dcphoto wrote:Actually, I said that video games desensitize kids to violence and teach there are no consequences, only reward, for that violence. I didn't say it would train kids how to shoot guns, or infiltrate an enemy encampment.
Every study that claims that gets refuted, because pinning it on video games is like saying that french fries are the reason American's are overweight. It picks a scapegoat from a long list of symptoms and completely ignores the disease.
Yes, kids are more desensitized now, yes, exposure to violence of any kind without parental supervision/control leads to desensitization, but that's a broad cultural problem. Think video games are bad? Ok, let them watch TV instead: Cops, WWE, CSI, whatever. Block their TV? Let them listen to some rap music or certain types of hard rock. Take away their music? Let them read "illustrated novels" or comics...the list goes on and on. Want to "fix the problem" of exposing kids to too much video game violence? Maybe we should have video game ratings that help parents make decisions for their children? Oh, wait, we already do that. Ok, maybe we can be like Germany, where all blood in a game must be green. Or like China, who bans the appearance of skeletons in video games. Let's just keep it clean, like Football...no wait, that simulates battlefield line and formation combat. Where do we draw the line?
dcphoto wrote:If you can't see that violence in video games and the media does exactly that, then you are fooling yourself. Furthermore, lazy parenting is why kids are learning right and wrong from a video game and television.
Now we have have something we can agree on. Too many parents, who themselves have been desensitized to violence (clearly we can blame the pre-1970's violence of Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote -- thank god those cartoons had all that edited out, because we're all much better for it now). Yes, parenting is critical. I have an 11 year old boy. I think nothing of taking him out shooting, but I would NEVER let him watch a rated R movie or play an M rated game, and I screen the PG-13 and T-rated games before he can play them (and his choices there are few).
Interesting anecdote: I watched the movie Kick-Ass when it came out. I knew it was going to be a hyperviolent satire about comic book heroes and it didn't disappoint me. But when I looked at the audience, I saw a LOT of children brought in with their parents. Some clearly as young as six! I was nauseated. For an adult to expose a child to a movie like that, which had a CLEAR "R" rating and stated "graphic violence" in it, made me wonder why we don't make people pass an IQ test before they reproduce.
dcphoto wrote:lkd: Video games ARE being used as a training aid.
You're in an unfair fight. I've built space and military simulators (Space Station, Space Shuttle, F-16, F-22, Military Kinematics scripting and animation, and 3D military model interoperation code), along with working in the video game industry (first at Microsoft, now at NVIDIA, which probably explains why I'm so passionate about this topic
). I know about all the links you've referenced. There's two facets that you're attempting to cite:
1) Video games (like Amreica's Army) that are being used as _recruiting_ tools. They expose the player to approximations of the hardware they will use if they join the Army, but that's the extent. I'm sure you'll agree that shooting an M-16 in the game does nothing to prepare you for the mechanics and knowledge needed for a real M-16. These games are designed to appeal to the _image_ of being a soldier and the esprit de corps (the fact that you can tell when you're actually playing with active duty soldiers is a particularly strong recruiting mechanism, as it strengthens the social ties as you accomplish goals together)
2) Low and High-fidelity training simulations. These are effective for specific training scenarios, and work best when designed for specific purposes. Often they are designed to teach the reinforced motor skills that a person needs in a high stress scenario. I built an F16 simulator that had massive dome projectors in low fidelity with high fidelity insets for dogfighting. Not ONCE did a pilot come back from combat and say it was like the real thing, because we can't simulate high-G stresses or all the loopy things that happen as you jink around. What we _could_ do is get them to understand the reaction, button-pressing, alert recognition, etc. that all pilots must instinctively know. Calling these things a "video game" makes no sense.
The problem I have is that the media (and certain congresscritters) are equivocating video games to a) inciting terrorist/criminal behavior and b) useful as a training aid. They are neither, nor can be. They are _games_.
