I can't talk to someone called Mario without saying "Its a me! Mario!" Totally gamings fault
- Gen_Warbuff
- Rank: Easter Egg
- Member since: Jun 11, 2005
- Last online: 05/25/13 8:01 am PT
My Achievements:
see more »
My Friends
-
zyxe online
-
Hallenbeck77 online
-
Lucky_Krystal online
-
Kevin-V online
-
Toysoldier34 online
-
rragnaar online
-
Legolas_Katarn online
-
Shame-usBlackley online
-
lightwarrior179 online
-
OrkHammer007 online
20Dec 12
With the recent events here in the states, another horrible, senseless school shooting, the inevitable ties between the event, and video games just had to come out. There was no other choice, video games are the cause of all evil right?
With that said, and with so many people wanting to point the finger and our hobby, I decided to take a good look at myself, things I have done in real life based on what I have done in video games. Ya, I could not find anything. BUT I did find something even more shocking, more terrifying than I could ever have expected. Real world life, has made me do things in games, games have made me do nothing in real life!
I know wow.
Let me give you some examples:
1) Last night while playing FarCry 3, I planted a road side bomb, and blew up a passing jeep. I have also done this multiple times in BF3. I wonder where I got that idea? Maybe watching the news about the wars around the world and seeing that tactic used in real life?
2) In a video game, I once drove a NASCAR around in a circle for 2 hrs. I saw that on TV too but have never done it in real life.
3) While playing FallOut 3 I walked into a building and cleared it out, I will leave it to your imagination on how I did it. Again, events in the real world made me do it.
4) In Viva Pinata I planted trees and a entire garden! Know why? Because I saw my neighbor do it in his real life yard.
5) I was once in NYC and saw a cabbie driving like a stockcar racer. Know what I did? When I got home I played some GTA4, stole a cab, and drove through the city like a complete a-hole.
6) While playing NHL 13 I started a fight with another player because I saw this happen on TV during a real game.
The list can go on and on, I hope its easy to see how real life has influenced my gaming life. Im really pissed off, because normally I would not do all that bad stuff I think I need to sue society for making me a bad person in virtual reality.
55 comments
2 Like I live in Iran And in my country every bad thing that happens caused by video games , our people think this way. but there is not anyone that say this is government that do that bad thing or crazy bastards politicians, there is not an smaller wall than video games. I played "The Walking Dead" and my reason was to save Clementine from zombies and get her to a safe place , so its a new vision, the game is not always bad, it has learning curve too, but whom to see video games from this vision.
3 Like This has a good point. I had been talking about this with some of my friends. Video games are not the problem, guns are not the problem. The problem is people who are unstable/angry who are willing to cause terrible loss of life for no true reason.
2 Like What they want to do currently is point fingers. It's easy to isolate one thing [video games] and blame that for molding psychotic characters.
The fact is that there are lots and lots of variables involved in molding such a psychotic character. It's all cause and effect from the moment we are born.
4 Like When bad thing happen people need something to blame, game is always a easy target.
Especially when someone want to take the heat off gun control (weapon manufacturer), education, child care, and other important stuff (or people).
What's sad is that so many people allow the media to mislead them, to redirect their attention away from the real and more severe problem, and dance like mindless puppets.
If you stop thinking on your own, and swallow everything the others feed you then you are just a mindless puppet, or rather a zombie with good(?) skin-tone.
It's frightening to see people got turned into mindless mobs by some stupid news report.
If that's what it takes to turn people into crazy mobs, then we are really in big trouble.
Democracy in the hands of mindless zombies, the end of days is trully among us.
1 Like I think the issue will never die, and the conservatives will always find fault in video games for no other reason than because they have no desire to look at where the issue really lies: parenting. In the case of what happened last week, that kid had issues, the parents knew and didn't think that there would ever be an issue. We all may want to think kids are harmless, but I'm sure the parents of the kids that died are wishing they could have reached out to that troubled child before it was too late.
1 Like I'm with @Darth_Ultima
Both the far left and the far right wanna control everyone's lives. Just from different directions. And both wanna blame artistic mediums that're still considered "on the fringes of society" rather than acknowledge some issues within society itself.
Example: What the Hell was a mentally unstable person doing with access to guns? And what the Hell is going on in these hick towns like Columbine and Newtown where someone offs 20 people at once?
1 Like @nate1222 @Darth_Ultima my other question is about parenting, what kind of parent takes their troubled child practice shooting?
2 Like Its not just consevatives. Liberals hate videogames too. This new legislation is being pushed by democrates. Video games are an easy target whenever crap like this happens.
1 Like The evil that always destroyed and still destroys society in its core it's hypocrisy. It's hypocrisy that lead people to change themselves into a shape SOCIETY accepts but the people don't. That's why everything that is different is seen as twisted.
1 Like Society isn't the problem, it's the products of society that are the problem. If violence didn't influence you, then we'd all be the same. You can make all the excuses you want about video game violence not being real, but it doesn't change the fact that you like what it portrays.
1 Like True true. Its rough part of our humanity. some people are better at shutting it down than others. but when have have greater loves value the people around us, our investments, and recognize our responsibilities in our lives it allows us to suppress our guilty pleasures, and not entertain ideas of destruction for prolonged periods. If anything should be blamed on VG violence its the fact that violent games have gotten ridiculously easy over the years. but the indies'll push gaming fwd. so no worries.
just direct all your vitriol to bobby kotick.
1 Like You're easily influenced. I'm going to write down some prescription medications for you and restrict the amount of time you spend in the real world. It's clearly having a negative effect on your gaming. I'm sorry, it's just the way it has to be.
4 Like I play video games because I like doing things in games that I can't do in real life.
4 Like I am baffled that when 30 American children gets shot killed, they immediately blame games and guns. But an order of magnitude greater number of children are dying weekly as a result of the same finger pointing politicians stance on economics and war.
3 Like This is what I have always thought. Alot of what people do comes down to how they are raised. People don't want to take responsibility for the way they do things. Video games CAN be a release of anger and other such emotions. They can also, if you are not careful, distort your view of reality. I believe the news and the way you are raised is more influential than a video game.
I don't know if I am behind in the news but I haven't heard anything connecting video games specifically with Adam Lanza. Video games are just a scapegoat to be trotted out whenever.
1 Like I don't really blame society. I blame sentience.
Seriously. Got sentient life? Got any two sentient beings interacting? They're probably plotting to, at the very least, be dickish.
3 Like Videogames never made me be more violent, but you know what actually did?
Seeing CNN guys talking about how in Connecticut, a kid with rage and autistic disorder that was taught to use guns very effectively killed like 28 people and then the reporter says "and obviously we need to treat the subject of the violent videogames that could've influenced him, right now when we get back"
That made me want to at least yell at him
2 Like "While playing FallOut 3 I walked into a building and cleared it out, I will leave it to your imagination on how I did it."
I'm assuming you did so in a similar vein to your real-world business practices...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6i_7JhpRqk
:P
@s_h_a_d_o Hey now, I never said that's my real-world business, just my girlfriends, I only work with them on occasion :)
By no means are games the root of the problem. They do however contribute to it as with many other things.
In what way do they contribute? I can easily differentiate between a video game and reality. If someone can't tell if they are in a video game or not, they need help.
1 Like over here in the UK, the press reacted first by looking at the gun laws in the US, probing what people can buy, what they cannot buy, and with the amount of guns and ammo already in the system, would changing the law now make any difference. But then, they turned onto video games. One of the biggest selling daily papers had Call of Duty and the killers face on the front page. The art layout left very little room for interpretation; the game made him mad, made him kill people.
Having said that, the infamous Russian airport scene from the game series was a serious error of judgement by the games publishers. Far worse than the hot coffee fiasco, and yet it got through.
Only thing I can add is that the Russian airport scene, you had the option to skip it. Not saying it was right to have it there, but there was an option if I remember correctly. But I'm old, so I may be wrong.
@Gen_Warbuff @6orange6 That's true, which further proves the point that it wasn't really necessary. It was just there for the publicity that came from the controversy.
2 Like What really Irks me is, People want to find some outside reason to blame. How about just calling someone a Murderer or Psycho? People now a days never want to take responsibility for their actions, always citing a pathetic outside reason.
People can be evil and do bad things, deal with it. Not every human is a golden angel of kindness, Its human nature to be good or bad. We have to make those who do bad or break the laws accountable not some outside random thing or intangible idea.
4 Like I am tired of the "Video games caused this!" argument as well. Society seems to be in moral decline, I suspect that there are a lot of factors that are causing it, games perhaps being one of them. The sole reason? Hell no.
I am still horribly saddened by those events in Connecticut, no "reason" that sick boy did that will be enough for me to understand it. :(
2 Like I'm 36 yrs old and have been playing video games since i was about 9 or 10 yrs of age. Maybe even early but video games do have a affect on younger children. But in very different ways not mention by media. Videogames have change so much since i have been playing and have seen the evolution since day 1. By no means i believe that videogames make one go out and kill your friends, family, or community. We learn that from our leaders who think its ok to kill innocent people over seas in the name of terrorism or what ever agenda they have. Also yes there are alot of sick people out there who no matter what the cost will get there hands on guns. There is a black market for everything and guns are no exception. So gun control is a bunch of B.S. it would be like video game control it doesn't make sense. Instead I believe that these law makers should look at the drugs that most of these crazy people are on. But they will not because thay are getting a kick back to look the other way or not even say.
3 Like Aren't video games a part of our society? So, in a sense, they part of the problem. In my opinion this is true but they are not the single source of influence that determines if a madman commits horrid crimes.
1 Like To look for a scapegoat is something we humands do naturally, is like in our instinct to try defend ourselves, even if the reasons are not good enough. I do not believe all the blame resides in videogames, you have to look at the sum of the parts and the psichological profile of the person and see in what ways video games are affecting their lives. It could be a possibility that games act as a trigger for some psichological problem of one human being. But at the end, you can not protect society form itself.
2 Like A few years ago, I would have agreed with your blog. However, being a teacher has opened my eyes to a different perspective. We tend to think about ourselves when we delve into these type of topics. "I do fill in the blank and I turned out fine." I feel we use our personal experience to provide some sort of justification.I will say that video games or other objects aren't fully to blame, but they can certainly be a catalyst. I've had students where games have made their reality altered in some way. I think that people are always assigning 100% of the blame to 1 thing when in fact it is usually a series of things. Again, games aren't fully to blame but you can't say they have nothing to do with how people act.
6 Like @Megaflush24 I would say the larger part of the problem is parents not spending enough time with their children to ensure their reality isn't being altered by not just video games, but by anything. So no, I can never put any blame on video games. It's like blaming a knife maker for making the knife that someone used to stab someone with when that person was having a really bad day. The way I see it, if video games really did attribute to gun violence in the amount that people claim, then we'd be seeing a LOT MORE SHOOTINGS.
1 Like Agreed with the parent part. Agree to disagree about not puttig any blame on the games. I love video games. I definately don't think forms of media should be banned. But, it can affect certain people and I feel that games cannot be blameless.
1 Like Using that logic.... we should ban Music, TV, Internet, Books, Talking to each other.... well everything......
Agreed, but you last comment "but you can't say they have nothing to do with how people act" is far from having any real evidence to show that they do.
1 Like Games are a bit of an easy target and I think that the connection between violent people and violent media is that the former are attracted to the later and not created by it. Stoopid people can't seem to get that.
By the way, did you clear the building after a particularly whiffsome parp? Can't think how else **scratches head**
1 Like While I agree that Video games are not at fault I'm not sure your argument holds up to well. You would have figured out to put a bomb on the road to get rid of a vehicle just like the people figured it out in real life, even without ever hearing about the technique. Are you trying to claim that the only reason you planted trees in Viva Pinata is because your neighbor did, and if he hadn't that you never would have? Or that you wouldn't have shot people in Fallout 3? You would have never been able to finish the game as it's designed so that you have to do that. That kind of argument falls apart pretty quickly.
I would agree that society is at fault, and that video games are no worse than any other medium of entertainment. It has a wonderful rating system that is sadly ignored by most parents. But claiming that society made you plant trees is a bit of a stretch.
Conversation powered by Livefyre
