man's James bond" that provide a more practical and realistic guide to mayhem (though to be honest, I wouldn't follow some of the instructions for chemicals or explosives too closely). Books like that largely fueled the left wing terrorist movements decades ago, with groups like the SLA (who "abducted" Patty Hearst) and numerous "one hit wonders". The truth is pretty much every left winger was a closet anarchist back then and had copies of crap like this, and far more of them seemed to turn to actual violence once they had material like this than you see today from video games. If you ever want to feel dirty take a look at some of the liberal terrorists that were under consideration for pardons by The Clintons during their administration as well.... even with this stuff though I don't think the information should be illegal, and if I support "urban gueriella manuals" (part of my support of the Second Amendment and it's spirit) obviously I'm not going to have any problems with video games.
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Also I'll be honest in saying that if you agree with Jim that Hollywood violence doesn't come close to the real think, I'd say that you've probably watched the wrong movies. Video games aren't up to that point yet, but there have been some understated horror movies where the violence almost exactly matches the real thing. Largely because there are directors and such who have sat down and watched a lot of those interrogation and execution videos made in the third world (and similar things) that show up on shock sites and obscure videos, and then set out to emulate the effects as exactly as possible. The usual problem is with movie makers doing too much, but that isn't always the case. This kind of thing is also why there is so much debate on whether snuff flicks exist or not, because it's so easy to fake. If you get into the "extreme horror" subculture and the obscure videos a lot of people in it follow, you'll notice a definate differance in how they do things from the Hollywood norm, even when they have reasonable large amounts of resources behind them (for the "genere"). To date we have yet to really see video games go there, though I am hoping they will for certain generes (like horror). As Yahtzee once pointed out in one of his "Dead Space" reviews, it's kind of immersion breaking to see limbs come off like dry twigs, or badly constructed models one would expect a degree of resistance when dismembering limbs. The human body (not considering necromorphs) is more durable than video games give it credit for, especially when facing certain kinds of trauma. I look forward to a time when a game like "Silent Hill" decides to try and "get it right".
To some this would make the point about being desensitized to violence, but as I said in response to Jim's video, humans are inherantly violent, predatory creatures, we wouldn't have survived or continued to thrive without these impulses (if your curious, read my response in response to The Jimquisition). Someone who gets deeply upset by something like this is unusually sensitive to violence, probably due to being conditioned by first world morality and living standards, being largely isolated from the rest of the world and reality. Your typical "Ivory Tower" liberal which goes along with the general political and moral sentiments in these forums, people will hate this point of course, but the bottom line this is exactly one of those forums where I'd expect an unusually strong reaction, which comes more from the crowd, than video games making people more sensitive.
That said, I did have a stronger reaction to things like this when I first ran into real violence and death. Time living in the real world and dealing with the kind of crap the majority of people on forums like this try and convince themselves aren't issues or don't exist, has however desensitized me to this type of thing, and lead to my "the world sucks, and it's actually going to have to be made to suck worse for it to get better" attitude which has made me (in)famous in non-gaming discussions on these forums.
That said, none of my sentiments came from video games or the media. If anything I tend to criticize "mature" gaming material for not going far enough, because of how unreal and one-sidedly idealistic it usually is.
Arguements by academics also tend to misjudge the sheer jump needed to go from fantasy, to actual action. It's not a simple matter of "I see people being shot in a video game, so I'm going to go shoot them in real life" or "Grand Theft Auto makes crime look fun, so I'm going to try it in real life" as soon as you stand up from your chair you can see how differant reality is compared to the way people move and the ease with which they do things in video games. Not to mention the numerous steps needed to get a gun, learn to shoot accuratly (which isn't that hard to achieve basic proficiency with, but it does take time), and other assorted things that these arguements don't consider. Then there are the realistic bits of planning something like this that don't come up in video games, since in real life you can't say walk down the street with an assault rifle slung over your back, and enter buildings with the same level of imputiny you can in video games and other works of fantasy. Not to mention even if you argue people become desensitized to violence and the suffering of others, even total sociopaths put value on their own life, unlike video games YOU do not come back with a simple "reload" or selecting "continue", it's that kind of immortality that makes a lot of what you see in video games work... if you think about how many times your character dies in a video game, they are hardly something that encourages this kind of thing in real life where there are no second chances. People who citicize crime games for example tend to look at the violence, not how pursuit magically disappears when you enter the right kind of business, or how often these rampages result in the death of the protaganist character.
Speaking for myself I think a much bigger "threat" if you want to go there are books and various terrorist training manuals like "The Anarchist's Cookbook", "The Black Book Of Dirty Tricks", and "The Poor Man's James bond" that provide a more practical and realistic guide to mayhem (though to be honest, I wouldn't follow some of the instructions for chemicals or explosives too closely). Books like that largely fueled the left wing terrorist movements decades ago, with groups like the SLA (who "abducted" Patty Hearst) and numerous "one hit wonders". The truth is pretty much every left winger was a closet anarchist back then and had copies of crap like this, and far more of them seemed to turn to actual violence once they had material like this than you see today from video games. If you ever want to feel dirty take a look at some of the liberal terrorists that were under consideration for pardons by The Clintons during their administration as well.... even with this stuff though I don't think the information should be illegal, and if I support "urban gueriella manuals" (part of my support of the Second Amendment and it's spirit) obviously I'm not going to have any problems with video games.
-
Also I'll be honest in saying that if you agree with Jim that Hollywood violence doesn't come close to the real think, I'd say that you've probably watched the wrong movies. Video games aren't up to that point yet, but there have been some understated horror movies where the violence almost exactly matches the real thing. Largely because there are directors and such who have sat down and watched a lot of those interrogation and execution videos made in the third world (and similar things) that show up on shock sites and obscure videos, and then set out to emulate the effects as exactly as possible. The usual problem is with movie makers doing too much, but that isn't always the case. This kind of thing is also why there is so much debate on whether snuff flicks exist or not, because it's so easy to fake. If you get into the "extreme horror" subculture and the obscure videos a lot of people in it follow, you'll notice a definate differance in how they do things from the Hollywood norm, even when they have reasonable large amounts of resources behind them (for the "genere"). To date we have yet to really see video games go there, though I am hoping they will for certain generes (like horror). As Yahtzee once pointed out in one of his "Dead Space" reviews, it's kind of immersion breaking to see limbs come off like dry twigs, or badly constructed models one would expect a degree of resistance when dismembering limbs. The human body (not considering necromorphs) is more durable than video games give it credit for, especially when facing certain kinds of trauma. I look forward to a time when a game like "Silent Hill" decides to try and "get it right".
Well, sometime between Budd pulling the trigger and the clip ending, I covered my eyes without realizing. So, yes, Jim's point is proven; gamers are not desensitized to real violence. I can't even give blood, its just... yeeegh.
I definitely cringed. Shows how much violence is exaggerated in games just to make the point that real violence isn't fun.
Honestly?
Not at all when Jim first showed the clip, though i felt i little bit uneasy a while after (not the death itself, but what he must have though when he did it sort of).
The low quality of the clip, how quick it was.
Sort of like some of those clips from warzones you see on the news or some old WW1/2 fotage.
Not at all when Jim first showed the clip, though i felt i little bit uneasy a while after (not the death itself, but what he must have though when he did it sort of).
The low quality of the clip, how quick it was.
Sort of like some of those clips from warzones you see on the news or some old WW1/2 fotage.
I haven't watched the footage and I won't. I can't handle real gore, I can't even look at broken bones without getting squeamish.
Computer games are a different beast though, any violence occurring to video game characters is happening to a cartoon, a puppet, and I'm tired of uninformed people, or desperate organisations (like the NRA) trying to link videogame violence to actual violence. It might be a more visual and interactive medium but I don't see any difference between it and violence in printed literature which encourages the reader to create their own image of a violent scene (I'm looking at you Bible)
Computer games are a different beast though, any violence occurring to video game characters is happening to a cartoon, a puppet, and I'm tired of uninformed people, or desperate organisations (like the NRA) trying to link videogame violence to actual violence. It might be a more visual and interactive medium but I don't see any difference between it and violence in printed literature which encourages the reader to create their own image of a violent scene (I'm looking at you Bible)
I didn't see it, rather I couldn't see it even though I wanted to. I wanted to see it just to observe my own reaction to it, but it hasn't even been a month since a dear friend of mine killed herself so I couldn't bring myself to do it.
It did however remind me of the first time I got squemish about someones death, and made me feel like erecting a shrine to Jim for his video. I was a kid and I was watching the news. A video with a truck was driving through a warzone and blew up. I was in shock for a bit, asking myself if it was real and why they would show it if it was.
I think I would've been made uncomfortable if I saw it, but not as much as I'd want to be. I don't want to think of a human life as something to just be ignored, but I know that I can. Why? Because I see it and read about it in the news as something unimportant. My giddyness at beheading an orc or assassinating a druglord in a game at least makes me feel something.
It did however remind me of the first time I got squemish about someones death, and made me feel like erecting a shrine to Jim for his video. I was a kid and I was watching the news. A video with a truck was driving through a warzone and blew up. I was in shock for a bit, asking myself if it was real and why they would show it if it was.
I think I would've been made uncomfortable if I saw it, but not as much as I'd want to be. I don't want to think of a human life as something to just be ignored, but I know that I can. Why? Because I see it and read about it in the news as something unimportant. My giddyness at beheading an orc or assassinating a druglord in a game at least makes me feel something.
The mere thought of watching a video of someone dying in real life disturbs me. Video game violence never does. It may upset me if something is happening to a character I am attached to, but fantasy violence does not affect me in the same way as real life violence I have seen. The brain establishes a clear divide. I can play through hours of Soldier of Fortune without feeling a thing, but I still haven't mustered the courage to look at that video of the teenagers killing a man with a hammer. Everyone who's seen it claims to have been...changed by doing so, if you can believe that.
Budd Dwyer's death was chilling, as I imagine seeing a video of a real suicide for the first time would be. It's an alien experience. The blood was somehow surprising. I can't imagine people watching that sort of thing for fun, although I imagine some people must feel indifferent to witnessing acts of violence - more likely due to something genetic than excessive gaming.
Budd Dwyer's death was chilling, as I imagine seeing a video of a real suicide for the first time would be. It's an alien experience. The blood was somehow surprising. I can't imagine people watching that sort of thing for fun, although I imagine some people must feel indifferent to witnessing acts of violence - more likely due to something genetic than excessive gaming.
Upon first watching it I was kind of... I won't say "disappointed", but it was so...bland. It was almost boring, really. But when I looked back over it, and realized the gravity of what I just saw, I was pretty shaken... Probably the best way he could have proven his point, in retrospect.