Better start smoking..

In case you missed it, Electronic Media Violence is now "scientifically proven" to be nearly as dangerous as smoking.

Well many supposedly free countries have already banned smoking in public places, how long do you think they're gonna let you play Crysis?

Saw this last night on SomethingAwful (I get links to news from the worst places), makes me wonder what research they conducted and how they came to their conclusion, especially considering there's also studies that have "scientifically proven" that violent gaming has no impact to having been correlated with reduced violence in society. (So I shall begin reading once I'm out of class.)

Which is why the parallel to smoking was so perfect.

It's true. Ever since I played Crysis, I feel an urge to blow up every helicopter I see.

Really though... couldn't it be said that aggressive people, for the most part, are just more inclined to play violent video games?

Just the Government wanting more control over our lives. They seem to think they can tell us whats dangerous, as if we didn't get the hint... But yet, are willing to send half the countries (UK's) Bank account and benefit details, in the post, twice, and lose it. Then, take a month to tell anyone about it. Here's me thinking it would probably have been safer, and quicker, to upload this data to a secure server, that any goverment department could, with the proper clearance.

So, thanks Mr Brown, no doubt you'll jump on the bandwagon with this one. I'm telling you, fodd will be next. You'll probably have points and everytime you buy food, you use points depending on how healthy it is. If people want to eat themselves to death, they should be allowed to.

when will they learn that banning stuff pushes it underground. People will still develop violent games just for the sake of it and host downloads from countries that dont ban it.
--with no controls whatsoever --

The other thing is that most media discussions I've heard are often held by people who don't actually play games. So they tend to treat them as only for kids and are then appalled that kids are playing games that aren't really designed for young children. Else they treat gaming as a monolithic media made up exclusively of 'video nasties'.

Something I'm trying to understand here... since when was smoking the worst thing for your health? I'm pretty sure if I started doing meth, I'd be worse off than were I smoking.

Also overeating is worse for you that smoking apparently. But smoking is pretty high on the list.

I'd also guess stabbings are worse for your health than smoking.

This sort of stuff always annoys me... Where they say violence in movies and video games... Pointing out 'children' are watching this stuff, these movies and video games are usually 18 rated and therefore children shouldn't be seeing this stuff, if parents are allowing their kids to watch this then it's just bad parenting.

Now I accept this stuff is more accessible with internet and so on, and as a kid I did watch a few video nasties (like some awful pirate copy of a clockwork orange) however, generally this stuff was kept away from kids.

There's plenty of net nanny type applications and lockable devices to keep these dvds out of the hands of kids, but if parents are too apathetic to do anything, or indeed theatres are letting children into 18 rated movies this surely isn't the fault of the media?!

Something that did bother me though was that movies like the Lord or the Rings were rated 12... I thought this should have had at least a 15 rating... But hey... This is where the cooperation's are using some wacky loophole to get round rating system rather than using just basic common sense, beheaded with an axe regardless of if it's a troll or a human getting beheaded is still a beheading and shouldn't be in 12 rated movies.

Grrr etc.

Getting run over by a bus is pretty bad for your health...but they havn't banned that have they?!

> Getting run over by a bus is pretty bad for your health...but they havn't banned that have they?!

I don't know what it's like where you live but it's certainly outlawed around here...

well there's a big difference between what was considered over 18 20 years ago and today.

I remember watching the golden child with eddie murphy and thinking how when we were kids that would have definately have been an 18 film. Standards drop as people become desensitised, you have to draw the line and establish some kind of common decency somewhere.

Having said that. I think that media has little effect on peoples violent tendencies. It might make already violent people more aggressive, but probably doesn't sway people either way.

To be honest I think news media has a much greater effect on peoples behaviour than violent fiction. People here all the bad things going on and feel less safe than they did 20 years ago. When in most cases statistics show things havent really changed that much and in some cases have improved.

Gah. Games don't cause anything. It's all in the mind, even when the mind allows the game to seem to affect it. But then, those who think they are really affected and really believe it's happening, are the ones who need the compassion.

Agree - but my cloak mode's faulty. Whenever I go cloaked, people stare at me and ask me what I'm doing. Must be bad AI.

Exactly. I play relatively violent games and I don't feel the need to snipe someone from a window or chainsaw someone because they look like a Cog.

I like to blow up things in games..that makes me released in real life so I can be focused on to real things (chicks, B3D forum, etc) :)

But hold on - let's be plain about it - many games now are interactive simulations of combat where human death is shown in detail and with more realism than ever before. Doesn't this give anyone here some misgivings?

As an example, there's a shooter (forget the name, soon to be released) where the producer explained how you can shoot someone in the neck and they'll stumble about bleeding. Or you can blow off a limb. This was all treated as high selling points - but it struck me as kind of grotesque.

You could argue that Lord of the Rings was ok as 12 because it was set in a fantasy world and so was easier for a child to disassociate from the violence. The youth of today are all more exposed to violence in media anyway.

I think you could say "games don't kill people, people kill people". For sure these games are in bad taste but they don't encourage the normal human being to commit a violent crime, no matter how realistic it is. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the more realistic violent games get the less people will want to play them.

There's another reason for that: The terrifying system requirements!

In the current incarnation of my current game ("current" being the 13th attempt at something that I think I can stand finishing within current technical limitations), you can create disturbing pictures - possibly even with physical simulation - visible to anyone playing on the same server. It can be as violent or non-violent as people make it.
The physical simulation part is quite interesting. It is possible to produce some, err, disturbing... images, and that risk will only grow as the engine grows up. (Thankfully, unless you are a genius, in which case said creations can be labelled as "art", it will mean your quick demise).

If it were ever to reach the point, the ratings people would assign it an age group based on how sick their minds are ;)

To be perfectly honest I feel more like killing someone when i read blatant propaganda like this. Its sign of the times. I heared that uk schools are now discouraging playground games like cowboys and indians (or the modern equiv.) because they encourage violence and ethnic division.

God help us if we are ever invaded, adults of the future will instinctively pick a nice bunch of flowers and sing PC songs in an attempt to pacify the maurauding, bloodlusting horde. Then will all have mental breakdowns at the first sight of a nosebleed.

Sure. But doing meth (and stabbing) are both illegal, unlike smoking and violent video games.

I would think Alcohol is probably more dangerous than smoking, and certainly more so than violent video games.

If you for real shoot someone in the neck, they wouldn't be doing much stumbling about, and unless you had a tank gun, there's no way you could possibly apply enough pressure to a limb (like say an arm or a leg) to actually physically tear it off. While a close range shotgun blast is likely to cause severe trauma and tissue damage, it's it's not going to actually dismember someone.

Well you could, but that would sound too much like you're one of those NRA nuts, and I think most people would expect a more sophisticated response than that from a gamer. :o>

Well it's a good thing that we are the marauding bloodthirsty horde then, isn't it? Of course it's probably not going to sit too well with the Jack Thompsons of the world but, General Sir Francis Richard Dannatt appraising the "Playstation Generation" for their partial prowess isn't exactly helping the situation.

It depends on the cartridges. One with many balls and a little powder will feel like a thousand airpellets whereas one with less balls and maximum powder would practically blow you in half. A family friend was a farmer who made his own shot (several years ago now) and demonstrated how a shotgun could blow a small treetrunk in half with the right balances. However if he went hunting rabbits with that, there would be no rabbit for the pot, just a million bits for the birds :)

Yeah - thanks for educating me there FD. Glad you sorted that out...

I hate these kind of topics as they are mostly fantastical bull..

1. Firstly Who Says whats right and wrong and were they right..?
This is always fav question.

2. Do People always Learn from their mistakes...
No but it does depend on the context and personality

3. Why improve something that doesnt work?..
This one totaly makes me mad so many things we see in life are built on failure .. god just giveup and make a thing that works from the start

4. Telly bubbies Why o why ?
This is promoted highly by our peers as a way to stimulate our children and embed good ethics..
Yet infact it creates a fantastical image of what things are about and brings forth an irrational behaviour within our children.. during the 0 - 5 years is the peak learning phase on how to interact with others and we are teaching them Nunu and Lala :(

5. Building on 4
He used to be such a nice lad... ?
I hate to count how many times ive heard this said about people..

Do you ever think they realise it most likely their parents fault.

Firstly They Put their Child in an Ilogical World surrounded by things that will be of no major use in their later years

Then They are Exposed to a more logical enviroment but have to start learning all over again as all previous knowlegde does not relate.

Come Late Teens they are givin a fully working logical enviroment with the abilitly to change anything god no wonder they are screwed up

Actually the most hilarious part of that "scientific" article was the las (and only) figure, showing us "The relative strength of known public health threats". Just check the last item on the list and die laughing...

J. Self-examination and extent of breast cancer

ROTFL

Barney

[quote]I would think Alcohol is probably more dangerous than smoking, and certainly more so than violent video games.[quote]Not sure about that based on mortality stats. Certainly alcohol is not good and screws up lots of people even if they don't die from it, but less people die from it than smoking for sure. However, maybe alcohol encourages people to EAT and SMOKE more in which case it's like a catalyst.

Sleeping and breathing will be bad for your health next. -edit- oh wait, it is!

Lets make a list..

tobacco
eggs
the air we breathe
sleeping too long/short
tapwater
potatoes
shellfish
alcohol
drugs
computer games
all (tasty) food
wifi
cellphones
loud music
sunlight (and lack of)
Farting (it really is a 'toxic gas'!)
bacteria
chocolate
bread
cream
butter
coffee
black tea
sneezing
yawning/tiredness
salt
MSG
sugar
cinnamon
sacharin etc..
yada yada yada yakyakyak!

Im wondering when they will add "living" to the list.

well for sure NOT breathing and sleeping are bad for your health ;-)

true, however breathing and sleeping could be, if you live in "Avonmouth" nr Bristol and your bed is too soft :P

..yeah..and I dont want whats wrong with walking naked..I like it..almost everyone said , its disgusting...sighh

you could possibly catch a cold, and could infect others with your DISEASE!!!!! :O

lol

..ouu.. :)

Hey you missed stress off the list. Also household chemicals, pesticides, pollution, sunlight, cosmic rays, meteors, AIDS, zombies, rabid wild animals. Some are man made, some aren't...

Well, actually, they already are:

http://www.euro.who.int/air
(By the way, the guy behind that programme is my boss.)

One thing about sleep that I found:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/318/7195/1369/a

One hit about sleep and depression:
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/diseases/depression/sleepanddepression_000493.htm

Anyway. I think we should create some Counterstrike maps of our parliaments for training and then later go there with real guns and rifles and toast those fuckers.

Now, wasn't that the best and easiest way to prove that computer games make you a terrorist and therefor should be banned? Whoever finds cynicism in that remark can keep it. ;-)

@ grey, i saw a few zombies once on the train back from glastonbury fest... I think i was one of them...
Memory is cloudy :)

Yes..it is official, anyone who does something as daring as 'live' will die with 100% mortality rate, no escaping that so let us all lock ourselves away in a bubble, close our eyes, block our ears and do whatever we can to not experience any of the dangers life has to offer.

Meanwhile a hidden cabal of game developers slaves away under cover of darkness developing a program to embed their consciousness into a simulated environment where they can live forever as a means to rebel against their evil overlords.

Yeah. Dean Koontz said it very nicely in his book "Dark rivers of the heart":

"After all it's just life, and we're all gonna make it through it."

Been there, done that in the 90s. Yeah and the zombies smell too...

A small treetrunk does not have the same ballistic properties as human tissue. Humans are soft, and thus the majority of the bullets kinetic energy will pass though the tissue doing comparatively little damage (particularly if the bullet doesn't deform or break up), and exit the other side. A tree trunk is a hard massive target, which will absorb a much larger amount of kinetic energy. That's why you use different ammunition against people (Hollow Points) and against hard targets (like Saboted Light Armor Penetrator).

Except you don't die from smoking. You die from smoking attributed cancer (which for all anyone knows could be caused by hundreds of other chemicals we come into contact with every day). Basically if you're not predisposed to get cancer, you're going to be just fine (unfortunately the only way to find out, is to subject yourself to large amounts of carcinogens). Alcohol on the other hand will wreck havoc on your liver, eventually causing organ failure and death regardless of any outside factors.

Bacteria isn't necessarily a bad thing. They strengthen our immune system. In fact the obsession with cleanness (in the words of George Carlin, "In prison, right before they give you a lethal injection, they swab your arm with alcohol") has made us susceptible to bacterial infections our ancestors would have just shrugged off.

Yeah. I don't get that at all. How is condom use a heath threat? Are the kids choking on them or what? Never mind the "H" score which is just bizarre. Ignoring that homework and academic achievement is only marginally related (never did any homework, always aced every test), how is academic achievement possibly a health risk?

OK then mr Pedant, you don't die from alcohol you die from "alchohol attributed liver cirrhosis" :-p

ROFL
'Since the early 1960s, research evidence has been accumulating that suggests that exposure to violence in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the Internet'
cellphones! ROFL!
Sir, your cellphone is violent.
I see what they are really doing. Can you?

Yeah, laugh it up! Back in the 1960's cell phones could cause some serious blunt trauma.

my dads friend had a portable phone we used to take to steam rally's all over the UK. That thing ran on what looked like a Car battery. Pretty amazing how far we have come.

Yes i know that and you know that, but mention "bacteria" to most people and they will instantly think sickness, disease and death.

I was attempting to be "ironically sarcastic" :P
Or is it sarcastically ironic? :/

I don't know about this specific study, but one thing about a lot of studies that link videogames to increased aggression is that they only look at aggressive tendencies immediately after a session of play. I think anyone can relate to the experience of being all hyped up after an energetic play session (why reactionaries think this is different from sports increasing aggression is a side issue.) Thing is, a short term increase in aggression due to some involving activity is perfectly normal; you do something that gets your juices flowing, then an hour later you are sitting around bored. There would only be a problem if there were a long-term increase in aggressive tendencies.

I have one of those somewhere at home. Boy were they big.