Talk About GTA

[ZXDunny]

While you may not agree with my opinions, or even like me personally, THAT IS NO EXCUSE to attack my status as a Mod.  Unless you have some REAL EVIDENCE that I have in any way, over-reached, or abused my Mod powers, I will be expecting an apology for that attack.  And if I do not get one, I will report it for other Mods to deal with, and remove myself from any decision-making process about it.  But I believe your attack on my Mod status is unwarranted and uncalled for. 

Although an apology issued after it was demanded is basically meaningless.  You should have known youself that you were out of line and your attack was unwarranted and uncalled for.

I have nothing further to say to you, sir.  Good day.

Wow, you really can overreact. Again, I'm not suprised by this. I did not attack any of your moderator decisions, I stated that because of your bigoted views and desire for censorship it was worrying that you are in fact a moderator - you're unable to be impartial over this issue and that is not a good quality for someone who is to moderate others. Your reaction over what I posted is proof you are not, in my eyes, a good choice to moderate.

You are not getting an apology, you are certainly overreaching yourself and I welcome discussion with the other moderators.

D.

 

[kirkanoss]

wow my head hurts now after all of that

 

[_wb_]

If you oppose GTA because it glorifies thugs and thiefs, you should also be opposed to any war game, because that glorifies war. War is much worse than thugs and thiefs:  the latter are mostly poor people committing mostly small crimes and violence to try to improve their own miserable personal situation, whereas the former are waged on a much larger scale and with many more casualties, by very rich people, for their own economic interests, and they're paid (both in money and lives) by the public. At least a thug does his own dirty work, the rich elite (e.g. the oil industry leaders) let others (e.g. soldiers) do the dirty work for them, and don't even pay them themselves, but manage to directly pay them with tax payers' money (which they contribute very little to). They even manage to legalize their crimes; for normal people it is illegal to steal a loaf of bread when you're hungry, but for the rich elite it is no problem and perfectly legal to get an entire village bombed to ashes if that's what it takes to get access to (i.e. steal) that country's oil reserves. That's hypocrisy on probably the largest scale humanly possible.

Anyway, I can see why you would oppose depictions, interactive or not, of socially or morally unacceptable behavior. However, in my opinion it is rather naive and philosophically idealistic to assume that you can significantly change reality by changing or outlawing these depictions. In my opinion, it is better to try to take away the real underlying causes of the unwanted behavior, and while violent video games or movies may or may not be a cause of them, there certainly are more important and significant causes: unemployment, poor education, lacking social security, bad health care (including mental health care), capitalism and its morals, etc. This is of course a much more daunting task than a relatively easy ban on violent video games, but it is what is needed to get rid of (or at least significantly reduce) thugs and thieves and wars. It requires a social-economical and political revolution, if it's up to me, a revolution that removes capitalism and replaces it with democratic socialism.

 

[klapse]

I tend to agree with Kumaki that some (too many) movies and games put you into the role of a killer that enjoys hurting and killing others, and that this is sick.


I disagree that censorship is the proper remedy. I think we each need to do our part to boycott such trash and explain to others why we reject it.

 

[Binky]

It think this discussion needs evidence.

Show me a graph of shootings, violent games and population against time.

(accepting that correlation!=causation)

Then I can form an opinion on the potential dangers of GTA.

 

[mjohansson]

You cant censor the entire world, and if you censor one thing someone else is gonna argue that something else also needs to be censored and point to that case for backing up the validity to censor also this new thing, and then soon everything will be censored and Im sure people will REALLY start to explode and go nuts at then!

As long as you dont intently physically harm anyone else your not doing anything wrong, if some killer didnt have access to Natural Born Killers film he might have had found "inspiration" in something else like Teletubbies, inspiration can come from anywere and you can never censor or control every aspects of everyones lifes. Oliver Stone is not responsible for what anyone else then he himself does against other people. 

I dont play GTA games myself cos I find them repulsive and get very upset by the violence against innocent non-combatants. But I have never and would never under any circumstance ask for them to be censored or banned from excisting, I find the idea of censorship a billion times more offensive then the GTA games themself. Media dont kill, people do, and if they blame media for their actions they are cowards and should stand up for what they have done and what they have choosen to do by their own free will, media only excists, it dont kill, it cant take the blame, it dosnt force anyone to do anything, and insane people can get "ideas" from anywere anyway, you cant censorship life itself. Life can upset you, you just have to find the strenght and carry on.

 

[Timstertoo]

Inspired by this thread I just downloaded GTA II (availabe for free at the Rockstar website!) and had a great time playing it again.

I find it so over the top that it's just plain funny. Also I tend to get arrested (and killed) a lot so there is also an educational value. 

I was looking at a trailer of Battlefield 4 and holy crap! If something gets you ready to do maximum carnage with a couple of team members it's games like that. 

Living in Holland where you simply aren't allowed to have shitloads of guns and ammos lying around willynilly I'm not really worried though. I can't imagine kids having a worse time here then in the US at school. I believe we're a little less prone to stuff every kid who has a bad week with anti-depressants though. (if we disagree that stuff like Prozac is much more easily supplied to teenagers in the US then over here I'll retract that statement as it's a different discussion and I can't be bothered to look it up)  And I think they watch the same series and play the same games.

So I'd venture a guess that the problem doesn't lie in being able to digitally play with an assault rifle. The problem seems to lie more in being easily able to get one and enough ammo to shoot up big buildings with loads of people in them. 

Now I certainly don't say the US should ban weapons. It's really up to you guys over there to sort that out for yourselves. Different strokes for different folks and all that. At the same time I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't project those problems upon us and talk about banning, censoring, taking all the fun out of, games we can play without those problems appearing in our society.

Interesting discussion though!

 

[b_o_b]

Penn and Teller : Episode Videogames 

Next to the usual cursing in the series there is some interesting info and also (IMO) pretty entertaining. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaF9nbLo8as

 

[PowerGod]

When we were little kids we started to play something just because we liked it... at that age we were unable to "think" about consequences, and we weren't even "stopped" by moral issues... but the majority of males preferred war games and the majority of girls preferred cute dolls... it's just something in us, I don't think that this can be changed somehow...

If for example a middle aged man want to play with cute dolls, maybe he will not do that, because at his age he can be scared about the consequences of "people will know it"... so either he will play with them in secret... or he will just keep this thought inside... leaving it growing... creating some kind of stressed situation that in some future can degenerate, if he is prone to this kind of things...

EDIT: The episode of Penn&Teller was AWESOME !! LOL !! It killed me many times, expecially at the beginning !! XD

 

[gotwake424]

I'm not reading all of this thread

But seriously people, Whatever happened to PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY? 

 

[Klumpen]

Self responsibility

Important point.

I'm not reading all of this thread

But seriously people, Whatever happened to PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY? 

Yeah, I probably meant that, but neither Google nor Wikipedia nor my dictionary had a translation for "Eigenverantwortung",

which is really disturbing. oO

Regarding the funny video above: Lol, that's hilarious! ^^

 

[gotwake424]

Self responsibility

Important point.

>I'm not reading all of this thread

But seriously people, Whatever happened to PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY? 

Yeah, I probably meant that, but neither Google nor Wikipedia nor my dictionary had a translation for "Eigenverantwortung",

which is really disturbing. oO

Regarding the funny video above: Lol, that's hilarious! ^^

Both work as an expression in english. 

 

[hailrazer]

If violent video games , violent movies, violent books don't hurt anyone or cause any problems in Society, then why have things got so bad in the last 50 years. 

And please don't respond that it hasn't. It has. The world is filled with violence immorality and terrible people. It wasn't that way 50 years and more ago. What's causing it if not the desensitizing of people by what they see and hear?

 

[gotwake424]

If violent video games , violent movies, violent books don't hurt anyone or cause any problems in Society, then why have things got so bad in the last 50 years. 

And please don't respond that it hasn't. It has. The world is filled with violence immorality and terrible people. It wasn't that way 50 years and more ago. What's causing it if not the desensitizing of people by what they see and hear?

24 hour news networks 

 

[moxie]

It think this discussion needs evidence.

Show me a graph of shootings, violent games and population against time.

(accepting that correlation!=causation)

Then I can form an opinion on the potential dangers of GTA.

I do not have it on hand now, but the link between video game violence and real world violence has been thoroughly disproven time and time again. It is no more than a few months ago that another far-encompassing meta study was released, with the same conclusion as every study before it: There is not even correlation between video game violence and real violence, let alone causation. That is what science tells us. Just as with Jazz, Rock'n'roll, Comic books and Role-playing games before it. And, much the same way, loads of "concerned parents" are ignoring science in favour of their own common un-sense. 

Why is that? Wouldn't people be happy to know that no, the fact that your kid is playing video games  is in no way predisposing him/her to actually shooting people up when he's a teen? Well...It usually goes the other way. Why do kids turn out violent and asocial? What creates a school shooter? Usually, when you look at it closely: Bad parents. Kids do as their parents do. If the parents are violent and asocial, the kids learn to be like that. If the parents are vocal about shooting people as a solution to their problems (even hypothetically - That is "I have this gun here, and if someone comes onto my land I'll shoot them"), then the kids will learn that, too. The absolutely most significant correlation (and likely causation) for kid behaviour: Parent behaviour.

Now, when do people start looking for an "explanation" for a violent kid? When something bad has happened. When little Billy has gotten dads guns from the cupboard, gone to school and solved his bully problem permanently. And what kind of explanation do people want to find? Well, they sure as hell doesn't want to learn that they (if they are the parents) made little Billy like this. Or (if they are the neighbours) that Bud and Daisy made little Billy turn out that way. After all, in most cases, people in a close community are rather similar in outlook and values - If Bud thought that shooting at "foreign" intruders was a good idea, there is a good chance that his neighbours think the same. That's just reason - Surely that is no harm? So, where shall we put the blame? In something external - Video games, nowadays. Roleplaying games, 20 years ago. "N*gger music", 60 years ago. Anything that means it is external, that means it is not our fault.

So, there you have it Video games does not cause violence. Science says so. If you really want, I can drum up a dozen links or so to scientific reports, but you really should be able to find them yourself with a small effort.

 

[ShleeDragon]

 

[hailrazer]

Insinuating that because we have more news coverage we now hear more about it.

Nope, not buying it. When I was growing up in the 80's I went to hardware stores and car garages with my dad all the time. Never hardly heard a curse word. People wouldn't curse in front of women and children. Now I can't go anywhere with the family without hearing the most foul language ever . Coincidence ? Nope, people wanted rights so now tv and movies allowing cursing so now everyone thinks its fine.

small example.

 

[ZXDunny]

Insinuating that because we have more news coverage we now hear more about it.

Nope, not buying it. When I was growing up in the 80's I went to hardware stores and car garages with my dad all the time. Never hardly heard a curse word. People wouldn't curse in front of women and children. Now I can't go anywhere with the family without hearing the most foul language ever . Coincidence ? Nope, people wanted rights so now tv and movies allowing cursing so now everyone thinks its fine.

small example.

You're looking at an evolution of the language, not the intent behind the language. That you're offended by what you deem to be "violent language" is a problem with your own ethical code, not that of society at large.

If you care to look up any official source of stats on crime (at least in the U.K, I would imagine it's the same whatever place you live in - Texas possibly?) then you'll find that you're actually less likely to be attacked in the street now than you were 50 years ago. I recall when I was a small boy, it was unacceptable to say the words "damn" or "damned" in polite company (this was the 70s, FYI), and yet now you don't hear anyone complaining about those. 

Don't get heated up about it, it's perfectly natural for you to rebel against changes that you personally don't agree with - and we're all grateful, as I mentioned to the esteemed crusader Kumaki, that you're not the one who gets to make the rules

D.

 

[moxie]

If violent video games , violent movies, violent books don't hurt anyone or cause any problems in Society, then why have things got so bad in the last 50 years. 

And please don't respond that it hasn't. It has. The world is filled with violence immorality and terrible people. It wasn't that way 50 years and more ago. What's causing it if not the desensitizing of people by what they see and hear?

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it hasn't Not really. In almost all kinds of measurements, the world is a much, much better place today than 50 years ago. More people are getting an education, less people are being murdered, more kids live to see adulthood, less people are starving...the list goes on. The world today is better than ever before. Really. Once again, that is what science tells us (I recommend Hans Rosling, a swedish statistician who makes wonderful presentations of these kinds of facts). 

However, As gotwake424 points out: We have a news culture these days, where 24-hour networks fight for our attention for their survival. And the best way to keep our attention (and thus the advertising revenue) is to have BIG HEADLINES about MURDER, CATASTROPHES, ORGIES, SCANDALS!!! The crime wave you've never expected! Will it reach you? The answer to that questions comes after these messages...."The home security system from HomeSec Inc, the only complete system with sensors, cameras and gun turrets"...And now we're back, with a map of the CRIMEWAVE OF THE CENTURY!!!

Keep the punters. Sell the ads. Good news makes people happy, and that is bad for business.

 

[ZeroOne]

I expected a topic of speculation on GTA 5 when I came in here and I got a fairly heated discussion on the ethics of violence in videogames.

Lovely, it's like I'm back in 2003 again, Jack Thompson is running around sueing Take Two over GTA III, I'm 13 years old and playing Vice City for the first time and having a blast.

Might I suggest a more unambiguous name to this topic? GTA might be a mainstream example of what you do not appreciate in the videogames industry but I can assure you that other worse titles exist.

As for the topic itself, I think anything I would add to the argument would be a case of duplication of effort on distain towards censorship, enforcement of personal responsibility and failure to produce evidence.