video games the new universal scapegoat

[takao]

so the big success of GTA:San Adreas and the big fuss made about it in the media i'll ask here (instead of the gaming forum) because of the "social issues" involved
who else is pissed off about the constant rambling media about such things like "you can run over innocent people or beat them with baseball bats" jada jada bla bla ... they simply replaced doom with GTA and repeat it all over that it is increasing the violence and what not

so because i'm tired of it i'm, for once and all, try to confess what you can do outside of egoshooters or such obvious parodies like the GTA series (thing i personally done once or twice ;):

- sunk an US aircraft carrier with a MiG 21 during the vietnam war (Dogfight)
- sunk unarmed freigth convoys and battleships lying in port with torpedos (silent hunter I+II , aces of the deep)
-leveled bagdad using 2000 pound bombs and the unlimited ammo option, destroyed the panama channel (F15 game series)
-invaded poland at least 20 times, washington 3 times with the wehrmacht, used strategic bombing against cities (panzer general series)
-leveled small to mid sized cities with heavy artillery "just to be safe" (steel panthers series)
-successfully used nuclear weapons as economy hitting, strategic weapons as first strike weapons just before the enemy can develop SDI(Civilization II+III),razed occupied cities (Civ III), and starved population of cities to death on purpose or poisoned the water supplies (civ2)
-used biological weapons of mass destruction and commited genocide (Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri)
-took the russian kremil (sp?), held the normandy beaches etc. and shot surrendered enemy soldiers (close combat I-V)
- sacrified lots of the cheapest infantry i could find to soften up fortified positions, to clear mine fields or to keep the enemy under constant pressure to win simply through superior economy (countless games)
- converted people/regions of other believes through force or used religion as a reason for war (europa universalis)
-assimilated/destroyed inhabitated planets (star trek and other space games
-took slaves to let them work in my cities (Civilization: call to power)
- etc etc. lsit goes on and on

and yet the media gets all crazy about games where you can beat somebody with a baseball bat or run over with a car ... somehow that gets you more media attention than making a game where you can kill more people per minute than through playing GTA for a whole year nonstop

[redeye be]

I think the main difference is the fact that almost everybody can get a car, a baseball bat or a gun.
Most of the other things are only options when you're president/king/emperor or very, very, very wealthy. I don't think most gamers are ;).

Hey, maybe it's all a ruse to make war more acceptable in the public's eyes.

I like San Andreas as a game. I bought my PS2 for playing GT. GTA:SA is the only other game i occasionally play anymore. Can you hit the corpses in those war/civ-sim games? Do you see them burn? ;)

Gaming has been all fun, although i do feel lucky i started playing more depraved games (as GTA:SA is) at a more mature age. I wonder what i'll say to my kids (if i ever have them) when they ask me to buy GTAextreme:World for their PS5. Although i don't agree with games being the source of all evil, everything you see and do forms your personality. At a younger age you're much more prone to influence.

[takao]

I think the main difference is the fact that almost everybody can get a car, a baseball bat or a gun.
Most of the other things are only options when you're president/king/emperor or very, very, very wealthy. I don't think most gamers are ;).

well that might be a point but those were just examples of things i've done with the controller or mouse in hand by myself ;) and GTA san andreas is hardly something new.. how many "run over people with cars" games are out there ? i remember playing one on my pc a decade ago


I like San Andreas as a game. I bought my PS2 for playing GT. GTA:SA is the only other game i occasionally play anymore. Can you hit the corpses in those war/civ-sim games? Do you see them burn? ;)

here it's the exact opposite: when playing GTA 3 for the first time i was like "that's what they made out of the GTA series ? you've gotta to be kidding me" i never touched the other two...
andi guess you've never palyed close combat with all it's ambushing, screaming soldiers,flamethrowers and piling up of bloody bodies (who don't dissapear during the fight)


Gaming has been all fun, although i do feel lucky i started playing more depraved games (as GTA:SA is) at a more mature age. I wonder what i'll say to my kids (if i ever have them) when they ask me to buy GTAextreme:World for their PS5. Although i don't agree with games being the source of all evil, everything you see and do forms your personality. At a younger age you're much more prone to influence.

i don't know i feel kinda different for me: lots of new games feel like "been there, done that" that's why i don't know any 'gamers' my age who likes the new GTA or the other game where you can kill cops or whatever: wow guess the media completly missed out SWAT 2 don't they ?
i think games are more shaped around the desires of people and not the other way around

the ratings are there for a reason: they don't say how difficult a game is but what age you _should_ be... sadly those ratings are sometimes simply wrong and get ignored

[Lyle]

When I was growing up, Dungeons and Dragons was the scapegoat for everything that was wrong with America's youth. Then, for a while, it was rap music. Right now, it's video games (notice how it's never, never irresponsible parents?).

I haven't quite figured out the timing of these cycles yet, but we should be due for a new scapegoat pretty soon, and then you'll be able to play GTA with much less scorn. ;)