Guns don't kill people, video games do...

Robert ninja

What's rich is how game journalists have been saying for years how culturally impactful games are, how we need to be super careful about their messages because they're causing racism, sexism etc etc. But as soon as Trump parrots that BS they do a 180. They'll just say the opposite of whatever he says even if it makes them hypocrites.

Exclamation Marc

In fairness, they're probably just aware that they're dealing with a sociopath who would most likely directly attribute gaming to high school shootings to deflect away from gun control etc. I wouldn't say its hypocritical at all.

If it was an Obama initiative, they'd probably engage but why would they when they'd so obviously be scapegoated.

Robert ninja

Exclamation Marc wrote: »

They're probably just aware that they're dealing with a sociopath who would most likely directly attribute gaming to high school shootings

Which is exactly what they've been doing, and then some.

Jamiekelly

Robert ninja wrote: »

Which is exactly what they've been doing, and then some.

Polygon does not account for games journalism as a whole. They are one of the most spineless click bait centred games websites that exist today. Not to mention how despised they are by the wider community for their political and social tirades masked behind games journalism.

Robert ninja

Jamiekelly wrote: »

Polygon does not account for games journalism as a whole. They are one of the most spineless click bait centred games websites that exist today. Not to mention how despised they are by the wider community for their political and social tirades masked behind games journalism.

If I were to make a collage of all outlets partaking in his game-blame and gamer hate then the image would be rightfully clipped by moderator for being too big and messing up the webpage. If you really don't think this is isn't the attitude of most mainstream outlets for nearly the last decade then I'm only glad you've been spared the horror of reading them.

gizmo

Robert ninja wrote: »

Which is exactly what they've been doing, and then some.

And yet none of the articles included in your collage actually do that. There are some opinion pieces there which go to some lengths so as to not say that as well as some articles about reports from the Center of Disease Control, American Psychological Association and other peer reviewed journals which have found some behavioural links between the two but nothing conclusive. Nothing there, however, directly attributes gaming to high school shootings.

Trump could be referring to the latter kind of reasearch above but given the timing, it's more likely he's just following in the footsteps of NRA EVP Wayne LaPierre who has drawn direct links between the two in order to deflect attention away from any possible gun control legislation.

In any case, due to Brown vs. EMA there's unlikely to be any fallout from any such attempt to shift the blame to video games.

Varik

gizmo wrote: »

And yet none of the articles included in your collage actually do that. There are some opinion pieces there which go to some lengths so as to not say that as well as some articles about reports from the Center of Disease Control, American Psychological Association and other peer reviewed journals which have found some behavioural links between the two but nothing conclusive. Nothing there, however, directly attributes gaming to high school shootings.

Trump could be referring to the latter kind of reasearch above but given the timing, it's more likely he's just following in the footsteps of NRA EVP Wayne LaPierre who has drawn direct links between the two in order to deflect attention away from any possible gun control legislation.

In any case, due to Brown vs. EMA there's unlikely to be any fallout from any such attempt to shift the blame to video games.

Think you missed a step.

He's not talking about any studies or proven links, just the authors of each and their opinion now suddenly doing a 180 in recent days.

There was a meeting after sandy hook with Biden as well and nothing came of it, but this being trump it'll end the same as with his Nato declaration.

gizmo

Varik wrote: »

Think you missed a step.

He's not talking about any studies or proven links, just the authors of each and their opinion now suddenly doing a 180 in recent days.

There was a meeting after sandy hook with Biden as well and nothing came of it, but this being trump it'll end the same as with his Nato declaration.

But they're not doing a 180, that's the point, no where in the contents of those articles do the authors make any attempt to directly attribute gaming or violence therein to high school shootings as was claimed.

Even in the articles which bring up more recently published research into the subject, the authors argue against them being lazily used as an easy target to blame by the usual suspects and instead argue for a more nuanced approach where they're treated the same as any other form of media in such study.

Robert ninja

gizmo wrote: »

And yet none of the articles included in your collage actually do that.

Except they do...

gizmo wrote: »

Nothing there, however, directly attributes gaming to high school shootings.

They can't say that because none of the science does. But most of the MSM attitude tries to suggest it does. And it's not specific to high-school shooting. These outlets have been blaming everything under the sun on gaming and gamers. You think they made a special exception just for school shootings in the USA all this time and were waiting for just now to defend it? Please. If Trump said up they'd say down.

gizmo wrote: »

But they're not doing a 180, that's the point, no where in the contents of those articles do the authors make any attempt to directly attribute gaming or violence therein to high school shootings as was claimed.

I think you're getting hung up on something too specific or maybe we just have to agree to disagree. Just because they didn't by-quote say "Video games 100% cause school shootings" doesn't change the fact that video games make you violent/a loser/sexist/racist/nazi/{insert current_year_trend} is what they've been trying to suggest for a long time and they're just now changing their tune at the exact time when it benefits them. Because saying the opposite of trump and calling him stupid is really what we all need to hear and totally a brave move in their line of work, I'm sure. :rolleyes:

Polygon wrote:

Does playing a video game steeped in a cycle of kill-die-kill have an impact on players? Almost certainly.

Polygon wrote:

But that early fascination with gunplay and the nuance of gun ownership in the United States was most certainly driven by some games' obsessive level of detail in presenting warfare and shooting.

Polygon wrote:

This fetishization of guns in play doesn’t just bring with it a level of knowledge arguably unnecessary for young teens, it also normalizes the idea of gunplay and gun ownership without bringing with it the necessary care and instruction that should go along with gun ownership.

Polygon wrote:

video games needs to be part of the research that goes into curing this bullet-fueled epidemic. Video games have become so deeply ingrained in modern society, that ignoring their impact would be akin to ignoring the effects of movies, of music or of the daily news on society

https://twitter.com/mombot/status/968135949732343808

In News
Oh well not much in news that interests me but Pretty big Skyrim mod gets a teaser trailer.

gizmo

Apologies for the long ass post, there was a bunch of different things to touch on and again, this is drifting off the whole news thing...

Robert ninja wrote: »

They can't say that because none of the science does. But most of the MSM attitude tries to suggest it does. And it's not specific to high-school shooting. These outlets have been blaming everything under the sun on gaming and gamers. You think they made a special exception just for school shootings in the USA all this time and were waiting for just now to defend it? Please. If Trump said up they'd say down.

You literally said above that that's exactly what they're saying.

Regardless, who is the MSM here? Gaming sites or general news media? In the former case, I can't remember ever seeing a journalist do it but I can definitely remember several examples from the latter. My favourite one was probably the Bulletstorm debacle when an article went up on the Fox News website entitled "Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?" which was promptly torn apart by most of the internet. RPS ran a little retrospective on the whole incident last year where the entire thing was exposed as the farce that it was.

This has generally been par for the course when such crossover occurs though.

Robert ninja wrote: »

I think you're getting hung up on something too specific or maybe we just have to agree to disagree. Just because they didn't by-quote say "Video games 100% cause school shootings" doesn't change the fact that video games make you violent/a loser/sexist/racist/nazi/{insert current_year_trend} is what they've been trying to suggest for a long time and they're just now changing their tune at the exact time when it benefits them. Because saying the opposite of trump and calling him stupid is really what we all need to hear and totally a brave move in their line of work, I'm sure. :rolleyes:

Not at all. You claimed that they've done a 180 on the subject since Trump spoke up and I'm simply refuting that by saying that there has been no demonstrable evidence that that is the case.

So, onto those quotes. They all seem to be from Brian Crecente's article "Guns, games and violence: The real questions you should be asking" from back in 2016, just before he headed off to the Games for Change Festival where he was going to discuss the topic of violence and video games with a bunch of psychologists, researchers and judging by the event's lineup, game developers. An apt time for such an article I would say.

For some, it raised the almost tired debate of gaming's direct impact on violence.

Does playing a video game steeped in a cycle of kill-die-kill have an impact on players? Almost certainly. Arguing that an overwhelmingly violent game doesn't impact its users is akin to arguing that any game with a singular drive or message can't inspire or evoke change.

It's arguing that Games for Change isn't a thing and that everyone at this week's festival, everyone who works to educate, inform, inspire through gaming, is wasting their time.

Violence in video games, like any other aspect of gaming, most certainly can impact a gamer.

That's the full context of your first quote. That doesn't sound like he's trying to blame games for shootings or even anything in particular, merely saying it's likely to have an effect just like any other aspect of games.

Robert ninja wrote: »

But that early fascination with gunplay and the nuance of gun ownership in the United States was most certainly driven by some games' obsessive level of detail in presenting warfare and shooting.

I can't see any problem with this. Almost the entirety of my knowledge of guns has come from the games I've played over the years. Again, nothing to do with blaming games for violence carried out with them.

Robert ninja wrote: »

This fetishization of guns in play doesn’t just bring with it a level of knowledge arguably unnecessary for young teens, it also normalizes the idea of gunplay and gun ownership without bringing with it the necessary care and instruction that should go along with gun ownership.

I'd wager most responsible gun owners in the US would feel the same way. It's a more long winded way of saying guns aren't a ****ing toy, a point he expands upon in the following paragraph in the article.

Robert ninja wrote: »

video games needs to be part of the research that goes into curing this bullet-fueled epidemic. Video games have become so deeply ingrained in modern society, that ignoring their impact would be akin to ignoring the effects of movies, of music or of the daily news on society

This quote is taken from the second part of the article after Crecente has stated that "Does playing a video game steeped in a cycle of kill-die-kill have an impact on players? " is the wrong question to ask and has instead moved onto the following subject in the context of his own son.

Here's the question I often wonder about: What sort of impact do gun games have on children in terms of their future support of gun ownership?

This is also what I was referring to above when I said an author wanted to take a more nuanced approach and simply include video games in research in the same manner as all other media. Again, he's not blaming guns for violence, he's simply pointing out what a lot of people outside of the US have said with regard to gun culture in that country - to paraphrase, it's ****ing mental, where the hell did it come from and why is it so bad over there?

Robert ninja wrote: »

<Mombot tweet>

And to wrap the whole thing up, the quote below is taken from the first article in that collage, also one of the most recent, posted on Feb 20th, two days before Trump mentioned video games...

Making the issue of school shootings about video games isn’t even a lack of moving forward as much as it’s actively taking a step backward. Those bones were picked clean years ago, and it’s personally hard to believe I’m writing about this issue again after so many of us thought the Supreme Court decision would be enough.

Blaming video games and the media for violence is just as tiresome now as it was a decade ago, only now we have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s ruling. There’s no excuse for politicians to pretend that this isn’t a settled issue.

There is no chance that any federal or state government is going to be able to successfully control games or other forms of entertainment, making Bevin’s attempts to spin the discussion away from gun control even more cowardly.

The author is the same person Mombot is making fun of in the tweet above.

johnny_ultimate

One: It’s possible to critique or have concerns about the fetishisation of guns / violence in many games (even just on a pure ‘art / culture criticism’ level), and still think the NRA and their Oval Office lapdog are disingenuously muddying the waters to avoid dealing with the more substantial issues. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

Two: Many publications can and should offer a variety of opinions and perspectives on issues. I can read the New York Times or Irish Times and get both conservative & liberal viewpoints on the issues of the day. One op-ed doesn’t mean the same publication can’t publish a contrasting op-ed.

Jerichoholic

Polygon are an abomination, any reading and taking their view as truth need to just stop.

Games aren't to blame, guns aren't to blame either. You are either insane or you are not. It's that simple.

gimli2112

you'd think they'd make it more difficult for the insane to purchase assault rifles in supermarkets though

Jerichoholic

The % of murderers that buy guns legally has to be miniscule. You think every gangbanger in Detroit has a receipt and a license for their weapons?

If you ban guns in the US you are just making crime a whole lot easier.

CatInABox

Jerichoholic wrote: »

The % of murderers that buy guns legally has to be miniscule. You think every gangbanger in Detroit has a receipt and a license for their weapons?

If you ban guns in the US you are just making crime a whole lot easier.

Guns are banned in most countries, and crime (particularly violent crime) is usually way lower than America.

johnny_ultimate

CatInABox wrote: »

Guns are banned in most countries, and crime (particularly violent crime) is usually way lower than America.

Our police force don’t even have guns as standard and Ireland is hardly a lawless land of crime

America is the only country where mass shootings happen with such regularity. While there are unquestionably various factors driving that, there is a central common denominator there, and it sure as **** isn’t video games.

Incidentally, I don’t even think most gun control advocates are calling for an outright ban on guns in the US. A few, sure (although I don’t think anybody is crazy enough to think that just clicking your finger and banning them would work), but mostly it is just more robust background checks, older age limits, and most importantly bans on the deadly semi-automatic weaponry so often used in atrocities. These are the sort of sensible measures the NRA attempts to avoid introducing when they use something like video games as a scapegoat.

pleasant Co.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

America is the only country where mass shootings happen with such regularity. There is a common denominator there, and it sure as **** isn’t video games.

They have a garbage society? other countries seem to be able to both have legal firearm ownership and a dearth of mass shootings - also, it's not as if guns are new or more freely available in the states than they were in the past, yet the issue of mass shootings at it's current level is a relatively new thing.

Kiith

Let's keep the gun debate to the politics forum. Back to Gaming News now.

kunst nugget

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Two: Many publications can and should offer a variety of opinions and perspectives on issues. I can read the New York Times or Irish Times and get both conservative & liberal viewpoints on the issues of the day. One op-ed doesn’t mean the same publication can’t publish a contrasting op-ed.

Breda O'Brien and Una Mullally both write Op-Eds for the Irish Times and they couldn't be more diametrically opposite in terms of socio-political outlook.

dreamers75

Trump is meeting the games lads today should be interesting.

Gun revenue last year 13b (CNBC)

Video games in USA 36b (Statista)

johnny_ultimate

Here's the sizzle reel of video games presented to Trump today, which I present without any comment other than a loud guffaw and accompanying snort:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C_IBSuXIoo

Here's the White House readout of the meeting between Trump and video game folk (plus a few 'think of the children' activists), which I also present without any comment other than this emoji: :cool:

Today, President Trump and senior members of the Administration met with leaders in the video game industry and experts on violence to discuss violent video game exposure and its impact on our children. To date, the Administration has led many discussions about how to prevent violent behavior in our schools, with a focus on stopping those intent on committing mass murder. During today’s meeting, the group spoke with the President about the effect that violent video games have on our youth, especially young males. The President acknowledged some studies have indicated there is a correlation between video game violence and real violence*. The conversation centered on whether violent video games, including games that graphically simulate killing, desensitize our community to violence. This meeting is part of ongoing discussions with local leaders and Congress on issues concerning school and public safety and protecting America’s youth.

*Arrested Development narrator: There was no such study

Retr0gamer

How dare they show glee in the deaths of far right nationalist heroes!

Retr0gamer

It amazes me that this crock of **** is given any type of coverage and not ridiculed from on high when a government funded and scientific* report that comprehensively disproves any connection already exists.

Whenever this bull**** ever comes up there should just be a link to the Byron report:

http://www.learn-ict.org.uk/intsafety/documents/Byron_Summary.pdf

*scientific

Skerries

oh god! I think I have gone blind from so much eye rolling!

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It amazes me that this crock of **** is given any type of coverage and not ridiculed from on high when a government funded and scientific* report that comprehensively disproves any connection already exists.

Whenever this bull**** ever comes up there should just be a link to the Byron report:

http://www.learn-ict.org.uk/intsafety/documents/Byron_Summary.pdf

*scientific

Retr0, this is the administration that appointed a climate change skeptic to run the Environmental Protection Agency. I think this 'science' of yours is relatively far down their agenda :pac:

dreamers75

Just to be clear this is the same country whose military gave 100m to create a video game that would recruit young males and desensitize them to killing.

it was a **** video game but lots of Americans played it.

Robert ninja

Dave Grossman invited to the meeting. Same guy from same publication who quoted

link between violent video game exposure and aggressive behaviour is one of the most studied and best established ... scientific research has demonstrated an association between violent video game use and both increases in aggressive behaviour, aggressive affect, aggressive cognitions and decreases in prosocial behaviour, empathy, and moral engagement.

in a game-blame piece. 2 years later now that Trump says the same, he's changed to quoting

the link between video games and gun violence has little empirical basis, as studies have repeatedly shown.

Trump says up. They say down. This will blow over and absolutely nothing will change because neither Trump or these journos give a flying feck about video games. When it's popular to blame games on everything again they'll be back at it.

Speaking of which, Vavra responds to more lies and hitpieces https://twitter.com/DanielVavra/status/971833372958953472

And bans are being handed out to T7 players

https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/971744594080616448

Hope I don't get a false positive. I have some mods installed but they're completely cosmetic. Seems they're looking for rank resets and lagswitch/pluggers, at least from these tweets... but I know they often don't like to say exactly what they're looking for because then people can circumvent it. Paranoid they'll think my music mod affects gameplay somehow, or are indiscriminate with mod banning.

dreamers75

You get way into this video game stuff.

Like way into it, you know they are just video games and should be just played or not played. you dont need to know the gender of the person reporting on it or if they are having sex with someone who made it.

Nobody actually cares.

Its just a video game.

gizmo

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Here's the White House readout of the meeting between Trump and video game folk (plus a few 'think of the children' activists), which I also present without any comment other than this emoji: :cool:

Getting in Grossman warranted more of a belly laugh though. This is literally the guy who coined the term "murder simulator" in describing the original Doom, the same term which Jack Thompson later ran with post-Columbine on his merry quest towards disbarment.

In any case, the meeting was utterly pointless. As per the summation on The Verge...

Attendees said there was little serious talk of government restrictions on content (which would present significant legal challenges), and the conversation focused on more robust age restrictions or voluntary measures that could be undertaken by the industry itself. “The president encouraged [game developers] to explore things they can do on their own to make things healthier in society,” said Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, “and that’s where it was left.”

Robert ninja

dreamers75 wrote: »

they are just video games and should be just played or not played

That's all? Not to be discussed online & off, modded, reviewed, promoted or criticised, have tournaments with legally-binding regulations? Why are you even reading a gaming forum if all there is to do is play or not play?

dreamers75 wrote: »

You get way into this video game stuff.

Because I make a post in a video game forum, in a gaming news thread about one of the biggest news stories related to video games, about participants of said news...

dreamers75 wrote: »

you dont need to know the gender of the person reporting on it

Who is even talking about that?

dreamers75 wrote: »

or if they are having sex with someone who made it.

Actually by the most basic journalistic standards, you would need to be made aware of a relationship. In fact I believe it's a grey legal area to promote something under the guise of journalism without disclosure of such things, at least in the countries that most of these articles come from. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking

Think it's fairly obvious that people do care about it. You might not, and that's fair enough if you don't care that what you're reading may be biased to the point of being an outright ad or propaganda. But others do, and I don't think it's 'too into it' to expect better than that. But that's neither here nor there in regards to this Trump nonsense.

gizmo wrote: »

In any case, the meeting was utterly pointless. As per the summation on The Verge...

Exactly. I don't think you even need to read any article to know that. I mean what exactly did people think was going to happen? I dunno what's more ridiculous, thinking that they were going to do something like hurt video games globally or that the US would under any circumstance consciously put themselves at a business disadvantage by limiting games or increasing taxes on the games industry, with absolutely nothing to gain from it.

Pac1Man

Weren't America (Microsoft) promoting that Full Spectrum Warrior game back in the day as some sort of military training aid?