Adult Language Filter option

[MasterPrudent]

The ESRB has rated Pillars of Eternity: http://www.esrb.org/ratings/synopsis.jsp?Certificate=33780&Title= I think a bad words filter would be like putting a band aid on a gaping wound.

[tdphys]

The ESRB has rated Pillars of Eternity: http://www.esrb.org/ratings/synopsis.jsp?Certificate=33780&Title= I think a bad words filter would be like putting a band aid on a gaping wound.

 

 

Actually,  minus the swearing,  the description sounds pretty close to Teen.  The sexual and violence content seems in line with BG2 which has a teen rating.     

[MasterPrudent]

 

The ESRB has rated Pillars of Eternity: http://www.esrb.org/ratings/synopsis.jsp?Certificate=33780&Title= I think a bad words filter would be like putting a band aid on a gaping wound.

 

 

Actually,  minus the swearing,  the description sounds pretty close to Teen.  The sexual and violence content seems in line with BG2 which has a teen rating.     

 

I don't remember STIs, or rumors thereof, being a part of quests or dialog in BG2... (“But if he spreads a rumor that her lover has just visited a brothel and acquired a pox on his loins, she'll end it on her own.") There's also a side quest in the beta involves rape and couldn't be made suitable for young folks with a language filter.

 

But yeah, I was exaggerating for effect.

[Mlatimudan]

If they play the game they will no doubt be exposed to the mature themes swearing or no.

 

While I think that they could add the option to remove swearing(as long as it wasn't too time consuming), I think it wouldn't really hurt them, I played the old fallouts when I was 12-14 and I think I turned out better for it (or at the very least with a better understanding of pop culture).

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I don't recall ever reading the fine print for a rating before, probably because I purchase most games online these days, is that standard practice to put the summery in there? That's actually pretty handy as I assumed it was just T or M or whatever for a generic summary, i.e. "This game may use adult themes or may include the use of alcohol and contain cartoon violence." I wonder how far it would be on the tipping scale like SP stick of truth. That was clearly going to be offensive from day one & you knew people were going to be offended if there was any prior experience to the series in a crude humorous way. Since this is brand new, it's hard to know how much is in there that will be pushing the envelope.

 

And it is really simple to remove it from a coding standpoint, at least in CSS, javascript or actionscript 3. I'm not familiar in C or C# but I assume it's pretty similar. if it were very difficult I would probably not even make a thread about it, but it's something that could be added in literally just a few lines of code. And indeed I'm not saying they have to take it out, just an option to toggle it off or on.

Edited February 15, 2015 by Falkon Swiftblade

[tdphys]

 

 

The ESRB has rated Pillars of Eternity: http://www.esrb.org/ratings/synopsis.jsp?Certificate=33780&Title= I think a bad words filter would be like putting a band aid on a gaping wound.

 

 

Actually,  minus the swearing,  the description sounds pretty close to Teen.  The sexual and violence content seems in line with BG2 which has a teen rating.     

 

I don't remember STIs, or rumors thereof, being a part of quests or dialog in BG2... (“But if he spreads a rumor that her lover has just visited a brothel and acquired a pox on his loins, she'll end it on her own.") There's also a side quest in the beta involves rape and couldn't be made suitable for young folks with a language filter.

 

But yeah, I was exaggerating for effect.

 

 

Well,  as long as it's not glorified,  I think discussions about rape and sti's  are suitable, even necessary,  for at least teenagers.  If POE can treat things like that in a "mature" way, without resorting to gratuitous violence, porn and f-bombs,  then that's commendable...  If you ask me,  too often "adult" or "mature" refers to treating sensitive subjects in the most "juvenile" or "immature" way possible.   When POE stated they were going to cover "mature" themes,  I was pretty sure they meant it in the context of gritty realism,  not "high school lockerism".   That seems to me that's the case, even more-so from the ESRB rating.   

Edited February 15, 2015 by tdphys

[MasterPrudent]

Well,  as long as it's not glorified,  I think discussions about rape and sti's  are suitable, even necessary,  for at least teenagers.  If POE can treat things like that in a "mature" way, without resorting to gratuitous violence, porn and f-bombs,  then that's commendable...  If you ask me,  too often "adult" or "mature" refers to treating sensitive subjects in the most "juvenile" or "immature" way possible.   When POE stated they were going to cover "mature" themes,  I was pretty sure they meant it in the context of gritty realism,  not "high school lockerism".   That seems to me that's the case, even more-so from the ESRB rating.   

 

Sure. I may have worded that badly. I'm not making any argument about what is or isn't suitable for young people; I 'll leave that for their guardians to decide. I was just making the point that it's difficult to achieve what Falkon wants - a game he can play around kids whose parents would prefer them not to hear such stuff - simply by implementing a profanity toggle.

[Luckmann]

Madscientist, you are certainly entitled to your opinion! Although, they would never have made those thing's sensored had it not been for the research that has shown over the past few decades the games kid's and the troubled people who were playing were directly related to the mass shootings and massacre's involved. Not everyone playing a game will go on a shooting spree or hack their family up with an axe because they saw it in a movie or a game, but as a content creator there is a level of integrity involved because you're planting seeds into peoples minds. It get's taken a step further when the mechanic in the game is forced vs being an option. Further it's worse when it's something you are forced to practice at to be more effective. I'm not opposed for adult themes and situation in a game or story, but everything should have context and serve a purpose. 

 

[citation needed]

[Night Stalker]

And it is really simple to remove it from a coding standpoint, at least in CSS, javascript or actionscript 3. I'm not familiar in C or C# but I assume it's pretty similar.

 

Cascading Style Sheets are for look and feel only, last time I checked they could not be used for adding logic.

 

if it were very difficult I would probably not even make a thread about it, but it's something that could be added in literally just a few lines of code. And indeed I'm not saying they have to take it out, just an option to toggle it off or on.

Falcon, the effort required here is definitely more than that of a 'few lines of code'. Obsidian will have to

a) Code in a parental toggle in their dialogue system, ensuring that if set the 'clean' dialogue is displayed

b) Change their own dialogue tool (and file formats) so that it can effectively deal with having both the original and the 'clean' version being pointed to by the same response.

c) Find all text entries with unwanted words, and suggestions, and add their 'clean' version to the dialogue editor, and rewrite them so they make sense without using the unwanted content (and they have to be thorough, since if they let anything slip there will be he'll to pay), and disable any and all for those instances, since it would be cost prohibitive to re-record them

d) Debug and test all the tools

e) Add the option in the game menu and tie it to the feature

f) Test the feature in the game, making sure it works and does not break anything along the way

 

All of this will take time and effort that could have been going into fixing bugs in the game. A M rated game I might add, whose feature set has been locked, and will be released in little over a month.

 

It is not going to happen.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

[Night Stalker]

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

I work as a programmer, and I have a Master's in Computer Science.

 

As for why you don't change the word. on the fly wouldn't work:

 

a) There can be overlap with 'innocent' words: http://bit.ly/1vvwjV7 (it is bitly'ed because the language filter on this site would mess it up, appropriately enough). And no, I don't think regexes are the solution.

b) The naive approach does not change the tone of the conversation, which could still be so suggestive that the word can be puzzled out.

c) It would still have to be tested and debugged.

d) If any words slipped through there would be an uproar.

 

But again, it does not matter because it is a M rated game.

[Devard]

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

 

I am not sure I fully follow you. What are you suggesting when you say "to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class"?

 

I think Night Stalker has covered most of what needs to be done. Throw in localization in there and the effort is significantly compounded because of all the extra translation passes. Translators are not cheap and from what I understand charge by the word. And let's not forget the voice overs. If an actor dropped the F bomb then that audio will need to be edited out.

 

It's also not clear if the dialogue system is the only thing that will need to be reworked. There may or may not be inappropriate words in the popup speech bubbles from the locals on-screen or the in-game interactive cutscenes (or whatever those things are called). On that note, just deciding what word is "inappropriate" and should be filtered out is going to eat up a lot of time because everyone is going to have an opinion about this. Having the user input the words in manually in some text box is not foolproof because the voiced audio has to be considered.

[Ineth]

And it is really simple to remove it from a coding standpoint

 

It might be simple enough to add an option which automatically replaces any occurrence of certain words in dialog or other writing, with different words (like "f**k" --> "frag").

 

However, re-recording voice-overs for any such content wouldn't be so trivial or cheap.

[gathersquall]

 

Madscientist, you are certainly entitled to your opinion! Although, they would never have made those thing's sensored had it not been for the research that has shown over the past few decades the games kid's and the troubled people who were playing were directly related to the mass shootings and massacre's involved. Not everyone playing a game will go on a shooting spree or hack their family up with an axe because they saw it in a movie or a game, but as a content creator there is a level of integrity involved because you're planting seeds into peoples minds. It get's taken a step further when the mechanic in the game is forced vs being an option. Further it's worse when it's something you are forced to practice at to be more effective. I'm not opposed for adult themes and situation in a game or story, but everything should have context and serve a purpose. 

 

[citation needed]

 

I'm surprised it took that long for that rubbish to be called out.

[Luckmann]

 

 

Madscientist, you are certainly entitled to your opinion! Although, they would never have made those thing's sensored had it not been for the research that has shown over the past few decades the games kid's and the troubled people who were playing were directly related to the mass shootings and massacre's involved. Not everyone playing a game will go on a shooting spree or hack their family up with an axe because they saw it in a movie or a game, but as a content creator there is a level of integrity involved because you're planting seeds into peoples minds. It get's taken a step further when the mechanic in the game is forced vs being an option. Further it's worse when it's something you are forced to practice at to be more effective. I'm not opposed for adult themes and situation in a game or story, but everything should have context and serve a purpose. 

 

[citation needed]

 

I'm surprised it took that long for that rubbish to be called out.

 

 

I'm on moderation, so it usually takes a couple of hours for each of my posts to show up.

[aeonsim]

...

for the research that has shown over the past few decades the games kid's and the troubled people who were playing were directly related to the mass shootings and massacre's involved.

...

 

That's a load of crap politicians love the idea so it gets a ton of air time but if you actually read the literature in the field it's all over the place. The small studies are hideously under powered to detect real effects and thus find effects both ways some say video games increase violence others say it decreases violence, which is generally a sign that the experimental designs suck or are lacking power! If there is an effect your expect the direction of the effect to remain the same even if the size of the effect varied.

While the big studies have tended to find no effect or possibly a small reduction but with out enough strength to be certain.

 

Keeping in mind correlation does not equal causation the general tends at a society level have been for decreasing per capita violence over the last 20 or so years while the amount of game playing has drastically increased, many of which are violent.

[Marcvs Caesar]

"Adult language"? You mean vulgar language.

 

 

Madscientist, you are certainly entitled to your opinion! Although, they would never have made those thing's sensored had it not been for the research that has shown over the past few decades the games kid's and the troubled people who were playing were directly related to the mass shootings and massacre's involved. Not everyone playing a game will go on a shooting spree or hack their family up with an axe because they saw it in a movie or a game, but as a content creator there is a level of integrity involved because you're planting seeds into peoples minds. It get's taken a step further when the mechanic in the game is forced vs being an option. Further it's worse when it's something you are forced to practice at to be more effective. I'm not opposed for adult themes and situation in a game or story, but everything should have context and serve a purpose. 

 

[citation needed]

 

 

How foolish. Depression, bullying, abuse, discrimination, etc are far more likely causes for that sort of behaviour. If you want to blame something then blame society or the parents, we're all products of our environment after all.

[tdphys]

 

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

I work as a programmer, and I have a Master's in Computer Science.

 

As for why you don't change the word. on the fly wouldn't work:

 

a) There can be overlap with 'innocent' words: http://bit.ly/1vvwjV7 (it is bitly'ed because the language filter on this site would mess it up, appropriately enough). And no, I don't think regexes are the solution.

b) The naive approach does not change the tone of the conversation, which could still be so suggestive that the word can be puzzled out.

c) It would still have to be tested and debugged.

d) If any words slipped through there would be an uproar.

 

But again, it does not matter because it is a M rated game.

 

 

I'm not sure that there would be that much of a problem for a straight up text-replace,  I bet I could do english in an hour, just by flagging false positives as the search went along.   But I think you're right about the localization problems,  I could maybe do french:)  ...  

 

 it's probably best to let the community provide suitably censored versions of the game,  seeing that Obsidian is only delivering as promised.   Given what Sensuki has said about the strings for the game being easily available,  I'll probably do the english swears.  If the audio is also easily available,  that could also be dubbed over, though the trick will be finding the audio.  I wonder if they have some correlation between audio files and strings,  finding the audio swears might need to be crowdsourced .    I actually care less about that, because I can't stand waiting for a voice-over to finish saying the text that I finished reading 10-20 seconds ago and usually disable voice audio,  but I'd be happy to put in some community  service if there's demand.

 

We'll call it "prudemod", or "thinkofthechildrenmod".

[Elerond]

 

 

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

I work as a programmer, and I have a Master's in Computer Science.

 

As for why you don't change the word. on the fly wouldn't work:

 

a) There can be overlap with 'innocent' words: http://bit.ly/1vvwjV7 (it is bitly'ed because the language filter on this site would mess it up, appropriately enough). And no, I don't think regexes are the solution.

b) The naive approach does not change the tone of the conversation, which could still be so suggestive that the word can be puzzled out.

c) It would still have to be tested and debugged.

d) If any words slipped through there would be an uproar.

 

But again, it does not matter because it is a M rated game.

 

 

I'm not sure that there would be that much of a problem for a straight up text-replace,  I bet I could do english in an hour, just by flagging false positives as the search went along.   But I think you're right about the localization problems,  I could maybe do french:)  ...  

 

 it's probably best to let the community provide suitably censored versions of the game,  seeing that Obsidian is only delivering as promised.   Given what Sensuki has said about the strings for the game being easily available,  I'll probably do the english swears.  If the audio is also easily available,  that could also be dubbed over, though the trick will be finding the audio.  I wonder if they have some correlation between audio files and strings,  finding the audio swears might need to be crowdsourced .    I actually care less about that, because I can't stand waiting for a voice-over to finish saying the text that I finished reading 10-20 seconds ago and usually disable voice audio,  but I'd be happy to put in some community  service if there's demand.

 

We'll call it "prudemod", or "thinkofthechildrenmod".

 

 

Accessing strings and audio files is easy and there is no problems in changing them, but I am not sure that you could check false positives in hour as there is quite lot of those files that you would need to go through (at least several hundred, as beta has over fifty conversation files plus other text files, there is file for every character).

[Falkon Swiftblade]

ohh boy, lots of reply's!

 

 

 

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

 

I am not sure I fully follow you. What are you suggesting when you say "to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class"?

 

I think Night Stalker has covered most of what needs to be done. Throw in localization in there and the effort is significantly compounded because of all the extra translation passes. Translators are not cheap and from what I understand charge by the word. And let's not forget the voice overs. If an actor dropped the F bomb then that audio will need to be edited out.

It's also not clear if the dialogue system is the only thing that will need to be reworked. There may or may not be inappropriate words in the popup speech bubbles from the locals on-screen or the in-game interactive cutscenes (or whatever those things are called). On that note, just deciding what word is "inappropriate" and should be filtered out is going to eat up a lot of time because everyone is going to have an opinion about this. Having the user input the words in manually in some text box is not foolproof because the voiced audio has to be considered.

 

 

 

I was speaking from a Javascript or Actionscript point of view for creating a function to call out. I assumed it was similar in C and I know that Unity likes Javascript, so I assumed it would be quite easy to implement. You guys have all brought up something I had not considered as far as localization. Since the F word was the only word I had specifically seen used so far and in English it does have a negative connotation, I believe in German it probably still does, but it also means to strike if I remember correctly from my childhood. I didn't think they were going to do a literal translation from region to region, and the swearwords probably would be the same across the board. I think it's fairly universal with swearwords what's definitely something you don't teach your 3 yr old to say, there may be some gray in there, but a lot of stuff is said in PG and PG-13 that they hear, or even prime time TV too, so it's just a matter of finding the context of the scene. That's what I was talking about initially when I said the F word is used lazily as a nonsensical word, people say it out of habit and often not for the reason they state it initially. 

 

 

 

 

And it is really simple to remove it from a coding standpoint

 

It might be simple enough to add an option which automatically replaces any occurrence of certain words in dialog or other writing, with different words (like "f**k" --> "frag").

 

However, re-recording voice-overs for any such content wouldn't be so trivial or cheap.

 

 

In Audio there's a part after thing's are recorded that they have to edit in later called ADR, that's when this comes into play and they add in the bleeps or swap in a safe word. There's a few ways to do that and it depends on how many lines are in there using it or may need changed. It could be a nightmare to do, or it could be less than 5 minutes to do. Although I've seen youtube videos that bleep stuff out, and the users have nowhere near the budget Obsidian does, and probably not the expertise they do either.

 

 

...
for the research that has shown over the past few decades the games kid's and the troubled people who were playing were directly related to the mass shootings and massacre's involved.
...

That's a load of crap politicians love the idea so it gets a ton of air time but if you actually read the literature in the field it's all over the place. The small studies are hideously under powered to detect real effects and thus find effects both ways some say video games increase violence others say it decreases violence, which is generally a sign that the experimental designs suck or are lacking power! If there is an effect your expect the direction of the effect to remain the same even if the size of the effect varied.
While the big studies have tended to find no effect or possibly a small reduction but with out enough strength to be certain.

Keeping in mind correlation does not equal causation the general tends at a society level have been for decreasing per capita violence over the last 20 or so years while the amount of game playing has drastically increased, many of which are violent.

 

 

If you read the gentlemen's response I was replying to, I wasn't speaking about the language as much as his examples of gore, nudity and killing in games and media. I've already stated I have no issues with the adult themes and content being in the game, I specified that not all people who encounter these thing's will be affected by it. it's only a request to control how certain aspects will be displayed. They've already done it by making the gore an option to turn on or off, that took a lot more time to animate, texture, design, and test than what I'm requesting.

 

As far as the citation goes, I can think of the Columbine killings in Colorado, where the kids emulated Doom and Duke Nukem the game when they went on a massacre. Some wisenheimer even made a Columbine video game where you go around shooting people, It may have even been one of the shooter's of the tragedy. http://extras.denverpost.com/news/shot0504f.htm In addition, there was a more recent study listed in the NYTimes about the effects of these troubled people, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/tieing-columbine-to-video-games/?_r=0 and here, http://education-curriculum-reform-government-schools.org/w/2012/12/violent-video-games-promote-violence/ That's not even other cases like the Virginia Tech case, or the other one where the kid's emulated the Matrix and dressed up like Neo and Morpheus... there's lot's of these stories where people emulate what they see. It's quite silly, some game developers are reckless in their designs, like in GTA where you're rewarded for killing prostitutes, which reminds me of another GTA game where a teen was playing GTA with his 4 or 5 yr old brother in the room and driving around stealing cars and what not. One morning the young boy tried waking his mom up to take him to school and she wouldn't wake up. He took her keys and tried to drive himself to school. He managed to drive about a mile before crashing into a tree. Luckily he survived and told the police his story. I wrote about that back in ~2010 or so for a class assignment. Here's another one same thing except he missed the bus and didn't make as far. http://geekologie.com/2009/01/6year-old-misses-bus-steals-fa.php But these are only a few cases. It could go on for pages across all forms of media. And my goal isn't to have it completely removed, only an option to control my environment for innocent eyes and ears. 

 

[GrinningReaper659]

ohh boy, lots of reply's!

 

 

 

Night Stalker, what is your background? as I mentioned I don't know the specific language used to code their game, but even in my basic logic coding classes a function was as simple as creating an if/then option. It seems to me they would have to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class, then either hide it or change the word. It really was like one of the first thing's they taught us in school, so I don't know why it would be so much more work?

 

I am not sure I fully follow you. What are you suggesting when you say "to classify a class for the adult language and place a query for the class"?

 

I think Night Stalker has covered most of what needs to be done. Throw in localization in there and the effort is significantly compounded because of all the extra translation passes. Translators are not cheap and from what I understand charge by the word. And let's not forget the voice overs. If an actor dropped the F bomb then that audio will need to be edited out.

 

It's also not clear if the dialogue system is the only thing that will need to be reworked. There may or may not be inappropriate words in the popup speech bubbles from the locals on-screen or the in-game interactive cutscenes (or whatever those things are called). On that note, just deciding what word is "inappropriate" and should be filtered out is going to eat up a lot of time because everyone is going to have an opinion about this. Having the user input the words in manually in some text box is not foolproof because the voiced audio has to be considered.

 

 

 

I was speaking from a Javascript or Actionscript point of view for creating a function to call out. I assumed it was similar in C and I know that Unity likes Javascript, so I assumed it would be quite easy to implement. You guys have all brought up something I had not considered as far as localization. Since the F word was the only word I had specifically seen used so far and in English it does have a negative connotation, I believe in German it probably still does, but it also means to strike if I remember correctly from my childhood. I didn't think they were going to do a literal translation from region to region, and the swearwords probably would be the same across the board. I think it's fairly universal with swearwords what's definitely something you don't teach your 3 yr old to say, there may be some gray in there, but a lot of stuff is said in PG and PG-13 that they hear, or even prime time TV too, so it's just a matter of finding the context of the scene. That's what I was talking about initially when I said the F word is used lazily as a nonsensical word, people say it out of habit and often not for the reason they state it initially. 

 

 

 

 

And it is really simple to remove it from a coding standpoint

 

It might be simple enough to add an option which automatically replaces any occurrence of certain words in dialog or other writing, with different words (like "f**k" --> "frag").

 

However, re-recording voice-overs for any such content wouldn't be so trivial or cheap.

 

 

In Audio there's a part after thing's are recorded that they have to edit in later called ADR, that's when this comes into play and they add in the bleeps or swap in a safe word. There's a few ways to do that and it depends on how many lines are in there using it or may need changed. It could be a nightmare to do, or it could be less than 5 minutes to do. Although I've seen youtube videos that bleep stuff out, and the users have nowhere near the budget Obsidian does, and probably not the expertise they do either.

 

 

...

for the research that has shown over the past few decades the games kid's and the troubled people who were playing were directly related to the mass shootings and massacre's involved.

...

That's a load of crap politicians love the idea so it gets a ton of air time but if you actually read the literature in the field it's all over the place. The small studies are hideously under powered to detect real effects and thus find effects both ways some say video games increase violence others say it decreases violence, which is generally a sign that the experimental designs suck or are lacking power! If there is an effect your expect the direction of the effect to remain the same even if the size of the effect varied.

While the big studies have tended to find no effect or possibly a small reduction but with out enough strength to be certain.

 

Keeping in mind correlation does not equal causation the general tends at a society level have been for decreasing per capita violence over the last 20 or so years while the amount of game playing has drastically increased, many of which are violent.

 

 

If you read the gentlemen's response I was replying to, I wasn't speaking about the language as much as his examples of gore, nudity and killing in games and media. I've already stated I have no issues with the adult themes and content being in the game, I specified that not all people who encounter these thing's will be affected by it. it's only a request to control how certain aspects will be displayed. They've already done it by making the gore an option to turn on or off, that took a lot more time to animate, texture, design, and test than what I'm requesting.

 

As far as the citation goes, I can think of the Columbine killings in Colorado, where the kids emulated Doom and Duke Nukem the game when they went on a massacre. Some wisenheimer even made a Columbine video game where you go around shooting people, It may have even been one of the shooter's of the tragedy. http://extras.denverpost.com/news/shot0504f.htm In addition, there was a more recent study listed in the NYTimes about the effects of these troubled people, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/tieing-columbine-to-video-games/?_r=0 and here, http://education-curriculum-reform-government-schools.org/w/2012/12/violent-video-games-promote-violence/ That's not even other cases like the Virginia Tech case, or the other one where the kid's emulated the Matrix and dressed up like Neo and Morpheus... there's lot's of these stories where people emulate what they see. It's quite silly, some game developers are reckless in their designs, like in GTA where you're rewarded for killing prostitutes, which reminds me of another GTA game where a teen was playing GTA with his 4 or 5 yr old brother in the room and driving around stealing cars and what not. One morning the young boy tried waking his mom up to take him to school and she wouldn't wake up. He took her keys and tried to drive himself to school. He managed to drive about a mile before crashing into a tree. Luckily he survived and told the police his story. I wrote about that back in ~2010 or so for a class assignment. Here's another one same thing except he missed the bus and didn't make as far. http://geekologie.com/2009/01/6year-old-misses-bus-steals-fa.php But these are only a few cases. It could go on for pages across all forms of media. And my goal isn't to have it completely removed, only an option to control my environment for innocent eyes and ears. 

 

 

Those articles don't help your case at all. It's just a bunch of sensationalism. So, these kids that carried out mass murders played violent video games, and therefore it's clearly the cause right? I wonder if they all had fathers with facial hair, perhaps facial hair on parental figures causes mass murder? How is it that ~99.9999% of youths that have ever played violent video games were able to resist the demonic urges they instill  in their victims?

It's easy to scare people by pointing out that the kids in question carried out acts which specifically reference or relate to these video games, but there's absolutely no reason to believe they wouldn't have carried out the crimes without any input from fiction at all, or perhaps would have referenced a history book or a fictional story about war instead, in the absence of violent video games, tv shows, and movies. Seriously, especially considering the percentage of teen boys who have been playing violent video games for decades now while vioent crime rates decrease, the argument that playing them leads to less violent crime is more reasonable (though still largely baseless) than your assertion. It doesn't really matter and it's sort of off-topic, but seriously there's just no research to support what you're saying here; and news articles aren't research papers.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Did ya read these articles? It wasn't like they randomly performed an act, they practiced what they saw. Some actually acted it out before they performed the massacre. BBC did a documentary back in the early 2000's for the last city on earth that hadn't received a TV signal. The people were all Buddhists and practiced peace and lived very religious and disciplined lives. After the TV signal had been established, and the equipment had been installed for the local population after only 2 weeks the young Buddhist boys had chosen to watch American Wrestling on TV. They were acting out what they saw on screen and the people quickly quit performing their religious acts and chores. Further, in less than 3 months the entire community had established a loss of moral and people were showing signs of anxiety and depression where there wasn't any before. It goes to show you how the impact of the media can have on a society. 

[GrinningReaper659]

Did ya read these articles? It wasn't like they randomly performed an act, they practiced what they saw. Some actually acted it out before they performed the massacre. BBC did a documentary back in the early 2000's for the last city on earth that hadn't received a TV signal. The people were all Buddhists and practiced peace and lived very religious and disciplined lives. After the TV signal had been established, and the equipment had been installed for the local population after only 2 weeks the young Buddhist boys had chosen to watch American Wrestling on TV. They were acting out what they saw on screen and the people quickly quit performing their religious acts and chores. Further, in less than 3 months the entire community had established a loss of moral and people were showing signs of anxiety and depression where there wasn't any before. It goes to show you how the impact of the media can have on a society. 

Perhaps they had been brainwashed with a very structured, limited view of the world all their lives and the introduction of media which displayed things challenging to their worldviews led them to change their behaviors. Maybe they became anxious and depressed because of the conflict between the way they had lived before and the things they were now being exposed to, maybe there was more to it than them seeing some wrestling. How exactly did the entire community establish a loss of morals? Is it possible that they were just, you know, happier and more free? North Koreans live very disciplined, religious (they worship dear leader) lives, and that system would likely be disrupted with access to enough outside information on a regular basis.

 

Also, why are you so sure that it was the violence in the shows that led to their changes? It could just as easily have been anything else they saw or simply a conflict between their rigid, pacifism-based ideology and the introduction of outside sources of information, some of which contradicted their ideals. You're engaged in some serious confirmation bias to conclude that those stories of mass murderers and this one you just provided display a causation between playing violent video games/watching violent tv shows and becoming mass murderers or completely losing your morals. I'm not saying that they don't, by the way, just that you haven't (nor has anyone else as far as I know) provided any reason to believe that they do. I happen to believe that fictional violence and morality can exist together in the world, but that's just my opinion I suppose.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

 

Did ya read these articles? It wasn't like they randomly performed an act, they practiced what they saw. Some actually acted it out before they performed the massacre. BBC did a documentary back in the early 2000's for the last city on earth that hadn't received a TV signal. The people were all Buddhists and practiced peace and lived very religious and disciplined lives. After the TV signal had been established, and the equipment had been installed for the local population after only 2 weeks the young Buddhist boys had chosen to watch American Wrestling on TV. They were acting out what they saw on screen and the people quickly quit performing their religious acts and chores. Further, in less than 3 months the entire community had established a loss of moral and people were showing signs of anxiety and depression where there wasn't any before. It goes to show you how the impact of the media can have on a society. 

Perhaps they had been brainwashed with a very structured, limited view of the world all their lives and the introduction of media which displayed things challenging to their worldviews led them to change their behaviors. Maybe they became anxious and depressed because of the conflict between the way they had lived before and the things they were now being exposed to, maybe there was more to it than them seeing some wrestling. How exactly did the entire community establish a loss of morals? Is it possible that they were just, you know, happier and more free? North Koreans live very disciplined, religious (they worship dear leader) lives, and that system would likely be disrupted with access to enough outside information on a regular basis.

 

Also, why are you so sure that it was the violence in the shows that led to their changes? It could just as easily have been anything else they saw or simply a conflict between their rigid, pacifism-based ideology and the introduction of outside sources of information, some of which contradicted their ideals. You're engaged in some serious confirmation bias to conclude that those stories of mass murderers and this one you just provided display a causation between playing violent video games/watching violent tv shows and becoming mass murderers or completely losing your morals. I'm not saying that they don't, by the way, just that you haven't (nor has anyone else as far as I know) provided any reason to believe that they do. I happen to believe that fictional violence and morality can exist together in the world, but that's just my opinion I suppose.

 

 

Sorry, I had a typo! I meant Morale, not moral or morals. The wrestling affected the boys because they actually got in fights, even some American's don't know wrestling is fake, but for some of the children they were actually trying to perform the same moves on the other kids and people were getting hurt. The Documentary made it sound like they stayed with the community and documented their habits over several months. They clearly specified prior to the signal coming in it was a very quiet peaceful town and everyone was very helpful and well behaved. In only a short time did it start affecting the community with the children being the most affected the fastest. Also, the majority of the adults wanted the equipment and tower removed. The kid's of course liked it and wanted it to stay, although I would too if I were in their shoes.

[GrinningReaper659]

 

 

Did ya read these articles? It wasn't like they randomly performed an act, they practiced what they saw. Some actually acted it out before they performed the massacre. BBC did a documentary back in the early 2000's for the last city on earth that hadn't received a TV signal. The people were all Buddhists and practiced peace and lived very religious and disciplined lives. After the TV signal had been established, and the equipment had been installed for the local population after only 2 weeks the young Buddhist boys had chosen to watch American Wrestling on TV. They were acting out what they saw on screen and the people quickly quit performing their religious acts and chores. Further, in less than 3 months the entire community had established a loss of moral and people were showing signs of anxiety and depression where there wasn't any before. It goes to show you how the impact of the media can have on a society. 

Perhaps they had been brainwashed with a very structured, limited view of the world all their lives and the introduction of media which displayed things challenging to their worldviews led them to change their behaviors. Maybe they became anxious and depressed because of the conflict between the way they had lived before and the things they were now being exposed to, maybe there was more to it than them seeing some wrestling. How exactly did the entire community establish a loss of morals? Is it possible that they were just, you know, happier and more free? North Koreans live very disciplined, religious (they worship dear leader) lives, and that system would likely be disrupted with access to enough outside information on a regular basis.

 

Also, why are you so sure that it was the violence in the shows that led to their changes? It could just as easily have been anything else they saw or simply a conflict between their rigid, pacifism-based ideology and the introduction of outside sources of information, some of which contradicted their ideals. You're engaged in some serious confirmation bias to conclude that those stories of mass murderers and this one you just provided display a causation between playing violent video games/watching violent tv shows and becoming mass murderers or completely losing your morals. I'm not saying that they don't, by the way, just that you haven't (nor has anyone else as far as I know) provided any reason to believe that they do. I happen to believe that fictional violence and morality can exist together in the world, but that's just my opinion I suppose.

 

 

Sorry, I had a typo! I meant Morale, not moral or morals. The wrestling affected the boys because they actually got in fights, even some American's don't know wrestling is fake, but for some of the children they were actually trying to perform the same moves on the other kids and people were getting hurt. The Documentary made it sound like they stayed with the community and documented their habits over several months. They clearly specified prior to the signal coming in it was a very quiet peaceful town and everyone was very helpful and well behaved. In only a short time did it start affecting the community with the children being the most affected the fastest. Also, the majority of the adults wanted the equipment and tower removed. The kid's of course liked it and wanted it to stay, although I would too if I were in their shoes.

 

Well I'd have to watch the documentary myself, which I may do if I find the time, but ultimately it doesn't suggest anything universally bad about television. Certainly more compelling than the articles about the school shootings but, like I mentioned, the violence that began could have been brought about because it was a shocking introduction to violence; these people practice a religion which specifically supports non-violence so it's reasonable to think that these bursts of violence could be temporary and that they wouldn't happen when tv is introduced to children that are already more familiar with violence from other sources. Then of course there is the argument that it doesn't matter, that's it's definitely better to have all the information and be able to choose to be violent than to be deprived of access to information in order to maintain control.

 

I'm just saying that I haven't seen anything compelling enough yet, and that those types of news articles get trying because of how frequently they are cited.