Murder and Fiction

[mimartin]

If, lets say, reality suddenly took some strange turn and when someone died they would respawn an hour or whatever later... would people treat the world like a video game?

 

I still would not run around killing people just because they respawn, after all I wouldn't want them killing me right before Texas played so that I would missed the entire first half of the game. I would however treat myself differently. I would take more chances with my own life. Always wanted to try bull riding, but never felt the need to risk my life to find out what it is like.

[JediMaster12]

First of all girl, the Nazis aren't around no more, they are all but extinct.

Neo Nazi ring a bell for you?

 

Well, that's your opinion, JediMaster12.

I'm not going to argue with you, you already accusing me of being a bad person.

So, forget it!

I am not accusing you. I am merely pointing out the logic do to your standard of good and bad persons. Perhaps it would help if you were mindful that some of your words however passionate they are come across very different to people who, while just as passionate, use reason and logic.

 

It is also apreciative if you address me civililly as JM12. Most others do around here and it makes it feel like we are talking to people and not nobodys.

 

Video games have no moral dilemmas because there is no moral choices; you have to have real people for that. I'm not going to feel sorry for letting (or purposely ) jumping Lara Croft off a cliff. I know that the scream was recorded in a sound studio, the damage was created by an artist, the movement created by an animator, the actions made possible by the engine programmer. When Lara dies, there's no one affected, very different from your above 'real life with respawns' idea.

You reminded me of something Sam Dravis. I remember when my brother and I were playing Frontline, the Colecovision game and my brother would make the joke that his guy got shot in the butt when he did get hit and died. We had fun laughing over that. Another game I think was the one that was one of the early Lara Croft games for the Playstation console. He did something funny and we laughed. You do have some point there in that we don't think twice about computer games because we see them as pixels on a screen and we detach ourselves at the moment the action is caused. However when you stop to think about it, that's when you run into the question of morality.

Unfortunately for me when I play KOTOR, the one scene that always rattles me is when Saul Karath tortures Revan, Bastila and Carth. Yeah it is computer generated but to hear it really ruffles me and I try to speed through it as quick as I can.

 

What I think really is the issue is to whether or not kids can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. People do pop a gasket over that video games are violent but have they considered to whether or not the kids know the difference? Are parents teaching them that difference? In truth it does come back to the parents. Kids learn the modes of society from their parents in the process called socialization. They learn was is acceptable and not acceptable behavior. They also know that their choices and actions have consequences.

[Totenkopf]

What I think really is the issue is to whether or not kids can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. People do pop a gasket over that video games are violent but have they considered to whether or not the kids know the difference? Are parents teaching them that difference? In truth it does come back to the parents. Kids learn the modes of society from their parents in the process called socialization. They learn was is acceptable and not acceptable behavior. They also know that their choices and actions have consequences.

 

I think this is pretty much spot on. If not, there'd be a bunch of "impaired" people running around trying to imitate WB cartoons or the 3 Stooges. So, even though media has gotten more graphic in content, almost all kids will grasp that it's make-believe and not something to be aped in their own personal conduct.

[JediMaster12]

So, even though media has gotten more graphic in content, almost all kids will grasp that it's make-believe and not something to be aped in their own personal conduct.

I am glad that you said almost every kid. We all know that there are exceptions to that. The best example I can cite actually is an episode of CSI Miami where the kids were reenacting this violent computer game and they thought it was real. They were given real guns that killed and they were obessessed with point value. The only reason they were running around like that was because some guy wanted to promote his game. Talk about criminally negligent homicide. I guess that cliche that there are always a few bad apples in a barrel of apples.

[Totenkopf]

Of course, we also live in an era where many children who DO know better also know they have the option of falling back on "the devil made me do it" when they get caught for doing something particularly bad, counting on a lighter (if any) sentence from liberal judges. Besides, no competent legal defense would allow for said child to admit they knew what they were doing was wrong as it would complicate their job. I do agree, though btw, that there will always be people with a comprised judgement ability that are the exception to the rule.

[John Galt]

I think video games represent a meaningful way to carry out fantasies and repressed desires that can't be vented elsewise in a civilized environment, a form of Walter Mitty-esque escapism, if you will. Anyone who can truthfully claim that playing videogames led them to beat down 20 cops with a rusty pipe wrench, or whatever demented crime they committed MUST have had a pre-existing mental condition, or else must not have ever been told that whatever they did was wrong.

[spark91]

I think the reason people kill in games is because the game gives u no other option, what i mean is that in order to advance to another level or beat the game u have to kill this guy or that person. and we kill them without hesitation because we know that they are not real and that u can just restart the game and they will be there again. but in real life once u killed someone their is no going back, you will have blood on your hand forever.

If someone say they killed someone because of a game then i agree with John Galt they must have some sort of mental condition.

[SilentScope001]

Since we believe in Science a lot, I think a Scientific view would suffice:

 

http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/06/this_is_your_brain_on_violent_1.php

 

It's well established that playing violent games is associated with aggressive behavior, but it's difficult to determine whether violent games cause aggression. After all, people who are predisposed to aggressive behavior might seek out violent games.

 

Basically, don't start defending violent video games or cursing them. Just wait and study them, but beware of them. They could have an effect, they could not. Of course, waiting would be silly...pro-Video Game companies will release studies showing video games are good, and anti-video game activists will release studies showing video games are bad. How are we to tell what is right and what is wrong?

 

But the only real effect I do notice is desenstiazation to violence. You see enough violent actions, you no longer get afraid of it, or worried of it, or even care about it. It's "violence in media" issue rather than "violence in games", but even so, I do worry a bit about people seeing NPCs as, well, cannon fooder. And I really don't like people saying, "We can tell the difference between real and fake" because, well, fiction can be a way to live out fanasties, and sometimes, our fanasties CAN be twisted and evil, revealing much more about who we really are. Just because it's fake does not mean we should ignore it...

 

EDIT: On a tangent, can video game companies STOP releasing blood and gore? I'm playing a game of murder for fun and fufilling dark fanasties, I don't want to see realistic blood and gore that interrupts my ability to fill out my fanasty, will gross me out, and overall stop me from playing as I vomit.

[JediMaster12]

And I suppose SilentScope001 that you believe that there are bad genes that can make us agressive enough to kill?

 

EDIT: On a tangent, can video game companies STOP releasing blood and gore? I'm playing a game of murder for fun and fufilling dark fanasties, I don't want to see realistic blood and gore that interrupts my ability to fill out my fanasty, will gross me out, and overall stop me from playing as I vomit.

Then the real question is what is it about death and violence that draws us like moths to a flame. I am such an example. I don't like to see people get murdered yet I get fascinated by autopsy and I watch gory war movies. I know that what's on TV is not always real but I have been around dead bodies before, after they have been mutilated by a mortician, and it doesn't really bother me. This is actually part of an ongoing research project for a paper I entitled Drawn to Death. I am using modern examples as well as archaeological evidence. It is strange as to how we condemn the blood and the killing yet we also can't help but watch. Take human sacrifice of the Aztecs. The idea of having your beating heart ripped out of your chest is like eww yet there is a huge procession of music and dancing all the way up until the act itself. Even then it is still "ooh dead body." I think that is the real question.

[SilentScope001]

And I suppose SilentScope001 that you believe that there are bad genes that can make us agressive enough to kill?

 

I do believe in Science, and whatever Science says. Too bad Science is so contradictry that its members would likely debate over and over on what is "true" and what is "false".

 

It would be wrong to say that genes are "good" or "bad" though (moral relativism FTW). Just agressive or less agressive. If they exist. But that article talks about the influence video games have on people, which I think is pretty likely to exist, and does not talk about any sort of genes.

 

Then the real question is what is it about death and violence that draws us like moths to a flame.

 

What about the fact that once you kill someone, that person isn't coming back to life, and that you stopped that person from living and continuing to do...say, whatever?

 

For example, in Video Game #596, when you are walking down a street, you see several bats flying. You shoot them, and the bats stop in their actions. Once they stop in their actions they fall down and, well, no longer move at all. You paused them once and for all.

 

I think it could be seen as an act of assuming the mantle of God in this respect. You are taking away another person's life, which is very empowering. You get to choose when that person no longer moves, no longer function. It's awesome. Just as awesome as, say, building Sim City, only it is a bit more permenant. Once a person die, he isn't coming back alive. But if you build a great City, it can easily collapse and die and nobody would like you.

[Nancy Allen``]

You look at the SWAT games where the objective is not to kill, you're meant to arrest the suspects if at all possible. The best way I know to achieve such a goal is to prepare your area first, gas the room say, before moving ahead in case there's someone behind the door who comes out firing as they often do. In those situations where as soon as you open the door they fire, or even shoot through the closed door, it is extremely hard if not impossible to take them alive, as you don't have the tazer ready, or the flashbang to stun them. Now in these games the situations are meant to be as real as it can possibly get, everything from mission callouts which range from the mundane such as a freeway sniper or high risk arrest and drug raid to something serious such as gunmen taking over a TV studio or hospital to the extreme but plausible; missile launchers aimed at planes over LAX or a bomb threat at the International Convention Centre, to weapons physics. In the killhouse there's panels of glass, wook, cement, metal, ect that use can shoot through with diffirent guns and diffirent ammunition to see how they work. So these games can be presented as a good example of using judgement in using force, using lethal force.