quote:
Would you rather come home day after stressfull day and play a violent game to relieve the pressure...or would you rather play a game that would not only relieve the day''s stress, but also possably give/teach you how to deal with stress better...so each day doesn''t seem as stressful as the last?

Sure sounds great to me but can you do that without using violence as a release?

quote: Original post by MSW
...Either we continue to pass the blame around, or we do what we can to help the situation...

Just to clarify this, nobody´s passing any blame around, if anything they are trying to defend the gaming industry from unreasonable allegations.

And to be honest, I care very little about the situation. If someone gets shot, sure it´s a tragedy but I will not have the style and content of my games dictated by a government who has failed to take care of its countries internal problems.

As long as PLAYERS (or customers) don´t tell me to, I won´t make games that teach, preach or in any other way present anything other than what I consider to be entertainment.

I want to make games that are fun. Period. Unless there´s cash on the table I´ve got no reason to do otherwise. Those who play violent games do so willingly and are of age (unless said government failed to put protective measures into effect), they want to be entertained. If they wanted a lecture on moral issues or a how-to-resolve-conflict self help group they would have gone and gotten that elsewhere (There are MANY good books on how to deal with stress, just check amazon).

I´m not so sure that games should be much more than a stress reliever. Some of them yes, but a lot of people want games just for that - stress relief and fun.

And violence has very little to do with blood on the screen.

quote: Original post by Hase
Insults aside, any statistic pretty much shows that you are wrong (at least the way I interpreted your post). It may be true that gun control laws don´t influence the populations willingness to commit crime , but it cerainly has an effect on homicides.

Of course, people have written books suggesting the opposite effect, see "More Guns, Less Crime".


Mike

MSW,

I''m not about to tell anyone how to create their games, but anyone who is influenced so much by a video game that they go out and commit acts of violence is not mentally stable to begin with. If a person''s mind is so soft that Doom will drive them to kill, then they will eventually kill anyway(and gun-control does NOT stop them, as per the massacre in Japan some time back that a man with a knife/sword perpetrated on about two dozen people).

If being around violence is such a powerful incentive to commit violence, then police the world over would be the biggest group of violent criminals. They are exposed to extreme amounts of violence and gore, and they must even participate in violence, and yet, they do not run around town like Duke Nukem, blasting everyone who looks like a "bad guy". Neither do soldiers, though the levels of violence to take a toll on many, and some may suffer psychological problems, the massive majority are normal.

As a game developer, it''s my job to create a game that is worth playing. If I want to exclude violence or create a game that sends a message, fine. If I want to create a game that is mindlessly violent, fine. Fact is, there are audiences for both, and you will find that more often than not, people play both kinds of games(how many people get "addicted" to Mahjong?). If you want to make a game that relaxs people, then more power to you because that''s a corner of the market that''s relatively empty. You stand to make some good cash there if you do it right. But I agree with bad parenting for being a factor in most of the trouble young kids get into. And sometimes, the parents do everything they can and the kid still goes wrong somehow.

Not to be cold, but that''s life. We are imperfect, and no amount of laws, parenting(good or bad), controls on any societal norms, or anything else, can change that. Sure, you can take games away, but we''ve been killing each other since we routed 3 or 4 other races of humans from the face of the earth. Before guns, swords, knives, sticks, or anything else. We are predators. Not that it''s pretty, but it''s a fact. Can we control our violence? Yes, of course. But the run-of-the-mill human mind is not so fragile that a game can undo years of parental upbringing, and not so strong that we can will away our problems. In the end, a game is just a snowflake in the avalanche. But like any avalanche, there''s no telling which snowflake does it, and removing one doesn''t neccessarily prevent it...

That''s my 10 cents

Ted Southard
DigitalFlux Entertainment, LLC
http://www.DigitalFlux.com

I appologise folks...I didn''t meen for this thread to drag out like this...

I remember back before game rateing were initiated...Here in the states our government formed a special committe to investigate alligations from parents about games being too violent...They pointed out games such as Mortal Kombat and Nighttrap being openly sold to 5 year olds...the net result was that the industry was put under pressure to create a rateings system...what is sad is that the game industry could have avoided the whole issue if they had taken the inititive to create the rateing standard before the investigation had began...but no...the industry defended itself with much the same arguments you folks have presented...Eh..the more things change, the more they stay the same...

It seems I''ve touched a nerve with many of you...from my point of view I was only pointing out several arguments (not unreasonable ones IMHO) why games should concentrait less on violence and more on the many other ways to resolve conflict...again, I apologise...it wasn''t my intent to step on anyones toes, I now realise how ''non-mainstream'' my argument was...sorry.

What do you have to apologize for? I admit that the thread is long and I haven''t read every single post(though I read most), but you don''t seem to have maliciously insulted anyone. You stated an opinion, and others theirs. Like I said in my last post: If you can find a way to make a non-violent game that is great, then that in itself is great. I think where we differ is that the opinions on whether the game industry must answer for the violence in society, in which case we disagree. Don''t tell me you''re going to back off on what you want to do because you''ve found that most people don''t agree? Go make a non-violent game. Because if you don''t, and you''ve lamented something that you don''t want to do, and then back away when you find that either people don''t agree with you, or that things aren''t the way you thought, then what use was lamenting in the first place? Go make your game. Whether you are right or wrong, or whether people agree with your view or not, has no effect on your game. Or else, you seem just to be bending with the pressures of either side of an argument, which is no way to develop a game. Push the politics and arguments aside and do what you want. I might like violent games, but I still can''t pass up Mahjong

Ted Southard
DigitalFlux Entertainment, LLC
http://www.DigitalFlux.com

Focus,

You have an interesting point about technology forcing games to be violent... However, I have to disagree; I don''t think it''s quite that simple.

Simulations of violence are now quite sophisticated. This is partly due, as you said, to the fact that computers are excellent at mathematics and physics. Realistic violence requires realistic physics; good artificial intelligence, a prerequisite for games based on social interaction, requires an entirely different type of computing, which is much less developed. Computers are a tool of engineers, and thus excel at engineering; the first computers were given the task of calculating missile trajectories, and the evolution has proceeded from there.

BUT, it DIDN''T HAVE TO.

The earliest games which weren''t based on board games were games like Asteroids, which used the computer''s capabilities for solving vector problems to create a crude simulation of space flight, and by extension space combat. The tradition of violence could be said to have begun here. However, the computer''s capacity to solve vector equations can also be put to good game use in a number of other ways. Racing games can easily be made fairly nonviolent, with spectacular crashes eliciting groans rather than cheers as they ruin your bright shiny Ferarri and with it your chances for success. Good physics models are a necessity for sports simulations, and by extension for the creation of sports that don''t yet exist. Remember BlastCorps? I''d like to see a controlled demo game in which you have a time limit to set limited shaped charges, after which the game uses a realistic physics engine to determine whether you brought down the building, and with how much collateral damage.

Computers also excel at database storage and retrieval. I have yet to see a game which puts modern computers'' massive storage capacity to good use. I have no idea how this could be done, but I''m no pro; perhaps use advanced search routines to create its own background music and cutscenes from media files already on your computer... My point is that if you see the resources of a computer as being only good for creating violence simulations, then you''ve probably been thinking too much along the lines of violence simulations. It''s not that simulating violent situations is necessarily the best task for a computer; it''s that the evolution of games has proceeded down that path BY CHOICE so it''s hard to think about computer games in any other way. I believe this is a mindset problem more than a hardware problem. The road less traveled is of course rather overgrown, but well worth the effort.

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

quote: Just do some comparing, select a region with tighter gun control laws (like Europe for example) and compare homicide rates

The problem with your theroy is there are alot more diffences between the USA and Europe that gun control. I''d venture to say that culture and society have far more to do on the amount of people murdered than the amount of guns. No one kills another person for the simple reason that they have a gun. Saying that they are too easy to get is an oversimplifed solution to a complex problem.

Why violence in games ?

Because it''s easy to design and easy to code.
We''re lazy.
And yes, I''m a professional game coder.

True, you could make non-violent games and sell...
but how much?
As I see it nowdays, Multiplayer seems to be the most important.

The easiest way to compete against others? Beating/shooting them down, I''d say.
Violence to the masses!