There was one article somewhere claiming the virginia and other
shootings were mainly influenced by video games. I smugly accepted,
considering some person might get influenced by all the killing that
you do in a game, and might’ve done it for real.
I was doing my half hour daily gaming ritual, playing GTA: San Andreas
(a great game, I wholly recommend it) Here you’re set loose in a city
and you can kill anyone or run over lots of people and become an
international criminal if you want to. Now this game has been claimed
to be responsible for a lot of things and has received a very bad
response from some people.
So here’s the mission, I’m chasing down this drug smuggler and trying
to kill him with my M4 Rifle, and I accidentally hit a civilian, and I
felt sick. Not because I took an innocent life, but because now the
cops were gonna come after me. And then it struck me!
Three golden rules every gamer knows:
- In a game, reckless killing can get you killed or arrested or something but it won’t be too much fun for you.
- A game is about fun and enjoyment, and very rarely about killing. Even if killing is the primary objective, like in Quake 3 Arena, where the primary objective is to go around killing everyone you see(while others are doing the same). Here it’s not even called a kill, it’s called a frag. If you’re killed you don’t respawn with a 150 bullets, but if you’re fragged you do. And I don’t keep up with the news much but I’ve never seen “Mass student fragging in this university”
- All games have a fight for a greater good. Every kill has an objective, weather it’s for points, or to unlock higher levels or whatever, it’s all about the objectives. You don’t celebrate that you blew someone’s head clean off, you celebrate you finished the tough mission.
What pissed me off was that some articles blamed everything on
videogames. There are millions of gamers in the world today, and why
don’t all of them take a gun out and go rampaging around
The point is that you shouldn’t be trying to blame the shooting on
something. If a kid really wants to shoot the crap out of people, he
will. There’s no stopping him. No gun laws, no rules, no security
checks, nothing.
What will prevent it is that if everyone had something to do with their
time and doesn’t give them the time to go around killing people. In
other words, they need a good pastime.
Might I suggest a good game of Quake 3?
Hi, Anirudh,
A very very cool website. ten out of ten .
Well exams are almost there, but I read your recent article on killings in games article. and, totally agree. Games are fantasy lands , they provide a very good outlet of fulfilling your fantasies, and its ok to have violence in games.
Dude, try accessing your website on linux firefox. It’s really sluggish (and I mean REALLY) to render. Even scrolling up and down takes ages.
Thanks @anshuman
@pravin, I’ll do that. I use linux as my os and the last.fm quilts are eating up connections. /me will remove those and use the old look now.
I totally disagree with you. I have across alot of games that can influence young minds. Infact, you don’t have to pay to play or borrow the CDs from someone. Games … Precisely, extremely violent games are easily available on the Internet for download.
I have seen my brother play a lot of violent games too. One particular game that he used to play shocked me to death. In the game, you play a role of a guy who works in a home for the aged. The guy is supposed to hit all the old people brutally and do other sick things that I can’t mention here. I even confronted my brother and asked him why he loved playing that particular game… He just smiled and didn’t find it necessary to answer me.
My brother is very rebellious. He even cut his wrist once.. :O
Now my brother’s case is a different story.
Imagine yourself to be a person who is totally sick of life and the people around. You are very lonely and spend most of the time with yourself. You hate being with friends and being a part of any celebrations. You spend days in your room and to kill time you play games.. Initially the games you are attracted to requires logical thinking and strategy. They are good games and safe to play. Slowly, you come across games that are violent and you don’t even realise you are addicted to it.. You play those games day and night… You wait for lecture hours to end so that you can get back home and continue with your “gaming ritual”. It brings you relief from all frustrations when you open fire at people in the game or run your car over innocent civilians.
In some way or the other, the game aggravates your mental condition.. It is normal. That is why it is very important that young people utilize their time in engaging themselves in positive social activities.
@Janice, I’m not saying that video games are not responsible for violence, I’m saying that in games, the violence isn’t the major part is the gameplay. If you’ve actually played a game, you’ll know that the important thing isn’t the killing. That gets boring after sometime.
As far as it’s effects are concerned, people can get influenced by anything. Heck, there’s so much violence on television and you just open the newspaper then all you’re greeted with are stories of murder, rape and likewise. It’s so much that you’re more resistant to it.
Frustrations aren’t released by running over some people, it’s by accomplishing something. I can’t be an assassin, but in Hitman 4: Blood Money, I can plan out an assassination, and execute it and feel proud of the intellect I used to do so.
It’s difficult to define “safe”, “social” and “nonviolence”. In our history textbooks, all you read about are wars, and plundering, freedom struggles, etc, stories of pain, violence and death that turns mass murder into a statistic.
Life for us today is desensitized, you can recover from almost any major catastrophe nearby. Like mumbai and the blasts. Video games are just recreation; entertainment, and a source for cynical people saying that “since people enjoy going and blowing others up with rocket launchers, they will do so in real life”
This is a major debate again, with some people requesting to ban all images of violence, sex, substance abuse, etc, and some others saying that it’s alright, but I have a feeling nothing will change and only the upbringing of a person, his/her role in society and the people who he/she was with will determine the behavior, and things which have no effect whatsoever on others will affect him/her