Video games and shootings...

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Good post ZR. If what you're telling me is the truth, and it sure sounds like it, there probably isn't as much value in most of these games as I thought. It might even induce weaknesses in their approach if you could find them.

I do still think they can influence people who have problems with reality.

Johnwilliamson, when you have a person who is unable to adapt to reality as most of us perceive it, they have a nasty tendency to "create their own worlds", so to speak. They incorporate what gives them pleasure into this witches brew.
To put it another way, "This game gives me pleasure and I can take out my anger on the other players, wouldn't it be cool if I could do this to those people I hate for real!"
A normal person understands they can't do this, and normally even feels shame at the thought.
Someone without the normal range of feelings, like the people you mentioned, doesn't feel that same way, and so they go down the pathway with no restraints.
Giving this person the idea that it is going to be easy and exciting to act this way is really not a good idea, letting them immerse themselves in the experience is a spectacularly poor idea. You are completely correct in your concepts however, these people simply do not feel others pain is real or anything they care about.
 
To those using the "The military trains with these" approach, here is a 2003 study from the Department of Defense advocating action video games not because they teach you to be trained killers, but because they increase perceptual and cognitive ability 10 to 20% vs. somebody who doesn't play.

Furthermore, let's take a look at what's actually happening in these games and see if they're exactly murder simulators to teach kids how to play these games.

I'm going to pick from top titles: Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Halo, and you tell me what you think.

Battlefield http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOaGhE_sejI

Call of Duty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF1LYKSQdxE

Halo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61bXX5TD1Ps

For those who didn't watch, in Battlefield a guy flies a jet up, jumps out, shoots another jet with a handheld RPG, and then lands on his plane and gets back in. This action wasn't intended within the game, just left possible with the controls. In Call of Duty he runs around "quick scoping" where he sprints around with a 30 lb. Barret .50 cal sniper rifle bringing the scope up at insane speeds to snipe people at distances from 5 feet to almost 200 with very little aiming required. Finally, in Halo, he begins the game being launched by an anti gravity propulsion system and then enters the battle with laser rifles, flying motorcycles, and plasma weapons that stick to the enemy and explode. Also notice that the sole tactic here is "rush through the enemy's bullets using your magical armor and shoot them 100 times before they shoot you 100 times so you can stay alive".

Oh, and here's Mass Effect, which many people protested because apparently the shooter at Newtown or Aurora played it :confused: That's like protesting Glock or Bushmaster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx2jt0IyFxY

I suppose you'd feel comfortable sending our soldiers into battle after learning to play that game?

And, just for fun, here's Fallout 3, where I once killed one of these monstrosities with a sledge hammer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnLYWSh8oek You can skip to around 1:00
 
Dakota, I already admitted ZR has a point on realism, but you might want to read the stars and stripes article again when it comes to how the military uses these as simulators.
"DARWARS Ambush" was modified by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to train soldiers using desktop computers, he said. It focuses on teaching soldiers how to react to ambushes and roadside bomb attacks on convoys, he said."
"the selected game must provide low-cost training and must not require large number of technicians to run. It must also have a play-back function for after-action reviews, he said.

"One of the major events for training is to be able to capture all these events, good or bad, throughout the entire scenario," he said."

"McManigal said the game will replicate what soldiers encounter on today’s battlefield — from fighting in urban terrain and convoy operations to reacting to contact and ambush operations.

["I]Another program being developed by the Army for fielding in 2009 — called "dismounted soldier" — allows personnel to don virtual-reality goggles and walk around virtual battle space carrying a "weapon" that allows them to shoot at virtual targets, Stephens said.

"We are just starting on the tip of the spear of where this is going to go," McManigal said."

They are clearly already seeing these games as simulators and have plans to run further down this road.
 
This may in fact be true (I somehow missed your original posting of that article) but these are not the mass produced games most people play.

Further, these are reactionary games taught to teach specific skills. Even IF a normal person got a hold of them, they would know military tactics (the same tactics they would get in the military) for surviving IED attacks or encountering enemy hostile forces, not for attacking 6 year olds.

I still hold strong that a person who goes to the range twice a year and has hunted deer will know far, far more than a video gamer.

And even if that weren't the case, are you going to punish 150 million people for the actions of (maybe) 20 or 30 since they've come out?
 
Oh, and here's Mass Effect, which many people protested because apparently the shooter at Newtown or Aurora played it
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I hadn't heard that. It's funny they mention Mass Effect, because the game caused another controversy. There was, to quote Glenn, a moral panic over the fact that you could do the frisky with aliens of the same gender in the game.

It seemed people were more offended by the "same gender" thing than they were the "alien" thing. Go figure.

Even more troublesome is the idea that intimacy is considered more offensive than violence. When a celebrity has a "wardrobe malfunction," it's a national outrage. Never mind the fact that I could turn the channel at nearly any time and watch procedural dramas in which serial killers do gruesome things to people or Jack Bauer tortures terrorists.

I'll leave the analysis of underlying causes to the psychiatry guys, but we've got some serious neuroses as a culture. Rather than ask the hard questions, we're often all too tempted to blame things for the actions of unstable people.

are you going to punish 150 million people for the actions of (maybe) 20 or 30 since they've come out?
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That's pretty much the gun-control playbook.
 
Somewhat off topic but the Mass Effect series is truly excellent. Better sci-fi than any sci-fi movie I've seen in recent years and on par with decent sci-fi novels. Shame that peoples' reactivity can overshadow good times.
 
The idea that the games are tactical training for rampages is well known. That is quite different from causing the rampage. BTW, Scrub - I wasn't talking to you.

However, if you buy that argument - you may recall that several of the rampage folks frequented ranges. Thus, once again - exposure to guns is dangerous and any move against games must include one's against gun ranges and practice?

Remember Full Metal Jacket when our Gunny Emry was telling the trainees that Whitman and Oswald were trained by the Marine Corps. Lots of folks trained with real lethal force nowadays.

You might recall the moves in MA to ban humanoid targets in matches. The UK shooters used to mock our humanoid IPSC targets - not sporting,blokes. Worked out well for them, now didn't it?

There is nothing in banning or controlling games that does the gun world any good. There is not good science nor good politics.
 
Glenn, thanks for the clarification. I do agree with all of you about banning these games. It's not at all a good idea. I just have a considerable amount of caution when it comes to immersing already troubled people in these games. I don't see anything good coming of it. You can call it my beliefs rather than something I can back up with studies, but I can guarantee you that this hunch comes from strong personal experience and training.
 
That's exactly my point. From my admittedly limited research, there is some underlying cause of severe mental illness in mass shooters.

Violent first person shooters aren't it.
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If you watched the documentary about public education I linked to earlier, the answer is the psychotropic drugs like Ritalin and Adderall

Every kid involved in a mass shooting fro Columbine forward has been shown to have been on those drugs during their school "career"
 
This fallacy again? We cry it out every time it's mentioned to us.

Correlation is not causation. Correlation =/= causation. Just because two things correlate does not mean one caused the other.

Maybe these kids were on drugs because they had a history of acting this way so their family got them medical help? From a correlation/causation standpoint this argument is more tenuous than either guns OR violent video games.

Furthermore I don't think it's Ritalin or Aderal. If anything it's SSRIs.
 
there were more mass killings in the 20's than there are today. they peaked in 1929.
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Gang killings related to mob wars and prohibition perhaps. Random shootings of innocent people just for kicks......you would have to cite specific examples, because I am unaware of any.
 
But what do I know? I'm just an every-scary-feature AR-15 owning guy that has played every game the media has freaked out about in the last 15-20 years, including Grand Theft Auto 2, 3, and 4, Postal, the entire Doom series, Manhunt, every Call of Duty game, every Battlefield game, ever Gears of War game, ever Fallout game, and every Left 4 Dead game. I've never been in a fight, I've never even had a traffic ticket, and in a year I'll have a doctorate. I believe this is because I was parented right and mental health issues were never stigmatized in my household - proper counseling and ADHD treatment saved my sanity and my schooling.
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Just because you played the so-called "violent" video games and did not commit mass shootings does not mean that these video games are completely irrelevant in the extremely rare instances that someone else did.

First, we all need to understand that "mass-shootings" are extremely rare. Second, we really need to eliminate those cases involving gang and turf wars, because those shootings are not for kicks or some twisted sense of glory; they are for money and turf - another problem entirely.

Third, we really have to understand that people who do these things have a very different mental makeup than just about all the rest of us. They have a suppressed or complete lack of empathy for others - i.e. psychopaths who are not afraid to die. Whether this is due to drugs, sustained abuse, or just born that way - I believe If you care about others, if the pain of others bothers you, then no matter how many violent movies you watch and video games you play, and guns you own, you are not going to randomly inflict pain and death on others.

There may be other elements that none of us have even touched on that need to be present as well. But, I think its a mistake to simply dismiss violent video games as completely irrelevant. There seems to be some connection. I'm not declaring this in the absolute and certainly not applying this to 99.??% of the people who play these games with no ill consequences.
 
To Dr. Meyer

In your professional opinion, do these games play a role in desensitizing people to violence, injury, or death? How about movies, videos, and television viewing?
 
That is a great unknown at this time. Violence rates are dropping in general while intensive media is increasing.

That would argue that they don't have a very strong effect on society. The increase in gun crime in lower SES was happening during the drug wars - media was not a crucial component in that.

I think the best answer we have is that for people with existing psychological problems, the media (of all types) can channel their ideation and actions.

For folks without such, I think the effect is minimal for society with current media. Can intense cultural pressure desensitize folks - I think it can. But it would take the order of Nazi propaganda effects for a society. Densitization can also occur on the small group level with intense socialization (like the FSU band beatings).

But do the freely played games do it - I don't think we have the evidence for it.
 
Glenn E. Meyer said:
That is a great unknown at this time. Violence rates are dropping in general while intensive media is increasing.

That would argue that they don't have a very strong effect on society. The increase in gun crime in lower SES was happening during the drug wars - media was not a crucial component in that.

I think the best answer we have is that for people with existing psychological problems, the media (of all types) can channel their ideation and actions.

For folks without such, I think the effect is minimal for society with current media. Can intense cultural pressure desensitize folks - I think it can. But it would take the order of Nazi propaganda effects for a society. Densitization can also occur on the small group level with intense socialization (like the FSU band beatings).

But do the freely played games do it - I don't think we have the evidence for it.
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Very reasoned answer and the way I view it also. Could it be a factor? Yes. Is it THE factor? No.
 
People have done some sick evil stuff right after playing games, mimicking what is done in GTA and whatnot.

but there are people who have done sick stuff "inspired" by any form of culture. because videogames are culture.

People commited suicide because of Goethes book young Werther, but we aren't throwing those on fire...

sick people play alotta videgames, playing alotta videogames doesn't MAKE you sick, fat perhaps but not sick in the head.

The older generation has always blamed the new popular thing for the "downfall" of society, Elvis got his share of blame 60 years ago, comics has gotten theirs and radio probably got it when it arrived!


or even just blaming the younger generation period
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
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Socrates
 
Husqvarna, I agree with you about blaming the new thing coming along.
But I'm not sure that was the right quote to use. Think about when he said it and what happened to those folks not too long after:D
 
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