ragged blog

So, according to techdirt, some people have been making up facts and labelling it Science again. I just want to get one thing straight on the topic of Violent Video Games. If violence in video games really makes people that violent in real life, then why are LAN Events or Cybergame events not really really dangerous places?

Seriously, explain to me why all the shootings that stupidly get blamed on video games, for the most unscientific of reasons, always happen in schools and not LAN Events or home gaming parties? EVER.

Honestly I don’t know how people sleep at night knowingly making up information for whatever reason they may have. And i’d really like to know what that reason is too. I question the sanity and bias of these so-called “Scientists”.

Now on the other hand, a Gamer from EnemyDown was stabbed this year whilst helping local police officers deal with a particularly rowdy member of public leaving a train. I would find the particular forum post, but there’s no search. If someone wouldn’t mind doing that and posting it in the comments, I’d be thankful. It was around the time of i31 IIRC.

As for the “reasons” so often given for killers being influenced by games, I have serious problems with many of those:

1. “We studied the video evidence cought on CCTV (note: school CCTV, not very high res). We have determined that the subjects heartbeat was stable, and this kind of thing only happens when the person is trained in dealing with such stressful situations.” - Bullshit. No really, BULLSHIT. Real answer(s):
   • Gamers do NOT learn to be calm. I have been an FPS gamer for over 10 years now. I still get adrenaline rushes that make me shiver, and my heartbeat still skyrockets at times.
   • I have fired live rounds on a range, after playing games for 6 years or so. Again, I had an adrenaline hit from it. If I was shooting people, I would not be calm. Not a chance.
   • Someone who is shooting their peers and doing such incredibly irrational things, is NOT in a normal state of mind. If they are calm, I would say this is just more evidence that they were seriously mentally unstable. A seriously mentally unstable mind will not react (or even perceive) the world in the “normal” manner.
   • The particular place that (remembered) quote was from, there was evidence in that case that the kid in question had not played these games for some months leading up to the shooting. This could have more to do with the problem than other things. (Lack of release).
2. “We see an increase in emotional and aggressive tenancies (note: unspecified what it is toward, of course) whilst the games are played.” - Yeah, sure. That’s what it’s about, idiot. Adrenaline promotes a Fight or Flight reaction - remember your basic biology lessons? It does not an irrational man make.

Carmageddon DID NOT make me want to run out, steal a car, and run people over. Even though I, like so many that played the red-blood demo, had patched my game to have RED BLOOD EVERYWHERE. Yet I am sane, and actually doing quite well for myself, thank you.

There is a DISTINCT PHYSICAL DIFFERENCE IN NEUROLOGICAL IMPACT BETWEEN VISUAL DISPLAYS AND REAL VISION!

Wake up call to the wankers out there. YES IT’S TRUE.

Go look at some papers on STROKE VICTIMS. Stroke victims loose particular regions of the brain, right. Some of them will loose the ability to speak, or to use a side of the body, or the ability to write, or many other things. Often large skill sets are affected at one time. What’s interesting, is that one can also loose the ability to write, and speak, but not typing. Yeah.

Similarly, one can find screens incomprehensible after a stroke. The brain can end up no longer properly reconstructing fake visual flow presented on a 2D screen. If this isn’t happening in the real world, then I put it to you, dear “Scientists”, that DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE BRAIN are actually responsible for these different states and actions. This makes your claims even less likely.

Games, yes Violent Video Games, have tought me A LOT of VERY useful skills. I have learned problem solving (which I find useful in many areas, real life, programming, integration issues, and ‘common sense’). I have learned advanced visual flows (I can operate with my body at many angles of orientation, and visual flow travelling in many directions, as I loved flight sims, Forsaken, and being the Alien in AVP1, etc etc). I have learned reaction times. I have learned to think FAST. I have learned to visual scan high detail scenes very fast. I have learned to listen. I have learned doppler effects in audio (that actually works in real life). I have learned to predict the movements of opponents. I have learned to read opponents in many different ways. I have learned to track multiple intelligent targets (I think I can manage over 10 at a time these days) at a time. From multiplayer, I have learned to analyse a scene like a tracker on the run, and know exactly what happened, when and how, without even stopping. And much much more.

Equally importantly, I’ve had fun doing it.

Why do games have such a good learning rate to teach me all this stuff, and for me to claim it crosses over into the real world after my comments above? Because I’ve played many games, and over plenty of time. During this time, I have had a STRONG training boundary for my neural network (my brain), as every failure has a harsh negative weight, and every success a very strong positive weight. I am either very unhappy, or very pleased. This is THE OPTIMAL WAY TO LEARN. You dickheads. You’re probably the same people that have made it illegal for teachers to say “no” to kids in the UK. Seriously, you’re DESTROYING the entire manner in which OUR BRAINS ARE MEANT TO LEARN by removing these weights. Getting back to the point of crossover, these things eventually cross over after experience playing many games for a long time. The variance means that you don’t just learn how to ’see’ or ‘hear’ in that particular game, but you learn to learn this faster. Myself, and my business partner are long term Quake and Counter-Strike players. We can play ANY first person shooter with _well_ above average skill, because we’ve played most of the games that have come out in this genre since it’s inception. Also because of this, we can learn these skills in the real world too, moreover we can very rapidly apply abstract idealisms to real world scenarios too. This turns out so very very useful, sometimes in the most surprising of places.

Now, lets just have a look at this learning re-enforcement thing a second. I am in the process of building a business. We’re doing ok thank you, but it’s hard work, as one expects in the first year. We’re also young, and doing this with minimal investment, so the hours are long and very little real social time. The impact to my mind has come close to severe at times, but the impacts were not what I would have expected. First of all, it started with nightmares. The nightmares were horribly violent. I mean more violent than anything I’ve seen in a video game. Hell, even the horror films I’ve seen don’t scratch it. Event Horizon - bah, weak. I mean it, my closest friends, family, destroyed in so many ways on so many levels in front of me. This is way beyond what is acceptable for normal artistic publishing. Now I figured out what it was… The outer part of the problem is obvious - working between the same four walls for weeks at a time, pulling long hours and not talking to many people face to face. The inner part is more subtle. I was not getting HURT enough. Yes, HURT ENOUGH. I need to hurt. The brain needs to hurt. Muscles need exercise, they need to have their fibres pushed to breaking point every now and then. You need to experience the world, you need neural input from all areas of the body. You need to actually experience life as an animal, you are one, as much as culture may deny it you. Comfort is NOT comfortable over a long period of time. If you don’t believe me, look at the suicide rate of lottery winners.

I think many gamers are helped in many regards by the games they play. Many gamers I know are more intelligent and have significantly more common sense than non-gamers. There are exceptions, but it’s almost as close as the “Did you play with Lego or Mechano?” rule.

I implore you fucking “Scientists” to please start doing some REAL work instead of writing this shit, before I get so angry I stop swearing on a blog, and actually spend the time gathering real research and waste a bunch of my precious time that I should be giving my girlfriend in order to write a paper to completely revoke your fucking awful claims.

My co-workers can attest to the fact that this bullshit has made me more dangerous to society than any game ever has. In fact, I think I might go play one to HELP ME CALM DOWN.