Games influence on violence

If people were influenced by video games, then the majority of Facebook users would be farmers with diabetes and jewelry thieves by now.

Thanks for inspiring me to extend your tweet @VideoGamesFacts

GTA5 banned in Australia

Oh my god. Aussies are doing it again. I frankly don’t really know if I should facepalm myself to death or do something else. I’ll for starters try to educate people a bit and maybe facepalm myself to death then, committing self-misandry. Yeah…

I have 3 fundamental questions here:

1. Why ban the game only now when it has been released out there for more than 1 whole year (17th September 2013 for PS3 and X360)?
2. Why has Australia historically banned and then UNBANNED all GTA games so far?
3. Where is a single proof of correlation between in-game violence and manifestation of the same violence in the real world as the result?

So, lets just start at the beginning. Where were these so-called activists when GTA5 was released back in September 2013? It was the exact same game, but it somehow slipped under their radars. Why was that? Because it wasn’t released on PC and now it will be? Are they being discriminatory towards PS4/Xbox One and PC gamers, but not towards PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers? What is it?

Secondly, after checking the historical data, Australia has banned and then unbanned every single Grand Theft Auto game that has ever been released. This includes GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas, GTA4 and now GTA5. I frankly don’t know why they even bother. I just have a recommendation for lobbies in Australia that make dumb decisions like this. Grow a pair of balls you lot! Don’t just ban every single game idiotic activists suggest you should ban. Say fuck off when they walk in with petitions like this and demand unbiased research that proves violent games like this actually are the source of all the misogyny and hatred towards women. Because that was the reason for banning the game. Of course they entirely disregarded the fact that game allows absolutely the same misandry toward male in-game characters (NPC’s). You can literally walk through GTA cities and exclusively and only kill male NPC’s. And no one will ever get bothered by that fact or ability given to the player. Shoot one virtual hooker and all hell breaks loose, just because you shot a female NPC. Dafaq people!? How more full retard can you go?

Thirdly, studies through they years have repeatedly and continuously proven that there is absolutely NO correlation between increasing consumption of “realistic” games and violence manifested as a result in real world. In fact, the crimes have and are continuously decreasing through the years while games sales are soaring. Here are some very colorful examples that will prove a point even for those who aren’t interested in reading very long in-depth studies. You know, the ones done by actual experts and not some douchey activists that got offended by something.

US Department of Justice report on crime per 1000 citizens from 1972 till 2004 and the release years of one of the most violent games in existence correlating to real-world crimes

Image courtesy of wired.com

I’ll exclude Doom games because they are as fictional as the Bible and I see absolutely no correlation between shooting monsters from hell and committing violence in real world. However, there are games released in the same time period that allowed you to commit torture and murdering of hundreds and thousands of innocent virtual characters, including women. Both Postal games, Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, Vice City and San Andreas. All released prior year 2004. There was also game Soldier of Fortune released in 2000/2001. One of the most gory and realistic human body deformation games available at that time which got even further upgraded with second installment of Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix in 2002 which pushed its simulation of body deformation using weapons to even higher level pretty much exceeding what really happens to human body when attacked by lethal weapons. Manhunt, another super gory and cruel game released in 2003 and so on and so forth… And yet, the crime levels have just kept on dropping. Why? Frankly I don’t care. It just proves that games aren’t the cause, because if they were, crime levels should be dramatically increasing, because games are becoming even more realistic visual vise as well as with options to do more and more violent things in games. But it just doesn’t reflect that in real world apparently.

Another chart from FBI’s data from 1990 till 2008…

Image courtesy of gamesbrief.com

Again, violence is declining where games sales are absolutely soaring.

And the study performed by Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson, an associate professor with Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Stetson University in Florida (data includes years from 1996 till 2011, time period in which games dramatically gained in visual and interactivity realism).

Image courtesy of mindofthegeek.com

Again, games consumption continuous to rise, but the violence in youth keeps on declining. Again, I’m not going to say that games are the cause for the decline, but then again no one can say games are the cause for increase either.

In fact, if I look at myself as a gamer and a regular consumer of incredibly violent games, I sort of steam out all the need or urge for any sort of aggression in games and I don’t really feel any need to do it in real life what so ever. I mean, why bother beating, stabbing or shooting someone in real life and face criminal charges from justice system, if I can do it in games without any legal consequences or anyone actually getting hurt. Psychologically or physically. It’s just bunch of pixels that have no feelings, no senses, no self-awareness that goes beyond scripted data feed into the game by the programmers. It’s again the damn separation of fiction from reality that I’ve continuously ranted about in the past. You can’t judge majority of gamers who are perfectly able to separate one from another just because of few very rare cases of crazy people who committed mass shootings or violence against women and they just happened to play the games. Every single damn time, media brings this crap up and fails to provide a single piece of evidence that the games were actually the cause for those individuals to go mad.

Which also includes misogyny accusations that are being plastered all over the place by nazi feminists lately and which was also the major reason for the Australian ban of the GTA5. Stop cherry picking examples from games and entirely ignoring the fact that in the exact same game you can exclusively torture/kill male NPC’s. So you’re basically killing pretty much exclusively male NPC’s. But this somehow doesn’t bother feminists. Why? What makes mass killing of male NPC’s acceptable, but killing just few female NPC’s creates such massive hatred towards games. And it’s not even encouraged, because committing any sort of crime in GTA results in more and more law enforcement breathing behind your neck.

Killing prostitutes is not even encouraged in GTA5!

Contrary to media nonsense feeding us on every corner lately regarding this particular matter in GTA5, the health increase past 100% is NOT a reward for killing a prostitute in a GTA game, it’s just an end result of player deciding to do so AFTER he has ALREADY gained the bonus from the sexual activity. Because game DOESN’T care what gender a character is in the game. It’s violence permissive towards ANY character. Imagine how moronic it would be if only female characters were somehow excluded from any ability to commit violence towards them. Besides, it’s not like the game brings up interactive option right after sexual activity where you could pick between “Kill a prostitute” or “Don’t kill a prostitute”. It’s not there at all. But when the sexual sequence ends, you return in the general interactive free roam world where you are indeed allowed to do such a thing. But is not encouraged and doesn’t give you any bonus. In fact only thing it does give you is 1 extra star to the felony meter (which, the more you have, the more aggressive law enforcement will be towards you). Which is associated with a bad thing and not something you’re encouraged to do, because police will arrest or shoot you for that.

Just like you can punch a police officer who is walking down the street in GTA world. Or you can decide not to. It’s not freaking mandatory. It’s just an option in the game like billion others and still expanding with every new GTA release. Inclusion of option doesn’t mean you strictly have to do it. Just like ability to commit mass shooting in real world doesn’t encourage or force me to actually do it. I prefer not to because I’m aware of the consequences and because I’m not a freaking psycho.

On that bombshell, the above image perfectly summarizes my feelings toward hatred against gamers. We are not a bunch of psychopathic killers and misogynistic bastards. We are just gamers who like to play any kind of games, be it violent or non-violent and actions in those games do not reflect our behavior in real world. How hard is it to comprehend that?

Sexist games

I’ve written about it on few occasions, like the latest Separation of Fantasy from Reality, but it seems I’ll have to extend things a lot further…

So, here we are again, returning to that circle of hell… My main question here is, what’s wrong with people like Anita Sarkeesian, those die hard extremist feminists that apparently have nothing better to do in their boring miserable lives than attack anything that is supposedly attacking their gender (which is female in 102% of times apparently and no, it is not a typo). If you go and look at her Youtube propaganda you just want to facepalm yourself to a mooshy pile of flesh and blood after watching it. Why you may say?

Well, I was greeted by her video analysing female content in games. And that’s basically all she does. Finding games and picking out things that fuel her extremist agenda and she plainly disregards everything else.

She’s bitching about depiction of women in games as sexist on every corner. Like marketing behind game Hitman Blood Money where they say in text “Beautifully executed” and depicts a beautiful (but dead) woman on a photo. And then there are also men pictures, a dead guy holding a cello instrument and a text “Classically executed”. And she has a problem with this, because the women were in a sexual poses and men were like whatever. You can’t depict a semi fat bald guy with a cello as “Beautifully executed”. Don’t you fucking get the game of words behind the marketing idea or you have a stick too far up your ass to understand it? My first reaction to it was: “Aaaaa, I see what you did there”. I didn’t even see the poorly dressed woman as a sexual object. I just connected the both themes and the words they used. And I left it at that. Unlike Anita which just goes on and pulls more of wild sexist “facts” and “proofs” out of her rear.

Or how she has a problem with women depicted in game Bioshock. You know, those nasty looking splicers that once used to be women? A game where a utopian city went to shits because people there went all crazy with genetics to all possible extremes. But she has a problem with female corpses being displayed sexually in certain part of the game world and not the fact that the entire in-game world is one fucked up mess created this way with very clear purpose. To portray that very utopian underwater city where all social, political and civil laws and rules went out the window.

Because when I look at female splicers or female splicer corpses, all I really feel is…

…yeah I’d bang that. Or jerk to it. Fap, fap, fap. Fap. /SARCASM OFF Just because it was supposedly a woman depicted in a sexy way. w00t…

There were countless depictions of male and female corpses throughout this game with sole purpose of shocking the player. If she feels a female corpse having piece of a stick stuck in their mouth is sexist, I guess that male character having Little Sister’s injection stuck in their balls is perfectly normal and not sexist at all. Right Anita? Riiight?

Or how an exotic dancer was killed in Mafia 2…

Mafia game is sort of historical recreation of the certain existing era when things like this were happening. But no, she wants to sugar coat it, stick her head in the sand and pretend it didn’t happen, never was and never will. You can’t place a dude dancing there and him getting killed the same way, because it would go against historical stuff of era in which Mafia game is happening. It just wouldn’t make any fucking sense. But hey, she’s being too damn narrow minded to even remotely understand it.

She only seem to have problems with women being objectified as some sort of side elements in the games, but completely and entirely ignores the fact that male characters in games perform the exact same role so many times as well. But hey, we’ll just skip that shit, since it’s not helping my extremist views and propaganda, right? Right?

Why can’t people just leave bullshit politics and extremist views out of the games, movies and other crafts and arts? If game designer decides to make a story where a woman gets killed as a side character, then so be it. If it’s one of leading characters, so be it as well. If they decide to make her with gigantic boobs, then let them fucking do it. It’s an art and yes, games ARE modern art. And art doesn’t always have to be politically correct, realistic or make everyone feel good or happy. In fact, most of the art was brought to life because of controversies or opposing views. If we all of a sudden won’t be allowed to express anything anymore, we’ll be stuck in this retarded boring reality. Which goes against the purpose of art itself. And that’s what people like Anita are trying to achieve. She doesn’t care about the ridiculously masculine men being depicted in various games and movies. Hey, me as a skinny guy, I’m being offended that only such masculine mega dudes can be protagonists. Why can’t be a skinny pale looking shy guy? But I’m not going out there bitching about it, because I know and am fully aware that it’s a made up stuff, fantasy, imagination manifested by the game designers to display us some sort of story or a product in the ways they wanted it. It’s what it is. She doesn’t display the murder of a character Hawk in Soldier of Fortune either as a shocker moment. He wasn’t all that important to the game story all things considered, so he kinda falls in the same level as that exotic dancer in Mafia 2. Only difference is that he has a name and that dancer did not, because the story didn’t tell us that. But maybe her name was, I don’t know, Jennifer. Would it make a difference if developers included that piece of info? And lets don’t forget how crazy muscled up Hawk is. She doesn’t care about that either. Not at all…

She doesn’t display or comment the cringing of the male victims when you shoot them in the balls in the very same game (Soldier of Fortune). Hey, only ladies get hurt in games. Mhm. I’ve played Soldier of Fortune a lot and I don’t recall any special animation for female characters when being shot in the crotch/nether region (and yes, there were female characters), unlike there was for male characters (despite assuming women would react the same way if injured in the private parts). This game is so sexist, I assume with absolute accuracy that the entire team consisted of female developers. Hm. That’s the kind of conclusions Anita is constantly and repeatedly pulling out of her bottom.

I’ll have to repeat myself over and over again like a broken record for certain things. Games DO NOT reflect our actual lives. If you look negatively at them for every single fucking thing, of course you’ll get butt hurt by every god damn thing in them. Just like religious fanatics can find an answer for God in every bloody thing they look at. And I hate those kinds of people. They are so stuck in their own mentality point of view, they can’t see past their own ass.

In games, one time a woman dies, another time a man dies, next time there is this badass black dude and the other time it’s a perfectly sculpted shirtless white guy jumping on the screen and then I can see some tities (yay, tities!). Half an hour later I’m driving a 1 million € Bugatti Veyron and bashing cops off the road and in the next moment I’m a guinea pig (G-Force game, loved that game). Did I mention I was also operating a 80 ton mech as well and performing operations in WW2 and Vietnam war? Men playing as female protagonst. Are you maaaad? These are all games, products of someone’s imagination. Sometimes they hold on to certain historical details, but for the most part, they are 99% fiction. I love to experience all this diverse worlds, be it realistic or absolutely twisted and inhumanly creepy or crazy. And you want to take this away from me. Why? What have I done to you? What has anyone done to you for you to be such a Nazi telling us what we should or shouldn’t play?

I never had any problems of any kind of depiction of women in games. In fact I never really looked at it as a problem until people like Anita started pointing them out in their stupid attempts to raise some sort of awareness. Awareness of what? That all women are goddess and all men are trash? I’m a very open person and I can change my views if someone presents me valid arguments. I’ve changed my views on gay people, I’ve changed my views on religions and I’ve changed my views on certain aspects regarding women in our society as well as so many other things. Valid and reasonable arguments can be very powerful tools to affect intelligent people. But those people made valid points and when I started thinking about those issues, they made sense. But Anita’s kind of feminists are not providing ANY of the evidences to change my view. In fact they look utterly retarded from my perspective. I respect women, sometimes too much for my own good for which I won’t go into details, but what she is saying about depiction of women in games is absolute nonsense and rubbish, which was also provided in some examples above that contradict her claims within the very same games.

If one is a total douchebag to women, it’s not because he is playing what she calls “sexist” games, but because he simply is a douchebag. There is no other way of saying it for men who treat women like shit. But she throws all of us men into the same bin, like we are all the same fucking bastards. Should I generalize that all women are stuck up bitches like Anita? No, because I know 99,999999% of women are amazing human beings. And same can be said for the exact same percentage of men. But there is always that 0,000001%…

If I can daydream and imagine any kind of things in my mind, why shouldn’t I be allowed to do similar things in games if they are being provided to me? Who the fuck are you to dictate what are we allowed to play in games? Women also play games that she hates so much and they don’t give a flying fart about the topics Anita is complaining about. It’s just a game to them. Because unlike Anita, those women are smart, intelligent persons and not mindless brainless retarded zombies nitpicking shit for their, what it seems like a failed attempt at feminist world domination campaign. Those smart, intelligent women understand the games are just that, entertainment, fantasy, manifested imagination of someone who may just as well be a female game designer (Anita will of course pretend there aren’t any, because all game studios are sexist establishments).

So, why don’t you just leave us gamers, developers and games alone? If I dislike something, I don’t play that shit. I don’t go into wars against turn based games, because I dislike them and demand that only real-time games should exist. That’s what you’re trying to do Anita. So, just stop it will ya?

Seriously, Anita Sarkeesian, can I donate you a reality check? Because you are clearly unable to separate fiction from reality. There is one reality where we are in and there is your fictional “reality” where women are so horrendously oppressed in every single part of our society, industry, arts, games, business, everywhere. I mean, your reality must be fictional, because we aren’t seeing what you are seeing. And what is hanging between my legs has nothing to do with the viewing perspective on this matter.

Separation of fantasy from reality

So, I’ve been watching videos from this guy who’s calling himself The Amazing Atheist. He has a very, how shall I say it, sharp way of responding to things, but he actually makes tons of sense pretty much all the time. And I’ve just caught this video response. Since I’m unable to find the original one to which he is responding, I’ll just use his video as a medium for the original.

Is rape bad and should be criticized by all means? Absolutely. No one should ever undergo such physical and psychological torture. However, the argument in question is: “Is rape role playing bad?” And my answer would be, no. It’s not a bad thing. It’s well known and well documented thing. It’s even on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_fantasy . It’s well known for people to have rape fantasies and as shocking as it might be to some, women actually fantasize about it more often than men do. A shocker right, considering women are usually the victims of rapes.

But rape fantasies include two persons in a sexual relationship who agree to the act of simulated rape (or fantasy rape if you want it). Being a consensual act, it’s not a rape anymore by any definition and it basically falls in the fetish zone. There are many different fetishes, from mild forms where one gets sexually aroused by certain body parts, like feet or woman having very short hair, really tiny breasts, really full lips or to more extreme versions considered by many to be rather disturbing, like eating feces, being tied hard with a rope and then be spanked or being dressed as an infant and sucking a milk from womans breasts (yeah, I’ve done reasearch and such things actually exist). But hey, if two find it sexually fulfilling, why not? I wouldn’t do it, but if someone wants to do it, then why not.

I’m pretty confident everyone have a mild form of fetish one way or another. It’s a basic sexual preference, the same way as some like blondes more than other hair color, pretty much anything can be in this category. As well as everyone had some sort of fantasy at one point in their life. Be it sexual or some other. Like wanting to punch someone in the face because he was a total douchebag or wanted to shoot someone or wanted to be a super villain or a famous singer. Or maybe fantasize to be a dog. Who hasn’t played a s a child and act like you were a dog or some other animal? The list could go on and on till infinity and beyond. But we call it “fantasy” for a reason. Either because it is being manifested in a consensual way or because it is just that, a fantasy, entirely happening in one’s mind and not harming anyone.

Violence or more specifically violence in games is what has been brought up so many times in arguments that violence in games creates violent people. It just doesn’t, like fantasy about being raped or committing a rape doesn’t necessarily makes you a rapist, that should be locked up in advance and treated in a psychiatric institution. I can fantasize about it all I want, but until I actually do it for real, I haven’t done anything wrong. And because my mind is not all messed up, I will fantasize about it, but would NEVER actually do it to anyone in reality. It’s the separation of fantasy from reality. Some think that fantasizing about such things makes you weird and a ticking bomb by default is a statement that couldn’t be more wrong than it already is. There has been no relation between fantasies and actually manifesting them in reality. So many people do it every day that if such statement was true, our society would self terminate itself millenia ago.

Hell, the last game I’ve played, Alien:Isolation, I’ve immersed myself so deeply into the game to feel like I’m the actual survivor on a space station being hunted by a superior predator alien. And years ago I’ve done the same with Half-Life game when I was walking through the Black Mesa complex. Or being on a Von Braun space ship in System Shock 2. It brings out that extra immersion factor which brings much stronger emotions to the surface than it would if you take it just as some game that you play to simply kill time. I also loved playing Soldier of Fortune and watch how shotgun makes guts fly out and how ones head goes into tiny pieces. Things that I know I’m not suppose to do in real life because they would harm someone. There is no quick save and quick load in reality. If you shoot someone in the head, you terminate one forever. And that’s why I like doing it in games, because they are virtual and they fulfill my fantasies without actually harming anyone. When I turn off the game, I switch off my fantasies and I “return” into reality. And real reality is that very large majority of people have no problem of such separation of fiction from reality. It’s something natural you do as far as my fantasies and imagination goes, regardless of how twisted or perverted it might be in someone elses eyes.

And that’s where I’ve come up with a conclusion that you shouldn’t really be afraid of people who fantasize about things, you should be afraid of people who judge this kind of people (while recording an AK-47 rifle on their table?). The person who wants to perform a rape fantasy is clearly able to separate fantasy from reality, because otherwise he/she wouldn’t be able to do it because of the nature of the act itself. Why would one be aroused by something that is torture for someone else? Or a person who fantasize to be a bad ass gangster in Grand Theft Auto, murdering hundreds of people in a game world. It’s natural to fantasize about things regardless of what they are and how they are treated or accepted in reality. Because for as long as they are not harming anyone (directly or indirectly), they are perfectly acceptable on any level. That’s why it’s called FANTASY.

Fantasy and imagination are what drives us. All the poetry, stories, books, music and movies or games, all the really weird brutal jokes, bizarre porn videos etc, it’s all fueled by our fantasies and imagination. Without it, we would be just an empty dull shell. But we also have intelligence that gives us ability to separate one from another. One who is unable to separate it is clearly mentally challenged or lacks the intelligence and morals. But should we judge entire population based on those few exceptions? Of course not. Should we judge people just because they think about such things? Of course not.