Sometimes in life people do dumb things; things that are for reasons beyond logic or understanding. Some folks claim it’s because of how they were raised, some say it’s genetic, and then some say it’s because outside influences like, oh say, video games.
I’ve talked about this in depth before, how the interactive media genre is a very new and because of that, it tends to get a bad rep when people do things outside of the realm of sanity. It’s easy to blame things. In fact, it’s hardwired into our very nature to try to come up with elaborate explanations for the mysteries around us. Just look at a lot of folklores and religions and even early sciences. There’s just this little part of us that wants an answer for something that isn’t right. Many times, this manifests into crazy stories so fantastic they must be true! Just look at the whole of history and the wonders of the cosmos. We puny little humans have been struggling with our insignificance place in the universe for as long as we’ve had brains, and everything from gods to giant space spiders have been thought up to explain the whole of existence. So when seemingly rational people go out of their way to kill and murder their own kind, it not only disgusts us but confuses us. We can understand some things, like war or crimes of passion, but when an ordinary looking person just loses his senses to madness… we look for an explanation… we NEED an explanation. We start manufacturing stories to help rationalize these heinous actions of one of our own. “Something must have happened in his life,” they say in a vain attempt to understand. That’s when the blame train rolls into the station. See, as wonderful as we human folks are, we often seek the easiest explanation… which unfortunately ends up being the blame game. It’s easy to blame other people or factors for our misdeeds. A guy goes off on a murderous spree? Obviously it was the video games he played! And that’s where we are now…
Anders Breivik, if you didn’t know, is that Norwegian guy that went on a little mental vacation and murdered 77 people last year. That’s almost impossible to comprehend! Worse yet, the initial reports I read about this incident were not about how shocked people were that so many people died, rather that someone who looked like this guy could do such a thing. For whatever reason, we can wrap our brains around death and not around the killer. If you look at pictures of the guy, other than looking like a bit of an @$$, he’s seemingly unremarkable. This guy could be your neighbor or someone you hang out with for flag football. And I think that’s what makes people want an external factor to be the cause of his breakdown even more. It’s because we don’t want our normal Joe Everybody from Anytown USA to be some kind of mass murderer. It hurts our brains to think that something safe or ordinary in our eye is really dangerous, and thus, it’s something else causing the problem. Which is why, with this whole incident, our old goat friend, video games, came back into the limelight. Apparently this gentleman played quite a bit of Call of Duty, a shooting game, before going out and using a real gun on real people. He claimed that he used this game as practice to “hone his skills” in preparation for his slaughter. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the game caused his violence. In fact, many people get a release of aggression when playing games like these (except when they’re getting pwened by me! ooooooh). But the point is, the chicken came second here; the game was not responsible for making him kill people, he just decided to use this in a way beyond its original intent.
And then it came out that he played WoW. He played a LOT of wow! Like 16hrs a day a lot. (well ok, that’s not so bad… lol!) Which raised many eyebrows and, of course, became another scape goat for his anger and aggression. But to our rescue he came! Swooping down like some sort of super hero, this obvious gleaming man of impeccable honor and duty to his fellow man, set the record straight! World of Warcraft did NOT influence him and his hatefilled ways at all! Aaaaand now I’m pissed! You sir are NOT a spokesman for our cause. You are the instigator for the entire media frenzy and it’s bloodthirst for the eradication of videogame violence and even the medium as a whole. By making such proclamations publicly, all you do is bring attention and focus to it. It’s like standing in front of a graffiti’d wall and telling the cop you didn’t do it as the officer walks by. Yeah, see how far that will get you! Sheesh!
So comeon! He is nothing more than a sociopath. Nothing more, nothing less. His brain is wired wrong. Games, movies, music, writings… all these effect him differently, causing him to seeth with hate. And beyond that, anything will do this to him. It’s not any one medium’s fault. It has nothing to do with media at all. Saying videogames made him into a murderer is like saying the number two causes clouds to rain. It’s pure absurdity! They are completely uncorrelated events and thus, not connected in any way. A normally functioning person doesn’t become a killer because of books or music or games. An emotionally disturbed person just might. And that’s not even saying having bad wiring causes bad things. Sure, it makes it more difficult and you probably need to seek counseling if you find pleasure in putting cats into blenders or watching an action movie gives you ideas rather than a brief bit of entertainment… but it’s a choice thing. People aren’t the sum of their programming. We have choice beyond our function. (back to my droids thing I guess) And ultimately, as much as we hate to just admit it, the blame falls solely upon us, the individual, for our actions. It is up to us what we do. And no amount of conditioning, genetics, or circumstance can stake claim for what we do. So the point still stands, Occam’s Razor, the answer was simple and staring us in the face the entire time… The guy’s an idiot. A sociopathic idiot. And as much as you try to bend the idea of outside influence to explain his actions, at the end of the day, it’s just him, an idiot, a sociopath, a guy who didn’t control his actions… not couldn’t.
Source: Escapist
The best any kind of media can really do is give people ideas. Brains are tricky, sometimes they think random thoughts that come from nowhere. I have my “stupid thoughts” all the time, ranging from silly to abstract to violent, but just because I have the mental image of pushing the distracted talking on the phone person down the stairs doesn’t mean I will. It’s like that thing where standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down, a part of your brain considers what it’d be like to jump.
As for ages and M-rated games, I think there should still be restrictions at the counter. A young adolescent should still need parental consent for this mature game, be it violence or sexual explicitness for the same reason they would need it at a movie theater. It’s acting, it’s all fake; but at least it lends power to the parents to decide what the children may and may not do. If the parents don’t want their children exposed to this, they can at least know it will be more difficult for the kids to get around it. If parents don’t care, they can just go with the kid to the movies or to buy the games.
As promised, arcane mage thoughts:
It feels familiar. If you like it on live, you’ll like the mop version too I would think. Arcane charges is the mechanic whose name I forgot but is basically an expanded version of the arcane blast debuff.
Arcane blast is basically the same, more damage and higher mana cost per charge, still unsustainable. The major difference is that the cast time is not reduced per stack anymore. It’ll be much harder to reach the GCD cap because of this.
Arcane missals is now something you’ll really want to hit, it too generates arcane charges, the damage of AM is increase by your charges, and currently still doesn’t cost mana (FREE DPS wooo). Also, it stacks up to two times so you won’t lose as many doing AoE. If you use the in game proc notifications on live, the AM one is update to reflect this. When you only have 1 stack, only the left one shows, and when you have two, both the arcs you’re used to seeing will show. It’s a nice quality of life change (that I kept really wishing they would do for frost, FoF is in the top slot and BF takes up the two curves, ugh)
Arcane Barrage consumes the charges, is the only spell that consumes charges, it’s damage scales with charges, and also hits additional targets per charge (one charge means ABar will hit two targets, four charges [max] will hit five targets). Let me tell you, ABar at four stacks hits like a truck, especially on dungeon trash (hit ALL the things!) and boss adds (it is so useful for temple of the jade serpent large weak trash pulls [biggest has about 7 mobs in it] and every single boss has adds that need burning).
Not mentioned in the arcane charge tooltip but somewhere else instead is that Arcane explosion ALSO generates charges and scales with damage. You don’t get to leave melee range for large packs of mobs, but at least your don’t have to do that annoying AB to 4 AE AE AE AE AE AB AE AE AE AE AB… I found the best AoE rotation to be AEx4 then stand back aimed at most of the mobs to barrage the center one and get all 5 barrages to hit.
With the loss of mage armor giving us mana, we got a new passive, nether attunement (not arcane mage specific btw). What it does is increase your mana regeneration and the amount of mana you get from “mage spells” based on your haste. Arcane specific again, it means you REALLY want haste. More regen AND being able to to cycle the rotation faster, all gravy as far as I can see. Mage spells I believe means evocation (using it at 35% like usual filled me up before the final tick which confused me until I read nether attunement again) and the level 90 talents. I don’t think it affects mana gem because those are items. (mana gem doesn’t give a SP bonus anymore btw, you can use it on cd with zero regard for your arcane power CD)
Ice bubble as an arc mage is really nice, so much less squishy.
Like I felt with my frost spec, the bomb spells feel awkwardish. They feel kinda added in for the sake of being in. Half the time I forgot to hit it. My favorite is nether tempest because it’s instant and doesn’t need to be spread like living bomb does and therefore requires less setup and allows you to move on with doing the rest of the rotation you care about.
My overall impression was positive, the spec feels very polished, and after the eventual numbers tuning (too early in beta still trying to work out some basic rotations for some classes before they tinker with the small stuff), I can see this being a very engaging spec as is in MoP.
For giggles: hilarious mage bug. The new spell alter time has a little bit of an issue.
For reference, this is the tooltip:
Alter the fabric of time, causing the caster to return to their current location, health, mana, and conditions after 4 sec.
Effect negated if the caster dies within the 4 sec before the effect occurs or moves too far away.
It’s a nifty spell, and is really fun to use (use it before you clear your charges, it wears off, CLEAR THEM AGAIN MUAHAHAHA fun ABar burst; I can hear the frost mage QQ already two FoF’d ice lances, use alter time, use them, TIME LAPSE, use them again. At my gear level, that’s a little over 200k damage in 6 seconds assuming all four crit *drool*)
HOWEVER
It wipes raid buffs off you no matter where you are, I’d use it and all I would have on are trinket procs, the mage procs, and my armor spell. Arcane brilliance was wiped, and in my dungeons, so was mark of the wild, blessing of might, etc.
That wasn’t even the trippy part.
I can’t replicate this outside dungeons (well, dungeon, all we have is temple of the jade serpent right now), but, in combat, out of combat, doesn’t matter, when you use it, it does what it should; but… it for some reason also drops you to about 3% health. As funny as it is to give your healer a heart attack, it’s deadly if you don’t watch yourself.
OMG. Ok… that was a lot more words than I had in mind…
I give up. I can’t write anything concisely.
To be completely honest, the fact that mass media (and media in general) can give ideas to people cn be either the best or the worst thing, depending on both the mesage(s) and reciever(s).
Yay, I’m not the only one who makes wall-o-text :D
I agree with you on both the arcanist part and the brainy part. I really do like the changes to mage mechanics, almost so much that I might change my main from huntard to spellslinger. Tho on the other hand, my huntard is the one I’ve collected all fun toys and pets on…. Maby if I started playing 16h/day, I might get to enjoy both equally much.
As for the brainy part - I have the same thing, all sorts of weird thoughts pop into my head and, just for the sake of exploring every aspect there is, I generally let them come and I think them through before dismissing them as bad ideas. The important part is just to dismiss any idea which will lead to harm to others - but if I don’t concider them thoroughly, I won’t know whether they will lead to harm to others (well, might be exception to all ideas which directly starts with violence - kinda hard to not see the harm part there).
lol, I foresee many evil deeds with time warping!
nice write up again niv!!
we all get crazy things that pop into our heads… usually following being in a supermarket with an overly obnoxious kid behind you in line… typically involving axes and lava… but the difference between a normal person and a psychopath is the acting on part.
OMHG! Videogames made Coffin write typos! ban!
Ok, that was not a nice comment. Still, I think that part of me wanted to hit the ban them all option in the poll (not because they’ll makes kill people, mind you, but because videogames can have much more subtle effects on a person’s psychis, such as social dificulties or isolation.)
I think that psycho will be given a full pardon when his lawyer asks “who amongst you has never wished to throw manners, tolerance and patience out of the window and kill the whole wide world?” and no one will be able to say “I didn’t”.
lol, typos are the least of my worries. XD
ha! the ol “he who hasn’t wanted to throw a stone may cast the first one” defense… think that could get just about anyone out of jail!
I cannot really add much to today’s topic, I think you said most of it in your post and I can only say that I agree.
Well, I can of course add some thoughts. I would want to believe that no person is born evil and that even a sociopath must have had a chance somewhere in life to take the right path but instead chose the wrong one. I do not mean it in a way where people should look for a scapegoat or for a rational explanation for the horrible acts which some people do, I simply mean that there has got to be something that made the connections in a person’s head to go haywire – that is, there has to be something we can learn when it comes to how to raise our children so we can guide them away from the evil side. For some reason they must have started out good and then started hating instead of loving; it could be so “simple” that they never understood that their parents really loved them and therefore filled the void in their hearts with violence and hate (I do believe that every parent tries their best, but that the affection might not always be easy to understand for the child).
TBH, I don’t really know what makes a person hate so much that they resort to the evil side. I mean, I do feel hate (at quite many occasions), but I would never act upon it – could be because my parents did their very best to teach me to solve my problems by talking and to be a fair person; could also be because I’ve simply realized that if I resort to violence to solve my problems, someone else will sooner or later consider me to be a problem and use violence on me: what I send out will sooner or later come back.
Although, I guess it’s just in my belief that everyone is born good – I might of course be wrong; there is a possibility that some people are born evil. But I also believe that as long as we believe that there are good inside everyone, sooner or later non violence ought to prevail. I just wish it’s sooner rather than later, we’ve been killing eachother since the dawn of mankind and it’s becomming sickening to see that people never fully grow up mentally. If I ever figure out how to end all wars, I promice I’ll climb the highest building with a megaphone an scream my lungs dry.
I guess what happens is that somewhere along the way they start making the wrong kinds of associations in their brains and lack the empathy to stay their imagination. at this point, there becomes a disconnect between what people do and how they see it effect others. the further the disconnect, the more heinous the acts become.
as amazing as the human mind is, there is some really crazy stuff it can allow us to do. hopefully someday with some future research they’ll be able to figure out some of the complexities to help prevent some of this craziness, but that might be wishful thinking.
well…the number 2 actually DOES cause clouds to rain.
Also, Catcher in the Rye inspired the JFK assassination…so, books must inspire murders too!
In all honesty, I don’t believe in choice though. I really do think you are the sum of your experiences, just not in the way people see it. People, i think, put too much stock in individuality; they think that they are who they are, and that outside influences don’t affect them. They see it as a weakness, but it’s just fact, even from a simple physical point! The photons reaching your eyes cause electrons to be fired into your brain, and at the end of the day, that changes SOMETHING, no matter how subtle. People just refuse to look at the themes, instead of the surface material.
I won’t get too deep into this bit here, being the internet is the prime place for controversial topics to burst into flames, but I honestly think that a lot of the Bible was misinterpretations of original stories, or just stories invented to scare ancient peasants. If you look beyond the spots where they explicitly define Satan as evil, he seems like a good guy to me. Garden of Eden for example, we’re living in this “paradise” and if we stay away from knowledge, we’re fine. Satan “tricked” Eden into exploring, into finding more knowledge, and in reaction to this God destroyed the paradise… Who looks like a bad guy there? Also, hell sounds a lot like the Nordic afterlife to me, a warm fire and indulging in all of life’s pleasures. /rant
ANYWAY, video games probably do instill violence in some cases, but they’re just one part of a bigger recipe. The effect is there, but it’s not “people are shooting each other on the screen!” because people know that part is fake, they can see it and dismiss it. The effect is the emotions that come with it, or other similar subtle things. I bet some of Superman’s popularity comes from the fact that his arch nemesis is a rich genius, why is the story about a jock beating up a rich nerd? Seems like what a lot of people would love to do to their bosses. It’s all in the subtext, but people don’t like to look that deep because it challenges the world view they’ve built. Built out of assumptions like the ones you yourself describe.
lol, good show!
I think it’s a bit more of a combo move between nature, nurture, and choice. I wouldn’t discount “choice” as an overall ending factor in the outcome of situations, however you are right that quite a bit of that final choice is made up from the sum of your experiences. conditioning would be an excellent example of this. sort of like, limiting your multiple choice options. again, I would like to say, to me anyways, the final verdict of an action comes down to the individual, though reviewing all the conditions leading up to that point may curb our view of that person/action. meaning, if the guy had a bad life, we can really feel sorry of the outcome, though it doesn’t excuse his actions.
lol, indeed… I’m probably not going to touch religion here with a 10ft poll, but lets just say a lot of it is our crazy attempt at explaining and controlling.
I mentioned once before that there was a study that said games DO increase violent tendencies, but only when it’s exposed to children younger than the threshold of understanding fantasy vs reality. which those with sociopathic tendencies probably don’t have a good grasp on that anyways… thus… crazies. I can’t say it wont make people want to go on a stabbing spree every day, but normal people wont and those that are already on the edge will be effected more.
It is a sad world we live in where when we step into the unknown territory ( in this case for Mainstream media to try and enter the gaming world ) we look for easy wayouts.
I know MANY gamers who have a great outlook in-life than say , those who study on ”important” classes like Lawyering etc…. and that SCARES people.
In the past, we were deemed weak,anti-social and living in our world. But suddenly when our world pour into theirs ( not talking about his sick murderer here ) and we proved our world sounds A LOT better than they currently have ( just look at the news and you will understand ) ….they wanted to keep a tight leash on us and stop the influence of Gaming.
What is a better way to do that then blaming the said games with some sort of audrocity…. like Murder. Hell in America, nudity is the first cause of many games’ ,like ME1 , critisized to death and people actually advertise the ”violent ” games….and then when this kind of thing happens somewhere around the world….and instead of ACTUALLY making a research about the said murderer…they look at the easiest solution…” he is a new generation soo he must’ve played the popular games somehow . Lets blame it ! ” …..
People are too complex to find a right answer… and one line from my fav villian Joker sums it up … ” For a person to break, all he need is one really bad day ”….. and I am not talking about ” Damn I lost this arena match,….must murder neighbours ! ” . I am talking about something that can cause trauma and so forth.
In fact , the current ”people in power” are MORE responsible for these sickening acts than any video game in history COMBINED…. The greed and the need to control people, actually force people into their breaking point. Sure there are genetic problems ,mental sickness…or flat our pure evil soul ( more often than not we ignore this fact, as you say, because we don’t want to think of Some people CAN be this unreasonably evil ) but the stress and the pressure can break even the most strongest man.
Just look at the protests and riots around the world. Did those people played games all day ? No . So that must tell you something.
You cannot focus on a ”personal interest” in case of such an act. I say this because I feel like everytime a youngster commit such a sickening act, we all get the same answer ” Games must’ve done it ! ”….while they leave out the REAL reasons from his family, his school life, the pressure he might’ve felt to flatout being a maniac.
I HIGHLY doubt ANYONE with a right mind will get affected by games to commit such henious acts…and the key word is ”right mind” since if the person is wrong-minded to begin with , you can’t really blame anything but him….
lol, well said! unfortunately it’s those people with the wrong minds that give bad reps to everything. and even worse, there are very bored people out there looking to jump on the first connection between games and murder. hell, I bet they’re working hard right now to somehow connect the holocaust to duck hunt. a bit extreme I know, but that’s the unfortunate truth; that no matter what atrocity happens from now on, it will somehow be linked to some sort of media and not the degree of tardediness of the individual.