| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 5:31:59 PM | | Have you seen the types of games kids play these days where they spend hours upon countless hours running around in a virtual world killing people. The graphics becoming so life like that it's as though it's reality for a child. I personally find this a bit disturbing how desentizing this must to these impressionable kids. Anyone else worried about this ? | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 5:47:57 PM | Desentizing children and making better soldiers are two completely different things. I think these games have a very negative effect on the development of children in some ways. Most of the school shooters have had two things in common... They played these video games and many were on behavior modification medication. I am sure there are many other factors involved, but I doubt those two factors played no part at all.
Your average soldier in modern countries has self discipline, works with a team, follows orders (but not blindly) and has the ability to solve problems. The countries with very unprofessional militaries are also ones wrought with poverty and not to many video games addictions occur there. Any large organizations are going to have a few bad apples, but compare our military with almost any others and we stand head and shoulders above them in most regards, not just firepower. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 6:08:34 PM | I doubt it. I can see it making them actually perhaps worse soldiers, because in the games, you never really die. You die, but you don't die. Our military is great training people though, I bet they would get over the attachment to the videos.
That said, I don't like those war games much at all. My kids don't have an XBox or a PS2. They had a Playstation, but their dad bought it for them, kept it at his house, and he broke it. I'm not in any hurry to get them a new one, either. I think too many kids spend way too much time on video games. Nobody wants to go out and really play anymore. Kinda sad. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 6:53:27 PM | The computer oriented changes in the way the military is doing things (UAVs like predator) actually benefit from the improved eye hand and fine motor coordination video games promote. Though that has nothing to do with the content of the game. If your not capable of separating a video game from reality then you'll have the same problem with TV and books and movies etc. I'm sure you'd agree there are movies just as violent as video games. If you don't think there's that level of violence in books try reading the old testament.
Really ? Explain Iraq ?
The issues in Iraq have been strategic/political bundlers not anything to do with individual soldiers. Then again there was that stupidity at the jail. But there was an experiment that was done with college kids in the '60s(?) that shows how easy that can happen. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 7:08:32 PM | | ^^^ yeah okay I'm scared if this is how people really think. wow needless undeclared wars being fought by kids who don't know better run by a government that has absloutely zero oversight has recklessly been allowed to kill over a million innocent iraqi's for absolutely no reason and you defend this ? Just turn off your TV man . You are so hopelessly brainwashed by the media's U.S. propaganda it makes me cringe. Then when these kids get to be old enough to have a coffee in the morning and want to watch the news what happens ? the whole mess get's reinforced by patriotic propaganda and people believe what they are told by the shills at the pentagon run media. Sad very sad. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 7:12:22 PM | 1.) Violent video games come with age ratings excluding young children from buying and playing them, just like movies.
2.) No commercial video game could ever be confused by a child (or adult) of even vague sanity for reality.
3.) Violent video games in which you handle guns do not teach you how to aim, load or fire said guns, just as racing games do not teach you how to drive and flight simulators do not teach you how to fly.
4.) Violent video games do not desensitise murder. When a character is destroyed in a video game they fall down and vanish only to reappear when you reset the game. At best this would a vague interpretation of murder, akin to a child playing with action figures. (I would also be reluctant to use the term “murder” in appliance to all violent video games. Do soldiers consider themselves murderers? Would a killing in an army game be termed murder?)
5.) No video game sells based on the content of violence alone. The GTA series sells because of its sandbox gameplay; the Halo series sells because of its application of online social interaction; ironically the Pokemon series sells because of its strategic depth. Only psychopaths seek out violence for the sake of violence alone.
6.) It should already be apparent but despite numerous studies video games have never been proven as a propagator of violence; neither have movies, songs, comic books (graphic novels) or novels. The number one coinciding factor in all high school shootings is that the killers had access to guns and willingness to use them against others. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 8:45:30 PM |
wow needless undeclared wars being fought by kids who don't know better run by a government that has absloutely zero oversight has recklessly been allowed to kill over a million innocent iraqi's for absolutely no reason and you defend this ?
Actually my informations a but more first hand than that. There's a guy at work and my brother who were both deployed to Iraq. I think you need to re-read my reply. I believe there are threads in the politics forum for discussing the Iraq situation. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 9:02:04 PM | | OP, I was thinking , depending upon the reality of the killing you do in the game, the gore shown, etc, it's a possibility yes. If you are "virtually" able to blow someone's brains all over the wall behind them, and it's shown to you quite clearly how that will look and (in a sense) "feel", I think you may as you grow up with that become inured to graphic violence , at least. It won't make you a guaranteed killer (obviously or we'd have hundreds of kids running around like that) but it's the desensitization that is probably something to be aware of I think. Also , there are some movies (I'm totally anti-any sort of censorship so don't get me wrong, just saying....) where the violence level has been taken to positively nearly pornographic levels. I mean, Hostel or Hostel II? The second one could have been damn near x rated for brutality, IMO. And to a lot of teens it's just something to rent and stare at over the weekend, in between the graphically violent video games you mentioned in which they actually get to "do" the killing. It's a desensitization, to a point, if nothing else. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/8/2008 9:32:17 PM | Well, I can't answer your question regarding the making of better soldiers. I do know however, that there's been research done on the brain development of kids who are gamers, as they become adults.
What it tells us is that there's a part of the brain that is responsible for evaluating and responding to stimulus. As kids get older, the massive numbers of daily experiences that occur in those earlier years, enable them to take action and make decisions that also include an emotional component to them. This, in a simplier sense, becomes the 'habit' and 'response' of the brain.
Small children who are into gaming for hours and hours on end, are well practiced at the 'instant response'; given a visual stimulus. The critical piece that's missing is the thought processes that normally happen in real life situations. The thinking, evaluating, feeling, problem-solving, decision-making, action habit, is replaced by instantaneous reaction; that becomes the 'habit' of the brain.
I don't believe everything I read but there's more than one reasearch opinion supporting this and it makes some sense to me. I would be very hesitant to say that better soldiers are the outcome of kids' intense gaming. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/9/2008 4:53:50 AM | | I think video games are training the soldiers of the future, but not in the way that most of you are thinking. It's not about desensitising them to violence and making it easier for them to kill. AppleGeek understood when he mentioned the UAV Preditor. It and others based off a similer design are unmanned aircrafts that can be used for surveilence and bombing. There are also the robots used by bomb squads and SWAT teams which are being improved as I type this. These are what video games are training people for. The U.S. (and other industrialized nations who can afford it) will eventually have very few real people in actual dangerous areas. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/9/2008 5:14:11 AM | America's Army teaches teenagers/young adults to become better soldiers.
It was designed to. Also why it's free. And sponsored by the Army. 
Join the army now!
http://www.americasarmy.com/
Also I could have sworn video games first started through someone creating a very simple simulation they thought the army could use.
And I would think that most people who play war games are old enough or close to being old enough to be drafted anyway. And if video games weren't around the younger children would be playing cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers. Pow, pow, pow! Bang yer dead! | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/9/2008 6:52:02 AM |
I personally find this a bit disturbing how desentizing this must to these impressionable kids. Anyone else worried about this ?
I find myself agreeing with Rated10 (message 7).
As I was growing up I was taught how to pluck chickens, pheasants and skin rabbits etc by a uncle of mine...didn't make me want to go out and skin and disembowel people!
My children are certainly impressionable (having ASD traits) and I'm not a particular fan of game consoles however I have to be honest and say I've seen the positive side to them.
E.G. my youngest lad has certain motor co ordination problems, his being allowed to use it is one of the ways that helps with that. Ok he's not playing adult shoot em ups (is a major lego star wars fan lol).
However his older brother does play games such as Halo, Mortal Kombat etc (is a fan of the "classics")...and he has one of the most anti war stances I know! His retort to criticism of the "violence" of the games he plays is "don't be daft, it's only a game!"
His views on "real" violence are as a result of what he has seen and read from various media, witnessing an real life incident, and from in depth discussions with myself and his father, thus making up his own mind on the subject. In other words he distinguishes the difference between games and reality. Games have not desensitised him.
At the end of the day it's individual parents who decide what is appropriate...and (should) monitor what their child/teen can deal with...and as with all things it is not a one size fits all decision.
Plus I think we have to remember previous generations have had so called violent alternatives to video games....cowboys n Indians, action man, pro wrestling etc as well as numerous films, books and so on (not just horror ones but genres like Sci Fi, cartoons, comedies too).....think about what Tom n Jerry do to each other! lol.
Were these things responsible for creating violent episodes in individual people?
Not to mention violence is portrayed everywhere we look these days....around us...so do we lock the kids in the house and not allow them to look out the windows?....In the news...do we restrict that too? | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/9/2008 11:26:32 AM | Personally, I'm sick of video games being the scapegoat for problems of today's youth. Sounds vaguely familiar to parents claming music was corrupting the youth of teh 60's/70's era... something to blame shortcomings on.
I;ve played video games all my life inlcluding *gasp* first person shooters... I also own and use firearms, been doingt hat all my life too. Is it a shocker then that I have no personal desire to walk into a school of my peers and open fire?
Maybe instead of focusing on how "guns" are bad and trying to shelter your children from them, perpetuating their ignorance in the matter, think about what it takes for a gun to kill someone... know it yet? No? It's actually the person holding the gun and not the gun at all... same as say, if that person was holding an axe would it be the axes fault?
Wait... what was I talking about... oh ya, if your child doesn't understand the concept that video games are just that, GAMES, then I think you should turn your attention from the TV and look in the direction of a mirror. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/9/2008 4:02:51 PM | | I was recently at a friends house and her kids were playing a game called " Blood" after you shot the guy in the head his head blew off and if you knew how to manipulate the contoller you could use the guys head like a soccer ball and kick it around the room ? These kids were having a great time kicking this bloody head with spinal cord attached around that room for a long time laughing their heads off ? I thought it was a bit disturbing. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/9/2008 4:25:44 PM | Blood is rated M for mature.
That's the parents mistake for letting the kids play that game.
That's basically like the parents saying hey kids here's Red Dragon.
Have fun watching this movie.
Do many parents think the ESRB ratings are not important?
That all video game genres are suitable for children?
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/10/2008 3:06:03 AM |
Have you seen the types of games kids play these days where they spend hours upon countless hours running around in a virtual world killing people. The graphics becoming so life like that it's as though it's reality for a child. I personally find this a bit disturbing how desentizing this must to these impressionable kids. Anyone else worried about this ?
It depends on what sort of hold they have on reality.
I've played a lot of relatively disturbing games since I was little. Violence in real life still bothers me. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/10/2008 4:49:16 AM | >>>The graphics becoming so life like that it's as though it's reality for a child
And the ability to try and try again reinforces that its not reality.
I don't think its the kids need to be reminded what is reality.
>>> Most of the school shooters have had two things in common...
Define most. Hell, name one school shooter in the last 5 years that actually played video games on a regular basis. | |
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| Do you believe that Video games are programming children to be better soldiers ?
Posted: 5/10/2008 4:54:58 AM | >>>I was recently at a friends house and her kids were playing a game called " Blood" after you shot the guy in the head his head blew off and if you knew how to manipulate the contoller you could use the guys head like a soccer ball and kick it around the room
They were playing Blood? Like, recently?
Thats odd- Blood came out in '97.......you were watching them play a game that was released over a decade ago.....
Eitherway, it was rated M for Mature- so it is not intended for kids. If a parent gives their kid this game, they are a bad parent- that doesn't mean the company that made it is a bad company, because they didn't make it with children in mind- over half of all video game purchases are made by adults for themselves- why shouldn't there be adult centered entertainment? | |
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