Video Gamers From the '90s Have Turned Out Mostly OK (arstechnica.com) 239
A study reported on by Ars Technica indicates that video games, much ballyhooed (alleged) source of mental, physical and psycho-social ills for the kids who spent a lot of time playing them, don't seem to have had quite as big a negative effect on those kids as the moral panic of the past few decades would have you believe. Instead, There didn't seem to be an association between the number of games the children reported owning and an increase in risk for conduct disorder. When examining depression among shoot-em-up players, there was evidence for increased risk before the researchers controlled for all the confounding factors, but not afterwards. Of course, there's a lot of data to go around in the several studies referred to here, and the upshot seems to both less exciting and less simple than "Video games are good, not bad!"
Paging Jon Katz... (Score:3, Insightful)
In regard to social issues, I do like that Slashdot is getting back to its roots [slashdot.org] at least! :)
Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians (Score:5, Insightful)
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That doesn't stop them from crying about xyz being the new moral panic. Then again, some of them are just out for the sweet victim buxs like Anita Sarkeesian, others are out to make a name for themselves like Tipper Gore, and others think it's their job to save everyone like Jack Thompson.
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Uh-huh. And which one went running to the UN trying to get criticism declared harassment.
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One could make a case for Roosh V being a misogynist (and this coming from someone who takes him at his word that the piece he wrote about legalizing rape was supposed to be satire. It's wasn't good satire, but unless there are women coming forward to accuse him of rape, I see no reason to say he's guilty of anything but exercising his right to free speech, and I'm compelled to defend especially the ugliest of free speech on principle), but I'd like solid evidence of Thunderf00t being a misogynist and/or "
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One could make a case for Roosh V being a misogynist (and this coming from someone who takes him at his word that the piece he wrote about legalizing rape was supposed to be satire. It's wasn't good satire, but unless there are women coming forward to accuse him of rape, I see no reason to say he's guilty of anything but exercising his right to free speech, and I'm compelled to defend especially the ugliest of free speech on principle)
The whole "right to free speech" thing is irrelevant.
People have the right to publish works glorifying child abuse, genocide or Clippy the Office Assistant, it doesn't mean that they're exempt from debate or criticism.
If you decide to exercise your freedom of speech by saying that rape should be legalised, you can expect a strong reaction, and not just from radical feminists.
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I'd agree with your overall point but point out that this isn't free speech being irrelevant but instead showing that the right to fre
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Have you read any of Roosh V's books? He talks at length about raping women in them. He doesn't consider it rape, but most legal jurisdictions would. It isn't clear if he actually did any of that stuff (he claims he did, but the victims have never come forward), but he certainly promotes it as the way a "neomasculine" man should treat women.
As for misogyny, check out the worlds least enticing personal ad [archive.is] here wrote. That's textbook misogyny.
Let's not forget the homophobia either.
Before someone asks for evid
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There's a reason people dismiss claims of IRL "harm" the from Tipper Gores or Jack Thompsons or Anita Sarkeesians of the world.
It's because every generation remembers something that their parents were absolutely certain was making the younger generation into terrible people. Facebook. Video games. Rock-n-roll. Jazz. Newspapers. There's a dozen quotes from notables stretching back to 2000 BC expressing the same, "Kids these days..." sentiment, all based on nostalgia for their own half-remembered, half-fantasized childhood.
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I wish people would watch Sarkeesian's videos (or read the transcripts) before making assumptions about what she says.
Thompson claimed that games directly trained and incited people to commit murder. Sarkeesian criticises games for not having good female characters because that makes them poorer games (in terms of story, options for female players who want a female avatar, artistic merit etc.) Her argument is not "poor representations of women in games make people harm women in real life", it's that games,
Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish people would watch Sarkeesian's videos (or read the transcripts) before making assumptions about what she says.
You mean the part where she says that "everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic" [youtube.com] or the part where she starts whining because it doesn't cater to her political ideology and she gets upset over it and goes running to the UN?
Yeah, she's no different then Jack Thompson...except for her gender. Which get's her a free pass where any criticism is labeled has harassment.
Note that she doesn't need to offer "proof" for her opinion that portraying women (and men) better in games is the right thing to do. She is a feminist, her position is backed up by decades of feminist theory, and you can debate it all you like. She isn't making a falsifiable hypothesis, she is stating an opinion based on a large body of widely accepted philosophical work.
No, she needs to offer proof. The second she claimed she wanted to make the series to be included in the classroom and for educational purpose. And the second she decided that she wanted to go speak before crowds. She's wants to spew her stuff, but doesn't want anyone to turn around and call her out on her bullshit.
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The problem with six second YouTube clips is that they don't offer a lot of context. What she actually said was that when you first start learning about feminism it might seem like "everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic", but as you learn you grow out of it and start to be more productive.
In other words, she is saying the exact opposite of what that clip makes out she is. She is saying she doesn't believe that.
Full transcript for reference: http://lybio.net/anita-sarkees... [lybio.net]
And the second she decided that she wanted to go speak before crowds. She's wants to spew her stuff, but doesn't want anyone to turn around and call her out on her bullshit.
So
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I think she was quite clear when she wrote that, I don't know how you got from "it's possible that some actions a woman might take could harm other women, thus we shouldn't blindly support every choice women make" to "women must only do things that benefit women as a collective".
Actually, I suspect you got there by deliberately misinterpreting what is an exceptionally clear and carefully worded statement that was obviously designed to avoid just such a misunderstanding. In fact, it addresses one of the bigg
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I will start respecting third wave feminism when it starts advocating for women to register for the draft, for more women in male-dominated blue collar industries, and when women start marrying men who earn less than them. For bonus points, eschew and rebuke female privileges and exceptions, like the "right" to slap a man, serve lighter sentences for the same offenses, automatically being granted child custody, etc. True equal treatment means taking the bad along with the good.
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I'm perfectly ok with just feminism. In my mind there's no reason to be against people who think they advocate for equality and there's no reason to say, "if you believe in equality then you must do XXX", everyone has their own idea of what that is. A lot of people will call themselves feminist because they believe in the dictionary definition, but it's not a central part of their lives and they wouldn't support the crazies if they were in the same room with them. What I do have an issue wit
Re: Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians (Score:2)
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What she is saying is that simply noticing and pointing stuff out isn't helpful and is actually just annoying. You have to transcend that and see it as a bunch of systems all interacting. So it's less about individuals or individual examples, and more about the systems that produce them.
That's why she does videos that cover the history of video games and how tropes came to exist, and how game mechanics evolved to perpetuate them. In fact her whole point, and the reason why many game developers love her, is
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Some people refer this this type of claim as "conspiracy theory"
Except that, the whole point of it is that there isn't a conspiracy at all. Tropes are not deliberately created, they evolve naturally. I actually said that in the text you quoted, somehow in your mind it became the exact opposite. Look, I'll highlight it for you:
It's not that some evil misogynist sat in front of his computer, rubbing his hands in glee as he designed another Ms. Male Character trope to keep the women down, it's just that they are a thing, part of a system.
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Which is exactly what a conspiracy theorists would say.
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You are correct, I should have made the distinction a bit clearer. While Thompson says that games directly cause people to physically harm others, Sarkeesian says that at most the harm comes from normalization and propagation. You put it better than I did, I just want to acknowledge your point and say I agree with it.
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Damsel in distress part 1:
"Just to be clear, I am not saying that all games using the damsel in distress as a plot device are automatically sexist or have no value. But it’s undeniable that popular culture is a powerful influence in or lives and the Damsel in Distress trope as a recurring trend does help to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and
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There's a reason people dismiss claims of IRL "harm" the from Tipper Gores or Jack Thompsons or Anita Sarkeesians of the world. The burden of proof is always squarely on them, they almost always fail to meet it, and years later we (as often as not) get scientific evidence showing the opposite.
Population studies usually drown out subtle influences and factors. I think you have to look at individuals that do have issues and then see how the availability of games, drugs, booze, television, social interactions all come together to make their problems worse or better.
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Finding no significant correlation between video gaming and those outcomes does not really prove the broad conclusion of the headline that "Video Gamers From the '90s Have Turned Out Mostly OK".
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From TFA:
Finding no significant correlation between video gaming and those outcomes does not really prove the broad conclusion of the headline that "Video Gamers From the '90s Have Turned Out Mostly OK".
Right. And I don't think the supposition has ever been that video games increase the prevalence or incidence of any particular disorders in children, but rather what negative (or positive?) effects certain types of video games and length of time playing would have on children already prone to behavioral or psychological issues. Whether gaming (amount of time spent, and types of games played) makes things better or worse for those kids both in the short term and longer run... But good luck finding a contro
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A story about how gamers from the 90s turned out okay. At first things seems great, people talk about how obvious this was, how earlier predictions of 'moral decay' turned out to be nonsense, that we're all perfectly well-adjusted reasonable people. Then someone mentions Anita Sarkessian.
Oh dear. We were doing so well too...
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No, she managed to get online media (and some mainstream) to swap the burden of proof from guilt to innocence, and the games industry fell for it too.
Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians (Score:4, Insightful)
Anita's butt video is a fine exercise of cherry picking and insane conspiracy theory nonsense. Nobody actually holds a board room meeting conspiring how to hide male butts, I'm pretty sure that the decision of giving Batman his cape was due to the fact that he is a character who is iconic for having a bloody cape but don't quote me on that. Not to mention that one of the DLCs for the very same game does give quite nice view of his ass. Her argument completely jumps the shark once she starts talking about how hard it is to see his ass, as if she doesn't understand how capes work.
There are many male characters across many video games who do have prominent tight-fitting clothing and many female characters who do wear capes or less form-fitting clothing. Just in the superhero genre, you have most X-men, Spider-man, Green Lantern, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, etc...
I'm not even going to get into the whole deal of how real-life females do tend to wear more form-fitting clothing than males and how one should control for the influence of gender dismorphism when it comes to portrayal of human characters, suffice to say that Anita offers to argument there because she tends to exercise the academic rigor expected of middle school students.
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She has some very good points though. It's funny to watch the videos with all the male characters having strategic butt coverings, but not female characters.
You don't play very many video games huh? Sure is strategic butt covering [imgur.com] in here. [imgur.com]
People overreact though, "raawr, she wants to change my game very slightly!" And GG had some very repulsive actors in it, they don't know how to debate so they decide to send threats.
Sure thing, [reddit.com] lots of death threats there. [8ch.net] You of course realize it's not a slightly. How's that Fire Emblem censorship going? SFV? GTA5? Those claims that gamers just "being localized" and all that(except of course when it's something they like...like steven universe then it's censorship)? If she actually gave a shit on anything she said, she'd make her own games and let the market decide if they're worth anything or not
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Yes, I do play a lot. You have some counter examples, no one every said it was 100% one way.
Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians (Score:5, Insightful)
Well considering she's the one claiming it's 100% one way. Never mind all those fashion magazines, or romance novels either. She's just another scam artist, the fact that she refuses to debate anyone even when offered 5 figures or the donation of that money to the charity of her choice should tell you a lot. Even Jack Thompson would debate people after he was called out. He looked like an idiot, but that's more then what she's done.
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IF that was the case, would you not play up the harassment you get? Keep in mind Anita was "being harassed" long before GamerGate was even a thing. GamerGate, made popular by the media it accused of being corrupt, simply gave her something, besides rando intern
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She has some very good points though. It's funny to watch the videos with all the male characters having strategic butt coverings, but not female characters.
You have a problem with a work of fiction presenting an idealised version of a woman? Those very same games present idealised versions of men as well - why is one a problem but not the other?
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To be clear, she isn't saying that the way men are presented is great either. She is just pointing out that there is a problem specific to female characters, who are designed to provide titillation to a presumed straight male audience.
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I've played a lot of video games over the centuries. I don't ever recall any idealized versions of men or women.
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How is this overreacting? If she wants to see a guy's butt in a game, she should get one written. Keep your dirty paws off my games and get your own done if you don't like them.
You know, there's something you can do if you don't like it: Not looking. I tried it on her videos and guess what? It actually does work, ignoring her really makes me feel better.
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Hell, as a red-blooded, woman loving man, *I'm* annoyed by a lot of the sexism in games. If I want to watch porn, I'll go watch porn. If I'm playing a game I want an immersive and plausible world, one where half the characters aren't puerile appeals to adolescent hormones dressed in skimpy armor that would likely get them killed the first time they entered combat.
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Consumers, like any other demands/requests for content in games. If you think they and the people who listen to them don't represent enough of your market share to care, then you can feel free to ignore them. Although funny enough, those with actual money and marketing research seem to think it is more important to listen than those that want to make up statistics from their mother's basement.
Well we've seen that already. Women make up the vast majority of the casual market, feminists whine and complain that the non-casual market which is primarily male dominated doesn't cater to their needs. Looks like the situation is working out fine and marketing and research departments are doing a good job of realizing that. So why is it that feminists and sjw's who in general don't play those games, want to shove stuff down everyone elses throats?
If they really wanted to, they could make their own game
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If they really wanted to, they could make their own game and see how well it holds up under public scrutiny. My guess? Dismal failures much like the various walking simulators and games like Gone Home(note the disconnect between reviewers and gamers).
I was going to say that the "make their own game" comment was a bit unfair, but had never heard of Gone Home. I looked it up and.... please do not let them make any more.
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Right. Her points may be true, but it's like complaining that the fashion industry doesn't cater to men. It never will, and it's not sexist, it's just that men don't want 30,000 varieties of shirts and shoes --at least not enough for it to be economically viable.
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Although funny enough, those with actual money and marketing research seem to think it is more important to listen than those that want to make up statistics from their mother's basement.
It's simple economy. They tend to want to cater to people who are inclined to buy their games instead of loudmouthed bitches who certainly won't.
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And the kid who drank a beer.
And the kid whose family owned a pit bull.
And the kid whose father owned a handgun.
And the kid who read Huck Finn (no matter how boring he thought it was).
And the kid who never sat in a child safety seat in the car.
And the kid who occasionally skipped school.
And the kid who played football.
And the kid saw scary movies at a young age.
And almost all the rest of the kids who didn't follow the rules we are all told are so critically important.
Re: Surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
The ones who don't turn out okay are mostly the kid who was not loved unconditionally and comforted in times of distress.
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Re:Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly.
When examining depression among shoot-em-up players, there was evidence for increased risk before the researchers controlled for all the confounding factors, but not afterwards.
This makes it sound like playing lots of video games is a effect of depression rather than the cause. Which sounds just as plausible to me than it being the other way around. Just like people already at risk of social withdrawal, for them video games can be a great time killer.
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You call it "basic stats" but to do statistics you need hard data to work with, which is probably really hard to get on for such a subject.
First of all, how do you define your data points? Which factors are you looking at, and how do you quantify them? Are you sure you don't forget about any factors, like how many oranges a person eats per day? Or are you really sure that eating oranges is not in any way related to how many video games one plays? For a really sound study all that has to be taken into accoun
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I think what they are saying is that the problem children are in some degree drawn to the "bad" games, but that the games don't make the problem children, nor make them worse.
So, yeah, if you've got a random school full of kids, the ones with the visibly violent interests, be that metal, comic books, rock 'n roll, video games, or whatever, will have _statistically_ more problems later, but it's not a judgement in and of itself, and the lack of visibly violent interests is in no way a guarantee of good behav
Re:Surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, it is funny how every "next technology" is always scapegoated by the last generation. I've pointed this out in the past [slashdot.org]:
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Besides, the great Satan these days is social media.
If they actually targeted guns as a problem with the same vitriol, they might do some good for once.
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Finally, vindication. Enough talk, let's celebrate [youtube.com]!
Groundwork for future research (Score:5, Informative)
Full study here [plos.org].
Pretty tame conclusions, but I'm glad they're still doing research into this. I'm actually really curious to see what kind of psychological effects show up (or don't) as graphics technology gets ever closer to perfect fidelity. Not in the moral panic or "we must legislate this" sense, but just to understand whether and how a technology is capable of damaging us. VR is right around the corner, and game developers are focusing constantly on immersion -- this makes me wonder whether a sufficiently advanced game could cause PTSD, or a similar condition. I suspect not now, and not soon, but it'll probably be an issue some day.
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(In my humble opinion) I think the key difference between response to a game and response to reality is the fact that the player knows one is make-believe before they engage in it. This fore-knowledge that you're in a simulation coupled with a desire to be there goes a long way to blunt the response your mind has to the input.
If it's possible for games to cause PTSD, then I imagine it would be possible to get PTSD from film and books as well. I'm not suggesting that this isn't the case however; But I do thi
don't forget Eric Harris (Score:2)
don't forget Eric Harris
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don't forget Eric Harris
Why not? He doesn't deserve brain room.
Everything old is new again (Score:2)
Unfortunately the newest moral panic is the representation of women in video games leading to rape culture, misogyny, and what ever else the moral crusaders have within their sights.
Will we ever learn?
And suppose there was a clear link between videogames and violence, exactly what is to be done? There were riots when the Rites of Spring was first performed, yet it is not damnatio memoriae, almost as if these relationships aren't quite as static as we are lead to believe, which is why there is so much confl
Results are skewed? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not sure what to make of it all but I am still glad I installed these games on all the machines on my LAN, http://www.chiark.greenend.org... [greenend.org.uk]
I definitely didn't turn out OK... (Score:5, Funny)
I definitely didn't turn out OK... in fact, I died of dysentery.
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Me as an example (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm doing ok, I got a successful retail business and I got pretty straight morals, yes I've done things as a teenage that makes my kids and others go WTF? But that's another time and place in history.
We use to play TONS of video games, believe it or not we actually walked in snow and -10+ temps for 30-45 min each way to the closest video game rental place (Overwaitea Food). One day a few buddies of mine came over and asked me to stash some Nintendo machines and box on top of boxes of games. I sure as hell didn't mind as my eye and thumbs twitches at the gloriousness that will be happening to me in the next few week of my teenage life. I truly had a Nintendo thumb and 3 hours of sleep for weeks. Well it turned out fine for me and majority of my friends.
Possible issues (Score:3)
There are games and there are games. And my guess is that games that map onto the real world more closely may have more intrusive effects than others. How could PacMan realistically affect real world functioning? You are guiding a blob of pixels around a maze, there are no real world corollaries to this. However, interacting with with photo realistic others in simulated environments could have a very positive impact. Take as an example some vulnerable kids who have learned to deal with others with aggression, then expose them to a simulated where game play success is only achieved through appropriate interactions, we might see positive effects in real world behaviour. At least this is the thinking of some developmental behavioural scientists... whose names and work I cannot at the moment find.
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Actually, Pac-Man may be the cause of today's obesity epidemic. All those kids spent their childhood playing a game where the object was to eat everything as quickly as possible, and then they became fat... that can't be a coincidence!
Study only considered violent games, not PacMan (Score:2)
How could PacMan realistically affect real world functioning?
Unfortunately, the summary is missing an important fact: the study _did_ control for the type of games played; the study (at least attempted) to only measure the effect of violent video games, although they relied on self-reporting of game type by the children who played them (a method which, while much better than nothing, still has issues). So yeah, the study authors are well aware that PacMan isn't going to cause violence.
"controlled for confounding factors"... (Score:2)
For those of you too young to remember (Score:2)
But what about the damage done by parents? (Score:2)
They never seem to do studies about how the kids turn out who's parents were control-freaks and used things like "video games are evil" and "D&D is evil" and "pogs are evil" to force their kids into the line the parents want them to adhere to.
Admittedly, those are just the excuses those parents use, and as a society our approach seems to be "Well, kids are chattel, nothing we can do about it if their parents are horrible."
studies says school shooters played lots of games (Score:2)
But this doesnt imply the reverse. Say half the 20 million males between age are frequent gamers. That would mean only 1 in 100,000 become shooters. In fact gamers could be blamed for every ill in society because it is such a common hobby.
Barracidal (Score:2)
Re:Kinda dissagree (Score:5, Informative)
I have read about people neglecting their kids to play farmville, I have even done a few nasty binges where I would swear to "stop by midnight" only to look outside and see that it was dawn.
The big kerfuffle in the 90's wasn't that games were addictive, it was that they were violent and that we were going to turn into desensitized savages who want to dismember people. Basically this article is about kids that grew up on Mortal Kombat.
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First they claimed games lead to satanism, then they claimed games caused people to be violent, lately it's been games cause people to be sexists, and they've been proven wrong over and over again. "Games are addictive" is just the latest iteration for busy bodies that have too much time on their hands and have a need to butt into other people's business. I'm sure when people start looking into it they'll find that, if it wasn't games, p
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It was the same dumb argument when Jack Thompson made it, it's the same dumb argument now, whether it's feminist supporting it or not.
I'm not even anti-feminist, but being a feminist doesn't automatically make you a good person, or right. Jack was proven wrong and mocked, Anita is proven wrong and, oh wait can't mock her because feminism. You're not doing anyone on the line about feminism any favors. From a neutral perspective, on feminism, I'd rather be called a misogynist and
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I don't remember anyone really talking about video game addiction until Everquest.
I remember talk about video game addiction back in the 80's when you had to go to an arcade. There was even a short about it on HBO about a guy whose wife and kids left him, but he didn't care because all he needed was another round of Galaga.
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Okay. I agree. So where are you going with that?
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That is an urge control issue, like gambling. If it wasn't video games it would have been one of any other endless list of vices. Maybe if we holed everyone up in plastic bubbles with filtered air, we'd all go to harvard some day. Your argument has no place in the violent video games debate, go away.
It's the same with books. (Score:2)
I have even done a few nasty binges where I would swear to "stop by midnight" only to look outside and see that it was dawn.
Losing oneself in a book, reading until the break of dawn cause you "just couldn't put the book down" is a common occurrence.
Often referred to with a dose of nostalgia and sympathy, along with reading with a flashlight, under the covers.
It's not the medium - it's the message.
Humans are suckers for vicarious experiences.
Particularly in the form of fiction - but they will also gladly waste hours and travel miles to watch millionaires kick or throw a ball around.
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Why do you blame the games? Perhaps the job/spouse was at fault and the game was just an escape valve due to lack of any other choice.
Define 'thrown away.' There is more to life than breeding and stacking papers. Most 'collage' is little more than a paper mill at this point. Most of the people going to 'collage' don't really belong there but are forced to go just so they can satisfy overstaffed HR depts.
Addictive personalities can find nearly anything addictive if it gives them pleasure. Stop blaming thin
Re:Kinda dissagree (Score:5, Interesting)
It's complex. I've known two people who have seriously messed up their lives as a result of excessive gaming and one who came close (but pulled back at the last minute). I've known a lot more people who fouled up their lives for other reasons.
The two I knew who seriously messed up their lives were friends from my university days who managed to get so heavily into the QuakeWorld/Quake 3 online scene that they failed their exams at the end of their second year and were thrown out (my university didn't "do" second chances). One of them went into the workplace without a degree (and is doing more or less ok now, almost 15 years later, though probably not in the field he wanted to be in) while the other enrolled at another university and came damned close to flunking out a second time (but scraped graduation and is now a teacher, so draw your own conclusions).
The near-miss was more recent. A friend I've known for about a decade got so heavily into an MMO last year that it started to affect his attendance and performance at work. A few of us spotted what was happening and did a bit of an "intervention" (god, I hate that term, but I can't think of a better one). The immediate result was a week long sulk - but after that, he realised the danger he was in and pulled back from the edge.
Thing is, though, I'm not ultimately convinced that "gaming" was a unique factor in either of those cases. In both cases, I think the social obligations that existed around gaming were a bigger factor. The Quake-pair weren't just playing the game; they were heavily involved in the competitive scene and had weekly practice and event schedules imposed on them by their clans. They both knew (one more than the other, perhaps) that they should be playing less, but didn't have the experience or maturity to tell their clan-mates when enough was enough. The MMO-player was, as he later admitted, more or less hating the game, but was so bound into his guild's hierarchy and structure that he felt he couldn't stop playing (or even cut back) for fear of letting other people down. So it wasn't so much video-game addiction as it was a kind of social entrapment.
Thing is, I've also seen people mess up their lives even more spectacularly for non-gaming reasons. In my first "grown up" job, one of my colleagues was into mountaineering. Seriously so. He'd take months of unpaid leave each year to go on expeditions. He'd done a couple of Himalayan 8,000ers as well as a whole load of peaks in Alaska and the Andes. And over time, it destroyed his life. His marriage fell apart, he lost contact with his son and, when redundancies came around at the office, he was the first one out the door; his lengthy absences meant that people had gotten used to doing without him, so he wasn't able to pull the "look indispensable" trick.
Another guy I was at university with ended up not just flunking out of his course but also winding up tens of thousands of GBP in debt. How? Poker. He convinced himself that as an "elite" maths student, he would be able to clean up. Turns out he couldn't. He ended up hopelessly addicted and throwing good money after bad.
I've also seen people wreck their lives through mundane and even unpleasant stuff. One guy I worked with got so drawn into work for the building management committee for the apartment block he lived in that it took over his life to the point he was spending most of the working day on it - and again, he was out the door at the first whiff of redundancies. He always told people that he was only doing it because he felt people were depending on him...
People are remarkably adept at finding ways to wreck their own lives and will use any tool at hand to do so. Games can be one of those tools and there certainly seem to be some people with a high general propensity to addictive behaviour who will be especially prone to gaming addiction. But for those people, I can't escape the view that if it wasn't gaming that brought them down, it would just be something else.
As for gaming and violence, whi
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I once stood up a friend in college because I forgot about our appointment because I was playing Quake. That makes me a bad person. FACT.
/ Still friends with this person.
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Bullshit. I mean, there is some of that in everybody, and that desire for avoidance can influence people's behaviour (I admit it has mine at times). But the companies that make games know perfectly well that the game does better the more addictive it is, even if they don't think about it in those terms.
Re:Video games are great (Score:5, Informative)
or you could play the masterpiece, Portal 2. And actually get smarter while you play. So says Stanford et al. http://www.fastcompany.com/303... [fastcompany.com]
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I swear I might snap at any moment, though.... rawr!
Re: Video games are great (Score:2)
So in summary psychos play video games. Video games don't make you psycho.
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I approve this message, at least pslytely.
Re:Video games are great (Score:4, Funny)
or you could play the masterpiece, Portal 2. And actually get smarter while you play. So says Stanford et al. http://www.fastcompany.com/303... [fastcompany.com]
The wait for Portal 3 is driving me insane.
Re: Video games are great (Score:2, Funny)
Why do you need Portal 3, aren't you already smart enough from Portal 1 and 2?
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or you could play quake AND portal.
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What has this got to do with video games? Who knows? But we must understand that this generation is one of the most mentally fucked up generations to have ever walked the face of the earth. So, saying 90's vido gamers turned out 'ok', is clearly bullshit.
I think the idea is that they turned out okay compared to non-gamers from the same time period. Although it's next to impossible to exclude other correlating factors, because those who played games likely had more similar demographics than compared with those who didn't.
As for speculations of why the late 30 early 40 somethings of today are so fucked up, I would guess that the conservative resurgence and Mrs. Reagan and "no child left behind" is part of the problem. A coddled generation taught to rote lea
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Even if you're right, you haven't linked games as a cause..
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Adult children who live in a deluded world view where women are either villains, trophies, and the reason women won't have sex with them is entirely because they're disgusting. How much of that is from video games? It can be argued that the degrading treatment of women in the games played a role, but it could also just be that they don't get out of their moms basement to see the world isn't the awful place that they think it is.
As opposed to adult children who live in a deluded world view where women are pe
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It isn't only about money.
Due to the insane blame culture is US society, there is a LOT of parents that think whenever their little darlings do something bad it must always be someone elses fault, and video games have always been an easy target.
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