Urge to kill.... rising.
It's funny how censorship makes me feel much more like taking a gun and massacring a bunch of people than playing Left 4 Dead does.
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8 comments:
Can you explain this to a non-Australian please Melf. I understand that the game has been refused an "under 18"'s rating bt why does this mean than nobody can play it. Surely you have over 18's films and video games on sale?
Films yes; video games no. The high-ups have refused to introduce an R18+ rating on the grounds that minors could still access the games sometimes. As if this were not true for movies and alcohol also.
Instead they limit the games that adults can play to those intended for a 15 year old maturity level. Australia is fast becoming the laughing stock of the gaming community (see recent debacle where Evony are suing a UK journalist that poo-pooed their game from Australia because of Australia's ridiculous libel laws).
Anyway, to sign an online petition against this amazing decision, go here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/l4d2inoz/petition.html
That is indeed a bizarre scenario. I had hoped that the notion that "games are only for kids" had died out a long time ago.
By the way I have a story about Australian gaming. My sister (who is Irish) is married to an Australian and living in the Central Coast. During our visit to their home my sister divulged that she was unhappy with her husband's PC gaming habit and had gone so far as to break the disks of his favourite game (Rome TW - what a sacrilege). I felt obliged to stand up for a fellow gamer and confessed to having several hundred PC games in my own collection. Entirely by co-incidence I happened to have a copy of Rome TW in my luggage that I had picked up in a sale en-route and I gave it to him to replace the disks he had lost.
Even though I strongly against encouraging anyone to watch pornography and gratuitous violence or to partake in it in video games, I am against censorship because it is basically saying the government should make your decisions for you, which it shouldn't. People should be educated and make their own decisions for themselves and teach their own kids to live correctly, not have their kids protected by censors. Who decides what gets censored and what doesn't? An imperfect person that's who, and someone who shouldn't be making decisions for you, so I am in agreement with you, "not being allowed to play makes me want to kill more than playing the game does" When a government does not do its duty properly to the people it is the people's responsibility to correct or overthrow it.
I think the argument about violence and video games has become extremely misunderstood. The primary problem is not that video games incite people to violence, like you guys are suggesting people are arguing (and if they are then they are simply mistaken and need to think a little about what they're saying), but that video game violence desensitizes people to violence and works to normalize it.
People don't shoot people in real life because they've shot people in video games, but I think the argument is fair that an individual that has shot many people before in a video game is far more likely to think about shooting people for real, and to not be as bothered by it.
There is a reason that in the military you shoot at sllhouettes and not circles. It's to help to desensitize soldiers to the idea of shooting at a human being, and you cannot ignore that video games can act as desensitizing agents.
Sounds like your brother-in-law needs to get your sister into games as well mbp... Tell him to try Plants vs Zombies, that seems to work well on my gf :)
Jedi, I disagree with your argument. There is no evidence to prove that "an individual that has shot many people before in a video game is far more likely to think about shooting people for real, and to not be as bothered by it". That is a ridiculous statement, and people making such statements not backed up by any facts are what causes these issues to arise.
While we're at it, I could just as easily argue that gamers understand better than anyone the consequences of violence (due to their continual exposure to extreme gore) and so they would be much less likely to commit violent acts.
Understanding the consequences and caring about them are two different things, Melf.
As to the OP topic, I'm no fan of Big Brother. I'm rather allergic to him, as it happens.
Doing anything in a video game can be looked at as training, hence shooting humans or human-likes can desensitize people to the shooting of humans in real life.
But so can watching the news or having to live through it in real life. Your first dead body will shock you to your core - your 100th? Not quite the same shock value, though still disturbing.
Death is a part of life we all live, what is more shocking about a dead human than passing that dead racoon on the side of the road? Both are essentially the same.
The more important concept to be talking about with regard to this issue is called Catharsis Theory. Basically the idea that viewing pornography or violence will make the person less likely to actually commit those acts in real life. Or something along those lines. The majority of people will actually be more "peaceful" as a result of playing a game like L4D.
It is also my opinion that violent video games are also similar to propaganda as a powerful to tool to control the masses.
What would you be doing if there was no WoW or CounterStrike or Civ4 or what-have-you? Probably being pissed off at the government. And in a G.I. Joe culture, an all-volunteer army pre-trained from childhood to fight and strategize is realitic. Why would a government pass up an opportunity like that?
Fear of the unknown is a powerful thing. Yes, I am high right now.
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