Kaftan Barlast

It's certainly preferable to living an iLife

Violence is painful and distressing, playing videogames is entertaining and relaxing. And I just thought of another wonderful example: if FPS games are violent, what about playing paintball? If you look at it, its a much more realistic combat simulation in which you 'kill' your opponents by shooting very real paint balls at them that actually cause pain depending on how close you are. Yet I dont think anyone would put violence and paintball in the same sentence, its just considered a sport same as football or golf. And its played by everyone from kids to corporate CEO's on teambuilding conferences. The whole notion of 'violent games' is just a contruct. One that will disapear in a few years when the majority of people play videogames. And then a frag will be though of as just a frag, not a step on the way to becoming Charles Whitman. edit: tidied up my arguments a bit

We've actually reached the point where we're literally repeating the same arguments over and over. Sweet

Does DA have male-male homosexual romances?

I want one that looks totally badass and isnt too boring toplay with

Its not available here until Friday, so I suppose half of you will have beaten the game by then and will spoil me silly. Wondering one thing, Alan. Can you open the console and muck around? I always end up wanting to change my class/gender/occupation etc. several hours into the game and its poop to have to replay it. I think I played the first part of NWN2 2-3 times before I got a character I was happy with.

You can definently get used to real violence, if youre exposed to it. Ask any policeman, nurse, soldier with combat experience and so on. But you cant get the same effect from films or videogames. And when it comes to porn, you definently build up a tolerance but it kind of stops at a certain point, atleast for me. A great cleavage is always a great cleavage So in fact, you're not actually desensitized at all, Alan.

But the thing is that you just become used to videogames or movies, not actual violence. Among others, there was a swede scientist who did an experiment on this a few years ago where a group of people were exposed to tons of gory horror films and whatnot, then shown real news footage. They showed no signs whatsoever of having developed greater tolerance for disturbing images from reality, just fictional film. The brain will always differentiate between real and imaginary wether you want it to or not, and the hard fact is that no amount of 'simulated' violence can prepare you for the real thing.

Im not quite sure you can say that games have messages, even in the academic sense. You might aswell ask what kind of message a hamburger sends. And we're not discussing films or poetry here, we're talking games. The psychology behind them are not the same. And I would claim that even with good graphics, the experience of playing a game is so different from the real thing that it can be considered an abstraction. High-end professional flight simulators with real ****pit controls and so on come quite close to reality, but when we're looking at a tiny screen using a keyboard and a mouse we might aswell be playing chess. The differance between game and reality is much larger than we might believe. We did a small experiment letting people drive a very realistic car simulator using best available computers wheel with pedals and shiftstick, and logicly it shouldnt have been a problem but it was. The test subject couldnt even get around the track, because he couldnt feel how fast he was going or where the car was on the road, and kept crashing. Maybe thats slightly irrelevant to the topic, but its interesting nontheless.

But if we could get back to the core question: is it correct to refer to games that contain conflict as "violent" even though that supposed violence is an abstraction? For instance, no one would call chess violent, although it is originally a wargame where a piece taking another is really one soldier killing another. Is it just a question of graphics and animation quality? And isnt that a rather absurd way of looking at it?

I started a thread on the academic forum aswell about this and apparently there is heavy reserach that supports my point of view. When playing a game, the human mind will treat everything as abstractions of a function. It doesnt matter if it throwing balls into a cup or taking out a grub with a well-aimed torque bow shot. What matters to the psyche is the result within the context of the game; for example "one more kill and I get the UAV!" in Cod4. Even if there was a connection between playing "violent" games and being violent IRL (which there is significant proof against), the brain is not thinking about violence when playing the game. The only person who percieves any violent action going on is an observer with no experience of similar games.

*puts on his robe and wizard hat* Is it possible to play the game as a complete douchebag?

I saw a TV show the other night about human psychology and violence in which they mentioned the usual "violent videogames" and this together with Alanschus relative got me thinking: Are combat/conflict driven games really violent or is it something completely different? For instance, when I frag someone in COD4 or Quake thats exactly the same thing as scoring if we were playing football or taking your opponents pieces in checkers. Its got nothing to do with hurting anyone. And in singleplayer games like GTA4 for example, combat is just the way in which challenges are overcome and missions are accomplished. If you had to defeat them by solving crossword puzzles, thats what youd do. Its just gameplay. Like winning a match in UFC Undisputed or FIFA 2010 is the exact same thing, but with a different model of challenge and set of moves. And on the same note, strategy games often contain violence on a massive scale, yet are not considered violent at all. A battle in ETW can have hundreds of dead and wounded, but that doesnt seem to matter. Violence is about physicly hurting or killing other people(or animals), games may seem violent to a casual and uninformed observer, but they're something completely different.

I spent 2 hours making my first Mass Effect Character ..in Saints Row 2 I spent more time fiddling with my character than playing the game

Regarding piracy, a proper PC release was released last night. Which makes whatever DRM was used one of the least effective in history. (And no, I havent downloaded it, I think Bioware are very deserving of my money.)

It's not? Ooh, yeah I thought the PC version was due february. Guess EA have realised delaying doesnt work.

Bu...b...b.... pa......pira.......piracy!!! Piracy only occurs for PC games, don' cha know? True. Its not at all like I have NEVER met someone who actually buys Nintendo DS games instead of running pirated games on one of those flash memory thingies.

Oh come on, there is not a single person on this forum who hasnt at one point downloaded something not entirely legal. But in this case it was actually a friend of mine who gave me the info while he was complaining about delayed PC versions of games.

I just saw that there is a pirated Xbox 360 release out now, two full days before its out in the stores. "Let's delay the PC versions of all games because piracy is like totally nonexistant on consoles" right.

Hippies are the genus, druids are a species of said genus. Biology 101.

Oh, just relax and have another beef smoothie

if it was invented by a bunch of hippies it's not a real holiday either.

Any sport that relies so heavily on referees is for sissies... and why doesnt basketball have tackles? It should have, its so boring to watch the teams take turns at scoring with players running completely unmolested across the court. Why even have defensive players if they're not allowed to do anything?

Its actually avatar beating on a townsperson on the docks of... the city where the evil priestess lives in Ultima 8. I Played that game til my eyes popped out of their sockets, it was so excruciatingly difficult and long. But I loved it. Never got farther than the fire people though.