I think the idea is that guns and bombs and such are cool, and probably lots of people have the impulse to just let loose some destructive volley, blow something up, shoot stuff, run people over, etc - and video games let them do that without consequence. If you saw someone playing GTA and they were running over drug dealers and having shoot outs with the police - that seems like a pretty wild and fun fantasy. Conversely, if they murdered an NPC, then found that NPC's grieving family members and kept dragging the murdered NPC's body in front of them to make them depressed - that would be more atypical.
In other words - if the fantasy you're indulging is being powerful (guns, bombs, using the car destructively) - then that's pretty normal. If the fantasy you're indulging is sadistic, that's pretty abnormal.
The game industry is growing faster every year because the demand for an escape from the dull grind is rising just as fast. The violence is just a peripheral aspect of it.
Another aspect is that it's easier to recognize violence as fictitious. When you are exposed to real-life violence, it feels completely different from anything you've ever experienced in media. There is simply no confusing the two. On the other hand, sexual content tends to be more directly related to the act itself or to complicated emotions around it, even if the material is recognized as fictitious. Sometimes the content IS the act, if we take into account that for a large number of individuals the main draw is the exposure itself.
Unlike with fictitious violence, the tastes of the player/watcher/consumer are in plain view, and we know that these tastes can then easily become behaviors. Much more is revealed than we would care to see. That is why is it considered much more abhorrent.
Perhaps. But does it mean you're more tolerant of violence? And that others such as yourself eventually aggregate to have a collective impact on the broader culture? And what about 10 or 20 years from now, will your non-desire to shoot people still not exist?
Neuro-plasticity effectively dictatess we are what we consume, we are what we do. I'm not disputing your self-diagnosis. But there is science that does.
No, which is the entire premise of the linked article we're discussing.
> And what about 10 or 20 years from now, will your non-desire to shoot people still not exist?
Perhaps, but it will have considerably less to do with video games than other life factors.
> Neuro-plasticity effectively dictatess we are what we consume, we are what we do
This isn't what neuro-plasticity means. It means your brain can perform a task with less work, not that you "become" something because the pathways are optimized for a task.
The brain is a result of how you "exercise" it, or not. It's the result of what you feed it, or not. It's not static.
Neuro-plasticity enables stroke victims to recover. And the depth and breadth of that recovery is a function of how much or not the brain is forced to rewire.
Exercising your brain causes structural changes, whereby neuronal circuity is "rewired" to create more optimal paths. Stroke victim recovery is functional, in which parts of the brain take over responsibilities for what was damaged (but it's not "transferred", you still need to learn it all over again).
Neither, however, somehow magically define you as a person just because your brain decided some optimizations would help with repetitive tasks or worst-case decided cortical remapping was necessary to recover from injury.
That is, what you "feed" your brain will manifest itself physically as paths in the brain. Full stop.
When you develop a habit of consuming violece - and enjoying it - those paths are real. Pretending they don't exist doesn't make them magically disappear. Confirmation bias works that way, the science does not.
Furthermore, human behavior is often learned for the collective. That is, for example, given a group of cigarette smokers, the more who quit smoking, the more likely others in the group are likely to quit.
Put another way, going in the other direction, humans naturally gravitate to broader norms. That is, the more I see others with excessive weight, the more likely others will join that club. So yes actually, you are what you eat. Literally.
Now please explain - not being snatky - how that's nonsensical.
Except that's exactly what is up for discussion, and so far there is no evidence that this is the case. There's a big difference between muscle memory, neuroplasticity, and playing the piano than their is for sitting on the couch and consuming violent media.
> Pretending they don't exist doesn't make them magically disappear.
Saying they exist doesn't make them magically appear.
> Furthermore, human behavior is often learned for the collective
Yes, that's also how morals work. The more people are exposed to something, the more morally acceptable it becomes.
> Now please explain - not being snatky - how that's nonsensical.
Short witticisms like "you are what you eat" or "you are what you learn" are shallow and vastly underestimate the subjects at hand in exchange for a quick nod. Such as "we are greater than the sum of our parts".
So the brain and mind work a certain way...except for video games and violent?
Did you read the Abstract on this "study"? FSS you can drive the planet Jupiter through the holes.
If we're going to discuss evidence, there's no evidence anyone reasonable would read that abstract and put their credibility behind it. HN is such a funny place sometimes. But I trust you can read the article or abstract and see the question marks. But if not, LMK and I'll break it down.
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/suppl/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049
"Therefore, it is determined that adolescents who played a high-level of violent video games at an early age did not show more aggressive behavior later in life than those who played fewer to no hours of violent video games at an early age."
The idea that consumption of violent media changes pathways in such a way that the expression of violent behavior is more common, is null and void. There's zilch, nada, zero evidence to support this including decades of prior research on film and television influence.
Maybe the pathways being trained have less to do with aggression and violence, and more to do with hand-eye coordination and other motor reflexes involved in the process.
Eat crap. Become crap. Brain may still work ...but on a deformed body
Has the collective impact of multiple violences been studied?
Put another way: Will a mouthful of soda do you in? Not really. But multiply that exposure to sugar across different drinks and processed foods multiple times per day and before you know there's an obesity crisis. But the mouthful of soda is proven to be safe.
We are what we consume - physically, emotionally, intellectually, and so on. That's been confirmed time and again as well.
Do Europeans consume large amounts of violent media? As a European, I can tell you the answer is yes. I don't know how much compared to the US, but I basically grew up on violent video games and I have a large number of friends who love horror films that depict far, far worse than anything in a game I ever played. I suspect the media we consume is pretty similar to the media in the US. And yet, less violence. So, an obvious hypothesis is that the tendency to enact violence comes from elsewhere in culture than media.
The best suggestion I've come across is from Pinker's History of Violence book. He suggests that levels of violence correlate with an "honor culture" - as in, godfather style "you disrespected my mother now I gotta kill your brother", to varying degrees. In the US, especially ex-confederate states, an honor culture still persists, while in Europe and northern US states we have progessed to a "law and order" culture with correspondingly lower levels of violence. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading the book. It gives a much better description of this topic than I can here, and once you've spent some time thinking about it, hopefully, you'll come to recognize that blaming media for violence is shallow thinking. Communities and culture cause violence, or prevent it. Media is just fantasy.
- What of the USA's willingness to use war as a proxy for foreign policy? Is not war a collective "enforcement" of violence? So much so that the masses have become numb and/or blind to war? Why is the USA _so much_ more violent? Because we have more guns? Point being, let's be clear, violence takes many forms.
- What if there are long term effects? What if the children of a player of violent video games are more effected? Maybe the parents are less likely to discipline for acts of toddler violence? What happens when that child grows up?
- The study looked at a particular group of kids, _10 y/o and up_. In terms of development, that's relatively late. The affect of violence on say 5 y/o's could be different, perhaps very.
- It's important to note that this "study" made no mention - at least in the non-pay material available about sample size. How they assessed violence vs non, and so on. The data collected also appears to be self-reported. Read: red flag. But confirmation bias runs strong on HN, yes?
- That said, the article does say:
"Participants were assessed through various behavioral characteristics such as aggression, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and prosocial behavior."
To be clear, the study doesn't connect violence to video games for the sample. However, it also fails to mention whether there are other less positive outcomes (e.g., increase in depression, obesity, or something else).
It is a simulator, so it has the best mechanics. The violence is the only thing missing. Flight Simulator will just display a boring dialog saying "you crashed".
Since it's not part of the mechanics: as you point out, it's not (frequently) done. That seems to support the claim that it's not about seeking violence.
E.g. in Kerbal Space Program I often "reset" bad airplane flights by crashing into the ground as fast as I can, or one of the space center buildings if I'm nearby. I could just hit esc and reset and be back faster, but then I don't see an explosion, nor have a chance to see messed up physics breaking the universe. I've also coordinated orbital collisions to do the same, but there it's more because it's extremely challenging to achieve at any reasonable velocity.
I have no desire to crash real planes or blow up space stations though. The closest that gets to the real world is "I like fireworks".
To transpose the argument to reality, a serial killer may see the act of killing as a neutral act pursuant to a goal they consider important. There are plenty of serial killers with manifestos.
Whatever they are trying to achidve, they aren't welcome in society.
Also, you could just as easily transpose it to something tame in reality. Kids like to put on capes and swing sticks around like swords, not because they want to kill stuff, but because it's fun to play pretend. Turns out grown ups like to do this too, we just call it cosplay and video games.
Part of the equation is that combat is interesting to simulate. It has clear rules ( live or die ), a lot of different ways you can tweak the game design to differentiate ( swords vs guns vs spells vs karate ).
The most popular games are NOT that violent. They simulate combat, but the draw is the competition created by the simulation, not the blood and guts. I can't name a game where "chopping people up" is the primary goal. I'm sure it exists, but I would find it dishonesty to disparage an entire medium because of the work of some niche game developer.
I didn't grow up during a time when you could go out and wander the streets all day and your parents would be OK with that. You had to be home. Having friends over and competing over video games was a great way to pass the time. The game we played the most? Super Smash Bros. Rated E, 0 realistic simulations of violence, about as bad as any slapstick film.
Are you sure we're talking about the same game industry?
I am not saying I WANT or would play said game, but that level does not exist in these games.
Star Wars the Old Republic (the KOTOR MMO) gets pretty dark if you roll dark side. There's also torture, shooting innocents into the void of space, and a few of the class stories let you kill a lot of people for no reason other than that they're no longer useful to you. It's a bit campier than GTA but I can't think of any other RPGs that model being an real asshole quite so well. SWTOR is actually kind of an interesting example because it has EA and Disney behind it, even if the latter joined on after-the-fact and invalidated the canon the game is based on.
Spoiler alert, but one of Far Cry 3's endings sees you murdered after climaxing during sex, all in first person.
Hardly chaste, if you ask me.
Yeah I would describe GTA as pretty tame compared to those movies some of which have broken through to the mainstream. The average horror movie is more violent and gruesome than even the worst we see from video games.
The Witcher and Mass Effect? Those are adult games with very lame sex scenes all of which are consensual. I don't see that as particularly scandalous.
I'll also note that most mainstream action movies and games tend to de-emphasize the goriness and injuries from violence (although gore-flicks also exist, especially in the horror genre). Compare a James Bond movie to a more realistic depiction like Saving Private Ryan. When James Bond shoots unnamed bad guys, they neatly fall over with minimal blood. When he blows people up, you don't usually see any blood or dismemberment. They just get thrown by the explosion and lie dead (but intact) on the ground.
My guess is they do this because the audience isn't watching for the injury aspect of violence, and gore can turn off some viewers. I think the violence in action movies (and games) is more about the protagonist winning. It's the competitive aspect we like. The power fantasy. The protagonist showing incredible skill.
As for graphical realism in games, I don't really know of any that specifically focused on making the killing more realistic (I'm sure some exist, I just don't know them). I've seen games advertise realistic lighting, shadows, reflection, environments, water, faces, gun models, etc. When they make everything more realistic, the violence may get more realistic along with it, but it doesn't seem to be the main focus.
The stories of most of these games are close to a hero fantasy. Having the people you shot scream in terrible agony as their organs fell out wouldn't exactly work with that theme.
Ultimately games and moves are fantasies. But for some reason living out some fantasies that would be very wrong in real life is ok, but others it’s not. I hesitate to even get into the really taboo subjects like for example pedophilia.
Rape on the other hand is mostly emotion.
Remember the controversy around the game "Hatred", where you play some random angry "antagonist" who just wants to kill innocent people? When the "good guy" narrative breaks down this far, society would reject violent video games as well.
There are games that toe the "good guy" line, most notably Grand Theft Auto. But GTA also has some of the most tame looking violence. I cannot imagine a GTA with the "sadistic gaze" of Mortal Kombat's finishers being widely accepted.
This is especially more palatable if non-humans on receiving the violence. There is strong interest in killing aliens/monsters/demons/robots, but I think it's safe to say there is comparatively little interest in having sex with them. I say "comparatively little" and not "none", because Rule 34.
We have a double standard when it comes to imaginary evil that is simply violent and imaginary evil that is repugnant. Make a game about shooting a thousand people and it may win game of the year. Make a game about avoiding prosecution while abusing your virtual pet dog and you'll probably lose your job.
Seems like you're making the OP's point, something is special about sex in your mind.
For example, the last time I was in a real physical fight was in kindergarten. If I watch/play violent media, it can't affect the way I fight because I do not fight. Sex is something I might actually do though, so overexposure to twisted versions of it could actually color my real world experience.
I still tend to think that most healthy adult minds can easily make the distinction between reality and pretend though.
Violence is a part of life. May be shooting a gun isn't a part of life but violence is definitely a part of everyday life.
And anyway, if actual physical violence is a daily or weekly occurrence, the supposed bad influence of video games is probably the least of your worries.
"Have you ever driven in traffic, seen someone arrested, PAID YOUR TAXES?" (emphasis mine)
What the heck are you talking about regarding taxes? Also, traffic accidents don't really count as "violence" in the context of this discussion. Arrests are something that generally happen for a reason, so again not a normal part of life for most people.
You should also try writing with less question marks, it's condescending, especially when you completely missed the point of this whole conversation.
As the study above points out, violent videos games don't make you more violent but I'm pretty confident sexy media (games, movies, music, etc) make people more horny and therefore more likely to seek out sex. Also, since sex is something people do in the normal course of their lives (vs violence which is not a normal part of someone's live) the media they consume is more likely to influence their behavior. It's a manual for something they hope to participate in vs violence, something they don't hope to participate in.
You can google "using porn to get in the mood" to see other people certainly get horny watching sexualized media.
Also sex is generally taboo way more than just murder. Soldier killin people - good. Even innocent women if it's indirect enough like bombing. Soldier raping people? Oh, no, we can't have that!
Also not all murder is equally safe for entertainment. Chopping enemies on the battlefield - great. Stalking innocent people in the city to murder them... Way more on the edge of what's acceptable. Even gunning down civilians in the airport raised some eyebrows.
As I'm getting older I'm getting softer. Recently I was sad because I unintentionally squashed Jeff in Half-Life Alyx, blind mutant that was pretty much helpless if you were careful about the sounds you make. Game characters cheering totally didn't sit well with me.
One way to look at it is violence in video games is a mechanism for “completing a mission” (neutralize those preventing it), financial ends, or survival (whether your pursuers have good reason or not). Those things are tangentially related to our day to day lives but the farthest end of what most people might consider themselves capable of doing in pursuit of extreme success or survival. Plus, death is a normal part of life, so is death by force. It’s normalized in modern life.
But in terms of sexual violence, there’s no real world corollary of survival or prosperity mapped to something so heinous. The real life perpetrator feels some twisted satisfaction over another person, but that’s it. It doesn’t preserve an individuals life or advance their station in life. So it’s not relatable to the majority of folks, even in the deep parts of their mind on what they’d be realistically capable of doing to just live or survive.
I am amazed that there's so much hypocrisy around different categories of violence in fiction. It's even worse than other manifestations of hypocrisy, because this one seems completely invisible to people — I don't recall having seen this discussed anywhere until I read your comment today.
Case in point: when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Serbian_Film came out, there was so much talk about it being immoral and/or illegal, and so many (eventually successful) calls to boycott, censor and ban. I have not watched the film, and I do not think I'll ever watch it, because judging by what I read about it, it seems utterly disgusting and horrifying. Disgusting to the level of scenes depicting the raping of a newborn, and the most imaginative mix of necrophilia, torture, rape, and gore. I think I could not stand it, and if I forced myself to watch it, I suspect I'd have nightmares (literally). So what follows is by no means a defence of this particular work, nor an endorsement of gloating over the most extreme and shocking forms of violence an artist/performer can conceive.
At the same time, there are so many depictions of violence in mainstream film, games, TV and literature. By far, most of that violence is done to male characters (and incidentally, also by male characters). That violence is usually not sexual in nature.
As Vladimir Nabokov put it, art has to be transgressive and shocking.
One more idea to consider: violence (as most things) comes in gradations. Murder > torture > punch > pinch. Rape > harassment. Actual violence > threat of violence. Violence to several people > violence to one. Sadistic violence > plain violence > violence as self-defence > physically restraining an aggressor. Violence committed taking advantage of physical superiority > violence among equals. Etc. There is no gradation, however, contingent on the sex of the victim nor on the sex of the perpetrator: violence towards men ≡ violence towards women.
Why then, it is so controversial to depict rape or sexual abuse, but so commonplace to rejoice in depictions of murder, torture and physical aggression?
I think you're operating under the false assumption that simulating sexual violence is taboo. I'm not sure that's a given: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_fantasy
I don't think that's a natural conclusion. Video games are a form of entertainment (or art). They are pretty young. There's usually a period where an art form gets super into "realism" because it's still a challenge and a way to communicate "high production values".
Then pretty good realism becomes cheap and widely available - and the art form pivots to more expressive works that go beyond chasing "realism". So why are high budget games trying to get more photorealistic? Because it's currently an effective way to communicate "high quality work of entertainment, worth at least 60 bucks". It has little to do with the actual entertainment value.
For example the entertainment media on the one hand say that entertainment does not influence people via depictions of violence, etc., to emulate such things. On the other hand they say that how people are portrayed for positive role models “I could be that person” they are necessary and instrumental and thus the need for representing a cross section of the population. Yet on the other hand they would (with good reason) resist showing only positive plots (ala modified 1950s but contemporary).
I agree though. If sexual violence is a non starter then so should lethal violence be a non starter. Else there is a non sequitur in reason.
Straight up torture - a person who is captive, has already surrendered, etc is not “fair game” in any sense of the word, not even by a stretch. They cannot shoot back, etc.
The same goes for sexual violence. If a character is raping another, the victim has to be incapacitated.
If we were a society of black widow spiders, then I’m sure sexual violence would be fair game because it would be very risky for the male.
Also on the evolutionary side, it was beneficial for us men to deal with violence and agression, to either defend our own stuff, or take that from others.
We're basically still training for when the day comes, we are able to survive. Good thing for most of us in the modern world, that day will never come. And so we can enjoy training in the risk free environment.
I think "simulated" sexual violence (that is to say, real-but-consensual violence, as well as other forms of simulated coercion) is pretty close to just as mainstream, people just don't talk about it as much.
Rick is not a real casting agent, and there is no job.
>Many video games are essentially simulators of things that we're prevented from doing in reality, because of the laws of nature or society. Whether that's dropping blocks into place, building a city, chasing and eating ghosts, flying a plane, performing magic spells, or engaging in physical violence.
I've played a lot of ultra-violent games, puzzle games, adventure rpg games, competitive shooters and mobas and more.
I've become quite skilled in most of them (t500 in OW and GE in CS:GO, to compare to competitive skill levels). I really enjoy "mastering" these games. (for example finished Doom: Eternal on the hardest not allowed to die mode too). This is ultimately what it's about more than the killing of monsters/people. It's about trying to survive impossible odds by skill or competing with other people to be better and get better. Your mileage will vary as this isn't what other people want to get out of games. Some people enjoy managing a farm in games like Stardew Valley, building things in Minecraft, solving puzzles in Portal and enjoy the story and gameplay whilst doing so.
>And there's a never-ending push to make experiences more photorealistic, to make simulator even better. From that I can only conclude that people want to get as close to the experience of perfoming the prevented act as possible.
Making games look better goes hand-in-hand with making them look more 'photorealistic' or realistic in general. We're very much grounded in our own realities. So when you're going for a 3d experience that emulates real life events like wars. You will end up with something that looks more photorealistic. It doesn't however mean that the game feels real. Playing a game like insert recent AAA fps is a very different experience from watching the Christchurch shooting. The latter makes me sick to my stomach, the former doesn't at all. NPCs are ultimately just visual representations of people, the latter actual people.
>Chopping someone up is heavily frowned upon in real life, but perfectly acceptable to emulate in someone's living room. Somehow the simulation escapes the taboo. And that escape seems to be absolute: In the range of violent acts you could commit, from a gentle nudge to grisly murder, simulation of the most extreme extent is permitted.
It's a thought I think almost no one actually has when it comes to murdering people. Hell this might even have the same effect as pornography, namely a reduction in crimes related to it. (Porn availability on a societal level reduces the amount of sex crimes). So a potential murdering being able to 'chop "people" to bits in a simulation' might be a good thing. For me it has no effect, I've never had the thought of murdering people let alone how. At most I've had a "I hope you die" moment, and then regretting thinking that.
>But if that's the case, why is the realistic simulation of some societal taboos (e.g. physical violence to the point of murder) mainstream, but others (e.g. sexual violence in any of its forms) not? They are both very serious offences, but somehow one gets a free pass to let anyone pretend to do it, but the other not.
Though certainly not mainstream, this might also have to do with general taboos on porn, this could become a thing in the future especially with VR. A lot of people have very taboo sexual fantasies the they enact with partners. We know that this is the case, but it rarely gets openly talked about due to the former taboo mentioned.
>Is it a reflection on the ultimate limits of those taboos in the society that produces most of these games? Or is my logic broken somewhere?
I think your logic is indeed a little broken, as different taboos are taboos for different reasons. Hopefully I made some sense.
In a virtual world:
- The gun weights nothing so strength doesn't matter and gravity doesn't slow your aim
- The trigger is a mouse button and there is no right or wrong way to pull it, and it's incredibly easy and identical for all firearms
- The accuracy of the firearm is often perfect
- Holding the gun still is usually only a consideration when sniping and you can just hold down a button to achieve an impossible level of stillness
- When you reload a half-empty magazine the bullets from the discarded magazine usually stay in your overall supply somehow
- Posture is a non-issue
- Recoil never hurts
- You achieve a perfect sight/scope picture every time you shoulder the weapon or raise it up with no practice needed
Basically I am trying to point out that these games are really not simulations. The visuals are just window-dressing for the real game which is determined by the mode. Even the ubiquitous "team deathmatch" is essentially just a modified version of capture-the-flag without the flag where eliminations are not permanent and the game is instead ended by a timer or a score limit.
On an interesting note, I got the game Star Wars: Battlefront 2 recently and I noticed that the game says I "defeated" whoever I just shot which is in contrast with the visuals of the person getting shot and falling down. I see this as an attempt to make the game more friendly to kids by pulling back the curtain on what is really happening through language in order to keep kids from going around talking about how many dozen people they killed in the last game they played. I don't see anything wrong with this but think it should not be necessary for adults. Of course if your game is rated T (Teen) or E (Everyone) then this makes perfect sense.
EDIT: sorry, not western culture, American culture, particularly.
Because there are severe consequences to it, pregnancies and STDs being just the start.
Yes, it is an amazing thing, and it is not overvalued at all. It's one of the strongest drives we have as humans, and it should be controlled, otherwise it will lead to chaos.
Reminds me of the GP comment... Also aligns with - murder is so out there that we can joke about it, rape is so common that we can't.
The same reason people have been reading horror novels for hundreds of years? A good book and an imagination is a lot more realistic than a computer game, IMO. The reason society gives it a pass is partly because they are entertaining and partly because they are considered free speech, the latter being a fundamental human right.
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Many video games are essentially simulators of things that we're prevented from doing in reality, because of the laws of nature or society. Whether that's dropping blocks into place, building a city, chasing and eating ghosts, flying a plane, performing magic spells, or engaging in physical violence.
And there's a never-ending push to make experiences more photorealistic, to make simulator even better. From that I can only conclude that people want to get as close to the experience of perfoming the prevented act as possible.
Chopping someone up is heavily frowned upon in real life, but perfectly acceptable to emulate in someone's living room. Somehow the simulation escapes the taboo. And that escape seems to be absolute: In the range of violent acts you could commit, from a gentle nudge to grisly murder, simulation of the most extreme extent is permitted.
But if that's the case, why is the realistic simulation of some societal taboos (e.g. physical violence to the point of murder) mainstream, but others (e.g. sexual violence in any of its forms) not? They are both very serious offences, but somehow one gets a free pass to let anyone pretend to do it, but the other not.
Is it a reflection on the ultimate limits of those taboos in the society that produces most of these games? Or is my logic broken somewhere?