$246 million lawsuit against makers of GTA3!

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Osweld


Who'd get aroused from playing myst?

But I don't see how this is very groundbreaking, or even relevant. Who'd of thunk that people tend to get more aggresive while playing shooters then puzzle games? This doesn't change the fact that it's the person's reaction to it, not the game.

Very few people play vice city and all of a sudden feel an urge to go outside and kill people, someone who's already capable of murder might think 'hey, that looks fun, maybe I'll try it' but it's certainly not the game that made him do it, because he would of already had to been capable of it.

I can play games without geting aggresive, and I can reconize when a game is winding me up and shrug it off. I'm about as anti-war and anti-military as you can get but I subscribe to WW2online, a game where you take on the role of a soldier in a war, and not be bothered by it at all. It's just a game. Heck, I hate cars almost as much as I hate guns, but I still enjoyed driving around Vice City shooting things up and geting in high-speed chases. How is this possible if games possess such influence?

My grandfather was butcher, and ate beef almost every day, and lived to a ripe old age and never got heart disease - how is this possible if saturated fat causes heart disease?

Things have multiple causes, and something can have a real impact, and yet not have that result in an individual case.

[Snotty]

Any chance for an URL for your source?

Female students blasted their opponents longer and louder on all trials than male students.

What was their justification for this? Surely the shock findings of their study should be 'Women more aggresive than men!!!'

[Snotty]

nm. This is from the full length version of the study.

http://mentalhealth.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp784772.html

One possible explanation involves differences in liking for video games. In our participant population, men generally report playing more video games than women, as was seen in Study 1. Even a cursory examination of video game advertisements reveals a clearly male orientation. Thus, it is possible that both the higher reported level of state hostility and the higher level of aggression by women in Study 2 resulted from their being less familiar with video games or less happy at having to play them in this lab experiment. Furthermore, the ambiguous nature of the duration measure may well fit the aggressive style of women in our culture better than the style of men. In any case, what is most important to keep in mind is that exposure to the violent video game increased the aggression of both male and female participants.

so women in this study were more aggresive because:

1) Women dont like computer games, so were unhappy at having to play them (!?!)
2) 'the ambiguous nature of the duration measure' WTF? So, Women cant tell how long they have put someone in pain, or what?
3) And finally it doesnt matter that women are more aggresive than men

Why the hell doesnt it matter? This seems as important a finding as aggresiveness from comp games, yet they brush it under the carpet.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Snotty
nm. This is from the full length version of the study.

http://mentalhealth.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp784772.html

One possible explanation involves differences in liking for video games. In our participant population, men generally report playing more video games than women, as was seen in Study 1. Even a cursory examination of video game advertisements reveals a clearly male orientation. Thus, it is possible that both the higher reported level of state hostility and the higher level of aggression by women in Study 2 resulted from their being less familiar with video games or less happy at having to play them in this lab experiment. Furthermore, the ambiguous nature of the duration measure may well fit the aggressive style of women in our culture better than the style of men. In any case, what is most important to keep in mind is that exposure to the violent video game increased the aggression of both male and female participants.

so women in this study were more aggresive because:

1) Women dont like computer games, so were unhappy at having to play them (!?!)
2) 'the ambiguous nature of the duration measure' WTF? So, Women cant tell how long they have put someone in pain, or what?
3) And finally it doesnt matter that women are more aggresive than men

Why the hell doesnt it matter? This seems as important a finding as aggresiveness from comp games, yet they brush it under the carpet.

well duh, ya suppose its cause we have loads of statistics on crimes, violent acts in the real world commited by women vs those commited by men - while any such stats for violent video game players vs everyone else (if they even exist) would be meaningless since it would be likely that people predisposed to violence would be more likely to play violent games?

[Snotty]

Thats one long sentence.

Yes, real world stats show men are more aggresive than women, so why are women more aggresive than men after playing comp games? Surely this is important. If it is, Im never letting my gf near my comp again.

[Snotty]

people predisposed to violence would be more likely to play violent games?

Im not entirly sure what your point is here. would it be time for a 'well duh' of my own?

[mrmitchell]

And by the way, after having skipped every post in the thread except LOTM's post--it's possible that the kids are just STUPID. "Oh, yeah, cool, let's go out onto the road and shoot up people like it's just a video game"...sorry, but I don't see the logic from either the lawsuit or their own thinking pattern. This kind of thing baffles me. It sounds like they need medication (or parenting that tells them not to shoot occupied cars? ) instead of (well, in their case, in addition to) taking the game away.

But you know what? If this suit wins, then millions of RESPONSIBLE PLAYERS will have a good (at least for a console game, good) game taken away from them because of kids who can't tell the difference between real life and play life (even after 13-14 yo, can't remember their age), at least in part because of bad raising or lack of attention etc., and victims' families who also lack so much of a logic processor in their mind to believe that the manufacturer of a secondary cause is the person to sue.

In unrelated news, schools accross America have started suing Wrigley's and other gum manufacturers for causing kids to put gum under all their desks.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
In unrelated news, schools accross America have started suing Wrigley's and other gum manufacturers for causing kids to put gum under all their desks.

Of course... they could have made non-sticky gum

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Snotty

people predisposed to violence would be more likely to play violent games?

Im not entirly sure what your point is here. would it be time for a 'well duh' of my own?

to explain why you can use real world experience to understand gender difference, but you need a lab experiment to test the impact of games. Game players are self selected.


maybe this will explain it. One of the arguments for bike helmet laws is that people who ride without helmets tend to be more badly injured than people who ride without helmets. Compelling argument right? Except that, IIUC, people who ride without helmets tend to have worse injuries to parts OTHER than the head as well as to the head! Why do you suppose that might be?

[Kirnwaffen]

Yet another meritless lawsuit. The family doesn't have a chance. I think it is now and has always been obvious enough that there are deeper factors at work than the video games themselves, and I think it's definitely worth looking at how these kids were raised, and how they arrived at the conclusion that it was ok to repeat behavior from a video game in the real world.

[Snotty]

All I want to know is if I let my girlfriend play 'the sims' will she then try and blare a horn in my ear?

My real problem here is the gender difference in this study. It runs counter to all the real world experience that I can think of. I appreciate your analogy, but I dont see how the aggresive women finding fits into it.

Are you saying only violent game playing women would choose to take part in this study?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Snotty
All I want to know is if I let my girlfriend play 'the sims' will she then try and blare a horn in my ear?

My real problem here is the gender difference in this study. It runs counter to all the real world experience that I can think of. I appreciate your analogy, but I dont see how the aggresive women finding fits into it.

Are you saying only violent game playing women would choose to take part in this study?

No - Im saying that people who play violent games in real life may be more aggressive to start out than other people. So saying that video game players commit twice as many assaults as non players tells me NOTHING about the effect of video games - therefore to find out the effect of video games you got to do artificial studies like this, and any result you get is interesting, cause theres nothing else available that tells you about the effect of video games.

With gender, people dont (as a general rule) choose their own gender. Its not like people who are already predisposed to violence choose to be male. You either are male or you arent (with rare exceptions) So you CAN use real world data (like say, males commit twice as many assaults as females) Since for gender YOU DO HAVE real world data, no one gives a s**t about an artificial study like this to determine if men or women are more aggressive. If it gives a counterintuitive result you write it off as an anomaly caused by something like women being pissed at having to play Castle Wolfenstein.

[Snotty]

Thanks for clearing that up. The female aggresiveness has still sparked an interest in me, simply because it reinforces behaviour I have witnessed myself (albeit with a sample of 1). The study contained plenty of links for me to track this down in other research.

[Dr Strangelove]

Golly! I guess I oughta run out and buy my copy of GTA3 and Vice City while I still can!

[Dis]

I knew this would happen eventually. I am suprised it took this long.

I wonder how long it will take before someone is hacked to death by a samuri sword until a lawsuit if filed against Tarantino, Disney, and Miramax films.

In any case I must agree GTA III is a very irresponsible game. Though I have played it. I wasn't really good, so I quit playing.