Let's play "Find the dumbass quote of the day"

URL: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-06-09-war-video-games-inside_x.htm - “Big-selling war games may carry bigger cost”

Today’s ultrarealistic games such as Warrior play like an interactive version of Black Hawk Down. However, some observers are critical of the combat-gaming trend, saying the games can mislead players into viewing war as fun, particularly among the target audience of young men. (Related story: War games launch all-out sales assault)

Mary Spio, 31, who served in the U.S. Air Force during the first Gulf War, thinks video games can create a bloodlust. “What we saw in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was the tip of the iceberg — it was a glimpse of a generation of war gamers coming of age,” says Spio, now the pop culture editor for One2One Magazine.

“Video games that allow players to kill real human beings are desensitizing generations of American society,” she says.

Emphasis added.

I also like the idea that because I play “war games,” I want to torture and sodomize people.

The second I looked at Lyndie England, I thought to myself “There’s a girl who plays a lot of counterstrike”. You guys remember the naked pyramid level, right? It’s all right there!

They have great broadband in the shack in West Virginia she lived in, right?

The fact that the writer believes “real human beings” live inside video games is somewhat disturbing.

Makes you wonder if SHODAN is somehow involved…

You know I always suspected that all those years of playing Avalon Hill’s Third Reich were going to turn me into a tyranical meglomaniac. Whenever I tell my kids to turn off the T.V. it’s confirmed that I am a dictator. At least that’s the feedback I get.

“Video games that allow players to kill real human beings are desensitizing generations of American society,” she says.

Yeah, you know, maybe if I was actually killing REAL HUMAN BEINGS when I play FSW, instead of little animated polygons, he’d have a fucking argument. Talk about irresponsible “journalism”.

Playing too much Avalon Hill will drive anyone insane. I guess their old wargame rules were better than SPI’s, though.

“Video games that allow players to kill real human beings are desensitizing generations of American society,”

The more I think about, the more I realize that she is correct. I think we need to lobby for a law that says that all potential targets in video and computer games must be droids or robots. And the must say dumb things like Roger Roger so there is no mistaking them for stormtroopers.

Yeah, during the first gulf war, a guy in my platoon jumped up and yelled “Time out! Time out! Get back in your hole, fuckers! You’re suppressed, you can’t move!”

Too much Squad Leader, I think. Damn rule mongers.

Stereotypes aren’t serving you well. Seymour Hersh specifically reported in the NYer that she lived in a trailer.

I stumbled across the article on Google news. I think I got about halfway before I quit. Same old tired crap.

Many Europeans who came through on a press tour asked me, “How is such an anti-war game doing in the American press?” You see what you want to see. FSW is probably the most sensitive portrayal of war and its effects on people that I have ever seen in a game. She doesn’t know that because she has never played it.

This is probably true, like with over-exposure to violence in any media. Of course the rest of the article was basically hogwash.

How do they fit them all in such a little box?

Pie4Foo wrote:
Quote:
“Video games that allow players to kill real human beings are desensitizing generations of American society,” she says.

This is probably true, like with over-exposure to violence in any media. Of course the rest of the article was basically hogwash

It’s an odd contradiction really. For those of us living in liberal democracies (and even some of the oligarchies and kleptocracies) the human condition is no longer defined by daily contact with violence or the threat of violence. We no longer live in a red meat world but we are exposed to graphic violence everyday in a virtual way through our media. It’s the same old feminist debate about pornography. Is it an inciting factor or a pressure release vent? Personally, I still believe in free will, the ability to choose between right and wrong, and the duty of the individual to accept responisiblity for consequences of their actions.

I agree completely. I’m not talking about inciting or causing, I’m talking about desensitizing. That’s a huge difference. Senstivity to violence is a passive trait which can be dulled not an active trait which can be encouraged. I can’t recall one rational article saying that violent media does not desensitize the viewers, and believe me I’ve looked. And again, this has nothing to do with causation.

Dude. So wrong. Dude. No, dude. No.