What are we to make of violent video game rhetoric?

[Mise]

You're right, what was I thinking. If she was really serious she would have written a letter and posted it instead.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Only applies to the discussion of criminals, remember? I guess criminal negligence of logic does fit in all this fruitless juxtaposition of mice and men going on though1

 

[Borachio]

Argh! Steinbeck! Take it away! Make it stop! Now!

Spoiler :

I liked Tortilla Flats, though.

 

[Kyriakos]

Argh! Steinbeck! Take it away! Make it stop! Now!

Spoiler :

I liked Tortilla Flats, though.

I recently read that the title of his novel possibly was influenced by a poem of that theme, presenting that a mouse building its nest during the winter in a hay field (remember straw? will in the end just see the work destroyed by a person being able to march on that field with a better point of view :/ (link i gave in my previous post is about that)

 

[metatron]

The above link purports to be a collection of tweets sent to David Vonderhaar expressing the tweeter's distaste for a change to some gun in the game. The tweets are vile attacks upon Mr. Vonderhaar.

I don't condone such behavior, but one has to appreciate that there are other causes at work than merely people becoming "more barbaric" or whatever:
The games industry is by and large refusing to change with the times and has become incredibly oblivious and arrogant.
At the heart of their arrogance is their failure to appreciate how easy it has become for end consumers to pool their ressources with some independent developer to actually get the game that they want instead of having the artistic (or economic) vision of an established developer inflicted on them.

If one makes a business model of not caring for the wishes of ones customers one will be called names. A rule roughly as old as commerce.
It's obviously quite debatable to what extent (if at all) this applies to this particular incident.

I would like to set aside whether video games can be attributed to actual violence for the moment.

That's excellent, seeing how this deserves roughly as much debate as climate change denialism.
There are plenty of things into which 100 years of organised psychology have yielded little insight.
But some things are known. Among them: People have a pretty firm grasp of the difference between fiction and reality.
The "studies" asserting the supposed causation you were referring to are rather acrobatic attempts to maneuver around that fact, typically undertaken by psychologists who either have a bad reputation or work in fields that are not well equipped to deal with the matter or both.

Do you game in a civil manner or do you swear like a sailor when playing Halo? Will you change your behavior after reading the tweets?

I don't think this is a question of free speech as much as responsibility to engage in discourse that is civil, rather than vile and obscene.

I am (among other things) one of the few people who frequently play LoL and while doing so never insult their team mates.*
I feel in no way deterred from continuing to do so.

And i am generally very cautious regarding the outlawing (or organised shaming etc.) of any form of "obscenety".

*And i am not one of those contemptible people who say things like "it's just a game" regarding board games and computer games. They are not games, they are sports. And there are ways non-trashy people behave in sports.

To modify my statement: punish those who make threats (as long as it isn't obvious that the threats are sarcastic).

Yeah, that too, if there is a chance that a threat is credible.
Threats and insults. Two very different things.

If you're role-playing in a violent game, is it any surprise if there's some spillover into real life?

It's not easy to compartmentalize. Especially for younger people.

You're sure you're not confusing cause and effect here?

I think what the OP is getting at is 'video game culture' is what is making an increasing number of teenagers give insults such as 'I hope you die of cancer' and things even worse than that more than ever before, and this in itself is a problem.

Yeah, in the olden days misbehaved male teenagers would play outside (i.e. rough up other random male teenagers for all sorts of non-reasons).
Today they sit on the couch and course on the internet.

Humanity is clearly doomed.

I have all sorts of theories on this sort of behavior, being an occasional COD online player myself I hear these kids all the time (they are just as bad online over the mic). I think one of the things that contributes to this is a sort of mob mentality where kids hear and read other kids saying these horrible things and they want to get in on the action, thinking its funny or cool or whatever, so there is a little bit of one upmanship going on.

I suspect the biggest incentive for these kids is this kind of reaction.
If the scale starts with "horrible" here, you'll need some new words once you want to express your feelings regarding war, rape, world hunger and cancer - the real one.

"Kids curse on the internet. My life can never be the same."
First world problems.

Not saying you're not right and they're not wrong. But be aware your reaction is exactly what gets them high on this stuff.

There is currently (Elizabeth Fry on the fiver), but the notes are being changed in the near future, and the £5 note will feature Winston Churchill. A lot of people, quite reasonably, objected to the fact that no women would appear at all and there was a pretty big campaign led by the people mentioned in that article to ensure that the £10 (due to be changed as well) would have a woman on it. For this, they received rape threats.

You mean nobody meticulously planned this and balanced gender as well as religious affiliation, area of achivement and regionalism?

Seriously: Has nobody thought about this beforehand?

It's illegal to send some of those messages by regular post, I don't see why it should be legal just because it's on the internet. People need to be better educated about the law. Some of those things are direct threats, others constitute harassment. That's illegal, plain and simple. We don't need more laws, we just need to enforce the ones we already have.

That's true.
But traditionally there has also been a different threshold for actually prosecuting threats, harassment and insults.
Face to face for example the consequences of such a comment made tuesday 10 a.m. in on office among professionals are typically different from the consequences incurred by the same comment made among drunks at a pub sunday 2 a.m.

One can argue whether this is "right". But anyway it's a consensus society has reached.
People have to get their heads around the evident fact that society has also reached a consensus that a comment made on the internet is not to be treated the same as the same comment made in an actual letter.

And private mailers in other parts of the world do it too.

I believe it may even be required, in some places, to do so.

I know it's not common practice in the UK for private mail. But the UK might just be the exception.

It's not required here. Everyone does though. It's just courtesy.
Also: What happens to your letters when postal services can't figure stuff out (say you made a mistake with the address or something)?

 

[Mise]

That's true.
But traditionally there has also been a different threshold for actually prosecuting threats, harassment and insults.
Face to face for example the consequences of such a comment made tuesday 10 a.m. in on office among professionals are typically different from the consequences incurred by the same comment made among drunks at a pub sunday 2 a.m.

One argue whether this is "right". But anyway it's a consensus society has reached.
People have to get their heads around the evident fact that society has also reached a consensus that a comment made on the internet is not to be treated the same as the same comment made in an actual letter.

Yes and I think the purpose is to change that consensus. Afterall, the goal of rational debate is not to read minds but to change minds.

Personally I think when a person receives 50 threatening, violent messages per hour, it is difficult to say that that person is not being harassed.

 

[metatron]

Yes and I think the purpose is to change that consensus. Afterall, the goal of rational debate is not to read minds but to change minds.

Personally I think when a person receives 50 threatening, violent messages per hour, it is difficult to say that that person is not being harassed.

Kind of comparable to being cursed at by 50 people at a pub up to the point where the victim voluntarily leaves.
Certainly not decent behavior. And you can certainly argue that there should be consequences at least in some cases.
But i don't accept the rational that behavior like this is supposedly always met with punishment in the real world and therefor the is supposed to be true on the internet.

 

[Mise]

Kind of comparable to being cursed at by 50 people at a pub up to the point where the victim voluntarily leaves.

That sort of thing used to happen a lot in the 1950s.

 

[Yeekim]

But i don't accept the rational that behavior like this is supposedly always met with punishment in the real world and therefor the is supposed to be true on the internet.

Behaviour like this rarely even happens in the real world...

 

[Antilogic]

So my connection flaked out and I lost a somewhat longer post here. The gist of what I wanted to say was that we in the gaming community make some distinction between the XBox Live crazy-hardcore FPS gamer types and the more chill and relaxed gamers (of all other types, from TBS guys to casual and so on), and that I would hope the outside community would recognize these distinctions as well.

But what appears to be happening is a blurring of the lines of what is acceptable in the in-community and the outside. And to the outside, the inside looks pretty ugly, which can discourage people from joining the gaming community even if they were not going to be hardcore FPS players but rather casual gamers.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Hardcore FPS players aren't monsters you know. I've seen people ejected from FPS servers for being jerks. I know, it's shocking, but we don't actually beat random women and eat babies between rounds.

As to violence in video games - I really don't like it. It's common because violence makes for very easy game mechanics and rules to model. It's the path of least resistance for developers, and violence/action historically sell well. That being said, I think it stifles innovation. While developers have made great strides in how they model and portray violence, nonviolent game mechanics have been more or less the same for years, if not decades. We still have the same old dialogue trees, the same old house customization mechanics, the same old good(nonviolent)/evil(violent) dichotomies. There really isn't a whole lot of nuance to it. So I'd obviously love to see that change, and games like Proteus, Cart Life, Papers Please (hell, even the vast majority of Minecraft) are really inspiring for the future of nonviolent games.

However, action+competition is going to equal violence ( or racing, and that can get old eventually ) and that's the type of genre I enjoy. I certainly don't have a problem with games that appeal to your tastes being made ( more power to you and anyone who wants something different ) but I don't think it has to be done at the expense of "classic" gamers who want to blow each other up.

The problem I run into isn't that I don't want Prometheus ( which was actually kind of neat, fwiw ) to exist or that I'm offended by it, but that I generally get the vibe that folks like you DON'T want the games I like to exist. You want to take what I like away from me, and that's where I get defensive.

So I'm coming at it from a "live and let live" perspective, but you seem to be coming at it from a purge perspective.

 

[Antilogic]

Hardcore FPS players aren't monsters you know. I've seen people ejected from FPS servers for being jerks. I know, it's shocking, but we don't actually beat random women and eat babies between rounds.

I mean to use the term "[crazy-]hardcore FPS" players to refer to the aggressive super-profane type of gamer that is referred to in the OP or that would be ejected for being a jerk. Not all FPS players would be categorized as such.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Right, but when people appear to want to shut down the genre I get the impression that a lot of broad brushing is, in fact, going on.

Implicit in a lot of these arguments is the idea that we'd be "better off" if we "evolved" to like Prometheus better than Counterstrike and that is, quite frankly, irritating and arrogant.

People have to get their heads around the evident fact that society has also reached a consensus that a comment made on the internet is not to be treated the same as the same comment made in an actual letter.

This consensus is being challenged and, I think, will only result in making the internet an incrementally less interesting place.

Will it work? Hard to say. The internet is a pretty wild place and they haven't even been able to shut down The Silk Road, so I'm optimistic that we can stay fairly unchained for at least the near term.

 

[Dachs]

yeah, well, maybe people wouldn't dump on CS so much if people played more maps than just freaking de_dust

 

[AlpsStranger]

Damn, well Dachs has me on that one

 

[Kyriakos]

CS did seem to attract a rather lowly crowd, FPS probably regularly do :/

But then again so did AOEII online.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I think you guys know where I'm coming from by now. I don't want much more than to do my thing and for you to do your thing. Hell, some of my favorite games are nonviolent: Minecraft, Sim City, I even like The Sims 3 a lot.

But my absolute favorites are definitely violent and I freely confess that my "Top 5" probably all involve either strategic warfare or direct shooting.

Still, gaming is a big place. We can have multiple communities within it. The Counterstrike community doesn't need to have the same etiquette as, for instance, the World of Warcraft community.

And I wouldn't exactly be a member of this site if my taste in gaming was limited to shooting people in the face, would I?

EDIT: I don't even use Twitter so I can't really do anything about idiots threatening people on twitter. Threatening people online is quite beneath me and I think if you were to game beside me you'd probably find me pretty inoffensive. I'm a good sport, win or lose, and I rarely blow my top. Good conduct is an asset to any competitive community.

 

[Symphony D.]

I can't say i like Joyce.

You seem to be missing the point that comparing writers separated by 2300 years is like comparing apples and hand grenades, considering the novel didn't exist as a thing until Cervantes. It's like taking Epic Rap Battles of History at face value.

Oh, yes, well, Mr. Rogers and Mr. T are both entertainers, so which is superior???

 

[Kyriakos]

You seem to be missing the point that comparing writers separated by 2300 years is like comparing apples and hand grenades, considering the novel didn't exist as a thing until Cervantes. It's like taking Epic Rap Battles of History at face value.

Oh, yes, well, Mr. Rogers and Mr. T are both entertainers, so which is superior???

Maybe it is not a good idea to claim someone is missing the deep point you had in mind only to go on to post a platitude? :/

 

[Luckymoose]

Maybe it is not a good idea to claim someone is missing the deep point you had in mind only to go on to post a platitude? :/

This doesn't make sense in the English language.