A gamers view on violence Thread

Or even a simple matching game like mahjong.
On the computer you can match them even faster, so it has an even better effect on your brain then the real game.
Playing "brain" games, similar to mahjong, left handed is good for you as well.

Edited by: ngs616

Not sure about the "rowdy mother fuckers" and
screams, but for the sirens i would say they arent all that bad. Police
gets called in situations like a drunken guy not getting out of a phone
booth etc. One of my relatives is an ambulance driver and everyday he
has to get a drunken guy out of said phone booth, more then 3 times.
And a lot of times some guy calls the police first etc. So 40 sirens a
day may seem much but if you know the causes youd prolly say, aww who
cares. And youd have to say the population of your city. 40 sirens a
day for a town of 10.000 poeple is different then 40 sirens for a city
of 4.000.000 poeple ^^

Yep, so true.

See thats why i dont get the US. The founding fathers said some good stuff. The constituition of the US is pretty good too. So why are most of the citizens so damn stupid as to willingly give up the rights their founding fathers gave them, they even paid a big blood toll for it too. This goes for other countrys too.(Germany)

And if you think all of this has nothing to do with games youre wrong. In Germany some politicians are currently trying to prevent the production and selling of "action games" while no one really knows what the definition of an "action game" would look like. Super Mario prolly would count as one.
This doesnt go as far as the patriot act but its on the same path. Makes me angry and sad *:(

The cops dont turn their sirens on for a drunk guy in a phone booth. the city pop is about 80k.

But regardless the people here arent the way they are because of video games.
The most violent people (lower class) cant/can barely afford them.
(if anyone is to blame it is 1990-2010 rap music; i think it has a much worse effect on young people then video games do.)

Edited by: ngs616

I don't think the argument has really become 'uncivilized'. Rather, the argument for violent video games rarely gets a fair chance. The media has already swayed many people away from video games with all of the sensationalist stories.

Very true. Who defines the genre in this case? The developer (could pay the right people off to get a different classification)? The government (dangerous)? Or an independent agency (just as dangerous)? There seems to be no appropriate group, that wouldn't be suceptible to extreme corruption, or that wouldn't be biased.

For the love of it, that should be unnecessary. But you are right, people don't care enough anymore to even send an email or letter to their politicians and leaders.

"Peace through superior firepower." The really interesting thing your argument brings up is that this argument can become "you vs. us." There are "gamers," and then there are "non-gamers." But this line has been blurred. I know that an increasing number of senior centers and assisted living homes are offering Wii gaming to get seniors moving. Gaming has become more and more mainstream; I believe it is more "hardcore" gamers that are the target.

I know you're not trying to be racist or mean or whatever, but that solution has never worked. There is no reason to force people to be the same, but there are so many different classifications in society and so much overlap, that keeping people separate like this would be impossible. Sure, person x is a gamer, and could therefore be segregated with other gamers. But certainly gamers are not all the same. The very sound of the idea brings up the thought of the distopia. Certainly, if "gamers" were segregated, the "non-gamers" might begin to worry that the gamers are all together becoming more effective killing machines. What kind of fight might ensue then?

I want to be clear that I don't blame all rap music. There are some good artists out there that have something meaningful to say. But I do believe that some of this music has created a culture where violence is a way of life. Somebody say something you don't like for some reason? The music teachers violence is the answer. End up going to prison because of it? That's part of the culture. Then, there is plenty of violence in the prison. It simply encourages a persistent culture of violence.

Certainly there is something to be said about the fact that the vast majority of those in prison are male.

It's easy to imagine where this course of action could go. The government would then have to crack down in piracy. Gaming would become a "black-market" kind of thing. Chances are, the people who would still be playing games would form an "underground" culture, which could breed much more violence then just letting it go.

But do games always show violence as the ultimate solution? In most of the games in question, if you don't act, the enemy is probably going to kill you. And then, you have to consider than there are plenty of RPGs (i.e. KotOR) where you can explore peaceful options through dialogue. And I think there is one thing you are not considering: the focus on violence in many video games may very well be a side-effect of our currently limited technology. Taking a virtual vacation using current technology would be boring and unrealistic; therefore, there is no demand for it. Who's not to say that in the future, with said "holodeck" immersion, games won't turn away from violence for the most part. Violence makes current games interesting. But when you get that realistic, are people really going to want to be immersed in something tantamount to the "real deal"? The kind of technology you are talking about could offer such broader horizons.

It's something I notice when I read through games news sites or any other place focusing on gaming. Many current ( and upcoming titles ) boast with having lots of violence and sex. Now I do not claim this to be the case for any game out there or even the majority ( if we also look at Indie and Hobbyists titles ) but some developer head once said ( no idea anymore who ) that to sell a game nowadays you have to stick out of the mass and the way to achieve this is to add more violence and sex ( or let's say simply what's considered bad in our society ). This line alone worried me a bit since it blocks what you mentioned the creative use of technology. Why misusing improvements in gaming technology for more violence instead of playing around with different types of game mechanics the new technology offers?

Now concerning your point about the RPG actions. Most of the RPGs I know do not allow you to not kill something if your task requires you to. There is no other option. How about telling your victim about what you have been tasked to do and tell him to hide for a short time so you can tell your task-giver that you did what he asked although you are lying? I've not seen an RPG yet where this had been an option without being coded for one specific situation. In general I've not seen an RPG where I can actually choose what I want to do. Now people can claim that sandbox title X or Y can do this but do they really? Can you choose such an option whenever you want not when the developer prepared this scenario beforehand? I know no such title so far. But that now goes into sandbox games and their problems of being just a sandbox but not actually allowing the player free will which is not what this topic is about.

Bottom line is developers increase violence in their games to gather more customers. Customers buy the violent games sending the wrong signal to the developers ( that this is what they want and nothing else ). So we are in a spiral going upwards. Fortunately though the games industries kills itself right now with their actions so chances are Indies and others with more creative ( and less violence oriented ) games can show that this media is not all about violence like the politicians belief right now.

EDIT: One point I forgot. You mentioned the situation of the player having to shoot first to not get killed. One of the recent mods ( Research and Development ) is a good example of the opposite. The player is shot at and attacked but he has to act using ( more or less non-violent ) different means to this threat. It's a bit funny but you said yourself the player has to shoot back. But in fact there are usually other options if you are smart ( or a little MacGyver ). That's not directed at you in no way, you just happen to bring up that example to nail something up on.

Edited by: Dragonlord

I skimmed over this topic and i plan to go back and read it later but ...

Gibberstein wrote:... Of course, Deathmatch is going to remain popular, but we manage to frag each other at LAN parties without feeling any sort of inclination to shoot each other in real life. So even if the AI you are fragging is self-aware and intelligent enough to hold a conversation with you, that's not going to change the basic fact that it's all pretend -you're still fragging the avatar, not killing the individual. As a bonus, maybe if we did have self-aware AI bots, I might get a better standard of conversation between rounds

This quote ... made me worried about the future ...

the fact is i really don't want to have an intelligent conversation with a bot ... one that is capable of digital speech, digital feeling, digital pain ...

because in reality we are all just really complex organic "bots" in an even more extremely complex system ... so even though "he" lives in a system that is a subspace of our system ... does that make him not alive?

Life cannot be unequivocally defined ... so what about intelligent life? ... considering it is indeed a subclass of life?

I know he probably wasn't talking as hypothetically as me but ... thats just what i thought of when i read it ...

Edited by: Assaultman67

This is correct. I didn't mean though that you go and play an FPS without killing. What I've been after is more that if you look at the game itself theoretically you would have additional options to solve the problem although these are not implemented and usable by the player.

Edited by: Dragonlord

You need a reward system for this and it can be very simple. Taking your example if you fight chances are you get damaged somehow. Make medkits scarce to emphasis this. If though you find a different way to overcome your foes you will not take any damage ( I call this "you can't shot what you can't see" ). Not only would you then have an advantage if you don't pick a fight with guns blazing you would also get fun out of it. It can be as rewarding to trick an opponent in a hilarious way than putting a bullet between his heads. Of course if you don't give the non-violent solution an advantage it won't be chosen that easily. Again this is the responsibility of the game developers to think outside the box and giving the player room for alternatives.

Some time ago i thought about a system that doesnt reward non violent behaviour rather then punishing violent one. I.E. make your character super strong in the beginning and for each person you kill/damage/talk bad (whatever suits the game) your power decreases. This is an interesting concept, though it has some flaws. For example how do prevent the player from becoming redicilously weak etc

Hypothetically, What if i created a bot that was controlled by an exact replication of the human brain and its body was controlled was nothing but a digital avatar in a digital world?

I guess it all boils down to a hypothetical "When does artificial intelligence become intelligence?"

Damn, so much to take in on this thread, why did I not reply sooner? Two main threads of discussion to contribute to here:

Regarding why physical conflict is more common in games than diplomacy or deception: Easy - physical conflict is a problem we understand best when implementing it using game technology. It's easy to say developers should think outside the box and find other mechanics, but the technology available for one against the other just isn't a fair comparision.

For physical conflict there's a few games out there with autonomous, unscripted AI that can be dropped in a world and do a fair job of putting up a fight. There is no equivalent that lets you drop characters in the world and they'll autonomously be bribeable, or open to discussion. Anything like that can only be done via slow, tedious, manual scripting, and until we understand how to give AI characters interesting social or political autonomy, free of scripts, shooting and beating people is always going to be the most common mechanic. We are a very long way off closing that technology gap.

 ... which leads me to:

Don't worry, such things probably won't happen in our lifetimes, but even if they did, don't panic. By the time AI is genuinely AI (as opposed to the current smoke-and-mirrors illusion wrapped around some very crude logic) they won't be bots in the sense you're assuming. They'll be players that exist outside of the game and pick an avatar in the game same as you and me - they wouldn't feel pain when the in-game character goes splat any more than you do. The advantage is that we can reasonably assume that since they won't have to deal with testosterone issues, they'll be a lot more civil and courteous than your average CS kiddie

Don't see why intelligence has to be organically reproduced though - if a being is capable of learning and conversing indistiguishably from a human, I reckon you should call it intelligent. When that day comes, looking down on it for not being organic is going to be a good way to encourage it to start taking notes from Skynet

I sense a mention of Asimov's 3 Rules coming soon! ( Will they someday become FACT..? Or remain forever FICTION..? Hmmmm??? )

orion2sirius wrote:I sense a mention of Asimov's 3 Rules coming soon! ( Will they someday become FACT..? Or remain forever FICTION..? Hmmmm??? )

Asimov's rules are a joke ... LOL

One day someone will be like "oh, if i just remove this 1st law i can use it as a weapon!" ... i guarantee some dumbass would do that ...