metadigital

And boy is it good! Man, you wouldn't like it, though ... Phew-ee! ... Force-Lightning has a new meaning.

Use the search function. <_< This has been posted (and answered) about a hundred times. To answer your question No.

I redeemed Atris. And Visas was a bunny boiler.

Judean People's Front crack suicide squad, Attack! *platoon of men pull out their swords and stab themselves*

Legislation is the only way to deal with this. A game that deals with mature themes must be restricted to a mature audience. The mechanism needs to be functional; if it is not, then it is the mechanism at fault, not the mature themes. Except that cigarette smoking is harmful to everyone, even people who happen to be in the general vicinity when someone else is smoking. Unlike video games, which are not harmful to most people on any scale similar. I think again the problem is not the MMORPG, but the people who need to be managed. It's okay to say MMORPGs are bad, but millions of people play them with no ill effects. Alcohol consumption is a much more costly and has a more direct correlation with abuse, illness, disease and violence than video games can ever aspire to, and I don't hear anyone calling for another prohibition of alcohol.

July 1 for War of the Worlds. The remake. Again. Starring Thomas Cruise as the everyman. And some CGI pixels as the badguys.

That's what I thought, too. The only way I could justify it in my mind was that Sidious was THE Sith Master so he executed a move that no one had ever seen before. I know thats stretching it, but thats the only thing I could think of. Only Mace, being the senior member of the Jedi Council, knew how to defend against it. But all in all, I really thought the Jedi were a bunch of panzis. Especially after how they were portrayed in the Clone Wars animated series. In Clone Wars, they pretty much lived up to my imagination of what a Jedi Knight would be like in his or her prime. An unkillable bada@#. But in ROTS, they are not only disposed of by Clone Troopers, but they are completely lacking of any kind of intelligence. They just walk right into traps blindly and seem only concerned with their own Order as opposed to the Republic itself. After watching the way Lucas portrayed them in the movie, I was left wondering how they survived THIS long. Also, the way Anakin fell made him look like a complete idiot. I'm sorry, but it did. He goes from, "What have I done??!", to willingly walking into a room and killing a bunch of innocent children. WTF? This is why I've always said that Anakin should've started off the prequels older. His fall to the darkside should've started at the end of Episode I, which is also where I thought the Clone Wars should've started. The second episode could've just been a balls to the wall Clone Wars movie, while still showing Anakin's gradual fall to darkness. At the end of EP2, he would've made a decision that pretty much would have sealed his fate. By the time we got to EP 3, he would pretty much be Darth Vader. There would be nothing left to do but show the fall of the Jedi at the hands of Vader and Sidious. But oh well. I mean, Lucas is a visionary and I totally see where he was going with Anakin's fall. He planted the seed in TPM when Yoda tells Anakin in the Jedi Council chamber that fear is the path to the darkside. All this time, Anakin was terrified of losing Padme. It was this fear that lead him to be angry, but most importantly desperate. He was desperate to save the woman he loved. His wife and the mother of his children. But he didn't know how. All he knew was that there was this horrible prospect of loss in his heart that he couldn't bear. This caused unimaginable fear. That's why Yoda tells him in EP III that Anakin must learn to let go of all that because it's greedy and selfish. However, in the end, human nature got the best of him. Could any of you honestly say that you wouldn't "go over to the darkside" in an effort to save the ones that you love if you thought they were in danger? Especially if you thought that by doing so, you would ensure the safety and security of your friends and/or family? Remember: you are DESPERATE here. You honest to goodness believe the person that is THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN YOUR LIFE (your wife, husband, mom, dad, best friend, girlfriend/boyfriend, whoever) is going to die and you feel utterly helpless to stop it. And then someone who has always been in your life, a mentor to you, someone you trust and has always looked after you and showed you affection and respect where no one else would, offers you a way to save this person. Would you honestly turn this down when you feel that no one else hears you or understands how you're feeling. When you are generally confused and caught up in the vacuum of a huge war while you're only in your 20s and have been told that, oh by the way, you are the chosen one who will bring balance to the Force. This poor man was FATED to go over to the darkside. Seriously. This is why Anakin and Darth Vader in general, is a tragic figure in every sense of the word. He allowed himself to be duped because he was desperate to save the woman he loved, to defeat the aspect of doubt in his heart. But when all was said and, there was only suffering. Which is exactly what Yoda said in TPM. The problem is Lucas did a terrible job conveying all this in a script or on the big screen. It just comes off as rushed and empty. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> This is an extremely idealised interpretation of a particularly poorly written, scripted, directed and acted part of the film. I applaud your heroic interpretation of the meagre raw ingredients. Yes, ideally, that should have been something like the story; unfortunately we got the equivalent of the Antartic Shakepeare Appreciation Society's Hamlet. dunno, that seems like an important bit of info to leave out, don't you? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hmm. Didn't phrase that right, did I? What I meant, is that that is what I'd imagine happened in between the two scenes, not that Lucas left out that important information. Who knows what his ideas behind the motivation were, but if I were Sidious, I'd say that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The problem is that Anakin was given too many motivations. The primary one which seemed to be save Padme whatever the cost was shot to bits when he thought he had killed her. Gratitude to the emporer dosnt seem too likely, revenge on Obi Wan ? Possibly , that could lead to him searching around the Galaxy. Anakin as a trgic figure just trying to save his wife might have worked if he hadnt gone around butchering children. He wasnt even involved directly in order 66 so without that scene he could have been very much the tragic hero...In which case meeting Luke would remind him of his humanity. I expect somewhere along the way he would have figured out that he didnt kill Padme after all. Probably between EPV and VI which would reinforce his motivations for turning on the emporer , who had lied to him all along. To me that seems to fit together better in relation with EP IV-VI. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It speaks volumes about the quality and depth of the writing when we have to create plot and character motivations for the main character of a film sexology. Well, cheese lines are still cheese no matter who says 'em. That has little to do with acting talent. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't agree with this either. Watch a good actor say a cheesey line with panache, and you'll agree. For example, Robert Deniro was given no stage direction and the line "Are you looking at me?" in Taxi Driver. (If you haven't seen this Oscar winning film, then I recommend it.) That is the difference that a good acting performance can achieve. No, that is not my opinion, anyway. I think that ANH was a breakthrough, a high watermark for special effects and a fresh, new way to do the romantic swashbuckling film in space. The sequel was a darker film, and had a better story, and marked GL's expansion into the EU. From there, the franchise became derivative and uninspiring. You may say that the prequel trilogy was just more of the same, and you would be correct. There is nothing new in filmmaking, plot, character development, acting, dialogue script or even special effects in these newer films than what was created thrity years ago. That's why the first and second films were better, they were original. I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of "... and then, a bit later ..." moments in the film; like there was a summary going on, because so much was happenning. Interesting that it appears the Emperor wasn't able to communicate with all the clones at once, instead he had to make a bunch of back-to-back trunk calls ...

for all the genius of lucas, he is rubbish at getting actors to act <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's because he over-directs them. And he directs badly, too. RotJ was crap. SW:ANH was a landmark film. It was a brand new concept in SF, after Flash Gordon, it was innovative and interesting and a very romantic swashbuckling film. The sets looked dirty and used: this was a new concept for SF, whereas normally it was expected that SF = sparkly new sets. Ridley Scott was so impressed he used the look for Alien. ESB was the dark image of ANH, and it featured the Empire taking a leading role; Darth Vader came into his own and GL began to create a big SW universe. (No-one, not even GL, expected SW to be more than one film.) The newer films are all less innovative, being derivative, and equally appalling -- or worse -- in acting, directing, scripting and charcter development. 'cause it were tolkien who came up with dragons and elves and orcs and trolls 'n such. george lucas made american graffiti... a pretty innovative movie in terms of narrative style. and keep in mind that george lucas funded Empire... $30 million of his own money so that he could do his way, and most folks seems to think that Empire turned out ok. star wars were a pretty clever movie... took traditional hero myth and set it in space... and space movies were not all that profitable at the time... is why fox were willing to sell lucas the merchandising rights for star wars. can lucas write? no. his dialogues, in particular, is awkward and tends to be overwrought. oddly 'nuff, lucas admits that he cannot write. even more odd is fact that in spite of lucas' acknowledged shortcoming, he continues to write. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What is interesting is that GL studied anthropology at university. You'd think he'd have a better idea about story-telling with this sort of background. Obviously he has never had a decent romance in his life, judging by the remorcelessly tedious dialogue. What a lost-cause nerd.

Yeah, I have to wonder if Yoda's increasingly goofy speech was a result of Lucas' desire to stick to rules he believed he'd made for Yoda's sentence structure in a more reliable way. In the Original movies, Yoda would very frequently break the rules which normally apply to his sentence structure arbitrarily, just to make the line more coherent or less goofy, or more accessible to the audience. In Ep III, Lucas seemed to throw any intent to make Yoda's sentence structure not sound ridiculous out the window, and the result was the audience laughing at all sorts inappropriate times, during seriously delivered Yoda lines. Unfortunately, there's no way to get around the badly (well, probably not at all) thought out jive talk Lucas invented for his little green puppet at this point. I think he should have just gone on breaking all the rules of the aphasic dialect he'd invented here as well. We know Yoda doesn't actually follow any logical rules in his speech. We know Lucas really has no better idea what he's doing than having his puppet "speak all backwards" or some such thing. So enforcing the irrational variations on English he'd invented when they sound so ridiculous seems silly. The frustrating thing about it is that it's grammatically such a mess. It's just English word order, usually with phrases which would normally begin a sentence ending them, with some English grammar rules enforced when they break Yoda's rules, and some of Yoda's rules enforced when they break English rules, in a confused and incoherent pile of linguistic uncertainties. Since English itself has a very messy, often broken set of greatly varied rules on word order, you can apply Yoda's variations to those rules and claim he's speaking according to certain grammatical rules to derive a subset of English grammar's, but in reality, he's just speaking every-day Modern English with a couple words which appeared significant to Lucas moved from the sentence's beginning to the sentence's end. One can say things like "in first person indicative phrases, the nominative pronoun and its auxilliary verb will normally be sentence final if the auxilliary verb is present, or the nominative pronoun and the main clausal verb will be sentence final if no auxilliary verb is present," but that's just a fancy way of describing the result of Lucas sticking what he saw at the beginning of a sentence on the end of it instead, so it seems like a pointless exercise. I think Lucas should have stuck with having his little green man "talking all weird" in whatever way had originally occurred to him, but being strict about rules which don't even really formally exist when it makes lines sounds so silly strikes me as pointless. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I other words, GL can't write dialogue. Even screwey dialogue that he invented in the first place he can't write successfully. If it's like EVERY other series made currently, it will be made eight episodes at a time, with the option to extend. I agree that the plot is completely ludicrous. The film itself I went in with no real (positive) expectations; I was still somewhat underwelmed by it. Yeah, there was some pretty laser cannons at the beginning. Seen it before. Yes there were some citiscapes. Seen it. Yes there were lightsabre battles. But now all rather boring (although I did chuckle at Grevious's twin hay-maker windmill attack). I thought the series ended up being more about Obi_wan than Darth Vader. Or R2D2 ... he survived all the films intact, after all. I found the acting woeful (with a few small exceptions: Ian McDiarmid carried his scenes) with Hayden Christensen again making hard work of the -- admitedly dire - dialogue. I agree totally that the whole raison d'

It was never implied by the poster or myself that the first language should be C. I said that the C family was a good language to learn, for all of the above-mentioned reasons. I don't know why I have been singled out for special mention by so many people, heck, I had to learn 24 computer langauges in my first year at university (SNOBOL, anyone?), and I can tell you that if I had to do it all again, I would just learn BASIC and C/C++/Java (oh, and C#, if you must). The danger with BASIC is that it is easy to focus on it to the detriment of C, and I don't know how many computer games use BASIC. :D It's true that Micro$oft make enviable development environments. It's also true that what language you chose to use is dependent on a lot of different factors, but familiarity ends up having a large -- yes, even disproportiate -- impact. If I can write a complete script in a language in hours rather than days (including debug time), then it makes more sense to do so. But, if that routine is going to be run thousands of times a day, and it will save expenses (computing overhead, user time) to programme in a language that you are not so familiar in, then it obviously behooves you to write it in the more unfamiliar / difficult language. I remember (early on) writing C programmes one week, then going back the next week to re-use some of the code and having to re-write the first algorithm to understand what I had done in the first place! Anyway, back on topic, the poster will gain most benefit from understanding C for a longer time. Hence my encouragement to learn it, or one of the sister languages.

I was referring to 3D modelling as the hardest computational stuff. If I confused anyone into thinking that I referred to graphic designers, e.g. such that re-decorate rooms, then I apologise. I did think I made that pretty clear, though. I don't know about you, but I was taught art at kindergarten all the way up until I chose not to further it in favour of the sciences, when I was a teenager. And I was not forced to learn swathes of Art History, just fingerpaint, paint with oils, watercolours, etc or create clay models or whatever. The reason mathematics is taught is that numeracy is a more essential skill in our society. It is a great pity that it has such bad press and poor practitioners that teach it. I guess most of the interesting mathematicians are making millions in the stock market and are not interested in teaching their skills to ungrateful little snots in grade school. <_< I was suggesting that a (right-brain dominant) artistic outlook is something that is not common in the (left-brain dominant) IT field, and if you have both artistic and mathematical flair to do both well, then you will go far.

Planet numbers are not important. I want a deep story for any RPG that I play, and I want immersion. That can happen on one planet. We've managed to live on planet Earth for a few millennia, and there are not a few plots to tell from our experiences; we don't need ten planets, we need some sort of grand design. I would like to see the PC working in the near-normal society; like Telos or Taris, where the evil and bad lurk just beneath the surface, and brute force is as likely as not to end up hurting innocents as well as the guilty. This will help balance the game: I want non-lethal combat for lawful good characters, otherwise they are all just different shades of chaos. PS I note also that the Kashyyyk of Epsiode III had no resemblance to the Kashyyyk of KotOR. Ah, well, at least it had Wookies on it.

Maybe they're the same guy?

What he said. If I refused to buy from any company that has ever been in any way associated with a game that wasn't top notch, I'd have a different hobby. And probably a cheaper one at that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What they said, and especially Steve's comments on absolute bans and different hobbies. I think the best strategy for all of us, as a group, is to only pay for games that are worth it to us. I for one will not be buying any games, review-sight-unseen, again. It is the supreme act of wishful thinking over hard-won experience to do so ... and any publisher that releases a game before the review code is sent to the game mags for review is obviously doging a bad review, too. I will make a special effort in future to wait for an extra month for previous egregious behaviour, like that displayed by LA with KotOR2.

I'm sure they'll put out a "My Little Pony" interactive game soon, Darque. PS InfogRames?

This just keeps getting better. So now you are proposing to suppress something that has been a constant in human society since the dawn of time, and even something that may arguably be hard-coded into our DNA, instead of just containing a relatively new form of "culture" whose desensitizing effect could potentially increase the incidence of violence. Yes, that's a sound argument alright. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was not trying to suppress human nature, I was pointing out the ludicrous proposition that you are propounding: removing violence from video games will prevent violence in society, the same violence that was present before video games were invented! To illustrate this, I was being sarcastic with the "worthy" comment. A "worthy" game is meant to be a curse: sure it would be a worthy cause -- but No, no-one would play it if it sacrificed portraying reality in a real way. It would be like making a game where chess pieces politely talk to each other on the chess board and trying to sell it to draughts players. Nice, "worthy" but altogether irrelevant: because it places the sanitization of reality above the enjopyment of the game. No. Your drinking cola doesn't affect me at all. However, it is debatable whether a violent game may bring you over the edge if you are already unstable, or under another set of circumstances that are beside the point. That is the difference. Uh... you are really trying hard to come up with absurd analogies, aren't you? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I am trying to dislodge your unrealistic adherence to a nonsensical ideology with rather extreme (not extremist) examples of why absolutes that may be well-meaning will just not work. And it is just as likely that an unstable individual taking 1,3,7 Trimethyl xanthine as well as the large dose of sugar present in cola, is more likely to become unstable than simply sitting and twitching their mouse in front of a computer. Coke is more widely available than computers (over 75% of the world's population have never made a telephone call), and excess sugar in the diet is a known and proven cause of ADHD and Type II Diabetes. So there is more imperative to ban cola -- which has few intrinsic redeeming values, per se. Risk management. This demonstrates the same hysterical arguments in a different zone of affect. Nice try at changing the topic. It's not sex we're talking about. Sex doesn't harm anyone, and I'm all for ultra realistic sex games. Violence and sex are not in the same league. Next. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sex is another example that has been brought up previously. Since you readily accept that the realistic portrayal of sexual acts in a video game are okay, then I wonder how far this extends. Is just the missionary position between married people acceptable, or are we permited to break societal norms and aspirations with sex, but not violence? Bondage? Micturation? Rape? Oops, we're into violence. I can imagine a world where conflict is solved with online combat rather than war. Sure that's far-fetched, but it is close in societies like South Korea, where the lines between virtual and real life are already blurring: In 2003, a group of thugs burst into a Seoul [PC arcade] and proceeded to kick seven shades out of a man who killed one of their characters in [Lineage].

There is a more important factor you are glossing over to the peril of adult discussion of this topic: flims reflect the societies more than they affect them. If you don't believe me, watch a film from the fifties, or even the eighties. What does it tell you about the era? Look at the differences with today. Not just the fashion (wow, look at those shoulderpads -- powerdressing?), but the way women are portrayed, the norms of sex and violence and manners. One curious trend -- if you haven't noticed already -- is that there are better roles for women in the fifties than right now. After the sexual revolution of the sixties there are fewer strong roles for women older than thirty than there have ever been. Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis wouldn't have a film to star in during this last decade. As Woopi Goldberg said at the 1996 Oscars, all the female leads were prostitutes (Sharon Stone in Casino, Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas). At least video games have strong female lead characters.

November 29, 2003. A rabid MMOG fan, known simply as Mr Jin, walks into a 24-hour internet caf

Oh. I see. And isn't controlling violent content in entertainment a way of containing the free spread of violence as a perfectly normal thing in our society? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Depends on the controlling mechanism and your definition of violence. It would be a very worthy game that made all the characters speak with utmost respect to each NPC; no scattological references or inappropriate language; no overt or implied verbal or physical violence. But would that really prevent a violent society? I put it to you that violence predates the video game industry by several millennia (at least), and there didn't seem to be a lack of violence -- even in Victorian society where prudish attitudes to manners reached a zenith. In fact, the Victorians were arguably the equal to the most violent conquerors in history. So I diagree with your stated conclusion. Sure. That's why the example was absurd. Everyone knows that cars are potentially deadly. But they are necessary for lots of things, and the motor industry is an important one. On the other hand, the gaming industry is already strong without the need for ultra realistic violence. And there is no benefit at all from having that kind of stuff, other than a marginal desire and the lust of some people for a "universal lack of censorship". There you have your risk-benefit calculation. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> By your argument you could advocate banning cola drinks. They serve no purpose except to make a few corporate executives rich and oil the wheels of capitalism. Except Coca Cola, for one example, pours billions of dollars into sports sponsorship worldwide, which would help countless young people out of poverty. (Liberals are always saying that the cost of saving just one life is immaterial.) What does the game industry do? Well, for a nascent industry -- less than a quarter of a century old -- it has already given quite a lot back to society, but I would bet London bridge to a brick that it will give more. Don't forget that innovations from the gaming industry are used throughout society; who knows if one day we might be able to limit to very few actual sex workers, for example, where most of the interactions are with virtual models that are indestinguishable from RL? This would help take away the demand for sex work: the number one cause for so much misery in our world. (Fact: so many people are trapped in sex work because the demand is so high.) You can't get results like that without realism in games now. What's interesting is the "inelegant" way you have of twisting my argument. Obviously, game devs have no voice in what's acceptable in society, and I don't recall saying so. I thought I had already made it clear that drawing conclusions from my statements was my prerogative, but I digress. Game devs have full control over the contents they release. Right now, the only guidelines game studios follow are those laid by legislation and marketing studies. But there comes a point where ethics should come into play, too. As I said in my previous post, no amount of money would convince me to help develop a game in which you could do certain things. Self censorship? Call it what you will. For me it's more like acknowledging that one's work may have a significant impact on other people. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It already exists, but the problem with self censorship is that it is not reliable; it is not regulated and it is not consistent. What is acceptable to one developer is not the same as another: the developers of the JFK game, or Manhunt, obviously have a different threshold than most. By making legislation, it can be agreed by society and consistently applied (and contested in court, as necessary), rather than some magic "black box". I see you have masterfully dodged the question. Next time you don't feel like answering a question that makes you uncomfortable, just say so. You don't need to go off on a tangent like that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I can answer the question; I have quite a rich imagination. Are you suggesting that under no circumstance there is any way that shooting a child is justified? Have you heard of the new game F.E.A.R.? I suppose you aren't familiar that 10% of rape in society is against men. Rape is not a sex crime, it is a crime of power: the exercise of one person's power (usually a disposessed or powerless individual) over another. I can think of many instances where this may be appropriate. Did you see Pulp Fiction? Did you like it? Many, many people did. Do you think it would be a better film without the rape scene?

Thanks for the link. What is clear is that Jack Thompson presents a poor case for rationality. He is portraying the extremist a little too well. His main complaint is that the ESRB is a rating label and not a warning label. Fine, fix the system and make the perpetrators rue their infringement. It's not like there aren't PUNITIVE DAMAGES in the US! He also degenerates into argumentum ad hominem and scare tactics, making an unflattering comparison between Doug Lowenstein and Saddam Hussein (I have very little time for people who conduct arguments like this and I see he was at least careful not to compare a man with a Jewish name to Hitler) and trying to whip up an emotional frenzy with warnings linking video game violence with Columbine. This is the worst sort of tabloid sensationalism, imo. On the other hand Henry Jenkins is arguing for more education and responsibility from parents, without which all initiatives are bound for failure. I know who's argument I am more likely to give heed to, regardless of my opinion.

[1]No. My arguments suggest nothing. They are what they are, don't draw conclusions from them. That's my prerogative. Using people with anger management issues was just an example, and a rather extreme one at that. The thing is, as you have already admitted that violent visual (books are only as explicit as you can imagine) entertainment desensitizes people to violence. That is a problem. [2]Banning cars would undoubtedly prevent lots of deaths. But the car industry is too important to shut down and the economic recession caused by doing so would be unimaginable. Not to mention that driving a car is not a violent act in itself, while violence in games, however fictional, is still violence. Yes, you are being absurd. [3]Oh, I agree. Prohibitions are useless. It should be an initiative on the developers' part. That's wishful thinking, though, since games are an industry, and as such is driven solely by profit. [4]Uh... so how exactly does the ability to rape, the ability to slaughter children with a minigun, the ability to abuse your wife boost your enjoyment of games? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 1. No, the problem is the violence in society, not the people becoming desensitized to it. Desensitization is (just another) defence mechanism. We need to address the root causes of violence inherrent in modern society, not band-aid the symptoms. 2. This is commonly called throwing the baby out with the bath water. The point I made, which you inelegantly avoided, is that it is impossible to eliminate risk. You will have to manage risk in some way, and that means a risk-benefit calculation must be made, not a knee-jerk reaction. The risk posed by high-risk hostile individuals is small because there are very few of them; just as there are few mass murderers for whom the motor vehicle is their weapon of choice. 3. So you advocate self-censorship? The gamedevelopers are in a better position than a) the legislative assembly, b) the judicial heirarchy and c) the general public to decide what is permissable in society? Interesting pov. 4. Depends on the game; if you are asking my to construct a scenario where one or all of those options is a viable plot, then that is an exercise in cretive writing, not moral rationalisation. I'm sure if you pushed yourself you would be able to come up with a suitable answer to your own question, or are you suggesting censorship? You seem to be arguing both sides.

Anecdotes aside, even the "quoted source" is cautious about making wide generalisations based on few clinical results. I read the underlying study and I highlight some abstracts that I think shed some light on the issues. (These are from the underlying clinical report, that is summarised in the link. Just download the pdf to read it -- it's less than twenty pages.) I do dispair at the sensationalist summary and first paragraph, which seems to fly in the face of the reasonable tone in the clincal report; statements like: On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold launched an assault on Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, murdering 13 and wounding 23 before turning the guns on themselves. Although it is impossible to know exactly what caused these teens to attack their own classmates and teachers, a number of factors probably were involved. One possible contributing factor is violent video games. Harris and Klebold enjoyed playing the bloody, shoot-'em-up video game Doom, a game licensed by the U.S. military to train soldiers to effectively kill. ... Now my understanding (albeit second-hand and mainly from Bowling for Columbine -- but that was a polemic against the endemic violence in US culture, so I would expect the bias to be against violence, not for it) is that this tragedy was more based on the teenagers feeling of futility based on their town being a munitions factory, rather than other factors. That said, let's press on: Test1: 278 students (78 male, 149 female) Test2: 210 students (104 male, 106 female) all from "a midwestern university" ... [page 778] ... Most of the participants were traditional freshmen and sophomores. The mean age was 18.5 years. The oldest participants were two 25-year-olds and two 24-year-olds. Data from the video game questionnaire provided information about their playing habits. Overall, participants reported playing video games progressively less from junior high school to college. Participants reported playing video games an average of 5.45 hours per week while in junior high school, 3.69 hours per week in early high school, and 2.68 hours per week late in high school. Presently, the students reported playing video games an average of 2.14 hours per week. Of the 227 students surveyed, 207 (91%) reported that they currently played video games. Of the 9% who do not play video games, 18 students, or 90% of the non-video game players, were women, Thus 88% of the female college students and 97% of the male college students surveyed were video game players. Participants were asked to list up to five favorite games. The mean number of games listed was 4.03, Over 69% listed five games, the maximum number allowed. ... These results are based on about 200 (I'd bet psychology first and second year) students from one US midwestern (I'd guess Missouri) university. That's a pretty narrow diversity to be extrapolating on. [page 779] ... Another interesting finding to emerge from data shown in Table 1 concerns GPA. Video game violence was negatively, but not significantly, related to GPA (r = -.08), but time spent playing video games in general was significantly and negatively correlated (r = - .20) with GPA. ... [page 775] ... RESEARCH ON VIDEO GAME VIOLENCE Although much research has examined the effects of exposure to movie and television violence (see Huesmann, 1994, for a review), and although popular press commentaries about possible effects of video games abound, the empirical literature on video game violence is sparse (see Dill & Dill, 1998; Ernes, 1997). There are less than half a dozen studies, over the last decade, quoted on the effects of violence from video sources (games and films). Video Games and Aggression: Correlational Work Four correlational studies have examined the relation between video game playing habits and real-world aggressive behavior. Across the four studies, the ages of participants ranged from 4th graders to 12th graders. Measures of aggression included self, teacher, and peer reports. Three of the studies (Dominick, 1984; Fling et al., 1992; Lin & Lepper, 1987) yielded reliable positive correlations between video game playing and aggression. The fourth (Van Schie & Wiegman, 1997) correlation did not differ from zero. But, none of the studies distinguished between violent and nonviolent video games. Thus, none test the hypothesis that violent video games are uniquely associated with increased aggression. Video Games and Aggression: Experimental Work The extant experimental studies of video games and aggression have yielded weak evidence also. Four studies found at least some support for the hypothesis that violent video game content can increase aggression (Cooper & Mackie, 1986; Irwin & Gross, 1995; Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gorden, & Rodasta, 1988; Silvern & Williamson, 1987). However, none of these studies can rule out the possibility that key variables such as excitement, difficulty, or enjoyment created the observed increase in aggression. In our experience with video games and in the movie literature (Bushman, 1995), violent materials tend to be more exciting than nonviolent materials, so the observed effects could have been the result of higher excitement levels induced by the violent games. Two additional experimental studies of violent video games and aggression found no effect of violence (Graybill, Strawniak, Hunter, & O'Leary, 1987; Winkel, Novak, & Hopson, 1987). Interestingly, of the six video game studies reviewed here, only the Graybill et al. (1987) study used games pretested and selected to be similar on a number of dimensions (e.g., difficulty, excitement, enjoyment). In sum, there is little experimental evidence that the violent content of video games can increase aggression in the immediate situation. Video Games, Aggressive Affect, and Cognition [page 776] Two studies have examined the effect of video game violence on aggressive cognition. Calvert and Tan (1994) randomly assigned male and female undergraduates to a condition in which they either played or observed a violent virtual-reality game or to a no-game control condition. Postgame aggressive thoughts were assessed with a thought-listing procedure. Aggressive thoughts were highest for violent game players. Although this supports our GAAM view of video game effects, we hesitate to claim strong support because it is possible that this effect resulted from the greater excitement or arousal engendered by playing the game, rather than the violent content of the game. More recently, Kirsh (1998) showed that 3rd- and 4th-grade children assigned to play a violent video game gave more hostile interpretations for a subsequent ambiguous provocation story than did children assigned to play a nonviolent game. This also supports GAAM. Five experiments have investigated the effects of video game violence on aggressive affect. One study showed increases in aggressive affect after violent video game play (Ballard & Weist, 1996). Another (Anderson & Ford, 1986) yielded mixed results. Three others (Nelson & Carlson, 1985; Scott, 1995; Calvert & Tan, 1994) showed little support for the hypothesis that short-term exposure to violent video games increases hostile affect. There are methodological shortcomings in many of these studies, which, when combined with the mixed results, suggest that there is little evidence that short-term exposure to violent video games increases aggression-related affect. To be clear, the clinicians of this test are saying that it is not clear whether aggression is increased from just playing any exciting game, like Tetris, and not just hostile ones. I tend to agree with the spirit of your post; it is more important to provide a sensible and reasonable game environment, where cultural ethics are rewarded in accordance with our beliefs, rather than a more dystopian or nihilistic enviroment. For example, I would rather see a game where some sort of "Cosmic Karma" will build up and reward players with both good and evil ethics, even if this is a debatable concept in the real world.

Maybe that's because the US is trying to keep their teenage pregnancy rate below that of the UK. Joke on curent affairs the other night: "And the government has announced plans to keep seventeen and eighteen year olds in college by allocating funds for an allowance. "This is ridiculous. What I want to know is: "Who's going to be picking up the toddlers from daycare at 3pm with all the teenagers in college?"

"Thanks" for simplifying my argument. I wasn't saying that if you murder someone in an ultra-realistic game you instantly become a psycho. However, violent acts are not commited with a cool head most of the times. People with anger management issues have very thin safeguards to prevent them from going berserk in a situation that tests their self-control. If such person is used to graphic, ultra-explicit violence, a violent act may not seem so out of place, since the "WTF am I doing?" threshold has been lifted somewhat. And people with anger management issues are not exactly rare. Note that I'm not against violent games. I was just arguing that "normal" people are not impervious to constant exposure to graphic violence, and that is a fact. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Okay, I'm not going to argue that people will be desensitized by exposure to violence in games. But violence in games is still totally different to violence in RL. Clicking a muse button to stab someone in the eye with a shard of glass in slow-mo is one thing; smashing a mirror, picking up a hard, serrated piece of it and aiming it into someone's face with your own hand, by now cut and bleeding, is another. I think the counter argument is more dangerous. Your arguments suggest that people with anger managment issues should be somehow restricted from excessive exposure to violence, and further, this will prevent them (for longer, presumably) from physically assaulting others. I think it is a convoluted and inelegant way to deal with the issue of anger management. People who have anger management issues should be dealt with, because even if violent video games are forbidden, then you must (naturally) forbid vioent films. And then we get to the issue of scale. How far do we go: banning violence in books? Maybe just for people with certified over-active imaginations and anger management issues? I am being absurd on purpose to make the point that we should target issues directly: anger management is a problem; in no small way is the frustration of driving contributing to this, for example, but I don't see anyone trying to ban cars to address anger issues. (And cars are the most deadly weapon most widely available to the most people.) To hide behind prohibition doesn't solve the core problem. And it stops me from enjoying a game.