Friday, March 26, 2010

More than Slightly more than Solitare




Let's get right into it. There has been raised the question of whether boyish fantasy violence in video games leads to violence in real life and by extension, whether games should be banned for such. There are also many other reasons why games should be banned.

I respectfully disagree, and I consider the argument misinformed.

There. You don't need to read any farther and get upset by a violent outburst of passion, because god forbid anyone get upset on the internet. And forgive me for not restraining myself in a blog that gets maybe skimmed maybe once a month by someone who's maybe awake.

:::::::WARNING: the following pages of text may contain great inarticulation, mild language, graphic metaphors, and blatant abuse of first amendment privileges. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNNNNNNNED!!!:::::::



ARGUMENTS BY REBUTTAL

Games depict women negatively

I listed this one first because I find it has the most backing to it. Yes, the game industry has a problem with depicting women as sex objects, allowing the lesbian romance choice but not the gay option, or equating "Strong, independent woman" with "Violent Psycho Bitch". I know there may not be many good arguments, but I'm going to ask you all to remember all the female marines, female professional football players, and favorable depictions of women in other media. Recall any? OF COURSE NOT. You can't assume any one aspect of culture will be a great degree progressive when most people's moms won't buy anything
An Excuse: Videogames are marketed to the young male demographic. Statistically, half of all gamers are female in the same way that statistically the average income of the average American is enough to by a slightly-more-than average Yaght, but while a good deal of male gamers are fat, bespectacled, socially-retarded nerds fighting trolls in real time in their parent's basement, most female gamers are sweaty moms playing yoga on Wii Fit or little girls living homoerotic fantasy in the Sims 3.
And 2: Video games are created by the same corporate conglomerate that has the same antediluvian mind point and discriminatory attitude, who hire mostly male game writers and I'm going to leave out the predictable masturbating social reject joke. No one blames 14-year-old fan fiction writing girls from author-inserting themselves into an orgy with Harry Potter or Spock, do they? Anyway, they usually make a point to be equal about it, with sickeningly muscular men as an alternative, which brings me to:

A Point of "You're looking at it one-sided": Yes, Lara Croft is featured with impossibly large melons (That Angelina Jolee couldn't measure up to even with the benefit of toilet paper) and every female character in the discustingly mispelled Mortal Kombat has greater than D cups, but the men in those games always look like walking triangles, with biceps larger than even their thick manly chins and enough steroids , but always the men are featured in more idealistic terms as well. Reminiscing about the time when heroes didn't need biceps larger than their faces, I sometimes find myself playing female characters (For ONLY that reason, mind your) or elves.

And lastly, there are a few games that feature decent female characters, like when you play Princess Peach instead of the fat Italian plumber.


Video Games Promote Violence

No, and I consider your argument misinformed, you ignorant scaremongering sperm-sandwich.
So every so often in the teenage world a young paragon of self control get's called a nasty name and decides murder would be the wittiest rebuttal. It's then found out he/she stood next to a video game sometime in the past because after events like the Columbine shooting and the murder of Stefan Pakeerah, everyone always looks for something to blame, and it's easy to pick on fat bespectacled social rejects in their parent's basement. WE HAVE FREAKING RIGHTS TOO.

People like to point out that the number of violent crimes has gone up in the last fifty years in conjunction to the number of violent videogames and other media. I would like to point out that many other things have gone up too, like POPULATION and OVERCROWDING IN PRISONS DUE TO PRISON SENTENCES FOR MINOR DRUG USERS. Life is turning to shit, being flushed away in the chunky quagmire of terrorist attracts, economic recessions, politics, the fact that 50% of families spend at least a year in poverty, that 51% of marriages end in divorce, and the numerous, small ways your life is made a unique hell.

So let's look at these arguments case by case:


Video Games Depict Violence as Good
: Wrong. Games, like most media, often feature violent crime as a tool of Italian Mobsters, the Oppressive Military and the general Bad Guy. They will almost always be punished for such (and a measure of an effective villain is how violently you want to crush his face for burning down a churchful of people or shooting the dog), and if they don't you feel disappointed and start to hate the film. Videogames too are the same way, and good guys use guns for the same reason police officers and soldiers do; to kill bad guys, who in most games are crudely-rendered aliens or expy's of Russians or Iraqis and who gives a shit about them? So I guess what I'm trying to say is that games don't do anything that TV or Political demagouges don't do either, and while I don't condone linking evil with a specific nationality that's not the Nazis, that point is not much brought up much and most games feature an actually reasonable enemy. Like evil gods or Ayn Rand.

I also would like to bring up the fact that not all games include violence, and that I do not support all kinds of violence. Yes, there are some otherwise-wonderful games that catch flak for their blood and gore, but Sturgeon's Law dictates that there are many irredeemable gore-fests. In that case, the resolution is simple: Don't buy the game. It's just like how you shouldn't buy movies of things you don't like. No one is forcing you to buy Manhunt for your 12-year old, and that's even condemned judging by the 'Mature' Rating of the game.

Video Games Cause Violence
: Alright, this one is a bit harder (not really, but I wanted to acknowledge that the arguments have gotten slightly, slightly, slightly less scare-mongering pants-on-head retarded) but I will extend the above argument, and divide this into:

Video games Teach Violence: Former West Point psychologist David Grossman wrote a few books specializing on "killology" (No joke), notably On Killing and Stop teaching our kids to Kill that defamed videogames for unethically training children in the use of weapons and desensitizing children to violence. His first argument has led me to conclude he's too busy writing crappy fiction and neglecting his wife to actually notice that pushing the 'A' button on a play station is as far removed from shooting a gun in real life as my ass is from Uranus. Arguing that

Video Games convince Children to Imitate their violent Acts: Assuming you're not talking about MySims or Barbie Horse Racing, Yeah, they do. Talking about garrote wire and shotguns is a great way to win friends in Middle School, as was learning to brawl in Middle School earlier this century when Body-Building was in or emulating a Gladiators in ancient freakin Greece. All of these fall under the heading "Being Male" and the only reason there is an alleged link to violence and emulating media is the 1987 Hungerford massacre, when Michal Ryan shot 16 people with an AK 47 while wearing a Headband, and apparently this was enough liking to Rambo for people to blame First Blood for the massacre and for less ethical Journalists, meaning all of those mainstream attention whores, to televise the link between violence and videogames. One documentary investigated it, and it is not known whether he actually owned a video recorder or even rented videos. Other cases exist where a purported link has been founded, most notably the Sefan Pakeerah murder in 2004 of the UK, conveniently in time for the UK general election, was linked to the game Manhunt. Now yes, in Manhunt you can take everyday objects and stab or bludgeon people to death with them, and Warren LeBlanc was described as being "obsessed with the game" and that his murder was done similarly to the methods employed by Manhunt's protagonist. This may look incriminating before I slap you and ask you to think of how many ways you can hold a knife. Essentially there are two, and stabbing people takes a general thrusting motion. You could probably hold it with your feet or while jacking off, but if so you've got other problems and the young California tard you're trying to kill will get away. There are even less ways to hold a gun, unless you're a tard etc, but games don't prepare you for the recoil or weight of an actual gun, and many games feature fictional guns, so unless your weapon was manufactured by Matel, then you'll have to ask a cop or something. And in regard to the Manhunt, "‘The prosecution and defence barristers insisted at Leicester Crown Court that the video game played no part in the killing’ (The Leicester Mercury, 3rd September, 2004).".

Video Games arouse people to violence who are mentally predisposed to: Avoiding the obvious joke, yes, I'll admit that games may do that, just like football and political shouting matches arouse people to anger. However, none of the studies looking at how children are affected by the arrival of television found much change at all, despite all the talk of violent TV increasing crime. The last case was St. Helena, a British Colony in the South Atlantic Ocean which received television for the first time in 1995. Before and after studies
showed no change in children’s anti-social or pro-social behavior. On top of this, the most
comprehensive analysis looking at whether violent crime rates changed alongside the growth of
television in different countries have concluded there has been no link.


Video Games Desensitize us to Violence
: Why? You surely won’t feel less upset if you are mugged, or less angry if your neighbour is or less distressed by the next brutal murder of a child today than you did before watching all the video violence that you have to watch in your job. Will you? In any case, as we’ve seen, people are far more likely to report less serious violence these days than they have ever been. Those who don’t like screen violence often look away and hide their eyes when they expect something nasty. If you get them to look, they will usually agree that it wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be. We might get ‘used’ to screen violence but I really don’t think this has anything to do with our sensitivity to the real world.

And Lastly: Banning Video Games will help these problems, assuming they exist: No. Assuming that videogames are spawns from Satan and turn people into ninja zombies the moment you touch a copy of Lego Batman, and Assuming that banning violent games is not a restriction on First Amendment rights or I am forced to recall the recent politcal attempt to regulate the media: the V Chip. In theory, the chip would scan channels and shows and block ones the parent's set as too obscene and stuff. Partly because it took time to create a rating system for all the shows, partially because the rating system was shit, after 3 years only 1 in 12 households used the system.


In short, I'm not saying that violence in videogames is good, just that it doesn't cause violence in gamers, and that any legislation denouncing videogames as causing violence is completely stupid for more than one reason.

(This blog took way too long)

(Also, the proponent will be tomorrow)

(In the meantime)

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