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Katie Couric asks to tweet the positives of violent games.

.GqueB. said:
Man this always happens.



I was just responding to the passion in this thread. People are saying "you can't answer this question in 140 characters!@!!!" which tells me that they could answer it in a couple paragraphs if they wanted to. I was under the impression that people wanted to have the conversation and couldn't (for some reason).

But if the purposes of this thread is to just cry then please carry on.
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It's not all crying. You're doing the same thing Katie probably wants to do. Pick and choose your posts and put those in the limelight. I had a statement, others did to, they aren't your focus. You're saying "the purpose of this thread" and bickering with somebody while the very thing you ask (a discussion) is happening around you.

DeaconKnowledge said:
I don't have an issue with people saying that Twitter is the wrong medium to defend gaming.

My issue is with those that immediately resort to denigrating a person rather than trying to be constructive. Gamers have a long standing reputation for being basement dwelling manchildren and sniping at anybody and everybody who may criticize the pastime just reinforces that.

It's ironic, gamers are desperate for gaming to be taken seriously yet can't handle any attempt at a serious conversation about its flaws.
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There are always going to be those. "GAF" isn't an intellectual site, it's not recognized as some embodiment of what should elevate and represent 'gaming' as a whole. It's a fan site where people paste CEO's of game companies onto funny movie scenes. But there will be good conversation. I'm a huge fan of Forza, and GT for that matter, but I know better than to go the 'Vs.' thread because it's the absolute worst GAF has to represent.

To expect that THE ENTIRETY of GAF would react with wisdom and prudence is completely irrational. There will be a few having the conversation, but this place is made up of 12-50+ year olds.

Again, you can point and blame the people saying "fuck Katie" all you want, but you and the other poster I quoted are just bringing more attention to that already blazing immature fire.
 
They provide all the benefits of murdering someone without all the fuss of a messy cleanup. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of clothes?
 
flyinpiranha said:
It's not all crying. You're doing the same thing Katie probably wants to do. Pick and choose your posts and put those in the limelight. I had a statement, others did to, they aren't your focus. You're saying "the purpose of this thread" and bickering with somebody while the very thing you ask (a discussion) is happening around you.

There are always going to be those. "GAF" isn't an intellectual site, it's not recognized as some embodiment of what should elevate and represent 'gaming' as a whole. It's a fan site where people paste CEO's of game companies onto funny movie scenes. But there will be good conversation. I'm a huge fan of Forza, and GT for that matter, but I know better than to go the 'Vs.' thread because it's the absolute worst GAF has to represent.

To expect that THE ENTIRETY of GAF would react with wisdom and prudence is completely irrational. There will be a few having the conversation, but this place is made up of 12-50+ year olds.

Again, you can point and blame the people saying "fuck Katie" all you want, but you and the other poster I quoted are just bringing more attention to that already blazing immature fire.
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Hm. You have a point actually. I was responding to the general consensus, which is hard to ignore. I still think it's rather pointless to have this discussion here though.
 
I personally don't agree with the way she presents the issue.

"Passionate gamers upset w convo whether violent video games can contribute to v behavior
Tweet the positive side of violent v games ?"

She presents violent behavior as an automatic symptom to violent video games. Which in all earnest does not open the subject to conversation, it opens it up to opinionated drivel in the guise of debate. There may be a "?" at the end of her message alluding to openneess, but the message is very much closed, written as she chose to write it.

I having nothing against Katie. But I would have liked to see a conversation starter instead of what we got...
 
Untalkative_Bunny said:
do you have some links?
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-as to:
"The loser of each trial would receive a blast of unpleasant noise through headphones, and the winner would decide how loud and long the blast would be. The noise blasts were a mixture of several sounds that most people find unpleasant (such as fingernails on a chalk board, dentist drills, and sirens). In actuality, there was no opponent and the participants were told they won about half the trials.)
The results showed that, after each day, those who played the violent games had an increase in their hostile expectations. In other words, after reading the beginning of the stories, they were more likely to think that the characters would react with aggression or violence."
see: http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/SCOTUSPaper.pdf
see also: http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/xfiles.pdf
-for background regarding criticism of the aggression model


from the article you link:
"Playing video games could be compared to smoking cigarettes. A single cigarette won't cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk. In the same way, repeated exposure to violent video games may have a cumulative effect on aggression."
see here why this is based on statistical incompetence: http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/effectsRoGP.pdf

"People who have a steady diet of playing these violent games may come to see the world as a hostile and violent place," Bushman said. "These results suggest there could be a cumulative effect."
-this experiment attempts to address criticism that short term priming/framing explains or exaggerates the result, however it could be argued that there is still a frame from knowing one is participating an experiment, creating an expectation of how to behave or play the "game" through the arbitrary connection between stages of the experiment. future experiments should adequately establish independence such that the participants make no connection between the two activities in addition to more adequate measures of aggression
 
According to my psych professor, research shows that violent games and violent behavior are correlated as much as smoking and lung cancer.

The good side of violent games is the same as the good side of any game. They teach critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, coordination, and other things.... like how to shoot people in real life.
That last one was a joke

Edit: Oh shit, Shai-tan dropping actual evidence... (I probably should have read the whole thread before posting my own 2 cents.)
 
DeaconKnowledge said:
Anytime somebody challenge gamer's mentality they get childishly pissy instead of answering the question. This thread has already proven to be no different.
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I would argue that this response isn't gamer specific though. People don't like to have their mentality questioned. Regardless, it seems rather disingenuous of her to ask such a question AFTER she has already done an hour-long special on how destructive violent games can be.

The fact of the matter is that people can respond differently to the same stimulus. Maybe some people can become more inherently violent because of violent video games, but I would argue instead that the violent individual could have reached that same point of violence whether they played games or not. It isn't as if violence in general has increased with the introduction of violent video games. Addiction, depression, poor parenting, and many other issues seem to be a theme with these violent outbursts. Maybe the better question could be, are the people who are attracted to violent video games inherently more violent from the start?

I'm not arguing that having violent games is necessarily a "positive" thing for society. But I think the whole argument is misguided. What are the "positives" of any form of entertainment? That they are entertaining and some consider it art.
 
KojiKnight said:
Indeed, correlation is not causation... But there is a subset of people in the violent video game debate that are convinced that violent games are turning people into killers... yet the murder rate has consistently been lowest it's ever been since the 1970's... when we had 33% less people in the country :p

(for those that don't get math, that means when there was 100 MILLION less people in the US, there were consistenly MORE murders. Not just per capita, but TOTAL)
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Pong related violence was crazy.

Katie Couric Tweets: what's positive about Pong?
 
.GqueB. said:
Hm. You have a point actually. I was responding to the general consensus, which is hard to ignore. I still think it's rather pointless to have this discussion here though.
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True, but I have had some pretty good conversations before. I liken it to being in the bar and you're with somebody you enjoy talking to, either you let that drunken idiot yelling at the basketball game ruin your conversation or you just ignore it.

... the problem with GAF is that drunken idiot grabs your girl's ass, spills booze on your new shirt and has 5 people pointing to him saying how funny he is which makes him try even harder.

(I've been both, lol)
 
Gooster said:
23MTm4i.png


https://twitter.com/katiecouric/status/330299496057675776

As much as I like using Twitter, I think this kind of conversation calls for more than 140 characters but hey, your tweet might be on her show! :p

Edit:

marrec linked to his tweet which linked to two pieces. I had no idea this stemmed from a recent segment she did.

Kotaku breaks down Couric's segment

PA Report commentary
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There is only one reply required since video games are entertainment.

They are fun.

Wtf is she expecting?
 
flyinpiranha said:
True, but I have had some pretty good conversations before. I liken it to being in the bar and you're with somebody you enjoy talking to, either you let that drunken idiot yelling at the basketball game ruin your conversation or you just ignore it.

... the problem with GAF is that drunken idiot grabs your girl's ass, spills booze on your new shirt and has 5 people pointing to him saying how funny he is which makes him try even harder.

(I've been both, lol)
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I'm stealing this analogy.
 
Eventually the people who say they care about games and/or the game industry are going to have to weigh in on violence in video games. Otherwise other people will and we may not like the outcome.

You can't keep avoiding the topic forever. And if you say you aren't going address a poorly thought out question, or what have you, than you should make the question, you should be the conversation starter.
 
The positives people will post will be hilarious

does the world realize games containing violence and violent games are two
very different things?

Do people not realize these games aren't made for children?

SMGDH
 
I think this will be my response.

@katiecouric This question could be asked of any media. The issue is that an easily influenced individual can be compelled by any media type
 
How about the positives of having an underestimated overbite, you "has been"?
 
The problem here is there are so many real world problems that contribute to violence in society and the socially maladjusted and mentally unstable individuals that perpetuate it, that to want to blame it on things like games or movies is just absurd. It's hard to even take the argument seriously considering how fond the US is of actual, real-life war and bloodshed, for example.
 
Well, if you are a progressive - wouldn't you agree that violent video games isn't the most - culturally/intellectually stimulating form of media?

Isn't the whole point of being a progressive to move society in a more positive direction with regards to their behaviors, and practices? So what is a progressives answer on the benefits of violent video games?

EDIT: If this is too political, I apologize. I'm not saying the above is correct. This is just what I thought people like Couric thought. So I was just asking those that identify as being left/progressive, how you justify these kind of games. I'm guessing the answer will overwhelmingly be: it's entertainment. So I guess the real question is, does violent entertainment have an impact on people with regards to their behaviors.

And I think most of us would answer no. It does not have an impact. So I guess I answered my own question. Derp.
 
Catatonic said:
Well, if you are a progressive - wouldn't you agree that violent video games isn't the most - culturally/intellectually stimulating form of media?

Isn't the whole point of being a progressive to move society in a more positive direction with regards to their behaviors, and practices? So what is a progressives answer on the benefits of violent video games?
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I don't think progressives even know what progressives are.

I would respond to her saying that it shows the free speech is and will be upheld, regardless of the medium.

But i don't want to give her the attention.
 
Campster's view on videogame violence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSBn77_h_6Q

This is probably the greatest deconstruction of why violence in video games is such a big thing, and why it's there at all. If someone can condense this argument into 140 characters, please do so and shoot it (HAH) at Couric's twitter.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go outside and commit some violent crime because videogames.
 
As an artist and sometimes writer, I feel that violence is a great mechanism for depicting various natures of relations just as much as an intimate love scene. Violence can be beautiful and evoking, too.

And like everything else, it can be banal.
 
Who was it that praised violent video games saying it helps express and exercise the primal instinct to hunt and kill we haven't had need for for thousands of years?


That seemed like a pretty cool thought.
 
we.are.the.armada said:
As an artist and sometimes writer, I feel that violence is a great mechanism for depicting various natures of relations just as much as an intimate love scene. Violence can be beautiful and evoking, too.

And like everything else, it can be banal.
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As a film aficionado I completly agree with this too. Kubrick, Scorsese, de Palma and Peckinpah ( among others ) have portrayed beautiful and violent scenes. Is part of our nature.
 
If the news is this wrong on just violent video games, image all the other stuff our televised news organizations get wrong.
 
I had a girl in my class do her final project on how violent games make people more aggressive. The project was so weak though. The premise was: x amount of people said they knew someone who got flustered when playing violent video games. Therefore, it does impact behaviors.

I was like lol wat. But she was pretty determined to prove that violent video games were a bad thing for society.
 
Loaded question indeed. All I ask is that most gamers replying to her state that "Twitter format isn't long enough for my answer."

Entertainment should be a good enough answer, plus venting anger or frustration and whatever other positives can come from game playing in general, but unfortunately there is no convincing-enough answer for her or the audience that viewed the first show and already agreed with it.
 
I refreshed and saw the name go from black to grey with nothing else changing on the page. Neat.


I don't think Katie Couric wants an actual conversation on this. I don't think most people do. Even here on GAF people can't comprehend how violent imagery can bring pleasure (it has to be violent for a "good reason" (i.e. aligned with their morality) for it to be acceptable).
 
Maybe Katie could tweet us back about the positive effects that have resulted from the transformation of mass media into a giant corporate megaphone and the disappearance of all journalistic integrity from the mainstream.

I know I can't think of any.
 
They are fun, simple as that, something in our human nature finds it fun. The brain knows it's not real, so the brain gives you guilt free entertainment.
 
The narrative is already made. She just wants reinforcement with the response of "But does it NEED to be so violent?"

Throw in a GTA hooker reference, some stock footage of a Call of Duty trailer, a 9 year old 6 inches from the screen looking up, no references made to the ESRB, and call it a day.

Edit:

Oh! Bonus points if they say you 'get points' for killing people or hookers, specifically.
 
I dislike questions like this, she's basically leading people into answering with what she wants to hear; as an attempt to "prove her point". It's like she's pushing some hidden agenda of hers.

I wouldn't waste my time with it, especially since it's Twitter where anything can be twisted and turned to fit someone's POV or argument.
 
Omega_Tom_Hanks said:
Campster's view on videogame violence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSBn77_h_6Q

This is probably the greatest deconstruction of why violence in video games is such a big thing, and why it's there at all. If someone can condense this argument into 140 characters, please do so and shoot it (HAH) at Couric's twitter.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go outside and commit some violent crime because videogames.
Click to expand...

Holy shit that's a good video.

I don't know if anyone should bother tweeting it, but the distillation of its central point is that physical interactions are relatively easy to simulate and communicate clearly to the player, which results in physical conflict (i.e., violence) being central to the mechanics of many games.
 
Why not respond with "we don't play games because they are violent. We play them because they are good, whether or not they are violent."
 
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