Video Games: School for Evil?
And if so, what should we do about it?
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Under the headline "Thailand Halts 'Grand Theft Auto' sales after murder" Reuters reports:
A Thai video game distributor halted sales of "Grand Theft Auto" on Monday after a teenager confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver while trying to recreate a scene from the controversial game.
The article went on to give more details about the crime:
Police said the youth, an obsessive player of "Grand Theft Auto", showed no sign of mental problems during questioning and had confessed to committing the crime because of the game. "He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game," chief police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak told Reuters.
If convicted of murder, the accused faces death by lethal injection.
Follow the Money
"Grand Theft Auto", aka GTA, is one of the top-selling video games all over the world and has been controversial for some years. Reuters described the basic issue about the game.
A senior official at Thailand's Culture Ministry said the murder was a wake-up call for authorities to tackle the issue of violent video games, and urged parents to pay closer attention to what their children played.
"This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse," Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry's Cultural Surveillance Centre, told Reuters. "Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."
The ministry has been pushing for tougher regulation of video games such as Grand Theft Auto, including the imposition of a rating system on sales and restriction on hours that youngsters can play the games in public arcades.
A multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in the U.S. state of Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto in 2005, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to kill two police officers and a 911 dispatcher.
It's not surprising that GTA might be associated with other murders because GTA glorifies murder in a manner which is not often found in other media.
We've had murders all through history, of course. Mystery writers tell stories about murderers which occasionally seem to lead to copycat crimes, as is equally true of movies and television.
But there is a crucial difference between GTA's treatment of murder and the way murder is portrayed in other media - murder generally isn't rewarded.
In GTA, on the other hand, committing murder, rape, assault, and other virtual crimes gives you points and advances you to higher and higher levels in the game. GTA creates an environment where committing crimes is the path to success - the more crimes a player commits, the more successful he is. In GTA, not only does crime pay, it's the only way to be paid.
Video Games and Violence
Video games have been criticized for inciting players to violence ever since violence started appearing in video games. On an intuitive level, people find it difficult to believe that television influences human behavior enough to justify advertisers pouring billions of dollars into TV in attempts to influence people to buy their products but that it does not promote violence in people who see violence on TV or in video games.
TV either influences behavior or it does not. If it doesn't, why are all those advertisers spending so much money trying to influence us to buy their products? Why do they print "As seen on TV" on packaging?
If TV does influence behavior, on the other hand, why do we permit so much violence on TV? To a layman, it's completely illogical to claim that TV influences only consumer behavior and not other human activities such as rape, murder, or grand theft (auto).
Controversy leads to opportunity for academic studies, of course, and the more vehement the controversy, the more money becomes available. Video games are hugely profitable; their makers have funded many studies of whether video games incite violence. If you Google "video games study violence no proof kids", you'll get more than 150,000 hits. The general tone of these studies is that there is no proof that video games incite violence.
The Cato Institute has posted an article summarizing the many efforts to ban video games:
For example, Indianapolis and St. Louis passed laws banning the sale of violent video games to minors. (Both measures were struck down by federal courts as violations of the First Amendment.) And Governor Gary Locke of Washington recently signed a law that would prohibit the sale of games to minors that depict acts of violence against law enforcement officers (this law is also being challenged in Federal Court and is likely to be struck down as an unconstitutional restriction of protected speech). In addition, Congress is now getting involved. Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) recently introduced H.R. 669, "The Protect Children from Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003." This bill would impose fines on anyone who sells or rents, "any video game that depicts nudity, sexual conduct, or other content harmful to minors." There are many problems with such regulatory measures.
The article goes on to discuss the constitutional issues involved in any sort of censorship and describes a number of legislative efforts to regulate video games. It then discloses the fact that no study has found any link between playing video games and increased violence among young people, claims that labeling of games is working by making information available to parents, points out that any laws regulating video games rapidly cross the line into censorship, and makes the self-evident statement that parents should be the judge of what's best for their children. The article ends as follows:
In conclusion, as David E. Rosenbaum of the New York Times noted in a 2001 column, "Some serious social problems in America may not have good legislative solutions. A case in point could be sex and violence in entertainment." Indeed, peaceful social persuasion and civic pressure are often a very powerful alternative to government regulation. When it comes to the games our children play, industry self-regulation and parental supervision, not government coercion, offers the optimal solution. [emphasis added]
Scragged is certainly in agreement with Mr. Rosenbaum's belief that not every serious social problem has a legislative solution; the number of legislative efforts to regulate games described in the Cato Institute article suggests that most legislators disagree with us. Assuming that all of the many past studies of video games were in fact correct in their conclusions that playing the video games which were available at the time did not lead to violence, we'd be on the side of not regulating them.
Grand Theft Auto may be in a different category, however, for a number of reasons.
First, video games are becoming more and more realistic as computers and displays improve. The games examined by the earlier studies did not have particularity realistic graphics; it may be that with the improved video realism of GTA, the line between game and reality has a greater chance of becoming blurred in a player's mind.
Second, there's the overall motif of GTA of awarding game points and advancements in rank for successful crimes, which is not really the mindset that we want to encourage in people.
Finally, it appears that the details of how GTA crimes are carried out are not only depicted realistically, they are also quite accurate as to similar situations in reality. "He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game," chief police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak told Reuters. Apparently it was, though the Thai police forces seem to be more competent than those in GTA.
This suggests that GTA's combination of realistic video, rewarding violence, and accurate depiction of the steps in carrying out violent crimes may offer a qualitatively different influence on violent behavior than previous games: GTA becomes a completely risk-free school for crime and evildoing.
In this case, it is clear that the murderer was following up on ideas and plots suggested by GTA. He said that he had not intended to kill the driver, only to rob him, but the driver is dead either way. At the very least, this murder has invalidated all prior studies of the influence of video games on violence; the researchers will have to apply for more funds and do the studies all over again. How sad.
Individuals and Society
We've discussed the difficult trade-off between individual rights and societal rights. As we pointed out, the mechanism Americans use for balancing individual rights with societal rights is called "politics." It is interesting to ponder some of the other regulatory decisions we've made.
Having experimented with the prohibition of sales of alcohol, our society has decided that alcohol should be freely available to adults despite the number of people who are killed by intoxicated drivers and the number of alcohol-driven assaults. Prostitution is illegal in most states but legal in Nevada. We've decided to outlaw marijuana, cocaine, and a number of other drugs and even to declare a war on drugs despite the fact that the market demand is strong enough to fund the Taliban in Afghanistan and to support the FARC drug dealers who tortured Mrs. Betancourt.
Again, we're reminded that our political system runs on money. The huge amount of money that the war on drugs yields to police departments and other law enforcement agencies makes it unlikely that drugs will be legalized any time soon.
Video gaming has become too profitable for our political system to be able to regulate it readily even though we now know that their self-serving "studies" must be flawed. Practically speaking, absent a huge epidemic of violence which can be directly traced to video games, our political masters will probably follow the money and continue to let the games be sold.
Politics aside, however, there remains the question of the morality of making money by selling games which advocate and rehearse violence in the graphic detail to be found in GTA. There are many who believe that cigarette company officials conspired to cover up their internal studies of the addictive effects of nicotine and the carcinogenic nature of tobacco and that such conspiracies were evil. Suppose that this GTA-induced murder proves to be the first of many murders induced by GTA and games like Godfather II, whose publisher promises "even more visceral hand-to-hand brutality" along with pressure tactics and "executions," a mealy-mouthed way to describe premeditated murder.
Game-induced murders becoming common would either confirm the bogus nature of all the existing studies of game-related violence or show that GTA and its ilk constitute an entirely different animal. Would we then conclude that the developers of this new category of "game" were evil?
Or would we regard them as evil only if it were shown that they knew their product could induce violent behavior and released it anyway? Now that the publishers know that GTA can induce violent behavior, what will they do about it?
Freedom To Be Stupid
We haven't yet discussed the most interesting question. Let's suppose for a moment that the next round of studies conclusively proved that GTA and games like it cause a statistically significant rise in murders, just as it's conclusively proven that smoking causes lung cancer and alcohol causes liver disease. Would it still be right for the government to outlaw a computer game that, in and of itself, causes no harm to anyone?
A knife or gun cause no harm to anyone until a person makes the decision to pick it up and shoot or stab someone. Karl Marx's book Das Kapital and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf led directly to the deaths of tens of millions of people; yet both books are still freely available for purchase and have been ever since they were first published. Sitting on the shelf, they are harmless; in the hands of the vast majority of readers, they are still harmless; but entering into the hearts and minds of some readers, they led to mass murder. Despite knowing this, we recognize that it is wrong to outlaw thoughts, even evil thoughts.
Traditionally, America has placed responsibility for criminal acts on the individual specifically performing the criminal act. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. In the hands of a man with murderous intent, a desk pen is a deadly weapon.
We don't outlaw devices such as automobiles that are inherently dangerous, but we regulate their use; similarly, almost any ideas or publications can be freely distributed to adults. In fact, GTA is one of these: it's rated "M" for Mature, and is supposed to be sold only to customers 17 years of age or older. Because some people misuse or abuse things that other people can handle, does that make a blanket ban wise or right?
As we've discussed, freedom must include the right to be stupid or the word has no meaning. By its very nature, freedom brings with it responsibility to account for your own choices and actions and to control them where necessary.
There are only two choices regarding who can make decisions on what's best for you: you yourself, or somebody else. Whom would you rather made decisions on your behalf: you, or the government? This is the liberal's dilemma - if you feel qualified to make decisions about what's best for someone other than yourself and your own children, it won't be long before someone else is making decisions for you.
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What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
"But there is a crucial difference between GTA's treatment of murder and the way murder is portrayed in other media - murder generally isn't rewarded.
In GTA, on the other hand, committing murder, rape, assault, and other virtual crimes gives you points and advances you to higher and higher levels in the game. GTA creates an environment where committing crimes is the path to success - the more crimes a player commits, the more successful he is. In GTA, not only does crime pay, it's the only way to be paid."
THIS IS MY PROBLEM WITH THE GAME.
Currently the "M" rating for video games only serves as an advertisement for children as to the violence/sexuality/language of the game. It's like dangling a big fat juicy steak in front of a bulldog.
The parents who have abdicated the raising of their children to the government (written about on this site) are the same parents who will get GTA for their kids. The parents who actually raise their children themselves won't. Making it illegal won't change that.
You need to do more research before making unvalidated absolute statements like this. Many of the studies that were done were on GTA. A quick google for "gta violence study" brings up this article: http://pub.ucsf.edu/today/cache/feature/200608312.html. This and other studies shred the foundational premise of the article -- GTA isn't something new, and is covered by the gaming studies that have been done.
In fact, many of the studies done were performed specifically because of GTA. These studies showed that GTA was no more affective of violent attitudes than any other game.
This is an apt point, but I believe that there should be some absolute minimums that the government imposes on parents.
For instance, I think it is good that - as a society - we have decided that the ill effects of alcohol when it comes to minors is so bad that no one should be allowed to supply it to them (even their parents).
The debate for all this really is a bit higher up. Do you believe that society should have ANY right to tell parents what they can/cannot give to their children? Keep in mind, there are some pretty heinous things out there.
If believe that SOME of those things are okay to dictate from on high, then the issue of video game violence is nothing more than a matter of whether it falls into that basket.
The ultra libertarians view says "no, nothing at all should be limited at for any reason" - the logical conclusion of which leads to chaos and anarchy far greater than any socialist government would produce.
Is there a line for anything? I say, yes. If so, do violent video games cross that line. I say, some do. Some don't. We'll watch and see how many other murderers say they were copying GTA.
Patently false. Most states allow parents to supply alcohol to their children.
http://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/index.asp?Type=BAS_APIS&SEC={B7EBF080-DB1F-4092-9897-E3F083BB3075}&DE={8F469551-8EAE-4020-9538-8844EC5549B8}
I can't imagine that ANYONE who isn't already prone to committing these acts would suddenly think it's a good idea just from playing a game.
As far as advertising and affecting consumer behavior: "To a layman, it's completely illogical to claim that TV influences only consumer behavior and not other human activities" - well, to a layman, perhaps. But that shows a lack of understanding about advertising and how it works.
Television advertising, like most other advertising, is about presence. Seeing ads for Pepsi is NOT going to make you go out and drink Pepsi, if you don't already drink soda. And it's not intended to. The purpose of advertising is all about brand recognition. Budweiser doesn't try to get non-drinkers to drink bud - it tries to get drinkers to consider bud when they want a beer. (Although Bud isn't beer, but that's another debate :) )
Violent movies and television programs DO NOT cause people to become violent. But they DO sometimes give form to the violence that someone, already prone to violence, might do.
Ifon:
"For instance, I think it is good that - as a society - we have decided that the ill effects of alcohol when it comes to minors is so bad that no one should be allowed to supply it to them"
I disagree. I think that a responsible parent would WANT their children to learn, in a SAFE environment, the effects of alcohol, rather than letting them suffer those effects for the first time on their own, when they can't judge when to stop - or worse, to suffer the effects unwittingly because they simply don't know the effects, and happen to have gotten ahold of some spiked punch.
Frankly, I think our puritanical attitude toward alcohol is what leads to so much of the drinking problems we see in college. It's the old "Forbidden fruit" syndrome.
The article said that as computer displays improve and the game looks more realistic, THIS version of GTA may be utterly different.
OOH, unfortunately, as scragged has so often said, our political system runs on money. GTA makes enough profit to pay off the politicians unless murders go through the roof.
Among the findings were that video games (even M rated games) give children something to talk about. I talked about baseball cards and saturday morning cartoons, todays children talk about video games. Children that don't play games are therefore left out of the social loop and that leads to feeling isolated. This increases antisocial behavior.
There is a correlation between children spending very large amount of their time playing violent video games and then engaging in violent behavior. Note NOT cause and effect but correlation. A very large percentage of children know that its all fake and that they can't do those things in real life, and in fact news stories about real murder often scare children because it makes the fantasies seem real and therefore the world more dangerous.
(back to my opinion)
The children that do end up acting out 'fantasies' are screwed up to start with. It is definitely true that making heroes out of criminals could lead to children wanting to grow up to be a drug dealer instead of an astronaut which is, of course, a problem. But it is important to remember (as the article points out) that it is the fact that negative behavior is rewarded and not the violence itself that is objectionable about GTA. Even given that, unless there is something preexisting within the child, players know that it is fantasy and therefore different and inapplicable to real life.
I played cowboys and indians, I watched violent saturday morning cartoons, I played violent video games, I watched violent movies, I read violent books, I played Dungeons and Dragons.
I would be willing to bet that nearly everyone here has done at least most of those things as a child, everything that people then or people now worried about 'destroying' our youth. One person in every million is simply screwed up and will decide to kill and drink their parents blood 'because' of playing a table top RPG (Vampire, happened in Florida a few years ago). Most people, most children, know better.
Concerning parental authority, I can understand the argument that it might be safer for parents to introduce kids to alcohol wisely in a controlled environment. OK. Now, what about sex? We call that incest. What's the difference? Why? Why does government have the right to limit one and not the other?
Seems to me that lfon is right - human society has clearly decided that there IS a line which government has the right to enforce, concerning what parents may and may not do with their children. Thus, it's only a question as to whether a particular circumstance crosses that line, or not.
I think we'd all agree, though, that very little of this stuff would be a problem if we still had functioning families as have existed through most of human history. The experiment of liberation from traditional marriage and families that we've been trying for the last half-century or so is clearly a disastrously abysmal failure. How to fix it? No clue... but surely it won't be fixed by Congress.
What to do...
Not obviously. That line is straight from the anti-smoking crowd. Can you tell me ANYONE who STARTED SMOKING because of ads? I've known quite a few smokers in my time, and none of them were influenced to START smoking due to advertising.
"Think about all those offensive drug ads you see, making you think you have a disease you had never heard of 5 minutes ago."
OK - and these work only if (a) you actually have the symptoms discussed in the commercials, or (b) you are predisposed toward medical hysteria (i.e. you're a hypochondriac). Again, can you show me any HEALTHY person who saw one of those ads and had to go out and get that drug? The point of those ads is that when you go to the doctor, complaining about that problem, you'll ask for that medicine.
"Now, what about sex? ... What's the difference?"
Alcohol affects your mental functioning as a consequence of its properties. Sex does not. Alcohol can also be given to you without your knowledge. Alcohol CAN be introduced in a safe environment, where growing children (most appropriately, IMO, high-school age) can learn the effects and feeling of a slight intoxication, and thus be able to recognize it in the future.
And what about the "forbidden fruit" point?
"Why does government have the right to limit one and not the other?"
"...human society has clearly decided that there IS a line which government has the right to enforce, concerning what parents may and may not do with their children."
Well, if you're talking about government limiting actions of parents, at what level do you stop? Here in California, a law was recently proposed to make SPANKING illegal.
What if "human society" decided that parents should not be able to teach their children about religion - that children should be free to make their own choice on the matter when they become adults. Would you support that, since "society" decided that was ok?
And don't forget - "human society" has reached a vast variety of different conclusions about all of this. Look at the various laws regarding alcohol consumption by minors in Europe. And while you're at it, compare the problems they have with teen and young adult alcohol abuse with what we have in the US.
Just like the "war on drugs", our approach to this matter - the approach of outlawing the undesired behavior - is having the opposite effect.
"I think we'd all agree, though, that very little of this stuff would be a problem if we still had functioning families as have existed through most of human history."
Functioning families, period. I don't totally agree with your next point:
"The experiment of liberation from traditional marriage and families that we've been trying for the last half-century or so is clearly a disastrously abysmal failure."
I disagree. What we see has not been the result of non-traditional families. Rather, it has been the result of government subsidization of irresponsibility (http://www.scragged.com/articles/the-incredible-vanishing-father.aspx)
"How to fix it? No clue... but surely it won't be fixed by Congress."
Congress COULD fix it, but they won't. How to fix it? Get back to holding people responsible for their own actions, and letting them deal with the consequences of their actions.
Hmm - funny - that's where I stand on this issue too. GTA IS NOT responsible for the idiot kid robbing the cab. THE IDIOT KID is responsible. And if he's a minor, then so are his parents.
Tony, you are obviously a virgin. ;-)
"Alcohol can also be given to you without your knowledge."
And with a little alcohol, so can sex, alas.
http://www.scragged.com/articles/there-but-for-the-grace-of-god.aspx
http://www.scragged.com/articles/the-all-seeing-eye.aspx
Whether this is a consequence of the properties of sex or not is hard to say, but it appears that at last SOME mental functioning in SOME people is affected by sex.
Did any of the studies explore whether playing sex-saturated video games led to increased interest in sex?
While I'm sure most married men might have a hard time believing that this is also true of women, the studies that I have seen say that it is.
One would presume therefore that sex in video games does indeed increase sex drive in teenagers. However, for most boys, at that age, pretty much any fairly pretty girl waring anything even mildly revealing is sexually motivating and therefore putting it in games seem to me that it would only have minimal effect.
If you don't want kids to have sex don't allow them to have long term significant others, otherwise there isn't much you can do.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE4A38H320081105?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology
says:
Young people who said that "many, most or all" of the Internet sites they frequented featured "real people fighting, shooting or killing" were five-times more likely than their peers who didn't visit violent websites to engage in seriously violent behavior.
The odds of violent behavior also rose with the number of types of violent media a young person consumed, but the effect of violent TV, movies, music, games or Internet cartoons was much smaller than that of Internet violence depicting real people.
The interactive nature of the Web may be behind its apparently more powerful influence when compared with types of violent media, Ybarra and colleagues suggest.
But the current study doesn't answer the question of whether violent media is turning kids violent, whether violence-prone youth are more likely to seek out violence on the Internet, or "more probably," whether a bit of both is going on, the researchers say.
It would appear that the interactive nature of things like grand theft auto does have an effect. Censorship, anyone?
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F14%2F0055214&from=rss
"An Ohio teen was found guilty of murdering his mother and shooting his father in the head after they took away his copy of Halo 3. One has to wonder if this is going to have any effect on the games industry. Clearly, the AP thought they could stir up something controversial by asking the IP owner for a statement: 'Microsoft, which owns the intellectual property for the game, declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."' I suppose the good news is they did not accept his insanity plea, so no one can claim that Halo 3 drove him insane. Even so, I don't think anything good can come out of this for gamers."
Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever." GamePolitics has further details from the judge's statement. It doesn't help that the boy's lawyers used video game addiction as a defense.
Was this a legitimate defense?
Among young college students, the frequency and type of video games played appears to parallel risky drug and alcohol use, poorer personal relationships, and low levels of self-esteem, researchers report.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE51508820090206?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology
Now they're claiming that some video games can cause mental illness:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70G29M20110117
There might be trouble brewing behind the glassy eyes of kids who spend too much time and energy on video games, according to a controversial new study.
In the 2-year study of more than 3,000 school children in Singapore, researchers found nearly one in ten were video game "addicts," and most were stuck with the problem.
While these kids were more likely to have behavioral problems to begin with, excessive gaming appeared to cause additional mental woes.
"When children became addicted, their depression, anxiety, and social phobias got worse, and their grades dropped," said Douglas A. Gentile, who runs the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University in Ames and worked on the study.
"When they stopped being addicted, their depression, anxiety, and social phobias got better."
He said neither parents nor healthcare providers are paying enough attention to video games' effect on mental health.
"We tend to approach it as 'just' entertainment, or just a game, and forget that entertainment still affects us," he told Reuters Health in an e-mail. "In fact, if it doesn't affect us, we call it 'boring!'"
But an independent expert said the study had important flaws.
"My own research has shown that excessive video game play is not necessarily addictive play and that many video gamers can play for long periods without there being any negative detrimental effects," said Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.
"If nine percent of children were genuinely addicted to video games there would be video game addiction clinics in every major city!" he said in an e-mail, adding that the concept is not currently an accepted diagnosis among psychiatrists and psychologists.
Part of the problem, Griffiths argued, is that the new work may be measuring preoccupation instead of addiction.