Games causing violence?

What's up guys,

I don't want to get into a heavy conversation, but this topic came up with my grandpa recently lol. He thinks videogames are "desensitizing" youth to cause violence, with the GTA series cited as his main example (killing cops etc.).

I've been legit thinking this over since the 90's, and I have to say, after roughly 2 decades of reflection: For the most part, I don't believe games cause people to commit violence. When this idea began, the most "violent" games were Mortal Kombat and Night Trap lol.

For example, I play Doom maybe twice a year, but also, I don't like guns in real life, and I never want to own a gun. (Although as an American, we live in a "gun culture," and I support people to own guns in general.)

Also, I enjoy rap music, including guns within rap music, although I still don't like guns in real life.

Also, movies have been violent forever, and I love a lot of movies with violence (like The Godfather), while no one blames movies for real-life violence.

Anyway what are your thoughts on the very doubtful connection between games and violence? How is it different from your thoughts on violent movies or music?

Christ..no. They are not. I don't feel like doing other peoples homework but the studies have found people are less likely to be violent who play games as it's a stress reliever. Multiple articles on this online. When I was in my teens and 20s I was a very angry bitter person with a violent temper. Games calmed me down and these days with my anger issues much under control they are very soothing for me. If I feel stressed I play a game or listen to a gaming OST or something. In fact, since I also have ADD they have helped me with that and improved my hand-eye coordination so extremely well I'm fantastic at catching anything with one hand with rarely needing to look. Helped in football. People who commit violent crimes had other circumstances from mental issues and not getting proper care (I been in therapy for 7 years for Aspergers, Schizoid Personality Disorder and debilitating anxiety) it's helped me a great deal and I know first-hand people who do not get the proper help only grow more confused and angry. I know very much first hand and second hand as I've been around many people and known many with even more severe issues (of course not all mental illness is violent as most are not) People who commit terrible acts then blame games..there was something wrong, to begin with. In the 1950s violence was blamed on Comic books and Elvis. Anyone who thinks movies, games, music and such creates violence is ignorant.

When I was in school we had this kid that was rather violent, and everybody knew it was because his dad was (is?) an alcoholic.
The dad would drink because of previous experiences, and would beat his children. then the son would beat us in school.
and because of continuing violent experiences during my educational years I have become rather angry myself.

So when people say "games cause violence" I say.. No, people being dicks to each other causes violence.

Humans can not help but lash out when experiencing setbacks, some fight some drink some cheat some steal and some.. shitpost about conspiracies.
All to keep away that little voice inside of us all that yells "I don't like this but don't know how to change my situation."

I don't have much to add here, I hope NeoVamp doesn't think I am doing the "shitpost about conspiracies."

I already said I don't believe games cause violence, any more than movies or music.

These are touchy subjects so, like I said, I'm really not going to get deep into a heavy conversation here.

I was mainly curious other people's thoughts and, for example, Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero never made me want to rip someone's head off lol. I generally think games are stress-relievers more than anything.

Well, Mario made me want to eat shrooms and jump on Turtles which made it very conflicting for my love of TMNT. I also started bullwhipping my walls anytime I wanted a porkchop. I'm running out of walls.

^lol great post. :D

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Originally Posted by Ecco

I hope NeoVamp doesn't think I am doing the "shitpost about conspiracies."

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Oh no not at all, was referring to a (for now) banned member who's into Thiefing so to say.

No they or any form of media do not out right cause violence. However the steady diet of ever increasing glorified, choreographed and occasional hilarious violence (Deadpool was hilarious) that's been going on since forever has to have some negative affect on people. Don't ask me to quantify that. Now we've also become desensitized to real life violence in the news. "Yet another school shooting." How much do they talk about Las Vegas these days? All I know is that it only takes one nutjob with a gun, car, knife etc to cause real grief and people dealing with it sure as hell aren't desensitized to it because they played too much GTA..

Games, movies and other media (like rap music) have definitely contributed to humans becoming desensitised to violence, or at least distant violence, the sort you see on the news, far away you know? That however does not make us more violent, in fact I would wager that video games make people less violent since they are highly effective at stress release.

Real violence also has the same effect; on TV lately I heard a comedian from the UK saying he did a gig in LA, there was a shooting further up the street as people were queuing and people craned their necks a bit then got on with their day. Shootings / guns going off were common place, the comic was fighting the urge to leg it.

As for realism in gaming making things worse: I often think of the Star Trek holodeck as the ultimate games console in terms of potential realism; if you were to create a murder / rape / horrendous act simulation and keep revisiting it as the perpetrator, would people be right to fear you? After all, you'd be experiencing it as real and visceral so you might want to achieve the zenith of this experience and do it in real life.

Even if you didn't, it would say a great deal about you as a person if you partook in those simulated fantasiest. It's a good question in this thread, and I think that the only reason I can justify my enjoyment in killing people as fantasy in GTA and the like is because we all can still see the pixels and polygons. The real question is how real does it have to get before you cross the line into it being disturbing, and everyone's line is drawn at a different point I suppose.

Also, violence is in different flavours, GTA's is mindless and fun like an exploitation movie, but in, say, The Last Of Us it's more real and justifiable: Kill or be killed, and to want to experience it on a holodeck would, I reckon, be less morally dubious.

So why is Japan one of the most peaceful nations on earth, with super low crime figs . You can have vending machines that stock games in the streets over there. In the UK or most parts of the work it would either be stolen or vandalised ,or more prob both.

In the west people make excuses for peoples bad behavior and total lack of respect, where as in Japan it's simply not tolerated at all. Have a look at how the Japanese cue up for tickets or a theme park, or big event compared to us in the West.

There seems no real answers to this topic, except that media generally does not cause anyone to do anything.

One aspect of American violence is that our country was founded on owning guns, so we are flooded with more guns than people, and that will never change. So I believe in gun ownership, at the same time that I DON'T believe in violence. However, it works out that we have more gun violence than probably anywhere else in the world. All we can do is try to find solutions within a country that is explicitly BASED ON gun ownership lol.

Re: Media: I think there's a huge difference between realistic violence, and fantasy violence. I looked up The Last Of Us and it is still a fantasy setting of apocalypse, apparently. So it's not like it will ever translate to real life (except a real-life apocalypse lol).

I'm glad that most games are in a fantasy setting.

I do think that REALISTIC violence might deserve to be censored actually, but thankfully most games keep it to impossible settings and characters etc.

Also, the real psychopaths probably spend their time doing things other than playing violent videogames, or listening to Biggie Smalls, etc. lol.

Society always likes to blame someone or something when something terrible happens, rather than look at itself. It's far easier to have a scapegoat than it is to start asking awkward questions about the society we've built. "So-and-so did that terrible crime because they were into horror comics/rock music/TV/heavy metal/horror films/video games." (delete as applicable). Society has always needed it's bogey men to blame when somebody goes off the rails. Video games are proven to be great sources of stress relief, they help develop problem solving skills and greatly help hand eye coordination. Not that any of those facts stop the media of informing us that a mass murderer was 'obsessed' by Mortal Kombat or GTA. If somebody is determined to kill, then they're going to kill, regardless of whether or not they are addicted to violent video games.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

So why is Japan one of the most peaceful nations on earth, with super low crime figs . You can have vending machines that stock games in the streets over there. In the UK or most parts of the work it would either be stolen or vandalised ,or more prob both.

In the west people make excuses for peoples bad behavior and total lack of respect, where as in Japan it's simply not tolerated at all. Have a look at how the Japanese cue up for tickets or a theme park, or big event compared to us in the West.

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Hold on there dude, in the UK we invented queueing!

Ecco: With regard to The Last Of Us the realism I was referring to is the depiction, rather than the setting / context. When you beat someone to death in that game there's realistic blood, sounds, grunts and quite a realistic feeling of fear and adrenaline thanks to the emotional attachment the game creates.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Games, movies and other media (like rap music) have definitely contributed to humans becoming desensitised to violence, or at least distant violence, the sort you see on the news, far away you know? That however does not make us more violent, in fact I would wager that video games make people less violent since they are highly effective at stress release.

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It desensitises the viewer, absolutely. I used to delight in some truly horrifying stuff as a teen and I don't think it did me much good at all.

I think images you see just once stay with you for good and become part of who you are - you reap what you sow as it were - so these days I certainly don't invite scenes that delight in OTT carnage whether they be from movies, games or literature. Stuff like the Saw movies or any torture porn exploitation, extreme gore etc is something I can do without.

Most normal folks are benign enough in character to just absorb it without trying to emulate what they've seen, but I don't necessarily think that's what we should judge content by.

Even have a hard time justifying animated stuff now - what's the point other than to bask in the horror of it all? Elven Lied for example. That's coming from a long time Hokuto no Ken fan, too.

I'm also a rap fan, and I like all the gun-busting shit like M.O.P, Onyx and all the rest but for me it's pretty comic-book stuff compared to what's out there IMO. For me personally, but for some dumb kid who is told there is value in living that sort of lifestyle - people will respect you if you act like a thug/gangster, treat women like dogs and so on then impressionable people will try to emulate that. You see it all the time.

I mean a dude at my old work introduced himself by his rap handle FFS. Guys like that end up bringing deadly weapons to a fist fight.