Violent Glory

I think this Penny Arcade strip is very to the point and fitting!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/pac.shtml

/ [V]

I think that violence is in our nature to start. As humans we instinctivley like to be above everything and everyone else. In competition, business, education, even art. Thats why we have events like the Super-Bowl, World Series, and things like that.

And it starts at a young age. When I was 6 my parents signed me up for little league soccer. I played until I was 12 and then started playing kiddie-league basketball competetivley all the way up to my sophmore year of High-School where I started on the Junior Varity team and bench-warmed for the Varsity squad. It made me competetive in some ways, not so much anymore. Except maybe in paintball against my friends.

Its in our nature to conqer and destroy though, I mean look at our history. Ceasar, Atilla the Hun, Alexander the Great, etc. They all were conquerors. Now we are conquering in like what I was saying the above, business, sports, education. Everyone has to be better than everyone else.

Violence just comes hand-in-hand with that. Violence in games, movies, sports, even 'play-fighting' with dad when you're 10 years old. Hunting, if taught the wrong way, can even show that killing things is ok. Now its a broad spectrum of right-and-wrong, and who learns what and how. But I think there are some things that are indeed the root of it all.

It all depends on how you were raised, and your personal beliefs and convictions on wether or not you use these instincts with tact or not. I personally would never want to physically harm anyone unless they hurt something to my friends or family in some way, and I certainly dont think I would handle it very well if, say, I hit a dog or a cat in my car.

just my .02

Well shit...

I've been playing violent video games all my life and I've only killed 2-3 people tops...
Puh-LEASE!

Why can't we all just get along?

glorification of violence that involves graphic violence might be easier to be misinterpreted than sublimated violence such as known from sports.

I think for now movies are worse in this respect than games; movies are still in general more realistic than games and the hero/good guy practically always wins.
The basic message is that violence gets you what you want and you'll be admired for it.
I can imagine this inspiring some people to giving it a try - more so than watching a football match would (even though that tells essentially the same message, it's just more 'make-believe').

Then again the effect of this is probably small since a vast majority apparently does not get inspired to put things to practice.

TV, movies, games, etc... are just stories of heroism much like the tales told around the campfire back when that was one of few forms of entertainment.
But over time the stories have become -much- more graphic and extreme, having much more impact. And there is ever less 'true realism' to act as a counter balance to this ehm.. source of information about what the world is like..

I bought Soldier of Fortune for my 8-year old niece...was that wrong??

i think violent movies are much more of a concern than video games ever will be. i mean violence in movies is cool, but most sacrifice content for violence and/or explosions

of course people who do this kind of shit include super mario brothers as violence.
Fireball's, stomping, attacking, and destruction of blocks....
Yeah, give me 50,000 dollars and I will prove video games are mother's milke for
a kid's psych and ethics.

It all depends on the kid's maturity, i could deal with death and such issues very early in my age (grandma died in front of me, and some other things which i wont get into heh) but i understood morals and what not. Some kids just dont care about death and violence and some do. Media just makes it so much more negative though :(

I have to say that this is all BS. I have been playing video games since before the atari 2600. My father had this triangular video game system that played games. I was about 8 or so at the time. Then atari, intellivision, colecovision, atari 5200, commodore 64, NES, super nintendo, sega genesis, PC, sony playstation, etc... I have been watching violent TV, movies, etc. since I was very young also. I am the most non violent person I know. I have been in one fight in my entire life, and I was in like 6th grade at the time. And I tried to avoid it and walk away, but the clown wouldn't let me, so I gave him a black eye. (Lifetime record: 1-0) Other than that, I have had no occasion that was close to a fight. This whole blaming the media for all the problems of the world really annoys me.

I was playing castle woflensteine and killing Nazi's and sticking them up to steal their bullets and planting the bomb in hitlers conference room when I was like 10 and im not a violent guy.

hell I dont even like slasher movies.

I was first introduced to DOOM when I was 12; my older cousin fired up his 486DX, typed in "doom" at the command prompt, and I watched the dots build up after "init DOOM refresh daemon". Then, I saw a very detailed 3D world unfold before me. Imps and demons and cacodemons. And then I saw the chainsaw (it was so glorious because my father owned the real thing: McCulloch Eager Beaver 16"). It was so incredibly detailed and vivid (yeah, 320x200 256-color paletted is kinda grainy today, but considering how I was playing games at 256x224 16-color paletted, that's pretty damn good).

Three years later, I got DOOM2. I played it on a 486DX2 (the exact same computer my cousin played it on; except for the upgraded CPU). It was incredibly vivid. Then I got DOOM for myself and relived the initial experience. To this day, I still fit in a bit of DOOM every now and then.

E rated games with killing?! i always thought that the ESRB was doing a good job, why dont they have examples in there? maby they mixed up E with A ?

Who the hell cares? I started playing games when I was about 10, and well, I'm screwed up anyway, with-or-without games. Doesnt matter. Who gives a damn what the world would be like without them. Its great with them imo.

Life sucks, play games, get over it. End of story.

Yeah I saw that on the Today show this morning. They went out and said, that NHL games with checking is ok but when you control the players when they fight, it becomes violent. So checking good, punching bad.

Wait a second, what version of Cops&Robbers were YOU playing? Mine didn't include ANY violence... >:(

Well there are those schools where children are taught how glorious suicide bombing is, and how to do it. (No joke)

Is this why most 3 years olds like to hit dogs?

1st

4? NOOOOOOOOOOO Bastid.

2 woot woooooooooooooooooooooooooot