Yes. But I remember Al Gore making a fool out of himself over hair-metal lyrics, which didn't do him any favors either.
I'd think the sex minigame would put people off less than the parts of the game where you get to shoot up random strangers and bury people alive in rock quarries. But hey, what do I know! Mass murder, the kids can handle. S-E-X? That's for adults only.
What age would you draw the line at? And how do these scenes compare to other scenes in GTA SA?
incidentally, since the game was previously rated to be unavailable to people under the age of 17, what do "kids" have to do with the subject, anyway?
I have to admit that interactive video games with high violence/sex content creep me out a lot more than movies or songs or what have you. But I, too, am a bit of a prude.
So without the sex, the blood and guts don't wig out your internal censor, but add in the hot polygon-on-polygon action and the it's time to hide the kids?
Your lack of faith in us eighteen-year-olds is most disappointing, Ogged.
I believe in you, L! Give me a call if you need someone to score some beer.
Here are the crappy parts - the language, the spurting blood, and now the bumping rhomboids.
You will not offer to buy beer for the underage readers of this blog.
Jeezus H. Christ on melba toast, this is what we're having Congressional hearings over? Are you fucking kidding me? The guy's pants are still buckled.
This is exactly why Hillary Clinton will never be president of the United States. Never in a million years.
The topic deserves a much longer comment than I'm about to make, and usually I'm totally on the side of "why is sex bad but violence ok?" but this creeps me out because of three things together: 1) in a video game, the player is doing and not just watching and 2) what sex is supposed to be and what is wrong and right about it are topics of great confusion for everyone and 3) kids are a lot more likely to have soul-deadening sex than to kill people.
L., if you ever want some eau-de-vie, I can provide.
Ogged, as god is my witness, I thought you were being tongue in cheek. Are you really serious? This disturbs you? Really, South Park is dirtier than this. Desperate Housewives is dirtier than this. Beach volleyball is almost this dirty.
Huh. You don't think the fact that it's a video game makes a difference? (By the way, I have no idea what's going on in Congress, so this is in no way a defense or apology for that.) And don't those other dirty things bother you either (not you personally, but on behalf of...forgive me...the children)? (And, are those things really like this? It's not so much the dirtiness as the utter anonymity and disposability of the "woman.")
don't those other dirty things bother you either
Um, you've been by my website, right? Do you really think I'm worried about cartoons giving blowjobs?
Yeah, I post that stuff too (ok, stuff kinda like it), but I'm still disturbed by its prevalence, and shit, I guess I am a prude. When would you let your boys watch that stuff?
You don't "let" boys see that stuff. They see it, at the very latest, when they are teenagers, whether you try to prevent it or not. When did you first see it? Me too.
I think the operative analogy is when would you let your kids see R-rated movies? If it's not until they are 18, are you disturbed that R-rated movies exist at all, even if it's only legal to sell tickets to adults?
You don't "let" boys see that stuff.
Point taken. I'm not so disturbed by R-rated movies; having played a lot of Doom, and remembering how much you become the main character, I was disturbed by this scene.
I haven't seen the clips. Would you say the woman has a realistic figure, or more a modelesque impossible waifness?
I know that, silly person.
She has breasts bigger than her head and a waist smaller than her ankles.
Does that answer the question?
And yes, she is completely dehumanised. The 'Hey baby, you should be a professional' line reminded me of bad movies about pimps.
But this is a game in which the player may kill hookers, among other things, so it's not exactly a feminist work. Not that many video games are, but GTA takes it to a new level. I don't believe in banning things, simply because it doesn't do anything but make something stupid more interesting by being forbidden, but if I were banning things it would certainly be on the list.
Note to self: trivializing abusive, degrading sex not necessarily humorous.
I was trying for an in-jokey lightening of the mood, but failed disastrously, as you can see. Sorry, all.
Uh. Geiger counter zero.
Worse than the Paris Hilton video. I had no idea that was possible.
The question is, is, if there a game that didn't involve blowing away hookers but merely screwing them, would it be worse or better?
[For example: a hypothetical game that was all about the tawdry club hookups. You could throw in some Dance Dance Revolution action to go with it! Dance! Master first lines! Find the best sex positions! Avoid the crystal meth addicts, unless they're cute! Like Leisure Larry actually but not intended for maximum hokeyness.]
As for Mizzzzzz Clinton, it seems like the D high muckety-mucks are going to persue the same strategy that hasn't worked but once in 30 years. Moving to the virtual right of the usual run of psychotic anti-porn crusaders, instead of the actual part fo the right where the votes are. Hardly seems worth bothering with.
ash
['The one is silly, the other disasterous.']
Who here has seen Charlie and the chocolate factory? Everyone? cool. You know the scene where Mike Teevee obliteratues that candy pumpkin-object, and responds to his dad's admonishment with, "What!? He told me to enjoy myself!!" That scene got me to thinking about the effects of video games. I used to be quite similar to that.
Now, I don't actually think the problem is video games. Not per se. The thing is that we're socialized by everything around us, video games being a part of that. I don't think it's controversial that movies and TV have an effect on how we dress or talk and that norms of aggressive and sexual behavior are picked up as well.
Do things like GTA contribute towards sociopathy or misanthropy? I think yes. Is that a good argument against them? Again, I'm going for yes, but I've been reading a lot of Plato in my spare time.
To legislate or to self-police? I'm having a hard time with that. I firmly believe we all have the potential to self-regulate when it comes to rejecting these influences. However, I am more cynical when it comes to the question of whether I think people as they are will do such a thing. I'm fairly convinced at the moment that GTA and other things of that sort exist to the detriment of society and human happiness. Dilemma.
Violent video games don't have deleterious effects on anyone who can separate reality from phantasy. The inability to do the latter is the problem, but it is not cured by restricting the supply of phantasy.
SB, I thought it was a genuine request for information.
I am a bad buzz-killing lurker. Forgive me!
"... what sex is supposed to be and what is wrong and right about it are topics of great confusion for everyone...."
Um, can we say "projection"?
I've never in my entire life had the slightest bit of confusion on this. Sorry. I've been confused about plenty of other things, to be sure.
re 34:
I've seen many people quite confused about this.
ogmb, perhaps so, but my feeling for the percentage of the population which is able to seperate fantasy from reality is rather low, and gets even lower the younger the age.
"You don't think the fact that it's a video game makes a difference?"
Since you're still hammering this, I'll do what I had previously decided not to do, which is repeat my questions: And how do these scenes compare to other scenes in GTA SA, in your view?; since the game was previously rated to be unavailable to people under the age of 17, what do "kids" have to do with the subject, anyway?
"When would you let your boys watch that stuff?"
Myself? Unless there were something wrong with their mental health or psyche, whenever they wanted to, and I'd give it a bit of context, and then answer any questions they had. Which is pretty much my answer to any such question.
Although you seem to be implying you favor a differing policy for girls and boys, in which case I respond: huh?
My parents only restricted my access to reading/viewing something only once in my life that I can recall, and that was when I was reading Portnoy's Complaint at the age of eight in the living room while they were having a dinner party, and they felt obligated to, apparently, in front of other friends. Other than that, I read the copies of Kinsey Report and Masters & Johnson on the bookshelf, looked at my father's Playboy's, and so on and so forth, without the slightest damage to my psyche ever resulting. I've been fucked up in my head by a variety of aspects of my childhood, but never ever once about sexuality. It was one of the few areas in which my parents raised me in a healthy way, by not attempting to censor me. Although my father did come and chat with me about the sexual content of Robert Silverberg's Up The Line after he borrowed my copy for something to read when I was around 10-11 or so.
And, no, I don't think that something being a video game makes an infinitesimal bit of difference. Are you familiar with Frederic Wertham?
"I've seen many people quite confused about this."
Sure. But "many" is hardly "every."
"ogmb, perhaps so, but my feeling for the percentage of the population which is able to seperate fantasy from reality is rather low, and gets even lower the younger the age."
Responding to what I assume you meant, rather than what you said (in which case I'd discuss your feeling), speaking as someone who spent a lot of years working in the science fiction and fantasy field, and who has been around it since age 12, I think this is rather out of contact with reality, itself, I'm afraid. I've known the looniest of loony sf/fantasy fans, and only an incredibly tiny percentage ever in fact showed any such signs; they're close to countable on the fingers of three hands, out of tens of thousands of people I've personally observed. This is not a reason to extrapolate to the general population.
Sure, i'm not going to try and make any kind of strong correlation between GTA and unhealthy activity. I think in a sense what I'm worried about is aesthetics. What is good? Not in the sense of how does someone linguistically define it, but in how people feel it. i.e. what gives them thrills, what drives them, etc.. Do video games have a negative effect on that? probably, but it's probably quite miniscule.
And the norms which produce a unhealthy approach to sex are cultural, and GTA, or any video game, has about nothing to do with that. Maybe it re-enforces, but such a person probably has deeper problems than can be fixed by the removal of a video game.
re 39: I wasn't thinking of SF fans at all. More along the lines of people beliving in supersitious things, which, according to some polls, is supposed to be a majority of America. But, in any case, it was a pthy comment. In a sense, there's nothing new in video games, except that for what was once mental activity has become practice. How big a difference is this? I'm not certain.
"Maybe it re-enforces, but such a person probably has deeper problems than can be fixed by the removal of a video game."
Just so.
I asked about the apostropher's boys because that's what he has.
The fantasy/reality argument doesn't really get at the issue, which I think is that kids take their cue of what's to be done and what's appropriate from the what's around them. Of course, if we posit wonderful, involved parenting, a lot of this discussion is moot. But that's not what you usually have, so you have to consider that plenty of kids are getting ideas about what sex is from the sex they see on TV, or enact in video games. And even adults are subject to being influenced this way. There are no definitive studies of which I'm aware, but my guess is that the sequence of events that went internet access-->readily available porn-->increased interest in anal sex-->anal sex is the new missionary position had something to do with what people were seeing, and what came to seem normal to them.
this is a game in which the player may kill hookers, among other things, so it's not exactly a feminist work.
It's also a game with 'pimping missions' in which you have to protect hookers from violent clients, too. And a game where you have to keep your girlfriend(s) happy in order to succeed. And a game where the most violent character is probably a woman: the hilarious, gutter-mouthed Catalina.
The idea that CJ is 'unrepentantly, irredeemably, fantastically evil' suggests that Majoo hasn't spent much time playing GTA:SA, which has a warped, but recognisible morality to it. I'm not going to make any grand claims for it, but the storyline is pretty consistent in that it's never necessary to kill hookers, little old ladies or obviously good characters.
You will not offer to buy beer for the underage readers of this blog.
What happened, ogged? You used to be cool.
anal sex is the new missionary position
If you believe that, I'm more clear on why your TiVo hasn't been reset.
That might have been a bit of a flourish for effect.
What happened, ogged? You used to be cool.
Tom, people keep getting that wrong.
Well, if you're going to leave it ambiguous, at all costs do not show this blog to prospective partners. I suspect that kind of baseline expectation retards one's chances.
"The fantasy/reality argument doesn't really get at the issue, which I think is that kids take their cue of what's to be done and what's appropriate from the what's around them."
Third time: what do "kids" have to do with a game that was rated "M," forbidding those under to 17 to buy it?
And sure, kids exposed to GTA SA will learn what it's appropriate to do when playing that game. The evidence that many will confuse that with what to do with reality is? Presumably, Road Runner cartoons should be regarded as equally dangerous, because they teach children to run off cliffs and run frantically in mid-air. Yet we seem to have missed that epidemic of children hurtling themselves off cliffs. Why would that be?
What do kids learn from the Brothers Grimm?
And why is the sex in GTA SA more alarming than the violence? Again: Ogged, can you please state what you think of GTA SA missions you've played? (You're not going to say you're issuing all this Viewing With Alarm, but have never actually played the game, and don't know what you're talking about when you talk about it, save what you know from screenshots and magazine articles, I trust?)
Can anyone here attest to a case where playing a video game has affected their behavior in real life? Anyone?
Again: Ogged, are you familiar with Frederic Wertham?
All those years of playing tetris really helped me pack stuff into my car when I moved last month.
And of course without minesweeper I'd have been blown to smithereens by now.
The relationship between solitaire and being solitary has yet to be proven, however.
anal sex is the new missionary position
That is hilarious! And not even remotely true.
Gary, I don't think it's inaccurate to suggest that, in a time in which the legal situation of homosexuality is a foremost topic of public discussion, there is a great deal of public confusion about sex. And that's just one example. That you and every other individual feels confident that he is not confused about sex doesn't preclude "everyone" (i.e., society) from being confused about sex. I mean, obviously we are, or we wouldn't be having this discussion, or the one about the Dove girls, the kinds of bottoms that Ogged prefers, etc.
I also think it's entirely reasonable to suggest that a virtual thing can edify our understanding of and behavior in the real world. I tend to think we probably process images of violence and sex differently, so I'm not sure it's necessarily possible to draw that connection. Like Ogged says above, having sex and avoiding violence are signs of healthy adult behavior, whereas not having sex and engaging in wanton violence nearly indicate the opposite, so even if we are taking lessons from virtual sex and violence, we probably aren't taking the same lessons from each.
To (sort of) follow on Kriston: It seems reasonable to me to wonder about the effect of violence or sex in VR situations as the VR tech gets better. It's fairly uncontroversial to believe that people who live for significant periods of time in violent situations are more likely to pick up bad habits. To the extent that vids are a sort of VR, and they are getting better, why is it strange to wonder about the effect of long periods of time spent in violent situation in fake life? Cf. Ogged's comment about being a pale friendless virgin who spent too much time playing Doom.
Mr. Farber -- I don't want to presume and use your first name -- I don't think that name-dropping Wertham doe sthe work that you want it to do. The question has been raised: Are video games different than other media. You simply dismissed this possibility, and then brought in the guy who tried to censor comics. Cool, but so what? Are all acts of protest against the violence in some media reducible to Wertham's? As an argument, it smacks of the old trope: My ideas are ignored, but Einstein/Darwin/NameYourGenius was ignored, which just proves that I am right. Being ignored doe snot make someone Einstein, and being upset at violent images widely available and marketed to children doe snot make someone Wertham.
Can anyone here attest to a case where playing a video game has affected their behavior in real life? Anyone?
Sure. Well, alright, I can't tell you how it affected my behavior, but that seems like an unreasonably high demand on a guy's limited self-awareness. I can tell you that games have clearly affected my mental state, though. Hasn't anyone else here played enough tetris that the feel the sensation of the blocks falling when they go to sleep? I know chess-players who report the same thing about that game. I also went through a particularly hermetic week in college where I played a truly unhealthy amount of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, and ended up compulsively evaluating every surface in the real world in terms of its grindability and combo porential.
I'm not in favor of censoring games, but I do think it's naive to dismiss any potential effects out of hand. I don't think GTA is going to produce a generation of thugs any more than I think Nelly is responsible for a coming wave of super energized pimps, but I suspect these games have a significant effect on kids' nervous systems.
The fantasy/reality argument doesn't really get at the issue, which I think is that kids take their cue of what's to be done and what's appropriate from the what's around them.
Trudat, except it's not exactly the right approach to call for "less fantasy" when the problem is "not enough reality".
Third time: what do "kids" have to do with a game that was rated "M," forbidding those under to 17 to buy it?
17 is about the age many people really start learning about sex, so, for the purposes of discussion, I'll consider them kids.
Presumably, Road Runner cartoons should be regarded as equally dangerous
There is a signifigant difference of degree of realism b/w RR and video games. Further, there is a difference as to the liklihood of the activity. No one wants to commit suicide off a cliff. Far from no one thinks its cool to be a tough killer.
why is the sex in GTA SA more alarming than the violence?
Because kids are more likely to engage in sex, and therefore the possibility of them learning from the video game is more likely and therefore more alarming.
Can anyone here attest to a case where playing a video game has affected their behavior in real life?
I wonder about it. But I haven't gamed in years, and games today are much more realisitic: it seems that be relevant.
Apropos of the claims that video-game violence has no effect on real life behavior, you may want to read this.
http://cosmicvariance.com/2005/07/23/you-are-what-you-read
As the article says, before it describes the experiments in detail
"Apparently, just being exposed to words expressing the concept of rudeness is enough to make people behave more rudely." And SIGNIFICANTLY more so, none of your 3% just barely statistically significant stuff.
Can anyone here attest to a case where playing a video game has affected their behavior in real life? Anyone?
Yeah, this was more or less the point of 23. When I was playing a lot of Doom (and I had a girlfriend at the time, Timbot), I was totally like this:
Play a first-person shooter long enough and its morbid reality seems to descend over your awareness like a grid, accompanied by a kind of adrenalized hyper-awareness and euphoric rage. Grid, adrenaline and rage stay with you, far past the point when you exit to the desktop. Walk away from the computer, and they still persist. You find yourself stealing up on street corners as if preparing to strafe the adjoining block; you seem to see a crosshair traced across the bodies of passersby.
It started to freak me out; the effect is real. And part of the reason you're not getting more concrete answers to this, I imagine, is that people aren't so keen to share "I saw something in a porno that I tried with my girlfriend and she got really mad at me" stories.
and I had a girlfriend at the time, Timbot
Which doesn't mean she liked you or that she gave up the rhythm.
I once tried to rent a porno and watch it with my then girlfriend. I'm almost positive it was my idea; I think was worried that I was prudish and boring, and wanted to show that I could be ...Gawd, who knows? Anyway, it was every bit as comfortable and successful as if I'd rented it and watched it with my parents. And to honest, the selection part was worst of all.
Ex and I had some unremarkable porn renting experiences; the main problem was just that almost all porn is really bad. You can ignore the badness if you're watching alone, but as soon as there's someone else watching with you, neither of you can ignore how absurd and poorly done it is.
First time porn rental: Rent funny or classic porn. You can laugh at it together, which is lots of fun, but it's still sex.
Is this upthread comment by the Bob, of Bob fame?
Just to, you know, make it explicit: sex in GTA-- which, in the unaltered game, is never shown onscreen-- occurs in two different contexts: (a) with prostitutes in cars; (b) with girlfriends. In order to have sex with a girlfriend, the player has to take her out for several dates involving dinner or drinks, must take her dancing, and must take her out driving in areas she enjoys. This is the courtship ritual of a bygone era, people.
As Ahem points out, it's not necessary to kill prostitutes, though it is necessary to kill security guards and to steal things. I haven't thought about this in great detail, but it seems odd to say that the game is anti-feminist because it allows killing women; it also allows killing an awful lot of other things.
And if you disagree with me, I will shoot you with my M4, or cut your head off with a katana, or burn you with my flamethrower.
I should have noted above that the girlfriends have different "personalities" and prefer different body types (Denise is the homegirl who dates you because you saved her life, Katie has been reading too much Ballard and likes muscle queens, Barbara is a small-town cop who loves fatties, Helena is really bitchy and has a taste for thin but well-defined men, Millie likes guys in gimp suits...and so on.). So it's not completely true that the women are anonymous and disposable.
Too much Ballard? So to have sex with her, you have to crash your car a lot?
"Sex times technology equals the future"--J.G. Ballard
Did anyone else find Ms. Lowrey's first name thing in the thread MMGood linked completely anti-internetly?
That was the strangest complaint I've ever gotten online.
Yes, that was odd. But 73 compels the question, what's the oddest complaint you've ever gotten offline?
Re #72: Maybe she's old, Ben. Different generations are different about formalities. It is wierd though.
Maybe. But, it's still anti-internetly. Netiquette would seem to apply regardless of age, no?
She's likely not old.
Slol, a fine question to which I have no answer.
She could be Canadian, which is the same thing.
Canadians are good-humored and even tempered.
And old people don't use the Internet.
Did anyone else find Ms. Lowrey's first name thing in the thread MMGood linked completely anti-internetly?
I couldn't get past her strange obsession with doe snot.
Yeah, I thought that might be a joke I didn't get. There are a lot of those on the Internets, especially for us old people. And earnest people. Also Canadians.
Doe snot is fine when used once, kinda like cow orker. But she used it twice. Twice is not twice as good. Twice is lame.
I like it jumbled and jivey, but not that jumbled and jivey.
kinda like cow orker
Or cob logger.
Whoops! 87 should be "Sade's toad toe".