November 18, 2007
Toy guns concern some people. Video game violence troubles others.As reported by Monica Hesse of the Washington Post, Nintendo's Wii Zapper peripheral, which launches tomorrow, will likely provide ammunition to critics from both camps:
The Zapper is white and elegant, all sleek curves and shiny surfaces...The name Zapper is a homage to the company's first Zapper, an orange ray gun sold with the original Nintendo in 1985.
This new Zapper, the Wii Zapper, with its snub nose and smooth grip, is the prettiest submachine gun ever sold. If that's what it is.
Outgoing Nintendo VP George Harrison told Hesse:
We don't think it even really looks like a gun. It's a utility that allows for more diverse styles of play.
Hesse notes some parental disagreement with Harrison's view:
In a recent New Jersey Star-Ledger online survey, one grandparent responded to news of Zapper by writing, "Why don't they enclose an application to the NRA in every box as well? ... The marketing person who came up with this brainchild of an idea should be fired."
Wii fans can't wait for the Zapper. Damian Crisafulli, 14, felt that critics were "paranoid," while 16-year-old Jonathan Moreira said:
I think it's going to make it feel like you're actually holding a gun in real life. It'll change everything about FPS.
Hesse notes long-standing objections to toy guns, offering a fascinating - and comprehensive - look at the subject:
The history of objections to toy guns is almost as long as the history of the toy, from Rose Simone, concerned Chicago citizen, who organized toy-gun-burning bonfires in 1934 and 1935, to the state senators in New Jersey who are stumping for a statewide ban on selling imitation firearms to those younger than 18...
A Chicago judge huffed in support [of Rose Simone], "When [the boy] gets used to pulling the trigger of a toy gun, it's not a long step toward pulling the trigger of a real one..."
GP: See any parallels to the game violence debate?
Back and forth, parental permissiveness, parental anxiety. With World War II, guns were patriotic again, even in play, but the assassinations and body bags of the '60s changed that. Sears and Bloomingdale's stripped toy guns from their Christmas inventories in 1968...
"I find it fascinating," Hasbro's then Chief Executive Officer Alan Hassenfeld said in "Timeless Toys," a history, "how we can legislate toy guns, but we can't legislate real guns."
Comments
By the way, I think people didn't have a problem with the old zapper because it was for duck hunt and we all know how some people love their hunting.
the remote brain did not respond
This was the feds or the Californians? And shooting down planes, seriously? That's retarded.
There's people out there who simply want kids shrinkwrapped and delivered to them by the school system at the age of 18. Kids need to learn, they have to get out thier and experience life as a child.
These anti game, anti toy gun people are the same fear campaining moral alarmists that are responsible for parents being scared to let their children play in the street and getting kids charged with sexual harrasment charges. It's ridiculous!
Kids are going to run, play, play with toy guns and sticks as make-believe swords. They'll hurt themselves and hear words and pick up things we really rather they didn't hear about. but it's all part of growing up and that's what this is really about; it's not about violence and it's not about indecency, it's about people who want to control the enviroment out children grow up in and instead of letting them grow up the idea is to have children bought up in their idea of an ideal world.
This sort of thing scares me; the more we try to insulate and protect our kids from the harsh realites of the world, the more blasé the problems with our world will seem to them.
THat's what I meant. It has been a while since I have used one. ;)
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
That's quite true :/ .
Why is the trigger on the fore grip?
Oh, right, sure, holding a piece of plastic that weighs less than your a laptop is exactly the same as holding a 10+ pound rifle three times the zapper's size. (or however the size/weight ratioes are. I'm ballparking it, at least.)
Yep. Uh-huh. Totli. >_>
Also, they are late. The Wiiblaster already came out, and it more closely resembles a gun than this thing, a sawed off shotgun to be precise
At the rate they are going I am waiting for a ban on the Supersoaker.
about 5 lbs fully loaded for a submachine gun, which you could argue looks roughly like the zapper.
I think this boils down to the same problem we have in the video game violence debate because it relies on peoples' opinions, not scientific study or comprehensive fact. The Rose Simone case quote points this out: is there actually a study out there that proves children are desensitized to gun violence by playing with toy guns, or is this just a 'rational' idea that seems plausible?
Furthermore, CNN was playing an interview with a young child who's been learning to hunt with his father. At ten, he's clocked more 'sniper' training in a blind than I have at almost 30. He is proficient with several rifles and a crossbow. Why aren't people worried about that leading to criminal activity?
There is one major difference between video games and toy guns: Children HAVE been shot by police by mistake when they were holding toy guns. I do not know of a similar situation for simply owning (and walking around holding) a game on Disc or Cartridge media...
hehe.
What amazes me though, is these people will get hysterical over a toy plastic gun for a game, but won't bat an eyelid when teens go off paintballing: probably the closest thing you can get to shooting real people with a gun.
I think the argument is not that it looks exactly like a fire arm. Rather that the action of emulating a kill in a similar posture will desensitized the user to real gun use.
Honestly you'd need an impossible scientific study to prove it one way or the other, but there is anecdotal evidence both sides can claim as 'fact' to support their case.
Take the US Navy for example. They have said that their Top Gun recruits progress through training at twice the speed now that they did in the '80s. Why? Not because they 'know tactics' or 'are hardened killers', but because playing flight sims have tought them where all of the controls are, and what all of the dials and readouts mean. The result is a 18 year old who knows most of the academics of flying before he gets into a cockpit for the first time.
You can spin that 'evidence' either way.
one one hand the person does know more, and this could result in them being an effective combat pilot more quickly.
on the other, they have no G training, limited tactical training, no parachuting training, no personal defense training, no soldiering -- basically things they have to study for years of schooling and military training.
take that for what it is. i'm sure everyone has already made up their own mind.
To me, this thing doesn't look like a real weapon at all. If they ban this thing, they should go right ahead and ban hand-held vacuum cleaners as well.
However a simulator, at least an accurate simulator can account for weight, kickback, reloading, even jamming, as a military grade flight simulator can accurately duplicate things like wind shear and atmospheric conditions.
This, device doesn't do any of that. that's there the argument falls apart
Doesn't have anything else going for it though.
Do not like X (toy guns/MA/AO/Porn/etc) for the Y (Wii)?
Then do not buy toy guns for the Wii. The rest of us will leave you to cry in the corner.
You know society is insane when virtually no uproar is created when people try to ban/discourage toy guns, but the gates of proverbial hell break loose the moment someone says anything about bringing US gun laws into accord with other democracies around the world.
Guns = Real Pain, Death, and Harm.
Toy Gun = Fictional Fun.
Pretty sure Nintendo's (very) unoffical reaction is - blow me.
Mind you, I'm now wondering when Killer7 for the Wii will be released . . . I've got it for gamecube but its for another region. As consumers we should be flexing our muscle to change that crap, not paying attention to people who'll be dead soon anyway and have absolutely nothing to say over what happens in computer games.
Humans are inherently stupid, that much is true of people who think that the Wii Zapper is anything like a gun.
Scary. Will they be able to do ANYTHING for themselves?
The original Zapper was grey and white. They changed it to orange much later.
Water Guns
Nerf Guns
Toy guns, need I say more?
There is no noticeable trigger pull.
It no where near as heavy.
No kick
No sights
November 18th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
404: Sanity Not Found
lol!
As already mentioned, why is the trigger on the foregrip? The foregrip is used for stability, and I know that from watching movies. And who decided that it would be ergonomic to have the C button there? The Nunchuck attachment is going to be uncomfortable.
Haven't we learned that the act of simulating a thing is just as bad as doing it? I mean, that kid trained on chicken fingers! Totally desensitizes him to holding a real gun and killing someone. Someone do something about the chicken fingers!!
A Christmas Story always comes to mind when I think of toy guns, because of how Ralphie wants that BB toy gun that he can't get because he'd "shoot his eye out". It depicts how back in the pre and post World War II, guns were patriotic, they were the symbol of our country, and kids still loved cops and robbers and the Wild West. Today guns don't hold the same vision as they used to. Cops and robbers have been replaced by Special Ops, SWAT, and other such units. The Wild West has been replaced by urban America and inner-city gangs. Toy guns though are still a symbol of masculinity, it's socially acceptable for boys to play with toy guns of any sort.
I and probably many other people who were in the Boy Scouts way back when learned proper gun safety and learned how to fire guns, and I think that boys and girls of any suitable age can be taught proper gun safety and procedures and doing so they would be less likely to use them irresponsibly.
As for the Wii Zapper, it's a toy, and even then, it's a shell that you put the Wiimote and the Nunchuck in. You play the Zelda target practice game. I'm sure there will be a few more shooting games for it, but frankly, so what? It's entertainment, and contrary to Jack Thompson or anyone else, video games DO NOT train people to kill. You may learn the reflexes, but there is no way I can go pick up a real gun and handle it the same way. Besides, I don't need a video game to pick up a gun and just fire it indiscriminately into a room, that's quite easy for any person to do, and that's the little detail that these people miss, there is no precision to most of the recent school shootings, hence why they bring extra ammo always.
Technically speaking pulling the trigger of an purely imaginary gun, and shouting "bang bang" is not much longer of a step towards pulling the trigger of a really one. Indeed, playing with a toy gun is an optional step along the way. Particularly in families where one or both parents takes their kids out, and teaches them proper use/care/and safety for the household guns.
@koichan
Paintballing or Airsoft. More soft Airsoft by virtue of it's guns being specifically made to look like their real counterparts.
All the whiners can go crawl back under the rock they've been living under since the NES Zapper days.
There is no way that the forefathers didn't have gun-related homicides and suicides. They knew about those things and put that amendment in regardless, because they knew that the average citizen could not actually rely on law enforcement protecting them in a timely manner, since law enforcement is reactive by nature.
As for the Wii zapper, it kind of looks like the SMG from Halo. I don't know how anybody could possible learn to shoot with this thing. No sights, no kick, no ammo, no weight, no noise, no smoke, no nothing.
That isn't going to happen, and they know it. So all they can do is bitch about things that can be legislated against.