All the World's Wrongs: Games At Fault!

[MartyG]

There's plenty of proof - like the increase in the deaths of turtles in the late '80s. It's why you can no longer buy them from pet stores.

There's further proof: With the increasing realism of games like Forza and Gran Turismo, speeding offences have sky rocketed

[Dogg Thang]

One of the earliest surviving works in the western philosophical tradition, Plato's Republic, is predicated largely on the conviction that the perfect society needs - first and foremost - to censor the flow and content of imagery, in the belief that people uncritically emulate what they see. Zeus rapes a nymph? Apollo flays Marsyas alive? OK, well if gods can do it, so can I. Aristotle, in the Poetics, said bollocks to his former mentor Plato: highly overwrought sensual and violent imagery has a 'cathartic' effect on its audience, purging their pent-up emotions and aggressions and thereby making them better citizens by the time they leave the theatre.

How ****ing retarded must we be that we can still offer nothing more concrete or convincing to either side of a debate that was had 2,500 years ago!

We can offer much more to the debate. There has been a ****load of research into media and just about all of the results point to Plato being right. The idea that aggressive media might somehow vent our own aggression has been researched and never been shown to be true. Similarly some have aimed to show that perhaps this sort of media might make us stronger people or is an important part of our development because it shows us that our enemies, fears or nightmares can be overcome. Again, studies have failed to find a positive outcome here. And yet there is study after study that has found that media has a very strong influence over us - and that, it should be pointed out, is something that can be used positively too.

Far from retarded, the research is there. It's just that many don't like answers. If you are genuinely curious, there is one book that sums up the academic studies into the effects of children and television. Even though obviously focusing just on television as a media and children, studies referenced in that book often point to more research into adults and eventually to other media too so it's a good place to start - http://www.amazon.com/Children-Telev.../dp/0805841393

[gIzzE]

There's plenty of proof - like the increase in the deaths of turtles in the late '80s. It's why you can no longer buy them from pet stores.

[Golgo]

We can offer much more to the debate. There has been a ****load of research into media and just about all of the results point to Plato being right. The idea that aggressive media might somehow vent our own aggression has been researched and never been shown to be true. Similarly some have aimed to show that perhaps this sort of media might make us stronger people or is an important part of our development because it shows us that our enemies, fears or nightmares can be overcome. Again, studies have failed to find a positive outcome here. And yet there is study after study that has found that media has a very strong influence over us - and that, it should be pointed out, is something that can be used positively too.

Far from retarded, the research is there. It's just that many don't like answers. If you are genuinely curious, there is one book that sums up the academic studies into the effects of children and television. Even though obviously focusing just on television as a media and children, studies referenced in that book often point to more research into adults and eventually to other media too so it's a good place to start - http://www.amazon.com/Children-Telev.../dp/0805841393

Thanks for the interesting link. You might say that Plato is very useful/easily demonstrable when talking about children (indeed, he credits almost no-one in the Republic with any real intelligence or self-control hence they need nannying and censorship their whole life through). Aristotle's theory is targeted more at adults, though, in the belief that people of a certain age and intelligence should be able to separate fictional escapism/entertainments from real life and moral/behavioural norms. That's where it gets tricky, I guess. Many people - such as the ****wits that commit these atrocities - don't mature into adulthood in any other than a physical sense, i.e.: they are not emotionally or intellectually adult. What to do? If we agree with Plato, why not go the whole hog and identify/exterminate the brutes that don't mature properly, or selectively breed them out of the populace to attain a "real pedigree herd". It's a short step from Plato's well-intentioned nannying and censorship to just that.

[Dogg Thang]

The idea that you are beyond influence as an adult is kind of nuts though. As is the idea that you should be beyond influence. That would mean you can't learn, can't improve or can't change. Anyone who has just once changed their mind during their adult years knows that we can do all those things. If we can learn through facts, be influenced by discussion or evidence or what we see in the world and how it is presented to us, we can also learn and be influenced by story, or by how the world is presented to us in media, even in a fictional form.

If we weren't influenced by media as adults, advertising would have died out years ago. It has not.

[Golgo]

The idea that you are beyond influence as an adult is kind of nuts though. As is the idea that you should be beyond influence. That would mean you can't learn, can't improve or can't change. Anyone who has just once changed their mind during their adult years knows that we can do all those things. If we can learn through facts, be influenced by discussion or evidence or what we see in the world and how it is presented to us, we can also learn and be influenced by story, or by how the world is presented to us in media, even in a fictional form.

If we weren't influenced by media as adults, advertising would have died out years ago. It has not.

I think you're talking about completely different sources of influence. Being open to alternative viewpoints and ideas, facts and emotions is itself a sign of maturity and intelligence, as you say. That's quite a different thing to emulating morally reprehensible behaviour presented - and intended - purely as a form of escapist entertainment. It is not nuts to say that you should be beyond the influence of this kind of thing - at least insofar as being able to resist any desire to re-enact.

[Dogg Thang]

And yet the line between them is far too difficult to draw. You can only fully pull the fantasy from fact if you are already in possession of all the facts. For example, if I play a war game based on a real or even a fictional but real-world setting combat event, I don't know enough about actual military procedures or recent conflicts to have any concept of what is total fantasy or what is real. The more of those games I play, the more that becomes my point of reference for combat - I would have few others. And most of us consume far more fictional media than we do actual facts. That all goes towards forming our world view.

Like I said a page or so back, it can be seen in that mean world syndrome example I gave a page or so back. Heavy viewers of TV have been found to massively overestimate crime figures or their chance of being a victim of crime. And it's so easy to see why - there are so many police dramas and crime shows that, put together as a percentage of the input people get from the world, they are seeing much more violent crime than there actually is. Even in totally fictional shows that we know are fiction, it all goes towards forming our world view. To think an adult should be immune to this is not in any way backed up by research.

And that is why a video like this is so important and needed -

[QualityChimp]

Great video, MartyG, up until the point of where he says video games have no effect on people. Your Turtles example is a great one. I'm pretty sure video games do influence us, I mean, just last week,

->Open Spoiler<-

J0e Mushashi was caught by his Mom running around his garden in just his pants whilst shooting his airsoft gun...

I guess though it boils down to this, so what if a few more kids get shot to bits, as long as I can play or watch what I want to watch who really gives a ****?!

Thanks, that puts what I was trying to say earlier a lot more succinctly! Maybe we all need to accept that, yes, the majority of us won't go on a gun rampage, but some people really are affected by what they watch/read/play, so a bit of self-censorship is needed by people making the films/books/games?

It's a tricky one, and making it harder to get big guns is an obvious start, but for those of us who don't have guns, maybe this is something we can agree to? And that's coming from somebody who loves his horror and action films!

One of the earliest surviving works in the western philosophical tradition, Plato's Republic, is predicated largely on the conviction that the perfect society needs - first and foremost - to censor the flow and content of imagery, in the belief that people uncritically emulate what they see. Zeus rapes a nymph? Apollo flays Marsyas alive? OK, well if gods can do it, so can I. Aristotle, in the Poetics, said bollocks to his former mentor Plato: highly overwrought sensual and violent imagery has a 'cathartic' effect on its audience, purging their pent-up emotions and aggressions and thereby making them better citizens by the time they leave the theatre.

I was going to tell you about when I saw a boy in a supermarket begging his mom for some Thomas the Tank Engine-shaped meat slices by repeatedly singing the advert's jingle, but you've given a much more academic example!

we're stuck arbitrarily taking sides in the Plato vs. Aristotle game. Aristotle FTW - woooooot!!!!

[Golgo]

^ I fecking love that and I'm stealing it!!!

With regards Dogg Thang's previous point: does the research you mention prove that people who stupidly limit their mental stimuli to one channel of information/entertainment are stupid and come to believe stupid things?

[Dogg Thang]

What are their special moves?

[MartyG]

Great video, MartyG, up until the point of where he says video games have no effect on people. Your Turtles example is a great one. I'm pretty sure video games do influence us...

It's not just Turtles; I deeply regret spending so much of my late teens playing Tetris. I was completely addicted to it when it launched with the Gameboy (addiction, yet another side effect of gaming). If it were not for Nintendo and more-so Alexey Pazhitnov, I wouldn't be banned from B&Q to this day. But it was just too difficult to separate the fantasy from the reality.

[Golgo]

^ Lol.

Plato could unleash the 'Platonic Love Mindgrip', reducing Aristotle to a gibbering mess of frustrated homo-erotic desire. Not sure what Aristotle would come back with...

[QualityChimp]

I deeply regret spending so much of my late teens playing Tetris. I was completely addicted to it when it launched with the Gameboy.

If it were not for Nintendo and more-so Alexey Pazhitnov, I wouldn't be banned from B&Q to this day. But it was just too difficult to separate the fantasy from the reality.

Odd. It's thanks to Tetris that I'm so good at packing the car!

[MartyG]

Odd. It's thanks to Tetris that I'm so good at packing the car!

I don’t think it’s something we should be making light of.

I mean, just how many other people have had their lives ruined by Tetris? How many people are now unable to do some simple DIY on a Sunday morning? How many marriages have been ruined because the wives can no longer take the stress of having an out-of-date bathroom? How many people have lost their jobs because less people are buying stuff from Homebase?

Alexey Pazhitnov knew what he was doing when he invented that arcade title, and while Nintendo should accept some of the blame for publishing it, it’s Pazhitnov who’s ultimately responsible for the resulting atrocities.

[originalbadboy]

Hell I played Pacman as a kid ... And I didn't grow up chomping pills and listening to repetitive dance music ... Oh wait ... Bugger!