We need a press release about the "Devastating effects the anti-game moral eleitists can have on the 1st Ammendment and Parental Rights".

Violent media may cause more aggressive play in children but aggresive play is a perfectly natural part of childhood and not harmful. There is a difference between real life violence/aggression with intent to harm and aggressive and violent play amoungst kids. Kids may pretent to punch and kick one another, wrestle, or shoot one another with toy guns or their fingers after playing a violent game or watching a watch a violent movie/T.V. show, BUT they don't intent to actually hurt or harm one another. And while some kids may get carried away and do hurt one another, they never intented to do that and are usually really appoligetic and sorry afterwards. Unintentional harm can come from anywhere though including playing violent sports like hockey, dodgeball and football but we don't consider those things devestating and harmful to kids.

There's three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and NIMF conference conclusions.

Who is the NIMF trying to influence? Kids, they're beyond their reach. Parents? Try to reach a parent who have been themselves buying GTA or Resident Evil games for their kids, you think a warning of "this videogame might be harmful to your child psychological health" is really going to work? The gaming community? We already have formed our opinion about these groups and it will be almost impossible for NIMF or any organization to make a single dent in our behavioral attitutudes toward playing or puchasing video games. These groups seem to forget that the average gamer is 29 years old. Good luck NIMF and good luck Jack Thompson's of the world, we're too big and too powerful for you to ever become relevant or influential with our purchasing habits or our entertainment experiences. We're on the side of the videogame industry because we want our games unfiltered by politicians and what we see as the moral police, we want our games to push the edge in creativity and adventure, so keep up the good research on "likelihood effects" and get back to us in 10 years when you think you have a plan. I'm sure we'll listen...

How can "Increase the likelihood of aggressive behavior" equate to "devestating"?

Doesn't "Increase the likelihood" mean that they still can't establish a causative and direct effect between videogames and teen violence?

"health experts and organizations agreed to a joint statement regarding the devastating effects of video games on children and youth."

"experts"? experts on what? It seems when ever some one brings up this topic, every one and their mother has an expert. JT had his expert gamer trying to find "violent content" in bully. NIMF has its medical health experts saying games are "devistating". Who are these "experts"? How do we know they even exist?

Also, Where is the proof that video games are "devistating" to our youth? The sad part is that they say stuff like this and no one has the guts to ask why? Or if they do ask why the people who said that it was devistating give no hard evidence to back it up. They just say some generalized statement we have herd before over and over again. Again, making this summit totally worthless!

@ Verbinator

Exactly. I was going to type up this long-winded anti-academia/research group/"parental activists" rant, but you summed it up so succinctly.

Now my tax dollars go toward destrying my hobby. What a steaming pile.

@ NIMF

"Behavior science research demonstrates that playing violent video games can increase the likelihood of aggressive behavior in children and youth."

How?

@ Gaming Industry

Ask that one question. All you had to do was accept the invite and ask that one tiny question - How?

Give me proof or give me vague accusations, unclear studies, and bad science!

Its nice they all agree it was devastating but where the hell is the proof? Oh right there isn't any. In fact the numbers show that violence among teens is decreasing.

So they sit around, discuss things and come to the conclusion that video games are, without a doubt, harmful? So is that how scientific research is done these days? Just sit around and decide what's what?

"For the first time ever, academic scholars, medical experts, child health advocates and representatives from the video game industry had a thoughtful discussion on the video game rating system and research on the impact these games have on our children."

A bit too late aren't we?




"I am optimistic that if researchers and health experts continue to have a meaningful dialogue with the video game industry, we can make great strides in improving the ratings, public education about how important it is to use the ratings, and in creating public policies that make
sense."

You say that as if the ESRB is broken, which it is not.



"Medical and health experts and organizations agreed to a joint statement regarding the devastating effects of video games on children and youth."

1. Prove that they were "experts"
2. Prove that the effect of videogames is "devastating"



"Behavior science research demonstrates that playing violent video games can increase the likelihood of aggressive behavior in children and youth."

Yeah, and behavior science research demonstrates that watching violent television, "play fighting" and other violent acts CAN increase the likelihood of aggressive behaviour, but it's actually the parents job to ensure they know what their kid is playing.

No one is denying that's it's possible that violent media COULD have a harmful effect on people but like Brer said the burden of proof lies with the believer to prove it. So far the so-called evidence doesn't even come close to showing this.

Soundbites and Knee-jerk profit making.

NIMF Hasn't changed much.

Sorry for the double post, but why am I not surprised that NIMF had a summit in which they went in with pre-assumed scape-goats for problems, and lo and behold, that's exactly what they found.

It's so cheap it's beneath nasty.

I am optimistic that if researchers and health experts continue to have a meaningful dialogue with the video game industry, we can make great strides in improving the ratings, public education about how important it is to use the ratings, and in creating public policies that make sense.

Eductate the public about the ratings? Isn't the public going to be confused considering how you've been saying the ratings are broken, meaningless, misleading, deceptive, and ineffective?

I'd love to hear what these "improvements" will be. There are some improvements that will help make the ratings more effective and informative. However if anyone mentions "playing the game all the way through", I'll remind them that other ratings groups (some government run) across the planet all looked at GTA:SA and Oblivion, and NONE OF THEM spotted the naughty content. Some of them even play the games they rate... So please, stop using those as examples of how the system is broken.

There was a really good quote in The Escapist yesterday about aggresive playing.

This might be paraphrased a bit since I'm just remembering it off the top of my head.

"Even among primates there is a clear distinction between play fighting and actual voilence."

What amazes me the most is that all these "experts" can't seem to grasp that concept.

Isn’t the public going to be confused considering how you’ve been saying the ratings are broken, meaningless, misleading, deceptive, and ineffective?

I’d love to hear what these “improvements” will be.

My best guess? A red tape-laden, heavily bureaucratic system where every last thing about the game has to be properly documented and broken down into a series of codes and/or labels. The end result would be a heavy, complex system that nobody understands because instead of a quick E or T, games would have long, indescribable ratings like 5/5/3/red/blue/double-black.

Think, HHGttG Vogons and you get the idea.

I want to know how NIMF thinks thier experts are so more more "experty" than the man who wrote "Seduction of the Innocent". A book that said that comic books would lead to DOOM!

Comics are still around, there was no doom. That expert was wrong. So what does NIMF have that Dr. Fredric Wertham didnt?

This seems odd to me. I thought, despite all the media hype, that youth violence and crime (and violence and crime in general) have been in decline over the last decade...a decade that marks a rise in the prevalence and sophistication of videogames.

http://www.cjcj.org/press/hype_skews.html (sorry, from 2001)

and also: http://www.cjcj.org/jjic/myths_facts.php

“Even among primates there is a clear distinction between play fighting and actual voilence.”
Why stop at primates? Look at my friends' cats. The bite, claw, and scratch at each other, but it's just for fun. Neither of them get hurt or anything, and a moment later, one will start grooming the other.
Anyone who suggests that children can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality is effectively saying that children are less inteligent than cats.
That being said, it can sometimes be difficult for a small child to tell where to draw the line. That's why it's important for a parent to sit down with their child and teach them wrong from right. Trying to shelter them completely from violence isn't going to work. Violence is everywhere. TV, movies, books, sports. It didn't start with video games.

It sucks seeing lies upon lies upon lies like these get spewed out by the NIMF, PTC, peacaholics,JT, and other politicians with little hope of retribution on the industry's part. they need to get off their asses!!

The thing I always love about this: numerous studies (I don't have citations, but someone less lazy than I can find them) have found that videogames are not harmful and do not cause increased violence or aggressiveness in children/teenagers. Some studies have shown a correlation between videogames and violence, but a correlation is not causation; in other words, violent people are more likely to enjoy violent videogames, but those people were already predisposed to violence anyway.

I would also like to know who the experts were at this panel. Was Steven Kent there? Henry Jenkins? No, not likely.

So I'm calling bullshit on this NIMF ridiculousness.

Sadly, we gamers can't have a voice, for most of us are citizens still in a formative stage. Academics and researchers who have studied games certainly see them under an old fashioned optic that doesn't apply to our psychology, nor to the context games are being developed and played. Many of us have used the art argument before, because it's fair: Every kind of art or entertainment (or entertaining art) has been seen as a terrible influence for the youth, such as homosexual tendencies, Rock and Roll, non realistic paintings, the Werther and many, many other things most of us can think of.
However, our time will come, when most of us understand what gaming means and have a "license" to be considered experts in different fields.
Yes, we are revolutionaries.

I've decide to do a short post. What goes in will come out, this is true of books and everything else. The truth is masking their intentions and their just looking for controllable factors. My sentences are not very well conected, in fact they could each be a paragraph. That would be stupid though.

If you honestly care about this issue to the point that you wish to avoid repeating their errors, however much good that will do you, figure out why the Democrats are in the picure and understand the meaning of federalism. Consider the difference between trying your best in an overwhelming situation and being prideful enough to believe you can "try your best" by focussing on problems that you feel are controlable, yet have nothing to do with you.

I'll tell you right now that video game violence does result in real-life violence, in the same way owning a hangun doesn't force you to murder someone. Legalitic control of morality and ethics though, is man's pathetic method of pretending that he is even capable of doing what is productive, that he is winning whatever fight he's cooked up in his head.

There is a difference between seeing a hooker's head bashed in with a baseball bat on tv and doing it yourself in a game. I don't care what science has to say about this, everyone already knows and has forever. We can't control the world and it's a good thing to do what you think is right, because the consequences are outside the logical grasp of any human being no matter how paralyzed and quirky. So you can't easily fix a danger because you honestly can't comprehend any of the real factors.

Everyone believes they have the answer in some form (consider how preachy my own writing sounds) and it is out there, but arrogance nullifies truth. People like JT shouldn't exist, logic should be plain enough, but they are there. In fact, you are a crazy fanatical monkey incapable of understanding reality, you might even choose to believe the world has no basis, as if your stupidity and ignorance proves the immaterial foundation of our world. And we all believe that on some level because we're all crazy ignorant fanatical monkys, it is pride that makes us deny the state of our species as a self-representing testemant to that very fact. I firmly admit to being an idiot, I admit that I do not know what I'm talking about on any level, but incredibly I believe the same of everyone I have ever spoken to. Yet we still converse and as long as we eventually do end up somewhere other than what we intended we know that we have made the effort to not be completely stupid.

Every word contains its own poison and sugar and people must be seeking something incredibly darker to waste everything on a lifelong of witch hunts and voluntarily rabid personalities. People like Jack Thompson suffer from the same illness as everyone else and thus the only way to "win" is to actually care about the negative content people spew in hatred and provide an example of the result. We can't fight our own ignorance and all destructive intents serve to do nothing more than destroy. If you set out to destroy pedophilia for instance, you will make human beings bleed and if you seek to solve not the problem, but the human being you're still only halfway there. If you intend to win in a situation you will find it incredibly easy, because people are very easy to infuriate, to mutilate and otherwise twist, destruction intended is destruction performed if you will.

So "activism" by many definitions will simply bring more pain outside it's intended bubble of reality. If people are willing to villainize games and go out of their way to detroy the evil, they destroy much more in the process. Essentially any solution not enveloping the whole of humanity and beyond is usess (if not openly maliscous). To seek action against people that oppose your beliefs (such as Jack Thompson or scientists restating common knowledge) is to do exactly what they are doing and it is not any more noble to try to protect something by deestroying with activism. "Bible-Thumping Parents" want to protect their children by destroying art and imagination, "Smelly Hippies" want to stop world war by making people late to work, "Dirty-Harry Rethuglicans" want to stop murderous mass slaughter by taking unwilling human lives, the list goes on and on because it includes the basic activities of the human race for the last ten-thousand or so years.

Activism creates the governments they intended to fix. We can't seem to stop hating because our ignorance doesn't provide alternatives.

So you can give up caring, or you can take every kick in the face until you can figure out what you're actually supposed to be doing.

Sacrifice...is a different sort of thing than destruction though. It may exist only because it is the corresponding irony to our life. To let someone kick you in the face and not ask for "anything" in return. To let the man keep you down because you don't wanna be like him. To be the loser, not because it isn't worth it, but because your sacrifice is the only thing different thaan the destruction you could bring the world.

Catholics are sometimes known for whipping themeselves for sins they have commited. for destruction they put on destruction and that isn't real sacrifice, simply more destruction. If both guilt and will allow you to, go deep into the inner city in the dangerous places for no other reason than you feel you might be needed there. See what people think of your religeon, be beaten, stabbed, even raped, not because you sought that pain (for that indeed is self-mutilation), but because the alternative was to destroy human beings in some way. If you can do that 24/7, you might become noble, might even begin to escape the cycle of ignorance that makes you stupid. I mentioned the Catholic self-punishment not because I condemn it, but because if taken at face value it seemed to make a reasonable example.

And I certainly can't do what I mentioned (I could, yet won't) and I'm not ordering because it's not my business.

News like above will keep coming, in one form or another and you're no better. If you want to change the world, you can't play by the rules. And if you don't, then it's you against everything mankind has done since its conception. Good luck keeping "the man" from taking our games.

Babus

PS: If you havn't already noticed, that might have been a tad longer than I intended. And actually, I meant it when I said good luck, I'm a tad frustrated right now and have opted to go play Disgaea.

The first one mind you, I sadly get distracted and don't finish very much.
Ever

@Claudius

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!!!! :p

Seriously though everything from rock and roll to videogames has been considered harmful to youth. What makes NIMF think that they are right?

Ah.. but THIS TIME they didn't make the same mistakes, which is why this new kind of influence really WILL do exactly what we said all the other types of evil influences did. We might have been wrong about Comics, Jazz, Rock'N'Roll, Rap, Dungeons and Dragons, Heavy Metal, Motorbikes, Homosexuals, Blacks and Native Americans, but this time, we're SURE we've found the culprit.

@terminator44

I dont think any amount of study could truely prove the human equasion with even 30% certaincy,sure you could say doing part 1 might lead to part 2 but more often than not part 1 will lead to infinity as every person is different reaction to different situations /stimuli.

example:I play doom and then i have a sudden urge during stage 5 for cherry pie....hmmmmm...cherry pie(not the sex kind if that idiot JT is reading >.>)how did playing a blood bath 16 bit pallette game like doom lead to me wanting to eat pie?

herin lies sciences 1 major flaw...thiers no such thing as absolute 100% certainy even on things we think are a absolute always has that very minute doubt in them.Whats worse is you have study groups that go into the study baised to begin with another example:

*hands a grant to a office to study JT phycology and 2 weeks later*

"um heres the report JT got raped in the butt by pong san andreas and also sodomizes girrafees with 71% efficiency,also his body is made of 30% lies,
20% grandstanding ,39% retarded ape man and 11% insane"

despite that fact that i could believe all of the above thiers still that scientific doubt since the guy was baised to begin with cuase *gasp*i paid him to say those things!

conclussion:do all the studies you want they will never be scientificly conclusive.

ps:also i think NIMF,JT and company eat baby pandas to keep going,news at 11.

I did a research project on Video game violence for two seperate classes. My findings, aggressive video games just PRIME aggressive thoughts. From these aggressive thoughts CAN lead to external aggression, especially to those unable to control themselves.

I can look for my sources about it, but from those i have concluded that there is no direct link of video games causing kids to become violent.
Video games are just caught in a cross fire.

Solution, have parents play games with the children, play games themselves, and have the Parents determine if their child is mature enough to play those types of games.

Studies have already been done, and research papers have already been made. the only thing is the new generation is born in this areas, and is the only real reason I can see that these studies need to be done again.

I'll try to look for my sources when i get home

@ Phantom.
Is any research ever really Conclusive? The problem with trying to research the subject of video games is that EVERYONE has their own personal view, likes, dislikes, and Backgrounds.

backgrounds meaning, how the person grew up, in what type of environment, how were they treated, etc.

There are way too many factors to consider if this research is to ever be done "right."

@Diceman

Of course I know that very little in scientifically certain. What I meant was that I'm tired of these Fredrick Wertham wannabes trying to make inconclusive research sound like indisputable evidence. Such people aren't even fit to utter the word "science." I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but these people really give actual scientists and researchers a bad thing.

I'm not saying we go into the study I suggested looking for a link. On the contrary, that would be detrimental to the study, as you would have objective bias. Still, even if there is no causal link between violent entertainment and violence, a lot could still be learned about human nature and how people generally respond to fictional violence vs. real-world violence. There are many more unanswered questions about violent entertainment's effect on people. Do people with violent tendancies really like such entertainment more than common people? Is our lust for blood really just a natural instinct, or something more? What has been the effect on overall society? What made the ancient gladatorial games so popular? Could such games ever return? You can see where I'm going with this.

THAT is why we need a REAL study on the effects of violence. We may not get anything concrete, we may not determine the realtionship between violent entertainment and real-world violence but we would have a much better picture on the effect of such entertainment on society, and not just the warped, blurry pictures painted by agenda pushers like JT. If we truly got serious about this kind of thinking, it would greatly reduce the credibilty of these self-appointed "experts."

@Phantom

"Yes, it’s true that there’s no real solid research showing a causative relationship. But there’s no solid research for our side, either."

You're making a basic mistake here. The burden of proof in cases like this lies with the people claiming the existence of a previously unrecorded phenomenon.

Brer
all the more reason to have you,politician's by definition now adays take care of them selfs and them selfs alone....

It will be a sad day when/if these witless morons decimate the game industry like they did the comic industry......even tho the game industry is not running at full speed quality wise its still heads above hollywood and thier cheap crappy films...just think of the horror if hollywood got to fill the void.

From the link in Brer's post above:

" In more general terms, the 'backwards' approach involves the mistake of looking at individuals, rather than society, in relation to the mass media. The narrowly individualistic approach of some psychologists leads them to argue that, because of their belief that particular individuals at certain times in specific circumstances may be negatively affected by one bit of media, the removal of such media from society would be a positive step. This approach is rather like arguing that the solution to the number of road traffic accidents in Britain would be to lock away one famously poor driver from Cornwall; that is, a blinkered approach which tackles a real problem from the wrong end, involves cosmetic rather than relevant changes, and fails to look in any way at the 'bigger picture'."

I think that section of the article is particularly good. I am seriously considering purchasing Gauntlett's book, even though it deals with television mostly, at first glance.

Newspapers don’ t need to just add blogs, databases and video. Newspapers need to radically rethink the fundamental product they produce and the business model they operate under.