WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior

[Pikminister]

Rep. Joe Baca is baaaack!

I'm very surprised Wrathborne didn't catch this story sooner...

Rep. Joe Baca, D-San Bernardino, has introduced a bill that would require many video games to be packaged with a warning label similar to the government-mandated notices that try to convince smokers to abandon their habits.

Baca's bill, opposed by an industry trade group, would mandate the following message be printed on video game packages: "WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior."

"It's time for the government to step up, to make sure parents are given accurate information about the consequences of playing violent video games," Baca said in an emailed statement.

Baca specifically mentioned the "Grand Theft Auto" series, in which "children assume the identity of murderers, rapists, car-jackers, drug dealers, and others, as an example of the kind of game parents should be warned about.

Link: http://www.sbsun.com/breakingnews/ci...ls-video-games

P.S. Baca tried the same shit waaaaay back in 2002. He's back, ladies and gents.

[alexdz]

Yeah, I bet that's VERY acurate information alright.

There was a congressman in Brazil that tried to pass a law that'd ban any game that "offended the morals and beliefs" of the people. That's basically censorship, these people are fucking nuts.

[I_Am_Nemesis]

I swear you cant rape people in GTA, or any other game ive played for that matter. this whole thing is bollocks, ive played violent game most of my life and im not a violent person, far from it.

[Canas Renvall]

Didn't this guy learn from Thompson? I mean seriously, Thompson's so disbarred for this shit that he can't even practice the law of gravity, for Christ's sake. That should clue people in.

Not to mention the ratings systems. I mean, it's sort of why it exists in the first place. It's the parents buying their five-year-olds GTAIV and other games that is the issue. (I'm guilty too, of course. I got my parents to get me the RE games, afterall )

And don't even get me started on the main cases against it... namely, the dumb broad who had a huge blowout on how Mass Effect contained graphic lesbian sex, then had to rescind her statement due to sheer stupidity.

Or the case where one kid murdered another and everyone blamed Manhunt because the killer played it, and it was aaaaall over the news. And yet soon after, everyone had to rescind their statements because it was totally backwards; the victim played Manhunt a lot, and the killer never had.

People are so quick to jump on video games, when in reality they're either not related in any way, or if it is in some cases then it's usually the parents' fault for buying their seven-year-old the latest iteration of [insert M-rated series here].

[Wrathborne]

@#$%^&*())U&^@#$%^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..cause I be having aggressive behavior playing violence video games.

[Darkmoon]

What's the rating system, generally, over there? I'm sure as with many things it varies state by state, but over here it puts the age rating on the box and it's illegal to sell to anyone under that age, as well as putting any major issues such as drug use, violence, swearing or sex on the back so people know what they're getting little Timmy.

[Wrathborne]

the US rating system is @#$%^&*(*&#!!!!!!!...because I be having aggressive behavior playing violence video games.

[Canas Renvall]

What's the rating system, generally, over there? I'm sure as with many things it varies state by state, but over here it puts the age rating on the box and it's illegal to sell to anyone under that age, as well as putting any major issues such as drug use, violence, swearing or sex on the back so people know what they're getting little Timmy.

From lowest to highest it's:
EC - Early Childhood (Most educational games.)
E - Everyone (Mario, Sonic, etc., formerly called K-A, Kids - Adults from 1994-1997.)
E10+ - Everyone 10+ (the Kingdom Hearts games come to mind here.)
T - Teen (Bully, Uncharted, etc.)
M - Mature (RE, Silent Hill, etc.)
AO - Adults Only (aka, video game death sentence. Retailers refuse to stock AO games here. Notable examples are Hot Coffee versions of GTA: San Andreas and the early build of Manhunt 2, which they toned down to get an M rating).

Edit: And as far as I know, that's nationwide and it has to put the letter rating on the front and back, and details of why on the back as well. It's illegal to sell M rated and up without an ID (unless of course they obviously look old enough or are a regular customer). You have to be 17 for M-rated games unless an adult is present and I believe 18 for an AO game, though again, I'm not sure as pretty much every single retailer refuses to stock AO games.

Edit Edit: To elaborate on the AO rating, the Big Three have all stated that they will never license an AO game for their consoles, ever. So AO games are limited to PC/Mac.

[Darkmoon]

So...either the retailer has to be illegally selling games to these kids, or the parents have to be ignoring the warning info and then getting outraged that little Timmy carved up a hooker in GTA? And this guy wants to slap a big sticker on the games warning these same folks, who ignore them anyway?

Smart man. Money well spent during a recession.

[Wrathborne]

Smart man. Money well spent during a recession.

From sea to shining seaaaa!

[Canas Renvall]

You hit the nail on the head, Jon. I was holiday help at EB Games here at the mall last year, and that's all it is. We have to warn the person buying for a younger kid of everything mentioned on the back, and every single time I got the wave of the hand and the "It's fine" response.

These are the same people who turn around the next week and complain that their child is playing overly violent games. One guy I actually sold Black Ops to for his kid came back the next week and started accusing me of lying to him about the game. Apparently I said it was perfectly acceptable for a five-year-old to play a game with military themes, bloody firefights, strong language... you know, the stuff I told him about word for word on the back of the fucking box when I sold it to him. Yeah, welcome to America. :|

[Darkmoon]

Parental responsibility is so much easier if you make it some else's responsibility.

[Vector]

There's been no way to prove these claims. There have been studies, and one study has said that playing violent video games can act as an aggressor for people who are already 'angry,' but that's it. There's no concrete way to prove it. This was actually an area of interest that I wrote about in my senior thesis. The excerpt is here:

Nearly two years later, MW2’s name came up on the internet for wrong reasons once more. Anders Behring Breivik, the suspect in the brutal killing of 93 people in Oslo, Norway on July 22, 2011, mentioned the game by name in his ‘manifesto.’ Amidst writings of radical right-wing anti-Muslim views, Breivik spoke of his love for 2009’s Call of Duty game.

"I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game,” wrote Breivik. “It is probably the best military simulator out there and it's one of the hottest games this year. I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I've still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations."
This information did not gain much media attention, but should be important to gamers and developers alike. Revelations such as this would no doubt do more to fan the flames of video game controversy. Through advances in technology, games like Call of Duty have attained such a sense of realism that Breivik’s point of the game being a simulation for actual operations is not that farfetched.

Incidents like this beg the age-old question: do video games cause people to become violent? Villanova psychology professor Patrick Markey recently conducted a study to try and find correlation between violent video games and people becoming violent, and the results were interesting, to say the least.

“The basic conclusion is simple,” Dr. Markey said. “Most people are not adversely affected by violent video games, and those that are have preexisting dispositions, [meaning] they are disagreeable, impulsive and neurotic.” The study, conducted along with Gary W. Giumetti, had 167 university undergrads perform a series of tasks, including randomly being assigned to play video games that were deemed either violent or nonviolent.

Individuals who were deemed to have ‘high anger’ and ‘moderate anger’ by a series of questionnaires and other tests had ‘a significant increase of aggressive responses’ to a final round of questioning after playing violent video games. However, individuals deemed to have low levels of anger were not significantly affected by violent video games. Still, these results are not exactly cut and dry, and there’s nothing written in stone about the effects that violence in games have on someone.

“Research in this area is still too early to know for sure,” said Markey. “Most of our outcomes are only proxy measures [like] answers on questionnaires, aggression measured in a lab setting, et cetera. So far, the only thing that can be known is that violent video games cause some people to feel more hostile.”

Starting with the shooting at Columbine High School over 10 years ago, people have been looking to place blame for such atrocities on video games, but there’s simply not enough evidence to back that up. The shooters at Columbine, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were known to have played another violent first-person shooter titled Doom, and were classified as loners and unpopular students who were the targets of bullying. Markey said that Columbine was the start of research into violent video games and aggressive behaviors.

Klebold and Harris were poster boys of “kids playing violent video games is bad” for many years. However, with the advent of online gaming, the violent, anti-social stereotype is beginning to fade away. Markey says that gaming online is an interesting aspect of games.

“Although most people still play video games in isolation, a growing number are now online and interacting,” he said. “While many of these interactions are one-time affairs, like [playing a deathmatch] on Xbox Live against a randomly created group, some of these interactions are ongoing and even result in real friendships and romance. This is probably going to be the next big area of research.”