Gaming Violence in video games

[Izack]

Call of Duty is generally one of the most unrealistic games I've ever seen.

But yes, you have a good point.

 

[garyw]

I've just spent part of this weekend beating Alpha protocol. It took a few tries and it took a lot of in game violence.

I don't see how game violence can be equated with real life violence for several reasons:

1. In a game, I can reload a save and all those people I spent hours killing are alive again.

2. They all look the same. In alpha protocol I spent a lot of time killing guards who have just two texture looks about them. Somewhere round the back of the game there must be a cloning factory churning out just two types of guard. Must be confusing at tea break.

3. After I've killed someone I sit there and watch the body get beamed up. Games like to keep things tidy. Aside from hitman where you have to hide the body most games will clear up for you like a fussy mother.

4. People in real life don't have health bars.

5. People in real life don't suffer glitches where they jump up and down on the spot because a 2 inch high wall blocks them.

In other words there is absolutely no comparable between game violence and real life.

 

[Grover]

its not the logic behind it, its the basic thoughts behind it that you dont even realise you think:

all the time playing that game, you'll be thinking "who wants to kill me next" or "who do i kill next". those thoughts set themselves into your brain like you learn anything else, causing you to absorb the emotions and behaviours that the game makes you take on

theres no escaping sub-conscious thought

 

[garyw]

all the time playing that game, you'll be thinking "who wants to kill me next" or "who do i kill next". those thoughts set themselves into your brain like you learn anything else, causing you to absorb the emotions and behaviours that the game makes you take on

Sure but when the person who wants to kill you next is the exact same clone of the person who has killed you the last 10 times you don't have emersion, you don't have any link between that bunch of pixels and real life.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

theres no escaping sub-conscious thought

I think you are greatly underestimating the power that conscious thought has over sub or unconscious thought.

 

[Urwumpe]

its not the logic behind it, its the basic thoughts behind it that you dont even realise you think:

all the time playing that game, you'll be thinking "who wants to kill me next" or "who do i kill next". those thoughts set themselves into your brain like you learn anything else, causing you to absorb the emotions and behaviours that the game makes you take on

theres no escaping sub-conscious thought

Look. I had been in the army. I learned not just the thinking of "who wants to kill me next" or "who do I kill next", but also many very creative ways of doing so, that no computer game can yet reproduce. And that not in a computer game, but in the real dirt.


I don't go around kill people. I actually became much less aggressive since. Before I went in the army, you had a long list of events in which I was using violence against others. Not always in defense.

Since the army, I had much better senses of my own aggressions and learned to be emotionally more stable about it.

I can't imagine somebody not wanting to kill somebody someday. Maybe not intentionally, maybe you just want to use violence without knowing its effects. It is part of your dinosaur past. You can be the biggest and most peaceful pacifist, still you will have it in you, feel it. The difference is only that you can choose not to be violent, if you are really peaceful, you can even look behind the mask of aggression and see what makes you feel aggressive.

Computer games, don't do anything there. You can feel strange after computer games, with your reflexes seeing enemies everywhere. This is bad, but a sign that you are not yet professional enough to deal with such aggressions - you need to get more used to them, learn to understand the mechanism and how plain aggression will not bring you forward.

The best violence is always the precisely directed violence, at the right time, at the right spot, with the right effort. and this can only be learned, you are not born with the sense of knowing when you should be aggressive, and when you should not be it.

 

[Izack]

all the time playing that game, you'll be thinking "who wants to kill me next" or "who do i kill next". those thoughts set themselves into your brain like you learn anything else, causing you to absorb the emotions and behaviours that the game makes you take on

I don't buy this. Maybe it's just me but it's not 'who do i kill next' because there are no people to kill with this simulated weapon! There are basic AI creations (or people on some other end of the tubes) controlling the moving of bits, rendered through the magic of modern technology onto this flat plastic panel. If you see them as anything else, you probably shouldn't be playing the game!

It's really hard not to see the unreality of video games. :shrug:

 

[garyw]

I don't buy this. Maybe it's just me but it's not 'who do i kill next' because there are no people to kill with this simulated weapon! There are basic AI creations (or people on some other end of the tubes) controlling the moving of bits, rendered through the magic of modern technology onto this flat plastic panel. If you see them as anything else, you probably shouldn't be playing the game!

It's really hard not to see the unreality of video games. :shrug:

I had one earlier today, enemy solider AI went wrong so he ended up running whilst facing a wall. I shot him to put him out of his misery. Poor Dumb Clone.

 

[N_Molson]

Awww, no gore pictures in this thread, how deceving !

:lol:

I've been playing Fallout 3, which is -18 rated. In this game you can aim at body parts to cripple enemies, or even better just their weapon, and when you do so on humans NPCs, that have "courage" checks, you can make them flee if their health is low, have crippled members or have lost their weapon because of your actions.

What I regret is that they will flee for a while, then come back at you 1 minute after, and fight to death with bare hands if needed (but they are smart enough to pick weapons on battlefields when they need one). It would have been cool to have them surrender, and this could have been linked with the reputation system, or having them giving you all their belongings (so sparing lives earns you something). :shrug:

 

[T.Neo]

I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but whenever I finished playing LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, I had this uncontrollable urge to defeat someone with a stick of glowing special effects made of computer-generated plastic, so that they would disassemble into body parts made of computer-generated plastic, and spill little bits of shiny computer-generated LEGO pieces that I could use to unlock hidden characters.

:rofl:

 

[mojoey]

Look. I had been in the army. I learned not just the thinking of "who wants to kill me next" or "who do I kill next", but also many very creative ways of doing so, that no computer game can yet reproduce. And that not in a computer game, but in the real dirt.


I don't go around kill people. I actually became much less aggressive since. Before I went in the army, you had a long list of events in which I was using violence against others. Not always in defense.

Since the army, I had much better senses of my own aggressions and learned to be emotionally more stable about it.

I can't imagine somebody not wanting to kill somebody someday. Maybe not intentionally, maybe you just want to use violence without knowing its effects. It is part of your dinosaur past. You can be the biggest and most peaceful pacifist, still you will have it in you, feel it. The difference is only that you can choose not to be violent, if you are really peaceful, you can even look behind the mask of aggression and see what makes you feel aggressive.

Computer games, don't do anything there. You can feel strange after computer games, with your reflexes seeing enemies everywhere. This is bad, but a sign that you are not yet professional enough to deal with such aggressions - you need to get more used to them, learn to understand the mechanism and how plain aggression will not bring you forward.

The best violence is always the precisely directed violence, at the right time, at the right spot, with the right effort. and this can only be learned, you are not born with the sense of knowing when you should be aggressive, and when you should not be it.

wow, didnt know that you were in the military. Youre right though, you arent born with discipline, you are taught it

 

[Urwumpe]

wow, didnt know that you were in the military. Youre right though, you arent born with discipline, you are taught it

It isn't just about discipline, you always need discipline for getting things right, even as artist, you need discipline to become great.

Only by discipline, you also don't learn to deal with aggression, you suppress it only. I think the real key is to learn how to channel your aggression into something productive. And for that you need to learn why you are aggressive in first place. When you turn into the Hulk, the aggression becomes self-sustained, you are aggressive for it being in command. The important thing is to feel this development and remain able to see what actually makes you aggressive.

If you get mad about somebody overtaking you in a very wild way, are you really only aggressive by him mistaking your road for the Green Hell? Or is there something else underneath? A real concrete aspect of the situation, that you can focus on.

It isn't easy, but then, if you just suppress your aggression, it will accumulate. Underneath. And one day it will vent. All the unsolved conflicts will shout for getting solved. And some will solve it the postal way. Instead of knowing the problems that need to be addressed.

PS: Don't channel your aggression into a martial trance. You scare your army instructors that way.