Can computer games make you a bad person?

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(advance apologies to N.)

OK, so not in the "I beat up some monster in Tekken today, so tonight I'm going for an action replay with the help of a broken bottle and some other drunken sod when the pubs close tonight" kind of way - more of the way it influences your thoughts.

Back in ye goode olde dayes when I lived with N. and his Playstation, we used to have right good fun sniping at passers by in GTA III. How many police wanted stars could we get? If you hide in the multi-storey car park will the helicopters be able to get you? &c. And I will freely confess that my reaction to the Washington Sniper is very similar to N.'s on that thread. So have I been desensitized to the whole thing by spending hours acting out the life of a gangster with my thumbs?

― Madchen, Tuesday, 22 October 2002 08:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Because when I picture the Washington sniper, he is even wearing the same clothes as the GTA III bloke and has the same Marti Pellow hair.

― Madchen, Tuesday, 22 October 2002 08:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Delta Force is my poison in the sniping respects - 'cept I'm dead good at it and I reckon I'd be a better sniper than this guy. You gotta remember breathing, resting your weapon, shoot once and move, onehitonekill, muzzle flash, leading targets, adjusting for wind, adjusting for bullet drops etc

Man leading a sniper at 1km on an plateau seeing him stop and popping him in the torso with the M5 (though you'll struggle at that distance with this little plugger) or, preferably, the Barrett!!!! Ak Ack Ak!!!

― david h (david h), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 08:35 (twenty-three years ago)

That would be a 'yes'.

― david h (david h), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 08:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, I nearly posted a comment to here the other day saying something to the effect of "If I want fun, I'll beat prostitutes to death with baseball bats in GTA3". So... yes.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:08 (twenty-three years ago)

starry to thread!

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Ah. There's nothing I enjoy more than running down a few pedestrians, and then getting out of the car and beating the remainders to death. Or sometimes I'll just whack a few lightly, and chase them for a while. When they stop running, I shoot them.

Haha.

― Andrew (enneff), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:15 (twenty-three years ago)

(oh, and I am talking about GTA3 in the above post!)

― Andrew (enneff), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Ever tried the trick where you hire a prostitute, and then drive to the side of a cliff? If you park correctly, when the prozzie gets out, she falls to her death. Classic.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:24 (twenty-three years ago)

You can always pull the trick which got the game censored in Australia:

Get a prostitute, fuck her in the car, wait for her to get out, run her down, take your money back.

― Andrew (enneff), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh that's a good one. I don't do that one though, as I find it immoral...

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:38 (twenty-three years ago)

I tend to beat the prozzie with a baseball bat until she gives up her cash. But, see, that's another problem I have with it - I'm happy to be violent towards a woman (as a man) in a game, but in real life find that kind of thing totally offensive (like the huge percentage of prostitute murders that are never solved, largely because nobody gives a shit).

― Madchen, Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:57 (twenty-three years ago)

only 17 days to GTA: Vice City...

I'm afraid my thoughts immediately go to "well, NOW are you going to think about gun control, you insane, insular motherfuckers?". But maybe because of hours spent with Madchen sniping pimps and mobsters, I can't see it as somehow as "bad" a crime as your more hands-on srial killers. It seems more glamourous, somehow.

― Mark C (Mark C), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 10:21 (twenty-three years ago)

I was going to say that the computer game issue is no different to Aristotelean catharsis, and these games, like splatter movies, give us a civilising purge of anti-social impulses. But actually, now I think about, don't computer games imply much more complete identification with perpetrators of violence? In a drama, or a film or a book, if it's any good, there are multiple characters, perspectives, voices, and identification is problematized. Of course, a certain kind of thriller or action movie has long implied the condition of video games... But even those films put you in the position of spectator rather than participant, and that's a crucial moral distance. I guess what I'm wondering is, do computer games admit the possibility of Irony (in the deepest sense)?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 10:21 (twenty-three years ago)

of course computer games can explore irony. not the sort of games discussed here though. (not in any important sense)

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 10:27 (twenty-three years ago)

The answer to the question is no. Because only bad people want to play computer games in the first place.

― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 10:30 (twenty-three years ago)

a) Depends on what you mean by a bad person
b) Make you? You make yourself...
c) Computer games?

The most recent research on the spectator / participant divide within computer games seems to be falling down on the side of spectator still - ie the player of the game does not seem themselves as the sniper, rather as the agent playing a game controlling the sniper. In the same way that "we do not die" when our characters do the basic rationalisation is that therefore no-one dies when you kill someone in a game.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 10:41 (twenty-three years ago)

The central logic of most computer games whether violent or not is that you are rewarded for the successful completion of a task. Sometimes this reward comes in the form of increased abilities but almost always it involves the opportunity to perform more tasks. This is also the logic of 'work' so I suspect that if computer games do have some kind of secret influence they have as much of a stabilising as a destabilising effect on society as a whole. ;)

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 10:51 (twenty-three years ago)

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