Oh boy, just as I’ve predicted in an my article from few days ago, after the usual parade of idiots who want MOAR GUN CONTROL! after every school shooting, the idiots who blame games finally crawled out of their caves, just as I’ve predicted it…
First it was this retard…
No, rape is and has never been rewarded…
First of all, there is literally NO game in existence where you are rewarded for raping someone. In fact, there is not a single game where you, as a player rape anyone. Because such game would fail all the possible ratings and approvals and wouldn’t even ever made it to the market. There were games that involve rape, granted, I can name you one, F.E.A.R. 2. And you don’t rape anyone, Alma, the supernatural antagonist rapes you. No points awarded to the player either. More like, what the fuck just happened factor.
Killing is not always rewarded, it’s often punished…
While killing in games is rewarded with progression, new weapons that you can pick up as part of progression and obstacles to overcome, they are often also punishing. For example killing non-targets or other civilians in military games, tactical games like SWAT or assassin games like Hitman. You actually get deduction of points or penalties if you kill people that are not part of the mission.
Games make you to empathize…
But games don’t only “teach” you killing and glorification of violence and desensitization to violence. Such games also teach you companionship and team work, makes you value people that fought for us in the past. I was never in the military, I’ve never fired an actual gun (apart from air rifle and paintball gun, but that doesn’t count imo), but I hold a respect to this tool we created and has shaped our civilization for the good and worse through centuries. I’ve fought in the beaches of Normandy in Medal of Honor, storming the beach as bullets were flying past my head and my fellow soldiers were dying left and right as we ran from the boat, you turn to the left and medic who’s rescuing someone gets blown up by a mortar, dust flying all over the place, yelling, explosions, ringing in your ears… You start to value the lives that were lost there so we can have the free Europe of today. One thing is reading history books and watching documentaries, something else is experiencing it from first person and experiencing all the terror and despair from the eyes of a soldier. This doesn’t teach you how to do school shootings, this teaches you to value life, it makes you empathize, feel bad for what it happened to the character.
Difficult moments in games…
Majority of these violent games also push the limits of your emotions when you work with some character for half the game and then something tragic happens and you lose that person. Sure, it’s just a fictional game with fictional characters, but it happened on several occasions that I got watery eyes when it happened. Now, tell me, do I look like a mass murderer when I almost start crying for a non existent character in a game? And I know I’m not the only one, I’m just one of few people who is not afraid to openly admit that. I’ve got tears in my eyes when memorable characters in games died, I got watery eyes when memorable characters die in movies, I cried when my actual friends and family members died, there is no shame in that, it’s what makes us human. Games invoking our emotions is a normal process of being human. But who can’t be classified as a human, all these mass murderers who kill innocent children in schools, does anyone honestly believe games did that or they’ve been that way the entire time even before they touched any game?
Chronological problem of the violent games argument…
There is also a major problem with this argument that games cause violence and that is a chronology of violent games existence. We didn’t actually have violent first person games before 1990’s, more specifically 1992 when Wolfenstein 3D (Wolf3D) came out. I mean, who doesn’t remember playing this as a kid?
If games are the cause of school shootings, then what the fuck was causing them before 1992 when era of “realistic” first person shooters began? Was it Tetris? Pong? Sokoban? Pac-Man? I know, it was Commander Keen! A motherfucking sidescroller… Besides, millions of people played Wolf3D or later Doom along with hundreds of others alike. We don’t see mass shootings all over the world as some sort of global epidemic because of games. In fact, violence in general among youth and in general has dramatically decreased…
I’m not saying correlation means causation, but the fact remains, as games became more violent and more graphic, global violence among people kept decreasing. So, I don’t know, maybe the reason is, I don’t know… elsewhere? But games are such easy scapegoat to blame after every fucking incident. And they are only doing it because whole industry is so passive. If games studios giants smacked these idiots in the face and demanded scientific evidence to support their claims, then they’d probably stop because there is not a single scientific study in existence that supports their claim that violent games increase violence among people. None. And quite some have been done so far. It’s a fucking 21st century witch hunt that has been going on for decades now. Show actual academic evidence to support these claims or shut the fuck up already.
And then there is this second cretin…
This is an interview with Governor of Florida, Mr. Bevin…
And while I agree with him that it’s a cultural problem and not a gun problem as he goes on about how they as kids brought guns to school and no one shot anyone and then fucks it all up by going with the same bullshit arguments as Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich about the games. Read my paragraphs above how much games desensitize us from violence and death. And then also read the study below… The thing is, they don’t cause this. Games don’t lead to school shootings or violence in general. Unless you have pre-existing problems with perception of death, violence, perception and separation of fiction from reality, games affect you about as much as a bag of stale chips. Or they do the reverse and increase the capacity to perceive death and violence and show higher levels of empathy. And also, there’s the same chronological issue as in Ozzie’s argument. There were school shootings before 1992. So, please do tell me what game caused those if evidence is so hard rock solid that he has the balls to say “what other evidence do you need” so nonchalantly? Because you haven’t presented any either apart from baseless accusations of games and throwing shit around without ever talking or reading any criminal psychology papers or studies.
Recent academic study tells a different story…
Like for example recent actual academic study done by Karger in Germany.
https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/487217
The study used The Sims 3 and Grand Theft Auto 5 which lasted for 8 weeks. Each group was later induced a stimuli that should fire the response to pain and empathy in our brains while monitoring the brain activity under 3T MRI scanner and it showed no difference in brain activity. Both groups responded basically identically to stimuli, concluding the study that there is no evidence to support the claims that playing violent games makes people desensitized to violence or death.
And while this is just one recent study, more have been done in the past and they have not shown any evidence that games induce violence in people either.
And we also know people play games differently. When Buzzfeed played GTA5, they immediately went after the hookers and ran them over with a car because they heard that’s what people do. Well, most players first drive around the city and explore it. Do silly things like steal a helicopter and throw themselves out of it, do silly jumps with tanks and trailer trucks etc. Just like we often play The Sims games in a normal way until we get a bit boring and we start drowning Sims in swimming pools without ladders to go out or closing them with a phone in a 2×2 cubicle, allowing them to order pizza but no doors to receive it and then they die of hunger in their own pool of piss. Or leave their kitchen burn to the ground while removing the doors from the kitchen. Don’t act like you haven’t done it, we’ve all tried it. That doesn’t make us any less human or any less empathetic. It just shows we know the separation between harmless fictional game, because we wouldn’t do this in real life because it harms another human being and would cause us to land in prison for a very long time if we did. You know, just the very most basic capacity for moral decisions. I can murder all the “people” in games and drown them in their own piss, but I wouldn’t be able to squash a spider in real life, because I’d feel bad if I did.
So, Mr. Bevin, the Governor of Florida, I’ve presented academic study and my personal experience of myself and millions of other gamers. What have you done, other than just flinging shit at us gamers who mind our fucking business being too busy playing games to even be bother to go and shoot some people at schools when doing it in games is probably actually far more fun and we can do it repeatedly without any harm to anyone or consequences.
I’m slowly getting tired of this bullshit and game companies and publishers should step up the game. It’s their industry. Seeing how every dick with 5 minutes of time is throwing shit and pissing all over us like we’re some sort of monsters really blows the lid of my head.
America has a cultural problem, but isn’t interested in finding a real cause of school shootings…
Yeah, America does have a cultural problem in this regard, but it’s not fucking caused by games, movies, music or tabletop games. It’s a problem of media vomiting all this glorification of mass shooters, it’s problem with this endless chasing of fame in America. They are the ones who desensitize everyone from it. We used to be shocked in the past when shooting happened. These days it’s more like “Oh for fucks sake, again?” And followed by “Oh no, they are gonna go after gun control and blaming the games again, like every single fucking time…” That’s what’s causing the desensitization, this endless parading of media with the shooting details about the shooter. I still believe it’s that and nothing else. It’s not the guns, America had them around for ages and they weren’t getting shot like Mr. Bevin stated, we have hundreds of millions of gamers worldwide backed by academic studies that games are not causing it either and we already know Rock & Roll didn’t cause it either so going after rap music “glorifying” violence is a bit of a silly path to go as well.
Maybe if they’d stop chasing these non existent bogeymen, they’d maybe already find the actual reason. But why bother and actually do real research when you can just throw lame accusations at the first thing you can think of and that’s again and again games. These people are a disgrace and they should be ashamed of what they are calling us gamers based on literally nothing.