Quote: Original post by Hodgman
I've seen a 4 year old kid almost get hit by a truck and say, "it's ok, I'd get up again", because he'd been playing GTA3, where that happens.
4 year olds, as smart as they can be, can have significant leakage between fantasy and reality.

That was my point, and why I believe the question in the OP to be disingenuous. You don't let kids play games aimed at adults, so the whole question is moot, IMO.

It's like asking whether letting kids drink alcohol makes them predisposed to alcoholism in later life...

Quote: Original post by Codeka
It's like asking whether letting kids drink alcohol makes them predisposed to alcoholism in later life...

LOL, exactly.

Quote: Original post by Drathis
I suggest you supervise your 4 year old no matter what you give him/her as entertainment.

Isn't that what I was suggesting?

Alright, thanks guys. (I just needed to quickly gather some opinions because this assignment is kinda due at the end of the week and I'm nowhere near done.)

Thats kinda why I asked what grade you are in...

Asking this question on a game development forum is pretty biased for one thing, and just getting a feel for our opinions is pretty wishy-washy, I dont even think you can source something like that can you? I just hope this is for grade 9 or lower, lol. Otherwise, yikes.

Anyway, good luck and make sure to say that the whole thing is non-sense, and dont forget to take a few jabs at government censorship while you're at it! ;)

Here's my theory on the claim that violent videogames can cause violence.

First of all, you need some evidence to support this. In the "studies" that I have seen which claim tangible and measurable results, such as increased heart-rate, adrenaline levels, perceived "aggravation" etc etc, you need to very carefully eliminate the actual style of game from the violent content, something which these studies fail to do.

For example, I can almost guarantee that in the good old Super Mario Bros, falling down the same pit 20 times in a row will cause the subject to display the exact same symptoms of increased aggression, elevated heart rate and adrenaline levels. In fact, the subject may even act out physically by throwing his controller across the room and smashing his console to bits!

So whats going on here, Mario Bros isn't violent at all. Its the style of game that has an effect, which is the same response we humans have to any challenging stimulus, be it football, tennis, sky diving or whatever.

It's the kids that harm cute little doggies you gotta watch out for.

Violent video games don't necessarily make you violent, they just attract violent gamers (as well as normal people). Fireworks don't always make you a pyromaniac, but they do attract pyromaniacs (as well as normal people).

In my case, violent video games have made me more averse to violence. For example, I simply could not play Doom 3 after seeing the Cherubs. I felt sick. I couldn't shoot them. No good reason to. I just quit and uninstalled the game when I realized what I was aiming at. Same with Deus Ex 2. My character killed a guard, and got chewed out. I didn't want to kill any more guards after that, even if I could get away with it. After that, I couldn't even bring myself to kill a greenhouse. It wasn't even a living character, just a greenhouse! The plants didn't have death animations, they couldn't cry in anguish at all! If anything, video games might have made me more pacifist. There's a reason why zombie games are so popular: no one really wants to be violent towards actual people, computer generated or not.

Of course, not everyone is as gutless a gamer as me. But that doesn't mean they play video games to practice murder. The only plausible argument for video games making you violent is that they desensitize you to aiming at humanoid figures. But at some point, when the murder simulation becomes too real, when the virtual murder has virtual repercussions, real gamers, not the violent sociopaths the media likes to pigeonhole gamers as, will sit back and think "There has to be a better way." That's why many games have pacifist runs, which involve playing through the game without killing anything, and soaking up damage from both enemies and oneself (because you are, for example, using grenades to create enough force to get you to an area where you don't have to shoot anyone). There are even mods dedicated to non violent styles of play (DeFrag, for example). Seldom do you hear the news talk about gamers emulating Ghandi.

Of course, the media likes to ignore speedruns and pacifist runs and non violent gamers because they just aren't interesting. And of course, that's the point: a story about a thousand bridges not breaking and not killing everyone driving on them simply does not get the same ratings as a story about a single bridge breaking and one person getting hurt. The problem is when the media forgets that when talking about violent gamers, they are writing about the exceptions, not the norms.

And then, there's that monk who plays video games. Again, the article is about an exception, not a norm: most monks don't play video games, and most gamers certainly aren't monks. The media only reports on what is interesting, and it goes both ways.

The question you ask here is actually quite irrelevant, because it isn't a matter of opinion, but one of science. Because your opinion doesn't matter much if there is scientific evidence proving the exact opposite of your opinion.

Now, the question itself is quite difficult because there are several case studies done to the subject, and some of them say the opposite of each other.

Studies however have shown that people who played a violent video game reacted more violently up to 30 minutes after playing the game. And this seems quite logical. Because we are exposing ourselfs to violence, our mind probably prepares itself for violent outbursts. But for children, the main question is: Does this state of mind become extended? Is it that they are constantly prepared for violence that makes them violent? Or do they become violent because they get used to seeing violence all the time without parents putting it in context?

If you want to hear an opinion, I think the problem does not lie in the fact that seeing violence makes up violent in the long run, but because there are no parents around to tell these children that the violence seen in video games isn't a very good example of how the world works. Children, and boys in particular, do express violence in their children. See all the boys running around with fake guns, smashing toy cars into each other in an attempt to re-enact a car crash seen on TV, or get into fights and beat the crap out of each other. However, in these cases, parents come in and tell their children that their behaviour is unacceptable. If this does not happen with video games, then children might indeed start to believe that excessive violence as seen in video games / movies is acceptable.

Toolmaker

Is people/society more violent or prone to physical violence today than 200 years ago?

Is people in developed societies more prone to physical violence than people in under-developed ones?

Don't think so.

All of my friends at school including myself played violent games. In particular, I remember this one which I played every day at age 14. The biggest incentive for playing that game was the ability to chop off the other's head, which would make the audience applaud and some gnomish guy enter the arena and kick the head away like a football. It was great fun.
I'm not aware of any of my school friends (or myself) being arrested for decapitating people or any other violence crime later in our lives. Strange, eh?

The media live from making drama and political zealots like picking it up. the most important tool in making drama is delivering deliberately false or misleading information.
Take for example yesterday's report about two three people dying in Germany after the H1N1 vaccination. While the vaccination may be debatable, and while it is probably true that those people died, it does not necessarily mean that they died to the vaccination. And sure enough, the media don't explicitely say that if you read very carefully.
However, they do publish "died after vaccination" in 2-inch tall letters everywhere. The way it is presented, it means "died to the vaccination", even if it is not worded that way. 99.9% of the population will read it as that, it doesn't matter whether those people maybe died in a car accident or had a heart attack.

The very same thing happens whenever there's a young adult running amok somewhere. The media are quick to point out that he played Counterstrike or a similar video game.
However, nobody seems to wonder what went wrong in their family, and nobody seems to wonder where teens get a whole bag of guns and ammo from (in particular in countries other than the USA, where even adults can't just buy a gun easily). Nobody seems to think that this is where things went wrong. Nobody points out that it might be a bit weird for a 15 year old to go to a gun club several times per week, and nobody would dare to suggest that this might have lowered his inhibition threshold of shooting people. Of course not, because there's a large lobby behind that.

It is my belief that if kids become violent, it's first and foremost a failure of family and society. Some people will turn to weirdos and/or psychos at some point. Some may get violent. Ok, this isn't pretty, but it can happen.
However, the one really scary thing is if nobody sees it and nobody cares either. That's where the failure is.

Directing the question towards one media, video games, and asking about one general response is a loaded and bias question. People are made up of their environmental situations and genes, which video games are just one. And more violent is not the only answer.

If a person eats a donut and says to you there's no direct effect, you'd laugh at them. A occasional donut will have no long term effect if eaten in moderation, but it does have a known effect both if over eaten and short term.

Violent media also has a measurable effect on short term decision making. There are no studies long term. Like a donut, can assume violent media should have no long term effect if viewed in moderation. And even if there is an effect, it may not be violence. For example, people who watch a lot of TV greatly overestimate the likelihood of being randomly murdered. This directly effects their decisions in their lives, but does not make them more violent.