Is the PC Gaming Community becoming a target?

[Yuri Zhivago]

Recently, I've noticed something. I'll set the scene for you all:

I live in Australia. So we get American television in abundance. (I am not however, Australian, not that it is relevant to the point I wanted to bring up here) I've been gaming well, since I had my brother's Commodore 64 handed down to me and since our first Windows 3.1 PC. But never until now have I noticed what's been happening recently.

This is where television comes into it. I watch it. I don't often enjoy it. This evening I sat through an episode of Numbers, tripe, yes. In the episode, they dramatised a school shooting, and the perpetrators turned out to be participants in an MMPORG Guild. Another such recent television episode of another program... Law and Order, dealt with a similar subject. PC Gamers as violent loners waiting to explode.

The media has also given widespread negative coverage, following the school shooting in Canadia (there was one in Germany also I believe.) They've publicised the killers gaming habits, etc etc.

Without giving links to information, because these are simply my thoughts on recent occurances, it would seem that the PC Gaming community at large is becoming more and more the target of attacks by the mainstream media as a breeding ground for violence. Right down to the banning of games which display human against human violence in Germany, including games such as M2TW.

There have also been financial attacks. I do not participate in any MMPORGs but recent moves have been made here and in the United States to investigate whether or not to tax goods acquired in games such as World of Warcraft, which are then sold in real life. (I don't want to go too deeply into this, but obviously the problem with taxation here is that sales are made across borders and I've never heard of tax on anything I've bought from ebay.)

So what does the community at large think ? Is the hobby of PC Gaming under attack as a result of ignorance and growing misconception about what exactly draws us to the hobby, and if this is the case, where will it end?

[Sit down, fat dog]

Three of the games it talked about in the article itself were not to be released for at least a month later. It was clearly unaware of this, in fact it is was obvious very little research had been carried out at all.

This particular issue of the Daily Mail is now often used as a comedy prop in British gaming magazines.

Also, not long before the Daily Mail spread the complete falsehood that a teenager who murdered a peer with a hammer had been inspired to do so by the game Manhunt. However, the police had actually discovered the game in the victim's room, not the murderer's.

[Oldgamer]

If games involving human versus human violence will be banned in Germany, exactly what games will be left? I've played every game in the Total War series. Currently, there are seven war games on my harddrive, not including M2TW. They include Silent Hunter III, a game whose designers went out of their way to lessen the most graphic of violence (for example, they purposely did not allow merchant ship crews to abandon their vessel, because they knew that players would surface their U-Boats and use their AA guns to strafe the lifeboats).

Indeed, if anyone is contributing to the violence among teens, today, it is TV and the big screen. How many primetime programs can be watched that don't include senseless, gratuitous violence.

Today's young people are not a reflection of their video games. They are a reflection of the increase in violence, which in turn is a reflection primarily of television ... which is ironic, since television is where we hear the most complaints about video games.

[Denny Crane!]

They won't be banned in germany, lets believe it when we see it not just some random proposition put forward.

Peter

[Erik]

Games are definitely a target for television and other media.

I'm not sure how much of this is simple sensationalism, and how much is strategy.
But if you think about it: the hours spend on gaming can't be spend on watching TV, so games are costing the television industry billions in lost advertisement.

The impression television gives you about crime rates also contradicts reality.
In reality violent crime rates have DROPPED considerably since computer games became popular, yet the impression you get from watching TV is that crime rates are up.

Since 1994, violent crime rates have declined, reaching the lowest level ever in 2005.

source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

[Oldgamer]

Games are definitely a target for television and other media.

I'm not sure how much of this is simple sensationalism, and how much is strategy.
But if you think about it: the hours spend on gaming can't be spend on watching TV, so games are costing the television industry billions in lost advertisement.

The impression television gives you about crime rates also contradicts reality.
In reality violent crime rates have DROPPED considerably since computer games became popular, yet the impression you get from watching TV is that crime rates are up.


source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

Erik, the world is coming to an end! We agree entirely.

[Princeps]

source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

All the young criminals are hooked on WOW.

[MoROmeTe]

Well, I see games as a way to limit the excesses of one's behaviour. We can now all turn to games for our adrenalin rush. No need to fight, drink, take drugs, play stupid jokes, drive at high speed. More games, less crime, in my humble opinion...

[Gaidin]

This is where television comes into it. I watch it. I don't often enjoy it. This evening I sat through an episode of Numbers, tripe, yes. In the episode, they dramatised a school shooting, and the perpetrators turned out to be participants in an MMPORG Guild. Another such recent television episode of another program... Law and Order, dealt with a similar subject. PC Gamers as violent loners waiting to explode.

Emphasis added.

Was this merely a characterization of the characters or did they actually try to use this as evidence against them?

We learned 9ish years ago that students who happen to play games(shooting aside, a characteristic not altogether uncommon, period, this day and age) and then shoot up schools isn't exactly out of this world.

[RZZZA]

nobody can ever die in these peoples minds, apparently. Every murder every death is a tragedy and something or someone has to be blamed and destroyed or taken away.

I think this is just fear of death, people trying to prevent death, as if they can.

[Big War Bird]

Violent crime is down in the US for three reasons
1. Abortion
2. Longer prison terms
3. More police

[Princeps]

2. Longer prison terms

Long prison terms create criminals.

[Cluny the Scourge]

The exact same garbage was peddled about Dungeons & Dragons when it was popular - it was corrupting kid's minds and turning them into violent devil-worshipping maniacs.

You'd think that people would begin to detect a pattern with these scum, so desperate to control every facet of people's lives with their perverted beliefs.

They'll make their move eventually. We have to be ready for them.

[Metellus]

The exact same garbage was peddled about Dungeons & Dragons when it was popular - it was corrupting kid's minds and turning them into violent devil-worshipping maniacs.

Ah, yes. I remember the days...
Well now its the turn of computer games, anyway. But I think I watched that Law & Order episode. IMO they seem to give a very balanced perspective on contentious issues, the scriptwriters seem to be reasonably intelligent. I don't mind it coming up because its topical, as long as its dealt with in a balanced way.

[Tiwaz]

There was this one CSI style program about US navy people where guy committed suicide (of course not realising since he was too "in" character with his MMORPG alter ego) to prove he was "Immortal" (name of fake MMORPG which was nothing like real ones in footage which showed the game).

In short, big problem with these series appears to be that writers, and apparently most others who could say it's utter BS, are in no way aware of what the games actually are!

Or what kind of people gamers are, so they come up with these ridiculous plots.

[Oldgamer]

Just last night, I watched an episode of CSI in which a group of college students in costumes went about Las Vegas beating tourists and street people to near death, and going over the edge (causing one man's death). They were just "having fun". They would text-message each other about their next outing, meet at the appointed time, and senselessly beat someone.

I can't think of any video game/wargame that had the level of violence in that episode of CSI. There was no rhyme or reason. It was gratuitious violence for it's own sake.

Television needs to look hard at itself, before it attempts to build support for political action against the gaming industry.

[Legio XX Valeria Victrix]

Video games to me are like guns to others: they can pry them from my cold dead fingers.

Seriously, its all a bunch of misleading figures and attempts to find blame for senseless murder, such as school shootings. Hell, I remember during the scare after Columbine, video games came under fire even though it was an express motive of the killers stated by them many times that abuse from other students was what inspired them to do it. That and awful, negligent parenting, which also gets conveniently left out when the "bash video game" bandwagon is jumped on.

[Yuri Zhivago]

" Was this merely a characterization of the characters or did they actually try to use this as evidence against them?"

It was used as evidence againstthem, in a roundabout way. The three students in the episode implicated in the shooting were members of a Guild (Which was strangely also a club at the High School recognised by the principal?) and they basically used the fact that the three of them were loners who shared an interest in MMPORGs to link the three of them together in the crime.

But in general, I'd say that video games are becoming more of a target due to widespread ignorance. I'm 20 now, and recently, a couple weeks ago that is, I set up a myspace. A few days ago I was having a conversation with my mum about technology etc, and we got onto the topic of it (Myspace has come into the news here after the Ipswich serial killings in Britain and the implication of that bloke who had a myspace where his name was "The Bishop, anyway!) and I asked her about it and we basically got to the point that her generation will probably never understand this kind of thing.

Now we look at games. If the media can't understand or even show what myspace is with any factual basis (the Aussie tv news in regards to the English suspect's myspace said he had "his own personal website, which described him as lonely and seeking companionship") how will they ever give an accurate portrait of gamers or games themselves? MMPORGs are a recent phenomenon, disregarding MUSH's, MUD's and Tabeltop RPGs of yesteryear, yet as MMPORG's have become so much larger, the media has turned its attention to games more and more. It doesn't help that the shooters at Columbine were shown to have had an affinity with DOOM, or that the recent shooter in Canada had an affinity with violent games. But overall, it seems that as games reach a wider audience through consoles and PC games targetting the lowest common demoninator, more and more people are logging on and playing. So why is it still a hobby that to the "mainstream" is still largely unacceptable?

[Metellus]

I think that particularly violent games coupled with poor parenting can lead to more violent crimes. But it is one of many factors.

[Legio XX Valeria Victrix]

I think that particularly violent games coupled with poor parenting can lead to more violent crimes. But it is one of many factors.

Possible, but I think the latter factor is of much higher importance than the former. The poor or abusive parenting leads to a belief that violence can solve problems, the video games may just provide an example of how to be violent, or that violence can be fun.

But in order for video games to inspire violence, there has to already be huge psychological problems in the individual to begin with. Rational people don't play Mortal Kombat and then think, "wouldn't it be fun to REALLY freeze a guy and shatter him with a hammer!"