6 ms·

> A significant portion of modern Americans regularly enjoy blood and carnage in video games and movies Yeah. it's called fiction and a more significant portio

> A significant portion of modern Americans regularly enjoy blood and carnage in video games and movies Yeah. it's called fiction and a more significant portion of people in the world consume all that without committing mass murder. So please, stop associating video games or movies with whatever crazy people do.

leereeves 10y ago
I enjoy those games and movies myself. It's not my intention to suggest that enjoying those means that our socialization has failed or that we are dangerous (which I do not believe), but that those games and movies appeal to something in our nature that still exists in many of the most well socialized Americans.
- qntty 10y ago
  There's a good case to be made that a significant factor is the association of masculinity with violence in American culture, which explains why men commit significantly more violence than women (and also explains some of the success of violent video games). From this perspective, much of our fascination with and performance of violence is far from inevitable.
  - throwaway7312 10y ago
    If we're blaming culture for male violence, "animal culture" would seem the more fitting one, since violent males are a feature throughout the animal kingdom and exceptions are, well, the exception. American culture is not much different from iguana culture or toucan culture in this respect.
    - qntty 10y ago
      Yeah, there are definitely a lot of similarities between humans and other animals in that respect, but that's the problem. It should worry us that humans, an animal capable of resolving conflicts in many different ways, chooses violence so often. To put it another way, if throwing feces was common behavior among humans, you might say "this isn't a human problem, it's a primate problem." And you'd be right, in a sense. But the key point is that throwing feces (as well as violence) is more easily avoided behavior for humans than for chimps. A human might choose to yell to express a level of anger than chimps only express with feces throwing (I might be uninformed about the feces-throwing behaviors of chimps, but you get the point). When we fail to take advantage of opportunities to avoid violence, we should ask ourselves why.
      - taeric 10y ago
        My question is if we are going astray looking for a "human" solution to what is ultimately an "animal" behavior. :) That is, I agree it is not an excuse to say "animals do it." But, it is also somewhat askew to me to have a barrier to our explanations that do not involve "humans are just animals."
- sixo 10y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if, except for cases of extreme violence, if video games (especially, much more than TV since the audience takes part in the action) and the like serve to pacify their audience in the long run. Perhaps a pacifistic steady-state solution to human nature doesn't involve denying this part of human nature, but indulging it in such harmless ways?
- sparky1990 10y ago
  Some time ago I came across a quote from maybe Huxley or Orwell saying, in effect, that as modern society advances it will become necessary to find a nondestructive means to express the impulse to violence that is a fundamental part of human nature. Maybe I've got it wrong, but it seems that things like video games and paintball serve that function. I've looked several times for that quote. Not sure who it was from, but there seems to be some wisdom in it.
- kawa 10y ago
  There's violence and there is violence. While I can enjoy an action movie or an UFC match, watching images from the Holocaust still makes me sick.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    It's a gradient: Fake violence like movies and WWE, "consensual" violence like MMA, and non-consensual violence like atrocities.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- projektir 10y ago
  I don't know about that. I play many games, including violent ones, and I don't really think the appeal is associated with some sort of a natural bloodthirst. I think the #1 reason for large amounts of violence in video games is because a violent conflict is much easier to make a narrative and game mechanics about, and a lot of fun activities are associated with previously violent pursuits, but I believe it exists in a completely different sphere from real life violence and doesn't really connect. It's similar to how one may find archery fun, and archery was designed to kill people, but people don't find archery fun because they want to kill people, they just find it fun to shoot arrows and that gaining of fun probably was designed to make people better at violence but there's no actual direct connection. On the other hand, the gaming situations where I have seen the negative aspects of nature come out were games that layered social aspects on top. MMORPG's, especially ones like DayZ, and, at worst, competitive games like League of Legends. When a single player game gets bad, like Doom or Nox, it gets bad over the multiplayer aspect. That's where all the nasty stuff really comes out, and it's not the art or the violence in the design of the game itself causing it, but the socializing aspect, power imbalances, etc. Meanwhile, people are cooperating pretty well in games like KSP or Minecraft as long as you avoid PvP servers, and even in the really dark, violent games like Dark Souls, again, as long as you stay away from PvP. Human violence instincts seem to come out in situations that simulate social pressures, such as those where there is evaluation, power imbalance, and competitions. Single player games, no matter how much blood is falling on the floor, don't seem to do that to their communities as long as PvP is not involved.
ythl 10y ago
His point was that you find something gratifying in the fantasy of murder and violence. If you don't find GTA to be abhorrent, then that means deep down some aspect of the anarchy and violence is appealing to you.
- DamnYuppie 10y ago
  Assassin's Creed scares the crap out of me as I find myself enjoying, on occasion, just murdering a passerby who I happened to find annoying.
- mhurron 10y ago
  > deep down some aspect of the anarchy and violence is appealing to you. Or you like doing all the silly things a game lets you do. Because, you know, it's not real and you've probably realized that. I guess if you play Monopoly against Grandma and ream her a new one when she lands on your Boardwalk with a hotel on it deep down you want to be a slum lord. It couldn't possibly be as simple as you like winning games. Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.
  - ythl 10y ago
    You should start a VR game studio and make a game about kidnapping and raping children. People like being able to do silly things. Give them points for every rape and make sure there is a win condition (people like winning games). This type of game definitely won't appeal to people that have child sex fantasies deep down - after all, it's not real (and you've probably realized that)! Come on, you can make the above case for Mario, but it's a harder sell when we are talking about Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.
    - mhurron 10y ago
      If you are run by your morals in a completely unreal situation that has no real effects in the exact same way as you would in a real situation, you may have problems separating fantasy and reality.
astrodust 10y ago
This article also completely misses the point that games are an incredibly immersive media and can teach you a lot about a point of view. I've played games as a cop where you're rolling through a rough neighborhood and everyone's immediately got their guard up, they're automatically on-edge. The tension between police and civilians experienced this way is nothing like reading headlines or hearing stories. It's long, empty periods of nothing punctuated by life-threatening situations which can build empathy for what some cops have to endure. Movies edit down for length. Books are building a narrative, they're cherry-picking by necessity. In a game you can spend dozens of hours immersed in an environment, experiencing both the intensity of the situations and the mundanity of the gaps between. I'd love to see some games put out by people in these difficult to understand cultures to better experience what they think and feel, the challenges they face, and to see the world through their eyes. The latest installment of Deus Ex lightly touches on the issues of race relations, there using an analogy where "augmented" humans are suddenly the Acceptable Thing To Hate and are subjected to endless scrutiny, carded constantly for no reason other than being augmented. The old "walk a mile in my shoes" principle applies here, and in most games you walk way, way more than a mile.

leereeves 10y ago

I enjoy those games and movies myself. It's not my intention to suggest that enjoying those means that our socialization has failed or that we are dangerous (which I do not believe), but that those games and movies appeal to something in our nature that still exists in many of the most well socialized Americans.

qntty 10y ago
There's a good case to be made that a significant factor is the association of masculinity with violence in American culture, which explains why men commit significantly more violence than women (and also explains some of the success of violent video games). From this perspective, much of our fascination with and performance of violence is far from inevitable.
- throwaway7312 10y ago
  If we're blaming culture for male violence, "animal culture" would seem the more fitting one, since violent males are a feature throughout the animal kingdom and exceptions are, well, the exception. American culture is not much different from iguana culture or toucan culture in this respect.
  - qntty 10y ago
    Yeah, there are definitely a lot of similarities between humans and other animals in that respect, but that's the problem. It should worry us that humans, an animal capable of resolving conflicts in many different ways, chooses violence so often. To put it another way, if throwing feces was common behavior among humans, you might say "this isn't a human problem, it's a primate problem." And you'd be right, in a sense. But the key point is that throwing feces (as well as violence) is more easily avoided behavior for humans than for chimps. A human might choose to yell to express a level of anger than chimps only express with feces throwing (I might be uninformed about the feces-throwing behaviors of chimps, but you get the point). When we fail to take advantage of opportunities to avoid violence, we should ask ourselves why.
    - taeric 10y ago
      My question is if we are going astray looking for a "human" solution to what is ultimately an "animal" behavior. :) That is, I agree it is not an excuse to say "animals do it." But, it is also somewhat askew to me to have a barrier to our explanations that do not involve "humans are just animals."
sixo 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if, except for cases of extreme violence, if video games (especially, much more than TV since the audience takes part in the action) and the like serve to pacify their audience in the long run. Perhaps a pacifistic steady-state solution to human nature doesn't involve denying this part of human nature, but indulging it in such harmless ways?
sparky1990 10y ago
Some time ago I came across a quote from maybe Huxley or Orwell saying, in effect, that as modern society advances it will become necessary to find a nondestructive means to express the impulse to violence that is a fundamental part of human nature. Maybe I've got it wrong, but it seems that things like video games and paintball serve that function. I've looked several times for that quote. Not sure who it was from, but there seems to be some wisdom in it.
kawa 10y ago
There's violence and there is violence. While I can enjoy an action movie or an UFC match, watching images from the Holocaust still makes me sick.
- astrodust 10y ago
  It's a gradient: Fake violence like movies and WWE, "consensual" violence like MMA, and non-consensual violence like atrocities.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
projektir 10y ago
I don't know about that. I play many games, including violent ones, and I don't really think the appeal is associated with some sort of a natural bloodthirst. I think the #1 reason for large amounts of violence in video games is because a violent conflict is much easier to make a narrative and game mechanics about, and a lot of fun activities are associated with previously violent pursuits, but I believe it exists in a completely different sphere from real life violence and doesn't really connect. It's similar to how one may find archery fun, and archery was designed to kill people, but people don't find archery fun because they want to kill people, they just find it fun to shoot arrows and that gaining of fun probably was designed to make people better at violence but there's no actual direct connection. On the other hand, the gaming situations where I have seen the negative aspects of nature come out were games that layered social aspects on top. MMORPG's, especially ones like DayZ, and, at worst, competitive games like League of Legends. When a single player game gets bad, like Doom or Nox, it gets bad over the multiplayer aspect. That's where all the nasty stuff really comes out, and it's not the art or the violence in the design of the game itself causing it, but the socializing aspect, power imbalances, etc. Meanwhile, people are cooperating pretty well in games like KSP or Minecraft as long as you avoid PvP servers, and even in the really dark, violent games like Dark Souls, again, as long as you stay away from PvP. Human violence instincts seem to come out in situations that simulate social pressures, such as those where there is evaluation, power imbalance, and competitions. Single player games, no matter how much blood is falling on the floor, don't seem to do that to their communities as long as PvP is not involved.

ythl 10y ago

His point was that you find something gratifying in the fantasy of murder and violence. If you don't find GTA to be abhorrent, then that means deep down some aspect of the anarchy and violence is appealing to you.

DamnYuppie 10y ago
Assassin's Creed scares the crap out of me as I find myself enjoying, on occasion, just murdering a passerby who I happened to find annoying.
mhurron 10y ago
> deep down some aspect of the anarchy and violence is appealing to you. Or you like doing all the silly things a game lets you do. Because, you know, it's not real and you've probably realized that. I guess if you play Monopoly against Grandma and ream her a new one when she lands on your Boardwalk with a hotel on it deep down you want to be a slum lord. It couldn't possibly be as simple as you like winning games. Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.
- ythl 10y ago
  You should start a VR game studio and make a game about kidnapping and raping children. People like being able to do silly things. Give them points for every rape and make sure there is a win condition (people like winning games). This type of game definitely won't appeal to people that have child sex fantasies deep down - after all, it's not real (and you've probably realized that)! Come on, you can make the above case for Mario, but it's a harder sell when we are talking about Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    If you are run by your morals in a completely unreal situation that has no real effects in the exact same way as you would in a real situation, you may have problems separating fantasy and reality.

astrodust 10y ago

This article also completely misses the point that games are an incredibly immersive media and can teach you a lot about a point of view. I've played games as a cop where you're rolling through a rough neighborhood and everyone's immediately got their guard up, they're automatically on-edge. The tension between police and civilians experienced this way is nothing like reading headlines or hearing stories. It's long, empty periods of nothing punctuated by life-threatening situations which can build empathy for what some cops have to endure. Movies edit down for length. Books are building a narrative, they're cherry-picking by necessity. In a game you can spend dozens of hours immersed in an environment, experiencing both the intensity of the situations and the mundanity of the gaps between. I'd love to see some games put out by people in these difficult to understand cultures to better experience what they think and feel, the challenges they face, and to see the world through their eyes. The latest installment of Deus Ex lightly touches on the issues of race relations, there using an analogy where "augmented" humans are suddenly the Acceptable Thing To Hate and are subjected to endless scrutiny, carded constantly for no reason other than being augmented. The old "walk a mile in my shoes" principle applies here, and in most games you walk way, way more than a mile.