Don Wang wrote:PA donated $10k and Jack Thompson did not and PA declares Jack loses. If Jack Thompson donated $10k and PA did not does the gaming industry lose?
No, because it was a lose-lose situation with Jack. Jack more or less re-nigged on his promise, and then PA step in and says "fuck it, we'll donate the money just to prove how much of a jackass you are." So, if Jack actually donated in the first place, he might have had a little bit more creditability, but he still would have lost his "bet".
Don Wang wrote:The fact that gamers need to talk about some overreactive guy and celebrate with a 'we sure pwned that guy' with an audience that consists of only people who already believe they are right to reassure that their position is the right one is a good sign of the problem.
Excuse me? This sort of thing is done all the time. It's called "discrediting an asshole that happens to get media attention". Unforunately, there are plenty of "assholes that happen to get media attention" and not enough "discrediting".
Don Wang wrote:The gamers are the ones who are deluded, and this time they happened to find someone more deluded than they are. It's always the parent's problem to take care of the children and no one else's problem.
Well, yeah. Duh. If parents aren't taking care of their children and watching what they do, then obviously it's the parent's fault. Why are you even arguing this? Or are you somebody who falls within the "society should be designed around protecting our children" crowd?
Don Wang wrote:After all it's the Japanese parents who are supposed to tell their children to stay away a stupid amount of manga/game/anime that focuses on Japan's unhealthy obsession with underage school girls. It's the Korean parent's fault that people in Korea played in Cyber Cafes until they died too.
Now, you're just going into the other extreme. The former example is up to the parents to try to block that sort of stuff from their TV/Internet, etc. But, kids are probably going to see that sort of thing anyway. Whether somebody considers it unhealthy or not is irrelevant. Society is society. There is no changing society, as it's a macro-psychological force, so no one individual can change it. Trying to convince people to change society is futile, because it like convincing people to change their entire personality. However, law can change that behavior by force, but it's entirely unhealthy for society if it goes against the majority of society for which it is affected.
The latter example is easy: if some dipshit is playing a game without eating or drinking, it's entirely the dipshit's fault. Hell, you can't even fault the parents for that. What? Did they not teach him to eat and drink? That level of stupidity is the gross minority in any society (even Korea), so Darwinism takes its course and life goes on for the rest of us.
Don Wang wrote:If games are a reflection of a society's problem then they are at least responsible for doing nothing to discourage some pretty messed up behaviors. I don't think you need to ban violent games just because a psycho or two decided shooting guys in GTA looks cool. But certainly games like GTA are not doing anything to help fixing a problem.
What problem? Again, there is no changing society, except removing the boundaries or creating boundaries by force. Perhaps there is a problem, but it's more of an issue with the gross imbalance between violence and sexuality. Love and war. Lust and blood lust. They are just two sides of our id, but man, do people get all bent out of shape over one but not the other!
This Hot Coffee incident was a prime example. GTA was mostly off everybody's radar, but suddenly the forces (even Congress) speed to "correct the problem with society" as soon as the slightly ioda of sexuality is hinted at.
Don Wang wrote:You are not allowed to advertise smoking and making it look cool because there is a very real chance that smoking will get you killed later. I don't hear people say 'well the parents should have told the kids smoking is bad so it's okay to advertise for smoking'. Why do gamers scream murder if games end up getting toned down so they don't glorify or even capitalize on a societal problem?
Apples and oranges. Cigarette makers were actually TARGETTING kids, especially during the 80's and early 90's. They were also targetting the "coolness" of smoking for the younger crowd, instead of the obvious, "Hey, it's a cigarette and I got a habit." which ends up being a vast majority of their sales. They have to focus on getting more people hooked and the rest of the addictees will buy them whether they advertise or not.
The key was getting them hooked before they made any sort of decision to smoke or not smoke later in life. Enter teenagers and targetting for kids. They could have instead focused on why their cigarette was better than the other guys, and actually work on the already addicted population (on the competition side), but the industry got greedy and thought that total industry growth was more important than stealing each other's customers. The end result is an entire image of their empire based on "coolness", just to target kids.
GTA, on the other hand, is rated M. It's not being advertised as anything but an adult game. Sure, some teenagers might want to play it, and it's entirely up to the parent on whether they think that they are mature enough to play such a game. But, it's not like there are many kids sneaking the game in their basement to play it late at night when their parents are asleep. (It's more like parents not giving a shit about whether they play it or not, and being all freaked out when they realize that it's a violent video game. The rating is there for a reason.) The core audience is adults, though, and that's who they are targetting.
