According to this piece in the New York Post, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (and Grand Theft Auto III) is worse than paedophilia, child porn and smoking. The piece goes on to say that an adult rating is not sufficient and that GTA should be banned - just like “dwarf throwing” has been.
As we would say in the UK, I’m gob smacked.
Ren
While I am no fan of the GTA line of games, it should be interesting how far the law and the public pushes this issue either with GTA poster-child or any of the many knockoffs that we can expect from anything this popular.
I'm no lawyer, but don't think it would be legally impossible to ban the sale of this product if the right politician was behind the movement. My guess is that the public views video games as scripted experiences, and not a new form of scripted literature and therefore games will not enjoy the 'free speech' protections that books and videos have access to.
However, if I were a politician, I think I would avoid the 'can we ban this' question altogether and use GTA3 as a way to go for a 'sin tax'.
Frankly the news report that I'm looking for is the one that puts tax dollar values on the effects of video games. I think it was the connection to the public's financial interest in public health that drove the taxes and regulation that are now an integral part of industries like cigarettes and alcohol.
Clearly, the public has an interest in public education, and I don't think its too hard to put some numbers together that said that video games cost tax payers X billion dollars in wasted educational funds every year.
The more I think about it, the more I think this would be a viable platform for any politician that wanted to pick it up; imagine a sin tax on video games that goes directly to aid poorly funded public education. I don't care how popular a congressperson you might be but, a 'no' vote on such a bill would be very hard to defend in the next round of elections. And, the person that champions the bill gets to claim a double victory of taxing yet another public nuisance and raising x hundreds of millions of dollars for public education.
So, how do you frame it? How about a 15% tax on all games with Teen or higher rating? Sin Taxes are most politician's dream, and GTA3 only makes it that much easier to sell to the public.
-Bruce
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Dec 30, 2003 at 17:58
The medium is the message -- if you realize that this is the New York *Post*, it all makes sense.
http://www.ihpva.org/pipermail/slo-bike/2002-March/000039.html
As the joke goes: "The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated."
Posted by: Greg Lastowka | Dec 30, 2003 at 17:59
Greg> The medium is the message -- if you realize that this is the New York *Post*, it all makes sense.
But even for a reactionary tabloid it's strong stuff and the fact that they are even bothering to look at video games is a thing.
>http://www.ihpva.org/pipermail/slo-bike/2002-March/000039.html
Mmm, well i subscribe to the WSJ so i guess i really am in charge of everything just as i alwasy suspected - muhahaha
ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: ren | Dec 30, 2003 at 19:03
Great cross-reference, Greg.
10 years ago it was Quake ("Teenagers are killing each other with shotguns and rocket launchers!"), today it's GTA. Just evidence that there's always going to be someone willing to carry the banner of thoughtcrime, because we're all just helpless morons who go out and mimick whatever we see in our entertainment media (empirical evidence be damned!). For the record, the somewhat more respectable news outlets were expressing their outrage at GTA3 a good year ago.
I could point out that this is also what happens when the "I am my avatar" p.o.v. is carried to its logical extent :)
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Dec 30, 2003 at 19:18
Euphrosyne > 10 years ago it was Quake ("Teenagers are killing each other with shotguns and rocket launchers!"), today it's GTA.
Dimitry Williams did a great study of this "The Social Construction of Video Games" - Playing With the Future: Development and Directions in Computer Gaming, CRIC, University of Manchester, 2002" (Not sure if it is in print yet - Dimitry's work is great all should check it out!) where he showed a strong link between video game stories like this and a number of other news trends and yes essentially the same story comes up again and again - and in alarmingly predictable way.
ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: ren | Dec 30, 2003 at 19:41
I had actually stuck this in a comment about the Dean game, but it is somewhat more applicable here. In 1999, Senator Lieberman and the National Institute on Media and the Family were on the warpath because too many supposedly violent games received an ESRB "T" rating (for teen). They singled out RR64. From their site:
Road Rash 64
Description: A racing game where the objective is to punch and kick other drivers and pedestrians off the road.
Summary: Due to excessive amounts of violence, illegal/harmful behavior which may cause fear, and some offensive language this game is not recommended for children of any age.
No mention of the fact that there is no blood, injury or death in RR64 (your rider always gets back up and rides away, unless your bike is broken) and that we had a big pro-helmet law PSA as the first page of our manual.
Ren, does Dimitry talk about how the same story was applied to video games, rap music, heavy metal music, drugs, role-playing games, TV violence, long hair, communism, atheism, Jews, witches, &c &c? Sad, realy.
Cory
Posted by: Cory Ondrejka | Dec 30, 2003 at 22:18
Cory > Ren, does Dimitry talk about how the same story was applied to video games, rap music, heavy metal music, drugs, role-playing games, TV violence, long hair, communism, atheism, Jews, witches, &c &c?
I alwayes knewe that it was thee video-games that did poison thee well and kill my yong calf. Yea, verily, I did always knowe it. Therefore, let us send to Boston for thee Inquisitor and rid oure lands of this pestilence for al tyme.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Dec 30, 2003 at 23:15
I would comment with something relevant, but the V-Chip implanted in my brain caused a seizure the last two times I tried. Hmm...
Posted by: DivineShadow | Dec 31, 2003 at 03:50
That was the real Ted posting, his writer is on vacation :)
By the age that players understand what is going on in a game, they should also know right from wrong (at least these extremes) and be able to differentiate reality from fantasy. Any person unable to makes these distinctions will be susceptible to much more than video games, and probably has bad parents or a mental imbalance.
Posted by: Tek | Dec 31, 2003 at 05:33
Tek >That was the real Ted posting, his writer is on vacation :)
He's moved on from channeling Mr Smith, to channeling The Witch Finder General.
re
Posted by: Ren | Dec 31, 2003 at 06:01
Cory> does Dimitry talk about how the same story was applied to video games, rap music, heavy metal music, drugs, role-playing games, TV violence, long hair, communism, atheism, Jews, witches, &c &c? Sad, realy.
Kind of. In this area Dimiti draws on the work of Daniel Czitrom (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/misc/profile/names/dczitrom.shtml), in particular the book ‘Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan’ (1982) and looks to see if the same pattern: “Utopian and dystopian discourses vs. later co-optation and cynicism” (quoted from D Williams’s abstract) is being applied to video games as has been applied to other emerging media.
The thing I like about Dimitri’s work is how hard core he is about methodology and statistical analysis. For this paper he looked at something like decades worth of magazines such as Newsweek and Time (this is from memory as I can’t find the full paper right now) and plotted the incidence of references to video games and correlations with specific terms then looked at this against other socio-economic factors going on – it produced some amazing graphs.
I do find the contradictory rhetorics about video games interesting (warning long with lots of references to things):
On the one hand we have the ‘video games are evil’ take as exemplified by the NY Post piece and the kind of examples that it cites e.g. Columbine, drive by shootings generally, and of course the work of Dave Grossman (www.killology.com/bio.htm - yes this site is called Killology) and the MediaWise Video Game Report Card by the National Institute on Media and the Family (www.mediafamily.org).
Aligned to this is the whole addiction discourse e.g. David Greenfield (www.virtual-addiction.com) and the selection of stories that seem to support this e.g. players dying at the keyboard. For an analysis of this see Chee et. al., (2003), ‘Is Electronic Community an Addictive Substance? EverQuest and its Implications for Addiction Policy’ (www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/mm/mm1/chee%20paper.pdf) – a piece that even made the news (yahoo don’t seem to have their copy of the story anymore but a copy of the text is here: http://pub140.ezboard.com/fprexus81531frm35.showMessage?topicID=93.topic)
Opposed to the ‘evil’ rhetoric is the ‘video games are trivial’ argument. Matthew Southern wrote about this for the IGDA in his piece ‘The Cultural Study of Games: More Than Just Games’ (http://www.igda.org/articles/msouthern_culture.php) and more recently Mia Consalvo presented “'It's no videogame': Global news media commentary and the second Gulf War” at Level Up where she looked at reference to the first Gulf War and its video game’ness particularly the way commentators used the idea that ‘its not just a video game’ as a way of highlighting the reality of the war – thus simultaneously casting video games as benign.
Though may be we are moving into a third phase. The Howard Dean game is an example of this. Given the above you might expect a back lash against Dean with people saying either that with this game he is effectively peddling and addictive substance or that he is trivialising politics by turning it into a mere game. But I have not been able to find any such back lash. Similarly the whole NY Law School conference (schedule here: www.nyls.edu/pages/1430.asp) seemed to be part of a dialectal shift to incorporate video games into establishment discourse. Particular with the papers on games and democracy and the Democracy Design Workshop – don’t get me wrong I had big problems with the substance of the papers and the workshop, but the intent is an interesting shift – and one that I think is an embracing rather than a utopianism though of course in NY we had a bit of that with agoraXchange (agoraxchange.net) - but moving very rapidly on.
Maybe what is needed is new medium or a resurgence of witches (actually there is a bit of a wiccan hate thang going on as neo-paganism is on the rise) or dwarf throwing (I cant find any evidence of this taking off other than in LOTR TT) i.e. a new scapegoat for the media to go out and poke with sharp sticks, before video games can be treated for what they are rather than being loaded with the usual set of baggage.
Ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: Ren | Dec 31, 2003 at 07:42
I always find it humorous to read these articles, which end with:
"In fact, "whatever you want" is what the game is all about."
...after detailing the myriad ways they managed to kill prostitutes. Presumeably the author of the review *wanted* to:
"Or you can pick up a prostitute and have sex with her in the back of your stolen car, then beat her to death - or shoot her, bludgeon her,"
After all, in a game which is about doing what you want, I presume one has the option of *not* killing the prostitute, no? Even if a game explicitly rewards the killing of innocents, nothing is requiring you to trade innocent blood for a high score. You can always quit the game, you know.
To me, for a game to be morally relevant, one must have the opportunity for immoral action. Often people do this, and then put some silly insta-punishment on the immoral action, thus removing all moral choice. I want people to not shoot innocents because it is *wrong*, not because they get -50 points.
It reminds me of when my Grandfather was playing Test Drive. He'd carefully maintain the posted speed limit, and thus safely make it to the next level. Of course, the game then accused him of driving like a grandmother and refused advancement :>
- Brask Mumei
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Dec 31, 2003 at 11:12
Hullo, folks. I'm new to this site, if not new to game research. Ren's just told me about terranova, so here's some catchup from me: If you want to read the stuff he's posted about, it's just out in Information, Communication & Society. If you don't get that, I posted my individual article on my CV page:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dcwillia/CV.html
There's also a longer version of this stuff in my dissertation, which I just finished. That's also downloadable on the same page, and the relevant bits are the intro chapter and chapters 3 and 4.
The short version is that I cite Barry Glassner, a sociologist who points out that we shouldn't just be harping on the current pop culture evil of the moment, but instead asking *why* that one is under fire and not something else. Looking at what's under attack tells us about root causes and underlying social tensions. In the dissertation, I point out that this is hardly new, and extends back at least to the telegraph (I didn't get into Cory's list, but it's similar stuff, I'm sure). What's new here is only the form of the current incarnation. Tensions over games in the 80s were prompted by fears around the changing notion of families and the roles of women. Today, I'd say that persists, but that there's also tension about caring for children. When we neglect children (big problem in the States, with serious child poverty problems), we simultaneously lash out at them. It's classic blame-the-victim stuff, and Columbine is a textbook case. Glassner's "Culture of Fear" is good background on the phenomenon.
The Post, of course, is not high journalism, but is a good bellweather of what gets people stired up. We are also having a conservative media shift in America, and cultural products are always on the front lines.
-Dmitri
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Dec 31, 2003 at 13:04
Dmitri> When we neglect children (big problem in the States, with serious child poverty problems), we simultaneously lash out at them. It's classic blame-the-victim stuff, and Columbine is a textbook case.
Dmitri: welcome, thanks for posting.
Boy does this hit the hammer on the head. Child neglect is a generational cycle - neglected kids become parents who resent their kids' demands for attention. Strained parent-child relationships are the result, and they seem to worsen with each generation. Epidemic-level in the US. And I think child poverty stats don't really reveal the problem. Family relationship problems seem indifferent to family income (citing my wife's experience as a family therapist); wealthier households are hard-working households, meaning, less time is spent with kids.
It's no surprise to me that each new generation finds various forms of media, and now artificial intelligence, to be more dependable, affirming, and soothing than the people who gave birth to them. No surprise that videogames have taken over the home. What's surprising, and only because it is so incredibly wrong (not that it's unexpected), is the repeated efforts to demonize the media/AI, when the human relationship problems are so obviously the disease. If people play games because relationships are broken, then the right policy answer is: fix the relationships. Killing the games won't help.
But of course, it is difficult for any parent to admit responsibility for the poor state of their home life. And as a culture, it's difficult for us to admit that we focus far too much on personal wealth. So, let's just demonize the technology.
If virtual worlds get dragged into this - what a tragedy. Virtual worlds are social. They're one place that a lonely, abandoned, misunderstood kid can go to make friends and find older mentors.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Dec 31, 2003 at 13:29
Welcome*2 dimiti.
Ted> If virtual worlds get dragged into this - what a tragedy. Virtual worlds are social. They're one place that a lonely, abandoned, misunderstood kid can go to make friends and find older mentors.
Dispite the lenght of my last post i still forgot to mention a bunch of stuff. Such as the characterisaion of gaming (including MMOs) as a lonely solo activity. TL & Mikael's recent paper (The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Socialization Processes in Massively Multiuser Games - http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/jakobsson.html) is a great refutation of this idea.
Also, while this has been fairly widly posted around the web I'm not sure I've seen a link here: Oprah's call for guests for a show on video game addiction: https://www.oprah.com/plugger/templates/BeOnTheShow.jhtml?action=respond&plugId=B75500004.
For anyone thinking of putting the other side of the argument or anyone just after a good read there is the great Salon piece "Coming up next: Ambushed on "Donahue"!" by Henry Jenkins: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/20/jenkins_on_donahue.
Moving on... a point that really struck me while discussing Flo Chee's at the AoIR conference was not only how neat MMOs are for breaking down inter-generational boundaries but how completly wrong much of the additction argument is.
What I mean by this that its far from unusual to come accross a player who holds a senior postion is a guild or other group and is generally respected by a player community and turns out to be in their mid teens. Now i'm sure that there are a whole range of these players - as MMOs arnt that narrow in the type of person they attract, but at least some of these must actually be in their mid teens and i would venture to guess that at least some of them also happen to be kids that dont look or act in the way that is deemed to be right in their geographic group and \ or they have fairly un-caring family lives (again I am NOT saying that this is the only type of person \ teen that plays MMOs ok).
Now in these circumstances how could one argue that persuing an activity where one is liked and respected by a buch of people of all ages, races and nationalities is an abnormal addiction and not in fact a rational sensible choice.
ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: ren | Dec 31, 2003 at 15:28
"Now in these circumstances how could one argue that persuing an activity where one is liked and respected by a buch of people of all ages, races and nationalities is an abnormal addiction and not in fact a rational sensible choice."
Maybe because rational sensible choices, and the reporting thereof, don't sell advertising space? Funny how the hysteria often comes from someone selling a book, filling their column space, raising funding, collecting a lecture fee...and the "Gee, this isn't that bad and could even be beneficial" angle comes from academics with little direct investment in the public's consumption of their work.
The other relevant thing to me is that the (mostly) younger generation actually playing the games have a much better ability to keep the real and virtual worlds separate than the foaming-at-the-mouth baby boomers (who of course do not play the games). Has anyone under 35 ever written a major "videogames are evil" piece [videogame 'addicts' don't count in my view, as addiction is largely a personal proclivity that will find an outlet in whatever form is convenient]? But really that's not surprising, and probably the way it has always been. Certainly the politics of virtuality are going to change as the technophobic members of society dwindle and die, and the bulk of society grows up learning the sort of cognitive partitioning that some (usually older) people just can't get a handle on.
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Dec 31, 2003 at 17:27
OK, my dissertation is now up and available. I hope it adds to our knowledge in the same way Nick's original survey work did.
For anyone interested, here's the link and the abstract. FYI, it's an 11MB download.
Download:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dcwillia/Dissertation.doc
Abstract:
Trouble in River City: The Social Life of VIDEO Games
by
Dmitri C. Williams
Co-Chairs: Susan J. Douglas, W. Russell Neuman
New media technologies tap into fears about what they do to us individually and collectively. One example of this is the “River City” reaction that draws on conservative fears about media’s harmful effects on youth, centering on aggression and social isolation. Reactions to video games and the Internet are current examples of this phenomenon. This dissertation explores the issue on two levels: What issues are apparent in these fears? Are these fears justified? As background, a basic history of video gaming is presented. Next, the social concerns raised by video gaming are tracked through a content analysis of media framing, supporting an analysis of social issues. This analysis reveals how games have been contested sites for gender, age and place, and how reactions to them have helped maintain inequalities.
The second half of the dissertation turns to an empirical study of game uses and effects, focusing on both the “River City” issues and on the social networks created by games. The new era of networked, online gaming demands that this work be integrated with Internet studies. Using the concept of “social capital,” new scales are developed and validated to test for the social impacts of an Internet activity. The dissertation concludes with a large field-based panel study of an online game, Asheron’s Call 2, and its players. After a participant observation study, the game is used as a stimulus to test hypotheses about negative displacement, aggression and health issues, as well as social impacts on individuals, community and habits.
The results show that the game has few of the negative River City impacts associated with the common stereotypes of games, including the contentious issue of aggression. Socially, the results are more complex. The game is shown to lead to a degree of social withdrawal at the same time as it improves some measures of community spirit and activism. Lastly, an unexpected cultivation-like finding emerged in the analysis, suggesting that online worlds can affect real-world perceptions.
-Dmitri
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Jan 02, 2004 at 11:09
YOU ALL SUCK GTA111 ROCKS I HOPE YOU ALL DIE YOU LITTLE BASTERDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Yuri ogburn | Apr 07, 2004 at 19:32
limp wristed motherfuckers it is only a game
Posted by: don | Jun 08, 2004 at 04:36