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(EDIT 3)
A tweet from Wil Wheaton, as this was the first I'd heard of this:
"Not @TheOnion: @CNN interrupts Biden and NRA meeting coverage to report on YET ANOTHER FUCKING SCHOOL SHOOTING. http://is.gd/RVR3Ty"
Here is a GoogleNews link.
(/EDIT 3)
Link to Forbes article.
Link to Gamasutra article.
I'm just going to say this again. Millions of people play video games and don't then run out and shoot up a school. Similarly, millions of people also own guns and don't then run out and shoot up a school. The guns aren't the cause of the problem any more than the video games are. The difference, however, for what it's worth (because I don't really want to get into that aspect of it all over again right now), is that when these crazy people do go out and shoot up a school, they're using a gun to do it. That should be pretty obvious. You can't shoot up a school with a video game (or a movie or a book or a music CD or whatever).
The main focus needs to be on mental health care, plain and simple. Find these people and help them before they get to the point where they're going out and shooting up schools. I know that's going to be difficult and that some people are still going to slip through the cracks even so, but steps need to be taken to make those cracks as narrow as possible. And before someone says that people can be evil without being crazy, no, I don't accept that, in this case at least. If you are "evil" enough to go out and shoot up a school then, in my eyes, there is something seriously wrong with you. You are bona fide crazy.
With all of that said, however, while I certainly do agree with the article writers that video games are not to blame for these events, I also don't really have as big of a problem as they seem to have with Joe Biden just "talking" with people from the video game industry (though I'd like a bit more disclosure about who exactly these people are). There's no harm in that, in and of itself. I don't see it as an "admission" by the video game industry that they are "at fault" in some way in these events just by talking with Biden about it. If anything, there should be more talking about it, rather than the typical knee-jerk "circle the wagons" approach that most game blogs/news sites and others in the game industry tend to take whenever the issue comes up at all. The discussion needs to be more proactive, rather than mostly just reactionary as it usually is.
Look, if nothing else, I figure that Joe Biden is just another clueless old fart who knows almost nothing about video games, as a whole lot of people in the US Government seem to be, so this could be a good opportunity to educate him about this issue. By angrily saying that these guys should have just given Biden the cold shoulder because how dare he imply that video games have any sort of fault in this matter, that makes game advocates just as bad as gun advocates and their whole "you'll take my guns from my cold dead hands" asininity. Also, we certainly don't want assholes from the NRA up there filling Biden's ear with poison about how video games are the culprit without also having people from the game industry there to set the record straight, do we?
(EDIT)
With that said, if what comes out of this is increased government oversight of the video game industry and censorship of any sort, above and beyond the steps already being taken by the video game industry, such as the ESRB and the like, then, yeah, it would be a pretty bad thing. But as long as all they're doing is talking, I'm pretty much okay with it.
(/EDIT)
(EDIT 2)
Oh my... Jack frickin' Thompson himself commented on that Forbes article I linked to above. Amazing. I thought (or at least hoped) that we'd long seen the last of that jackhole, but I guess not.
Here is Mr. Thompson's full comment on the Forbes article, in case it gets deleted at some point:
"Mr. Tassi, in the interest of full disclosure, should probably reveal that he is a video gamer. Hard core, it appears.
I have represented families of victims shot and killed by kids who have trained to do so on hyperviolent video games. I appeared twice on 60 Minutes about these incidents. The Virginia Tech killer trained on CounterStrike, as apparently so did Adam Lanza of Sandy Hook.
Only a total idiot would suggest that violent video games do not cause violence. The American Medical Association and American Psychological Association have found that they do.
Brain scan studies done at Harvard prove that teens process these games in a different part of the brain than do adults, and it is the part of the brain, the mid-brain, that is the seat of emotions of the brain. Trigger the emotions and you trigger shooting scenarios, learned while playing the games. You also, with the games, decrease the resistance to kill. It is called operant conditioning, Mr. Tassi. Ever hear of that?
Our Dept. of Defense uses video games–yes, video games–to break down the inhibition to kill of new recruits and to give them increased killing efficiency. Why would anyone other than Mr. Tassi, or game industry tools like him, think these games would not have this effect upon civilians. Duh.
I am a political conservative, died-in-the-wool defender of the First and Second Amendments and the rest of the Constitution.
But what we have going on here is fraud by corporate entities who continue to market and sell adult-rated video games to minors. The rating is an admission that they are harmful! So it is a legitimate aim to stop the consumption of adult games by kids, just as pornography is not legally sold to minors.
Garbage in, garabage [sic] out, Mr. Tassi.
You either don’t have kids and thus don’t know that–that kids replicate what they consume–or you do have kids and your libertarian, business is always right mentality makes you not care about your kids or anyone else who might get in the way of a kid trained to be violent.
I have said on hundreds of college campuses on this issue: Some people believe in original sin, unless it emanates from a corporate boardroom. The problem here at Forbes is that the mindset, which Mr. Tassi expressly transparently, is that if business does it we needn’t be concerned about it.
Quite the contrary. Not a single school shooter has not trained on point and shoot video games to kill.
Just check out Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s book, On Killing, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He proves the above statement, and he knows of what he speaks as he trains police and soliders to kill.
Wake up, America. You’re growing Mini-Manchurian Candidates with the 'games' your little monsters are playing. Jack Thompson, Miami, amendmentone@comcast.net"
In other words, he's pretty much just saying the same old tiresome shit that he's been saying for years now. You'd think after all this time that he'd come up with some new material or something.
He's even repeating once again the lie that the Virginia Tech shooter "trained" on violent video games, even though that was blatantly not true at all.
(/EDIT 2)
(EDIT 4)
I think it's appropriate to post this (again, as I've posted it elsewhere, if not here to LJ):
Not, of course, to say that the news media are the direct cause of these shootings, mind you. They're no more the cause than are video games or guns. Some people are just fucking batshit insane, that's all. That is the root cause of these things and is the problem that ultimately needs to be addressed.
(/EDIT 4)
A tweet from Wil Wheaton, as this was the first I'd heard of this:
"Not @TheOnion: @CNN interrupts Biden and NRA meeting coverage to report on YET ANOTHER FUCKING SCHOOL SHOOTING. http://is.gd/RVR3Ty"
Here is a Google
(/EDIT 3)
Link to Forbes article.
Link to Gamasutra article.
I'm just going to say this again. Millions of people play video games and don't then run out and shoot up a school. Similarly, millions of people also own guns and don't then run out and shoot up a school. The guns aren't the cause of the problem any more than the video games are. The difference, however, for what it's worth (because I don't really want to get into that aspect of it all over again right now), is that when these crazy people do go out and shoot up a school, they're using a gun to do it. That should be pretty obvious. You can't shoot up a school with a video game (or a movie or a book or a music CD or whatever).
The main focus needs to be on mental health care, plain and simple. Find these people and help them before they get to the point where they're going out and shooting up schools. I know that's going to be difficult and that some people are still going to slip through the cracks even so, but steps need to be taken to make those cracks as narrow as possible. And before someone says that people can be evil without being crazy, no, I don't accept that, in this case at least. If you are "evil" enough to go out and shoot up a school then, in my eyes, there is something seriously wrong with you. You are bona fide crazy.
With all of that said, however, while I certainly do agree with the article writers that video games are not to blame for these events, I also don't really have as big of a problem as they seem to have with Joe Biden just "talking" with people from the video game industry (though I'd like a bit more disclosure about who exactly these people are). There's no harm in that, in and of itself. I don't see it as an "admission" by the video game industry that they are "at fault" in some way in these events just by talking with Biden about it. If anything, there should be more talking about it, rather than the typical knee-jerk "circle the wagons" approach that most game blogs/news sites and others in the game industry tend to take whenever the issue comes up at all. The discussion needs to be more proactive, rather than mostly just reactionary as it usually is.
Look, if nothing else, I figure that Joe Biden is just another clueless old fart who knows almost nothing about video games, as a whole lot of people in the US Government seem to be, so this could be a good opportunity to educate him about this issue. By angrily saying that these guys should have just given Biden the cold shoulder because how dare he imply that video games have any sort of fault in this matter, that makes game advocates just as bad as gun advocates and their whole "you'll take my guns from my cold dead hands" asininity. Also, we certainly don't want assholes from the NRA up there filling Biden's ear with poison about how video games are the culprit without also having people from the game industry there to set the record straight, do we?
(EDIT)
With that said, if what comes out of this is increased government oversight of the video game industry and censorship of any sort, above and beyond the steps already being taken by the video game industry, such as the ESRB and the like, then, yeah, it would be a pretty bad thing. But as long as all they're doing is talking, I'm pretty much okay with it.
(/EDIT)
(EDIT 2)
Oh my... Jack frickin' Thompson himself commented on that Forbes article I linked to above. Amazing. I thought (or at least hoped) that we'd long seen the last of that jackhole, but I guess not.
Here is Mr. Thompson's full comment on the Forbes article, in case it gets deleted at some point:
"Mr. Tassi, in the interest of full disclosure, should probably reveal that he is a video gamer. Hard core, it appears.
I have represented families of victims shot and killed by kids who have trained to do so on hyperviolent video games. I appeared twice on 60 Minutes about these incidents. The Virginia Tech killer trained on CounterStrike, as apparently so did Adam Lanza of Sandy Hook.
Only a total idiot would suggest that violent video games do not cause violence. The American Medical Association and American Psychological Association have found that they do.
Brain scan studies done at Harvard prove that teens process these games in a different part of the brain than do adults, and it is the part of the brain, the mid-brain, that is the seat of emotions of the brain. Trigger the emotions and you trigger shooting scenarios, learned while playing the games. You also, with the games, decrease the resistance to kill. It is called operant conditioning, Mr. Tassi. Ever hear of that?
Our Dept. of Defense uses video games–yes, video games–to break down the inhibition to kill of new recruits and to give them increased killing efficiency. Why would anyone other than Mr. Tassi, or game industry tools like him, think these games would not have this effect upon civilians. Duh.
I am a political conservative, died-in-the-wool defender of the First and Second Amendments and the rest of the Constitution.
But what we have going on here is fraud by corporate entities who continue to market and sell adult-rated video games to minors. The rating is an admission that they are harmful! So it is a legitimate aim to stop the consumption of adult games by kids, just as pornography is not legally sold to minors.
Garbage in, garabage [sic] out, Mr. Tassi.
You either don’t have kids and thus don’t know that–that kids replicate what they consume–or you do have kids and your libertarian, business is always right mentality makes you not care about your kids or anyone else who might get in the way of a kid trained to be violent.
I have said on hundreds of college campuses on this issue: Some people believe in original sin, unless it emanates from a corporate boardroom. The problem here at Forbes is that the mindset, which Mr. Tassi expressly transparently, is that if business does it we needn’t be concerned about it.
Quite the contrary. Not a single school shooter has not trained on point and shoot video games to kill.
Just check out Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s book, On Killing, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He proves the above statement, and he knows of what he speaks as he trains police and soliders to kill.
Wake up, America. You’re growing Mini-Manchurian Candidates with the 'games' your little monsters are playing. Jack Thompson, Miami, amendmentone@comcast.net"
In other words, he's pretty much just saying the same old tiresome shit that he's been saying for years now. You'd think after all this time that he'd come up with some new material or something.
He's even repeating once again the lie that the Virginia Tech shooter "trained" on violent video games, even though that was blatantly not true at all.
(/EDIT 2)
(EDIT 4)
I think it's appropriate to post this (again, as I've posted it elsewhere, if not here to LJ):
Not, of course, to say that the news media are the direct cause of these shootings, mind you. They're no more the cause than are video games or guns. Some people are just fucking batshit insane, that's all. That is the root cause of these things and is the problem that ultimately needs to be addressed.
(/EDIT 4)
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Kudos
Date: 2013-01-11 01:51 am (UTC)From:Re: Kudos
Date: 2013-01-12 01:47 am (UTC)From:For instance, someone on my FB list just posted a stupid little image macro that implied that Obamacare was worse than shootings, due to the fact that there are more medical malpractice deaths than there are deaths via guns (or, at least, that particular model of gun that was used in the Sandy Hook shooting, anyway). As if posting that is supposed to just shut down the debate about gun control or something. "Oh, wow, you're right, that statistic there is totally higher than the other one. I'm sorry, I guess I'll stop worrying about school shootings now, because it's clearly not as important as the other things in your picture there. You totally changed my way of thinking by posting that image macro. Thanks, dude." That sort of thing is kind of ridiculous, in my not so humble opinion, and not very productive at all.
Re: Kudos
Date: 2013-01-12 03:36 am (UTC)From: