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CNN: "Video games get you in the mode to do the killing"

I was playing Harvest Moon earlier. Now I am in the mood to tend to the fields and start a family. I'll pick some flowers and fruit from around the forest and later this evening I'll run around town giving girls these flowers I picked so they'll like me and become my wife.
 
Today, I responded to an opinion-letter in the local paper that directed blame toward violence from Hollywood and video games. These shootings (Columbine, Rep. Gifford, VA Tech, etc.) are related to individual mental health and the availability of the weapons used. Other factors exist in the periphery. In the reponse, I included the hypothetical: Would eliminating competitive sports make the population more cooperative? It is as if there is some twisted logic that if history were to no longer part of the curriculum, only then would it stop repeating itself.
 
JohnLacke said:
I was playing Harvest Moon earlier. Now I am in the mood to tend to the fields and start a family. I'll pick some flowers and fruit from around the forest and later this evening I'll run around town giving girls these flowers I picked so they'll like me and become my wife.
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Perfect plan to murder young girls
 
oh-for-fucks-sake-500x324.jpg
 
I feel like the headline is misleading. The Examiner says it's CNN's criminal profiler, EGM says Pat Brown was a guest. Not to mention that he clearly stated that he didn't believe that video games MAKE you a killer but have an effect on the mentally unsound.

I’m not saying video games make you a killer. But if you’re a psychopath, video games help you get in the mode to do the killing,
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I agree 100% that if you're mentally unstable video games can have an effect on you in this way. So can movies and other forms of media, but I'd believe that a mentally unstable person could use video games to act out their twisted fantasies and be used to hype oneself up for acting on those ideas in real life.

Maybe if we didn't just go off bullshit headlines and read the full statement, we wouldn't have such knee-jerk reactions. This is just like the Dead Space 3 controversy that was cleared up by the Penny Arcade Report.
 
It's really unfortunate that we are mostly not mature enough to handle the potential fallibility of gaming in certain circumstances. Research I've seen suggests violent/intense (not just graphic violence, think things that are the polar opposite of Fl0wer) games do generally tend to increase aggression in people, though the effects of this are typically minute for the overwhelming majority of people. Unlike your average person, someone with mental illness might not have the capability to contextualize the violence of the game and treat it as mere fantasy.

We do realize that acknowledging that games can have a downside doesn't negate the creative or expressive potential of them as a medium, right?
 
BY2K said:
It's mood, for God's sake, not mode!
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Just rollin' with what the headline said. At any rate, it's still amusing to see this when it is clearly movies that influenced the guy. Not saying this argument should be used towards movies, either. Just saying that he was deranged enough to be influenced in the first place, and it is clearly the Dark Knight adaption of Batman that the guy was obsessed with. Yet here this quack is pointing the finger at games.
 
I remember CNN (and just about every other network) had people on the air saying the same thing about the DC Sniper killings. It had to be video games. The guy doing it had to have been trained by playing FPS. Turns out he was trained by the government and those people who blamed it on video games simply faded into the background and were never made to answer for their own stupidity.
 
cuyahoga said:
It's really unfortunate that we are mostly not mature enough to handle the potential fallibility of gaming in certain circumstances. Research I've seen suggests violent/intense (not just graphic violence, think things that are the polar opposite of Fl0wer) games do generally tend to increase aggression in people, though the effects of this are typically minute for the overwhelming majority of people. Unlike your average person, someone with mental illness might not have the capability to contextualize the violence of the game and treat it as mere fantasy.

We do realize that acknowledging that games can have a downside doesn't negate the creative or expressive potential of them as a medium, right?
Click to expand...

It would be fairer to say that crazies seek out and are more susceptible to violent media - but I agree. Video games are a viable target. However, the violence in entertainment is just a reflection of part of the human experience. life>art>life ad infinitum.

The real problem is that some people are unstable and certain things play into their fantasies/delusions. Some will even emulate or simulate violence they see, hear, experience. Nothing new there. I just hope this doesn't turn into another tiresome witch-hunt because people always tend to look outside when they should be looking inside.
 
cuyahoga said:
It's really unfortunate that we are mostly not mature enough to handle the potential fallibility of gaming in certain circumstances. Research I've seen suggests violent/intense (not just graphic violence, think things that are the polar opposite of Fl0wer) games do generally tend to increase aggression in people, though the effects of this are typically minute for the overwhelming majority of people. Unlike your average person, someone with mental illness might not have the capability to contextualize the violence of the game and treat it as mere fantasy.

We do realize that acknowledging that games can have a downside doesn't negate the creative or expressive potential of them as a medium, right?
Click to expand...

I'm curious about the research you mention. I am skeptical of its validity. Here are a couple of studies to the contrary, the latter does call for more research and citing a lack thereof.

No strong-link between violence and video games

Violent Video Games Help Relieve Stress, Depression

There are studies that I came across that suggest gamers become more desensitized to violent images, but the methodology employed is questionable. Gamers play for long durations and then are shown violent images on a screen. Heart rates and blood pressure are monitored to gauge responses. The problem is that this indicates desensitization toward on-screen violence and not necessarily real-life violence. I find it a stretch to claim that someone becomes less empathetic toward a real person at the same rate that they would toward an image of one suffering, especially after hours of being in front of a monitor.
 
Would it be possible to sue for defamation? Claiming million of gamers are just waiting to go out and kill someone doesn't seem like something that would be okay to say without any evidence.
 
Guy dresses up like a character from a movie and shoots people dead and they say video games had something to do with it? Smh
 
So 1 in 15 million people is a good enough measure to conclude that video games=killers? That guy probably had some messed up psychological problems already.
 
PSFan said:
So 1 in 15 million people is a good enough measure to conclude that video games=killers? That guy probably had some messed up psychological problems already.
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The guy that is quoted already stated that the guy was a psychopath beforehand.
 
PSFan said:
So 1 in 15 million people is a good enough measure to conclude that video games=killers? That guy probably had some messed up psychological problems already.
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Well, he told police that he was the joker after a commiting a massacre at a Batman movie. I'd say he is indeed pretty deranged.
 
I always knew pacman was putting me in kill mode. You're hunted by your bullies until you digest drugs and go on a murderous rampage against those who chase you.
 
I expected a worse video to be honest, she does mention "if you are a psycho" but I agree VG shouldn't be singled out in this case... especially at a movie screening; look at all the violent movies in the world.
 
It isn't just the US media. The Daily Mail here in the UK claimed he was addicted to Guitar Hero....
 
If violent video games make you violent in real life, then I should win the Daytona 500 with all the racing games I played.
 
Daydream Sequence said:
I remember CNN (and just about every other network) had people on the air saying the same thing about the DC Sniper killings. It had to be video games. The guy doing it had to have been trained by playing FPS. Turns out he was trained by the government and those people who blamed it on video games simply faded into the background and were never made to answer for their own stupidity.
Click to expand...

I was in Florida during the wrap up of that incident (i don't live in the US and being in Japan i don't watch TV -at all- and haven't for about 12 years) so i was amazed to sit through this program that documented the whole Sniper Killings - the military training, the idea of having his wife killed in amongst them to make it look random, etc... It was a seemingly good well researched analytical program and -not one- mention of videogames.

Following that : "Coming up next - VIDEO GAME KILLERS!!! How Halo turned a man to commit the DC Sniper killings!"

i just didn't get it - show the real reason then show a program contradicting all that good work. #facepalm
 
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