Connecticut Group Wants Your Violent Videogames — To Destroy Them 449
DavidGilbert99 writes with this excerpt from IB Times: "The Sandy Hook shooting once again raised the debate about how much power violent videogames wield over teenagers. Following proclamations from the National Rifle Association and the establishment of a study by the National Academy of Sciences to investigate the psychological effects of violent games on children, a group in Connecticut is now having its say Southington, a town 30 miles from where the shooting took place, is offering gift tokens in exchange for violent videogames, as well as other violent media such as DVDs or videos. The group, called SouthingtonSOS, said in a statement: 'There is ample evidence that violent video games, along with violent media of all kinds, including TV and movies portraying story after story showing a continuous stream of violence and killing, has contributed to increasing aggressiveness, fear, anxiety and is desensitizing our children to acts of violence including bullying.'" And Yes, they plan to destroy the traded-in games. (Note: Beware the obnoxious auto-playing video ad with sound; adjust volume accordingly.)
hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, I even designed Doom and Half-Life levels based on my old high school (shit, don't tell anyone or they'll come after me next!!!)
Heh, I did the same thing with Bungie's Marathon II and their level/physics editors 'Anvil" and "Forge".
Now I'd get expelled for talking about it. So sad.
Re:Haw (Score:5, Interesting)
I played hockey since I was 5, and also played for my high school for a year. But I had to quit - because of all the idiot jocks and their homophobia, misogyny, and general distaste for anything they couldn't understand or was slightly different from them. You should have heard the shit that was talked about in the locker room. Yeah, those dumb louts sure had a firm grip on their emotions all right.
Re:Better price than gamestop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you run into the same problem as people trading in broken or useless guns to the gun buyback:
By turning in your property, you effectively endorse their political cause. They get to say that "X number of people turned in this filth to get it off of our streets and out of our schools!". Personally, I'm not willing to become part of their cause and make that value of X going higher at any cost.
If you actually do find their message convincing then by all means turn in your games.
But if you use the reward you get from the group to directly support the opposite of their agenda... did you really help them? For instance, using the gift token to buy a new FPS game.
I would like to think they would somehow arrange for the reward to not be able to be used in this way, but groups like this tend not to be terribly forward thinking.
Re:Give them a bit of credit .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny part is, no banning or restriction of any one thing, or even combination thereof, will curtail mass violence.
Removing every firearm from the planet won't prevent future mass violence. Removing every violent cultural item (video, music, books, etc) won't prevent it either.
Long story short... it's going to require a massive cultural shift. Problem is, too many people stand to make too much profit off of not doing that. News media will blame the viewers without stopping to think that they themselves created the viewership. Hollywood will do the same, and so one down the line, all forgetting that they all participated in building that lowest-common-denominator which we have today. The NRA will of course defensively want to keep every type of firearm legal, as they're too busy staring at the slippery slope of rights-curtailment and not liking what they see, but neglecting to see that sometimes maybe some folks don't need the things. Overly-busy parents aren't going to want to curtail their lifestyle and actually pay close attention to WTF their kid is watching, playing, and reading - especially if those kids are teenagers. Sometimes those parents can't slow down (e.g. the single working parent) - overall, this is going to require a strengthening of marriage (though not by law, but by culture).
As you can see, there are too many people won either like the status quo, or hate it but fear changing it (especially if that change introduces responsibility). So I fully expect a whole lot of nothing to be done at the least, or a lot of the wrong things done at the worst.
Meanwhile, some as-yet-anonymous sad loser of a kid quietly designs a bomb that will utilize the school's natural gas line...
Re:Don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
You might want to read some of the criticisms [wikipedia.org] of the author of that article. His motives are deeply suspect, and there's so much literature on the subject that it's easy to cherry-pick. (Note to anyone dragging out the "ad hominem" card: this is entirely relevant to the subject at hand, and casts serious doubt on anything he has to say about the subject.) Here [tamiu.edu] (PDF link) is a rebuttal to his primary claims--which, unlike the link you provided, actually goes into some detail about the methods of analysis.
Re:Give them a bit of credit .... (Score:4, Interesting)
As the AC mentioned, Starcraft isn't a first/third person shooter - it's not a 'trainer' for shooting people like you could say for games like counterstrike.
On the topic of violent video games in general, I remember the graph of youth violence up against major console releases - youth violence has experienced a drop after each release. As far as I know, the 'ample research' on violent media and it's effects on kids consists of some poorly constructed double blind studies involving pre-teen children and did things like conclude 'cartoons increase violent behavior' where they included live action shows like power rangers in the cartoon category. The increased violence was for a short period while the kids were allowed to run rampant without adult supervision, where they demonstrated imitative behavior for the *live action* shows.
Teenagers who play video games are actually less likely to be violent - maybe they're venting their anger/violence in a safe manner? Maybe they're just too unfit as a result to get into much trouble?
I've mowed down tens of thousands in just first person shooters alone. I haven't been tempted to shoot anybody in real life, and we had plenty of people commit horrible shoots before TV even existed, much less video games.
Re:Get used to it (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, the customer of that game is forced to buy, at full price and royalties to author, another full licensed version, instead of buying the recycled one, from which only the reseller, not the author, profits.
How much are they giving per game? Because if it works like some gun-buybacks, you'll get people bringing in old copies of Daikatana and using the resulting certificates to buy the latest call of duty...
I've seen it multiple times - a gunnie will collect 'scrap metal' guns worth maybe $20 for the metal in them, then go to Chicago for a gun buyback and get $100 gift certificates for them. Most of the guns don't even work, or would be unsafe to fire if they did. They then proceed to buy a nice NEW gun for their collection.