The Most Violent Video Games of All Time 287
adeelarshad82 writes "Switzerland and Australia already feel that violent video games are an issue, and in June the US Supreme Court will also take matters in its own hands. Revisiting some of the most violent video games made over the last couple of decades shows exactly why this is such a huge concern." Warning: this slideshow contains imaginary violence.
Curing Zombies (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Religion makes ME uncomfortable (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes violence can be a learning experience.
When I watched the videos of Russian soldiers having their heads cut off, Jews being burned in furnaces, cats being set on fire "for fun", and a Ukranian man having his face bashed in by two teen boys, it taught me the world is a violent and disgusting place filled with dark, deranged people.
Had these videos been censored, I'd still naively think everyone is good.
Re:Idiots... (Score:4, Interesting)
Prime-time TV crime dramas. These shows contain some of the most violent, disturbing themes and imagery I've ever seen: Some unlucky bloke gets decapitated by an out-of-control steel beam. Bad guy #1 shoots bad guy #2 full of blood-oozing bullet holes and kicks him off a pier. And then pan into a full shot of a rotting corpse on a autopsy table. This is all within the first 5 minutes of one episode.
But put the same thing in a video game and it's going to corrupt the children.
I am against all forms of censorship. Shielding kids from disturbing content is the parents' responsibility. However, if they're going to ban violent video games, I insist that they also ban the same content in all broadcast and cable television shows because such content is not only much more lifelike, it's also a lot easier for children to access. All they have to do is turn on the TV, whereas a violent video game must be purchased by someone...
Re:Religion makes ME uncomfortable (Score:1, Interesting)
I think you just stumbled upon the solution - video games as a religion.
Hell, there is plenty of child rape, murder and other horrific atrocities committed in the Bible and other religious texts, and it's even marketed towards kids! If you think video games are violent now, imagine a FPS game that walks you through the old testament.
And no taxes :)
And words can hurt forever... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have never understood people that believe they must impose there beliefs and supposed morals on others.
Largely because they, themselves, gained their belief system by having it imposed on them, often with cruelty, and despite their innate belief that what they were being taught was wrong. If they don't impose their belief on others, then they have to admit that what was done to them was wrong, and then they have to deal with all that pain.
Spirituality is not the problem. Belief in a God who wants us to follow a path ("Torah") as part of our relationship with What Is, is not the problem. Religion often is. Religion is the belief in men who somehow know more about what God wants than you do or what He can communicate with you directly. Religion, at its foundation, is therefore idolatry and forbidden by the cardinal rule of Torah.
Video game violence has been declining for years (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite video game back in the day was Galaga, which came out in 1981. I still play it via MAME and whenever I run across the original game or the anniversary re-release. Every level is a fucking massacre. You kill at least 40 aliens and potentially more: if you're really good at killing aliens especially quickly, the game slips in some extras to satisfy your lust for xenocide. Every fourth level, in fact, is a "challenging stage" in which the aliens are completely defenseless and you get bonus points for killing them to the last man. I'm not an especially good player, but I can reliably get to at least the 25th level, which takes about fifteen minutes and during which I must kill at least 1,000 aliens. Nor is Galaga an extreme case. By the late 80's and early 90's, there was a whole slew of Japanese shoot-em-up scrollers where the screen was positively jammed with enemies that could only be overcome by acquiring more and more powerful weapons, next to which Galaga is like the most boring of UN peacekeeping missions.
The body count in hours of gameplay with the current first-person shooters doesn't even merit comparison with three minutes of gameplay in any number of arcade classics from twenty or thirty years ago. What has changed is that the mayhem is more realistic -- and then only if you accept a rather loose reading of "realistic" that actually means "resembling the comic-book violence of action movies".
To make matters worse, the violent crime rate has been mostly declining during all this time, during which ownership of computers and game consoles has gone from a relatively small market to being nearly universal, especially in the age groups that are most likely to be involved in violent crime. If one was compelled to draw a causal connection between violent video games and real-world violence, one would have to conclude that they are actually reducing the level of real-world violence. There is actually some evidence to that effect -- but the balance of the actual scientific data, as opposed to the hyperventilation of people like Jack Thompson, strongly suggests that if there is any connection between video games and real violence, it is too insignificant to be measured even with relatively large samples.
At the end of the day, we'd probably hear less of this hysterical crap if y'all would just stay of those nice people's lawns. Now, if you'll pardon me, I have a sudden urge to fire up MAME and take another pass at getting to the 30th level in Galaga.
Re:Lazy parents make ME uncomfortable (Score:5, Interesting)
My daughter has seen me edit photos since forever. With the GIMP open, I often remove things, improve things, duplicate things, or just make things plain improbable. When we started letting her watch movies with any violent effects, we would also pause or later discuss the storytelling side of it, and demonstrate how scenes can be shot out of sequence to lead the viewer to believe bad things happened. Now she regularly asks me how they did certain things, and I try to find "the making of" footage that illustrates it. Beheadings in The Last Samurai. Motion capture in Avatar. Forced perspective in Lord of the Rings.
Learning about special effects is a great way of learning not to trust what you see... and incidentally, to become a critical thinker when it comes to the media shown by news organizations and corporations and even her school, as well.