Video games bad?

[timesjoke]

A new law in California is being looked at by the Supreme Court, story HERE if you want all the details.

Basically the law provides a penalty to anyone who sells or rents "violent" video games to minors at the tune of $1,000 each.

The battle in the Supreme Court is mostly going to be centered around free speach issues I am sure but aside from that, I was wondering if anyone here thought violent video games were "bad" and if so, what level of protection (if any) you feel is right to fit this situation?

My own view:

While I do believe there is a "desensitizing" aspect to viewing a lot of violent things like movies or video games, I also do not believe a person is transformed from a good person to a bad person from watching video or game violence. Long before there were violent movies and video games, man was just about as violent as he could get, chopping off a man's head with an axe is what I would call pretty violent. If we look back at the most violent leaders to ever exist (Mao Zedong, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mengistu Haile Mariam, etc...) what was the violent video game or violent movie that made them be violent????

Oh, there were no violent games or popular movies so where do we place the blame then? Bad parents? No Welfare? What excuse was popular then?

I feel for good or bad we should not have Big Government decide for us what is good or bad in video games or movies, or anything else for that matter. Let Parents make these decisions.

 

[jokersarewild]

My own view:

While I do believe there is a "desensitizing" aspect to viewing a lot of violent things like movies or video games, I also do not believe a person is transformed from a good person to a bad person from watching video or game violence. Long before there were violent movies and video games, man was just about as violent as he could get, chopping off a man's head with an axe is what I would call pretty violent. If we look back at the most violent leaders to ever exist (Mao Zedong, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mengistu Haile Mariam, etc...) what was the violent video game or violent movie that made them be violent????

Oh, there were no violent games or popular movies so where do we place the blame then? Bad parents? No Welfare? What excuse was popular then?

I feel for good or bad we should not have Big Government decide for us what is good or bad in video games or movies, or anything else for that matter. Let Parents make these decisions.

The "No Welfare?" part made me chuckle a little. Would love to hear that excuse laughs .

As far as people being worse in the past, you're dead on. Impaling people's heads on spikes? Raping every woman you see on your conquest of their land/empire? Those are experiences a violent video game couldn't emulate (right now) if it prayed to 6 different gods for the ability.

Some parents are just ******* stupid. They don't want it to be their bad parenting that'll be remembered when their kid goes postal. They will want to blame video games. I play violent video games all the time (Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas are pretty gruesome). I'm talking about limbs popping off with squirting blood, heads popping off with squirting blood, bodies basically exploding, etc, etc. I enjoy the violence because it's appropriate for the game (they're set after a Nuclear Apocalypse, if you didn't know) and I'm ok with that. If I were playing some Hello Kitty ****, and suddenly they all popped in a ****** death mess, I would probably say "******* finally", but if you're a kid and even the nice **** turns into a fine ****** mist for no good reason, that'll probably screw you up.

But I can't think of a single game that tries to hide the amount of violence. That's what the ratings are for anyway.