Top 5 Countdown, Day 5
All this week, I'm doing a countdown of what I deem to be the top 5 threats to gaming society in America. If you miss a segment, you can catch it in the links below.
1/30/06 - Threat #5
1/31/06 - Threat #4
2/1/06 - Threat #3
2/2/06 - Threat #2
May I have a drumroll, please...
Papa Rotzi.
It might surprise you to see that the media trumped politicians as my #1 threat against American gamers. The reason is simple enough; the media reaches every single American, and affects their opinions. The danger lies in how they report the news.
Much like there’s an alleged liberal-bias in the media, I propose that there’s an anti-gaming sentiment that permeates all major news organizations. You can see it in all of the sensationalist reporting of a school shooting, or in the recent tragedy in which a couple of teenagers were drag racing and a taxi cab was impacted. No matter the incident, if it involves anyone under the age of 30, the media immediately starts hyping up the possibility that it was somehow related to a video game (or they skip the hype and go straight to blaming game x. Rarely do you see a report covering two sides of such an issue.
For instance, Jack Thompson has been invited to appear on shows like “Dateline” and “60 Minutes” several times, giving him the opportunity to belittle and berate the gaming community as being “depressed” and “[in need of] a life” nearly unopposed. I’ve yet to view one of his interviews where he has a counterpart of equal status to really challenge his twisted views. Of course, he gets invitations to do many of these appearances because he has a very persuasive way of presenting his arguments, so people just readily believe anything he has to say. It doesn’t matter that he misconstrues facts and misquotes psychological studies; when you’re Jack Thompson, if someone doesn’t take your word as irrefutable universe-defining law, then they are prejudiced, ignorant, slanderous, harassing, or a turncoat against your cause.
But it’s not really Jack’s fault; the reporters involved aren’t doing their research like they should. For instance, on occasion I hear about a psychological study or research project that links video games to acts of violence. Having actually researched as many finished studies as I can get my hands on, and being close friends with a leading psychologist in this very field, I can tell you that there have been no studies that could prove that video games cause violence. Definitely, there are plenty of studies that indicate that video games, and any other media portraying violence, can and frequently do elevate aggression levels in their users/viewers. However, higher aggression doesn’t mean a decrease in moral values; it most often translates into a competitive mood, and all of the studies I’ve read show that the effects that video games have on the mind are temporary at best. If reporters were to read the research that they’re reporting on, they’d know this to be true, and it would change their stories. But the media doesn’t seem to want to check itself when it comes to video games and crimes allegedly caused by them. They want their ratings, and if that means conveying a misinterpretation of data as a fact, then they aren’t above it.
Where this gets dangerous, of course, is when that news hits their audience. A large number of people in America don’t play video games, so when they’re told that today’s games are violent “murder simulators,” they understandably react very negatively towards video games. More often than not, they’ll take what they hear on the news as absolute fact (why wouldn’t it be?) and don’t do any more research for themselves. Now these people, victims of disinformation, write to their congressmen and file lawsuits against game developers over things they don’t really know enough about. Parents see these broadcasts and immediately become concerned about what their children are playing, despite the fact that they themselves bought the children’s games to begin with. As I discussed in yesterday’s article, there was a grandmother who filed a suit against Take-Two and Rockstar Games over the disabled content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that was re-enabled via the “Hot Coffee” modification. She filed the suit because of the risk that game put her grandchildren in when they played the game. She bought the game for her grandkids in the first place, despite its “M” rating.
And of course, don’t forget that these newly-concerned members of society take the little information and lots of disinformation they’ve been fed, and go straight to the polls to vote for whichever candidate says they’ll fight for our children’s safety from the video game menace.
1/30/06 - Threat #5
1/31/06 - Threat #4
2/1/06 - Threat #3
2/2/06 - Threat #2
May I have a drumroll, please...
Papa Rotzi.
It might surprise you to see that the media trumped politicians as my #1 threat against American gamers. The reason is simple enough; the media reaches every single American, and affects their opinions. The danger lies in how they report the news.
Much like there’s an alleged liberal-bias in the media, I propose that there’s an anti-gaming sentiment that permeates all major news organizations. You can see it in all of the sensationalist reporting of a school shooting, or in the recent tragedy in which a couple of teenagers were drag racing and a taxi cab was impacted. No matter the incident, if it involves anyone under the age of 30, the media immediately starts hyping up the possibility that it was somehow related to a video game (or they skip the hype and go straight to blaming game x. Rarely do you see a report covering two sides of such an issue.
For instance, Jack Thompson has been invited to appear on shows like “Dateline” and “60 Minutes” several times, giving him the opportunity to belittle and berate the gaming community as being “depressed” and “[in need of] a life” nearly unopposed. I’ve yet to view one of his interviews where he has a counterpart of equal status to really challenge his twisted views. Of course, he gets invitations to do many of these appearances because he has a very persuasive way of presenting his arguments, so people just readily believe anything he has to say. It doesn’t matter that he misconstrues facts and misquotes psychological studies; when you’re Jack Thompson, if someone doesn’t take your word as irrefutable universe-defining law, then they are prejudiced, ignorant, slanderous, harassing, or a turncoat against your cause.
But it’s not really Jack’s fault; the reporters involved aren’t doing their research like they should. For instance, on occasion I hear about a psychological study or research project that links video games to acts of violence. Having actually researched as many finished studies as I can get my hands on, and being close friends with a leading psychologist in this very field, I can tell you that there have been no studies that could prove that video games cause violence. Definitely, there are plenty of studies that indicate that video games, and any other media portraying violence, can and frequently do elevate aggression levels in their users/viewers. However, higher aggression doesn’t mean a decrease in moral values; it most often translates into a competitive mood, and all of the studies I’ve read show that the effects that video games have on the mind are temporary at best. If reporters were to read the research that they’re reporting on, they’d know this to be true, and it would change their stories. But the media doesn’t seem to want to check itself when it comes to video games and crimes allegedly caused by them. They want their ratings, and if that means conveying a misinterpretation of data as a fact, then they aren’t above it.
Where this gets dangerous, of course, is when that news hits their audience. A large number of people in America don’t play video games, so when they’re told that today’s games are violent “murder simulators,” they understandably react very negatively towards video games. More often than not, they’ll take what they hear on the news as absolute fact (why wouldn’t it be?) and don’t do any more research for themselves. Now these people, victims of disinformation, write to their congressmen and file lawsuits against game developers over things they don’t really know enough about. Parents see these broadcasts and immediately become concerned about what their children are playing, despite the fact that they themselves bought the children’s games to begin with. As I discussed in yesterday’s article, there was a grandmother who filed a suit against Take-Two and Rockstar Games over the disabled content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that was re-enabled via the “Hot Coffee” modification. She filed the suit because of the risk that game put her grandchildren in when they played the game. She bought the game for her grandkids in the first place, despite its “M” rating.
And of course, don’t forget that these newly-concerned members of society take the little information and lots of disinformation they’ve been fed, and go straight to the polls to vote for whichever candidate says they’ll fight for our children’s safety from the video game menace.
posted by IcarusFountain at
2:00 PM
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