Video Games as a "Murder Simulator"

[Starke]

Now, we all know that Jack Thompson was a nutjob.


How many guns can you name simply because you were playing Counter Strike or Modern Warfare 2 with no previous knowledge of guns?

uhh.. AK47 maybe (if that counts), honestly I've learned more gun types from the mythbusters than video games. I don't pay attention to gun names in games.

Even if you did, it wouldn't help you, really. A lot of games substitute gun names to avoid having to pay for licensing fees. STALKER for instance, while having a bunch of very specific real world weapons doesn't have a single real gun name (that I can recall).

How many of you think you can reload a gun based on what you saw from a video game?

Not me.

Generally speaking games are a very poor place to learn about how to reload a weapon. That said, most weapons are pretty intuitive in that regard, but still.

How many people here have looked at their school and said, "man this would make an awesome map."

There was a gamer who actually made a map of his school, the police searched his house determined he wasn't a threat and that he wasn't planning on harming the school. The school still had him punished quite severely even after the police declared that they weren't going to pay any more attention to him. I remember one game developer said a lot of people make maps of places they know when they're starting out/experimenting. It's really old news but if you wish I'll find the old links.

Anyway I've never felt it.

This one, no offense to either of you is really building out of a really bullshit logical fallacy. The idea is that because the columbine kids decided to make a map of their school, everyone who makes a map of their school is planning on executing a shooting.

By the same measure we could say that, based on the kid who went after his father with a sledgehammer, all children who are punished will commit patricide.

When you are holding a knife, do you feel like you are in a video game?

The only time I ever hold knives is when I'm eating so ... no.

But it's a gut wrenching food eating simulation?

Okay, all joking aside the knife thing kinda bugs me Oranges. A knife is a tool, and only a tool. Without a pretty comprehensive understanding of knife fighting it is more dangerous to you in a knife fight than anyone you're attacking. By the same measure you could say the same thing about crow bars or baseball bats.

I know you're not saying they are, but video games are not murder simulators. To be a simulator you have to strive to be accurate and can never sacrifice realism in the name of fun.

Every shooter where you can get shot and still run and jump like you weren't wounded or has regenerating health etc. can therefore no longer be a murder simulation which is probably most of them.

Hell no one would call fighting enemy soldiers in a war murder and that's what a lot of shooter games are.

Operation: Flashpoint (2001) strikes me as falling into that category of simulation, but again, it is a combat sim, and the game actually penalizes you for gunning down civilians.

No, generally, Oranges, your thesis is wrong, it needs to be reexamined and adjusted.

 

[Necromancer1991]

I live in the middle of nowhere, if I nuked my house none would be hurt

 

[OrdinaryGuy]

You have a mission in a war game where you need to snipe a person from so many yards away. In the game you do have to accomidate for timing, bullet lag, gravity, wind. You need to think like a sniper. With enough practice on the real thing do you think you can take that 'training' and apply it to the real thing? killing in a war and killing in a neighborhood is still killing.

When you play Forza or Gran Tourismo you learn about things like drafting, how to take the inner lane, when to accelerate, how to turn. If you were seated in a car with the engine on, and with enough practice could you apply it to the real thing?

I understand what you mean but can you *actually* do those things in real life? Just because you do something in a video game or see something on television doesn't mean you can do it in the real world. Sure, having knowledge of the basics on how to race a car or shoot a gun might help you learn it, but there's no way someone could just pick one up and do it unless they were incredibly talented.

 

[Crosshead]

The majority of shooty games are not "murder simulators". They are combat simulators. Theres an important distinction to be made here, The people you kill are armed and are trying to kill you. If I killed a guy like that in real life, I wouldn't call it murder. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of computer game kills are against antagonists.

I'm playing heavy rain with my girlfriend at the moment (Very minor spoiler alert), and there is a murder in that. Pre-meditated. It was very different from gunning down the disposable mooks of CoD. It was unpleasant, messy and disturbing. Neither of us felt good about it afterwards. And that, I feel, is how murder should be portrayed.

 

[Ikuraut]

I don't think it's a matter of video games but more a sign of the age we live in. The population of most cities has gotten to a size were crowding in schools and other such places is common place enough that when a crazy person does decide to go ballistic they have no shortage of "target rich environments". Combine that with the fact that information is so easy to pass on, and we get media panic.

It's more about mathematical eventuality than influence. Lets say 1 in 10000 will actually go ballistic and harm others. Rewind to the Wild West and we are talking about 5-6 casualties tops, move to the 1940's and most people are to poor to afford fire arms so most incidents are fist fights. Fast forward to 1995 and the population is extremely dense in comparison to the other 2 examples, the economy is doing well so most are well enough off that 400 dollars on a hunting rifle or shotgun seems small, and now you'll have a higher chance for someone to loose their cool and more innocents to get hurt.

 

[Gentleman_Reptile]

It's really one of those unsolveable problems, and you've pretty much said it all in your original post.

Crazy + anything = killer..........and that is what most people fail to realise.

Even if videogames WERE the mind-warping muder simulaters those radical buttwipes claim they are, the problem is not the MEANS to exact a bloody massacre, but the original motivation, which is usually along the lines of being dumped or kicked out of home or assaulted or wronged in some way.

NOBODY picks up a violent videogame and decides they are going to eat a baby based on their experience with the game alone.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

Now, we all know that Jack Thompson was a nutjob. Anything that could have been remotely close to video games, he would attack with no evidence to support him. He'd make a claim and find evidence that supports him.
but could there be some truth to his words?


How many guns can you name simply because you were playing Counter Strike or Modern Warfare 2 with no previous knowledge of guns? How many of you think you can reload a gun based on what you saw from a video game? How many people here have looked at their school and said, "man this would make an awesome map." When you are holding a knife, do you feel like you are in a video game?

admit it, we all have.

crazy = tension
video games = increase tension
trigger = snap

Inner thoughts:
Knives...this is sharp enough to cut kiwi/taters/sheetrock or I need to sharpen this dull thing. Don't know about the gun thing b/c I have never held a videogame equivalent. Other than an M16 and prior experience in DOOM and Solider of Fortune didn't help me with that gun.
Never thought about that school/ videgame map thing and I had knowledge of different types of guns prior to being exposed to videogames...

The problem with your equations is that anything can be placed in the videogames slot for a potential crazy person. Someone could get roadrage or start raging on taxes likes that pilot who tried to kill an IRS building.

 

[SuccessAndBiscuts]

but could there be some truth to his words? You could say the same thing about anyone against any form of violent media


How many guns can you name simply because you were playing Counter Strike or Modern Warfare 2 with no previous knowledge of guns? Not many, I recognise the shape, rarely look at the name.

How many of you think you can reload a gun based on what you saw from a video game? I like to think I have the correct general idea, like how I think I have the correct general idea of how to fly a helicopter cause I read a book with a detailed and labled cockpit diagram.

How many people here have looked at their school and said, "man this would make an awesome map." I looked at it and went "this would be sweet for paintballing"

When you are holding a knife, do you feel like you are in a video game? No, I owned a knife before I owned my first console, I grew up using them.

video games on their own are not a problem, but they act more like a catalyst when combined with crazy person.

In summary yes they have a point, but its no more of a point than people who say violent books and films should be banned.

 

[maninahat]

I don't think it's a matter of video games but more a sign of the age we live in. The population of most cities has gotten to a size were crowding in schools and other such places is common place enough that when a crazy person does decide to go ballistic they have no shortage of "target rich environments". Combine that with the fact that information is so easy to pass on, and we get media panic.

It's more about mathematical eventuality than influence. Lets say 1 in 10000 will actually go ballistic and harm others. Rewind to the Wild West and we are talking about 5-6 casualties tops, move to the 1940's and most people are to poor to afford fire arms so most incidents are fist fights. Fast forward to 1995 and the population is extremely dense in comparison to the other 2 examples, the economy is doing well so most are well enough off that 400 dollars on a hunting rifle or shotgun seems small, and now you'll have a higher chance for someone to loose their cool and more innocents to get hurt.

UK, access to guns is limited (though gun crime has risen amoung gangs). This does not result in any less crazy killings; they just use blunt instruments and knives instead.

 

[tzimize]

probably been said before but if you're gonna take away everything that can trigger a psycho we will all be sitting in a square grey room with nothing in it for as long as we live eating porridge.

Could games have triggered psychos? Sure. Does that mean games are bad? No. These people would be crazy no matter what.

Can we learn stuff from violent video games? Absolutely. Names/looks of weapons, potentially reloading skills, ammo conservation, tactical thinking/planning. We can learn a whole lot, and a lot of the skills are usable in the military.

Does this mean playing CS make you a Marine? No...

When we experience something we learn and grow. This is true for real life situations and for games, but no matter how you look at it taking a life in real life and doing it on a screen is not comparable.

 

[Tellaris]

Alrighty, firstly video games have the same problem violence on TV always had. Both desensitize you to it. Does this mean that you see somebody stabbed on TV, or stabbed in a game will make you a killer? Hell no.
Being able to identify weapons, and being able to actually use them competently are two totally different things. Firing a gun, and hitting things accurately is easy in a video game. In real life, there is often a ton more stuff to take into account, and your aim is likely to be complete crap without practice.
The "video game link" is mostly just the newest scapegoat for society's problems. Video games are getting ragged on the same way TV used to be back in the day.
Saying that being "crazy" as a predisposing factor for violence from video games is also misleading. There are tons of mental disorders that, while crippling for the suffer, rare result in any form of violence against others. (Though suicide in many of them is common)
The single largest cause of crime from a mentally disturbed person is from psychopaths. The rest generally are more of a danger to themselves, if at all, then they are to anybody else. For psychopaths, since they don't apparently experience any guilt, and appear to lack morality (there is actually a biological link for this.), they tend to commit major crimes like murder to get what they want. As a result, large proportions of prison inmates tend to be psychopaths. The base rate of psychopathy in society is about 3%. .03 x 300,000,000 = 9,000,000 psychopaths in American society. Of those, approx 50% completely escape detection. The ones that escape detection are usually either non-criminal or commit rather minor crimes, or just haven't been caught yet. These "successful" psychopaths tend to be found in government, and higher positions in business.
Regardless, there are a fair few psychopaths to cause problems. Additionally, the base rate of psychopathy tends to be stable cross culturally. Point is, aside from Psychopathy, the rest of the mental disorders are mostly non-criminal. At most, they are far more likely to kill themselves then harm others. And even the amount of criminal behavior that is detected, caused by psychopaths, doesn't even make up half the picture. They're still a minority. The majority of crime appears to be caused more by people who have low socioeconomic status (poor), are the victims of bad parenting and/or abuse, and often, unemployment. Note this excludes white collar crime.
The point? Games don't cause criminality. Bad parenting and a individualistic society contributes to crime. The prevalence of gaming these days makes it easy to assume there is a direct cause from game to crime, when if you look at it statistically, only a very small amount of gamers actually commit crime, only slightly higher then the average non-gamer (though again, this is either statistical error, or more then likely can be chalked up to desensitization.)

 

[IanBrazen]

video games on their own are not a problem, but they act more like a catalyst when combined with crazy person.

counter strike is a murder simulator just like cooking mama is a chef simulator, or guitar hero is a band simulator.
I don't know how to play guitar, I don't know how to cook a five star meal, and I don't know how to use an AK-47.

If someone is already crazy, it doesn't matter what they are doing that set them off because they are already crazy.
if pornography influenced someone to become a serial rapist do you think that pornography is the problem?
No its the person, because 99.99% of everyone else who watches pornography isn't effected by it.

People need to stop blaming material things for society's problems.

This is our generations problem, video games are turning us into rapists and murderers, my 35 year old brothers problem was comicbooks and heavy metal.

Its the same old song and dance, first it was rock and roll, then comic books, then D&D, now its video games and when the next thing the youth of America likes comes out its going to be the next thing to get blamed.

 

[Bucht]

I don't think that games, movies or music would stimulate anything just by themselves, but if you're already making up twisted plans in your mind to kill someone I'm sure shows like Dexter or any game made by Rockstar would inspire you to actually do it.
Of course if games/movies/music didn't trigger such actions, something else would've.

This has been said before here, but I prefer to post it this way instead of quoting someone and adding "This" or " ² "

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

I can agree it might trigger, but for someone to go on a rampage something is going on in their twisted minds already.

 

[Galebaby]

I think that the whole "Violent video games make violent people" will never go away.
As games get more involved and people get more attached its only going to raise more along the lines of theory.

Just wait 10-15 years until things go full virtual reality.
The standard "moralfags" will probably cream in their pants and foam at their mouths.

 

[Nuds]

The whole point of video games is to have fun and therefore reduce stress levels/tension. If you are feeling more stressed by playing video games then you are doing it wrong and you should find another hobby.

 

[Julianking93]

While Jack Thompson is a total douchebag, I will agree that videogames can be blamed for violent crimes.

But the thing is, it's not only videogames.

Movies, books, TV and hell even religion is full of violence that people will kill over. If it's not videogames, people will kill over something else.