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[update]Bulletstorm Turns People into Rapists?

Demon_Skeith

Demon_Skeith

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What the crap Fox News.

Fox News has warned parents off of the upcoming M-rated game Bulletstorm (calling it "the worst video game in the world"), alleging that it and other games in the same vein are directly responsible for an increase in the incidence of rape. You can't just toss around the word "rape," Fox News. Ask Penny Arcade.

The "Skill Shots" in the game - rewards for shooting people in certain areas/ways - have sexually suggestive names such as "gang bang" for killing multiple enemies or "topless" for cutting a player in half. The combination of innuendo and graphic violence will be very damaging to young gamers, who, Fox News claims, are the target market for the M-rated Bulletstorm.

To back their claims, Fox News quotes various "experts" in the field, like Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute in Southern California: "If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm's explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant. Violent video games like Bulletstorm have the potential to send the message that violence and insults with sexual innuendos are the way to handle disputes and problems."

And then there's this lovely quote from psychologist/author Carol Lieberman: "The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games."

... What. No backing evidence. No examples. This is just a fact of life at Fox News, I guess. The RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) website (the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization) claims that instances of rape have fallen by roughly 60% in recent years. Who will you believe?

Fox News then goes on to cite the shortcomings of the ESRB, claiming that more laws should be put into place similar to California's, where the fine for selling an M-rated game to a minor is $1,000. Bulletstorm developers Epic Games refused to comment on the story, but publisher Electronic Arts stated simply, "Bulletstorm has been given an 'M' rating by the ESRB, and we have adhered to all their guidelines in regards to the marketing and promotion of Bulletstorm."

It wasn't completely game-hate in the Fox News article, however. Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumers Association, told Fox News, "Between a great ratings system, parental controls on the consoles and the major retailers inhibiting the sale of Mature-rated games to minors, the matter is really one for parents and adults to consider, individually. I respect the creative rights of game developers to make a game like Bulletstorm in the same way that I appreciate Quentin Tarantino's right to make over-the-top movies like Kill Bill." Hoo-rah.

Bottom line, most stores - the big chains, especially - simply won't sell an M-rated game to a minor. Bulletstorm isn't made for children, so don't let them play it, ok? Fox News thinks it'll turn us into a nation a rapists, but people with common sense know that it's simply not age-appropriate.

source

worst video game in the world? This trailer disagrees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjL44d7WOQ
 
Dead Space 2 is amazing! Also, Fox is full of shit, and unbelievably biased. They suck, and are only for republican vote. Games don't make people rapists, Fox makes rapists by being douchebags.
 
update:

A couple of days ago, psychiatrist Carole Lieberman gave a quote to Fox News about the violent upcoming game Bulletstorm. Dr. Lieberman isn't a fan of such games. She thinks the worst of them cause people to do bad things. Two days later, she's been through a storm.

Dr. Lieberman is no accidental enemy of violent and sexual video games, though she seemed today interested in adding some nuance to her Fox News comment.

"The more video games a person plays that have violent sexual content," she said, carefully choosing her words during a phone interview with Kotaku, "the more likely one is to become desensitized to violent sexual acts and commit them."

That's a less direct version of what she said in the Fox News piece, in a comment that sent gamers into a frenzy: "The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games."

(Reporters typically trim quotes for space, flow or emphasis; Dr. Lieberman's full quote about sexual violence and games to Fox News was: "Video games have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, actions and words. This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts. The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in video games.")

Fox News didn't really get Lieberman wrong. She's been pushing back against what she sees as the harmful influence of violent video games and other violent media for years. In a chapter of a book written for TV host Larry King, she bundled video games with violent movies, toys, and rap lyrics as "modern weapons of mass destruction" that "are causing us to destroy each other - on playgrounds and battlegrounds."

She believes that violent media does encourage more aggressive behavior and says there are "thousands" of studies that support the view she and others share. "The thing is that all these thousands of studies relate violent media,including video games, to an increase in violence in general." She's been wary of the effects of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon in the 80s compelling kids to karate chop each other on playgrounds, and testified to Congress about the impact of violent media. She's seen in the history of people she's studied in her clinical and forensic work an obsession with video games, which makes her wary of the influence of the medium.

Dr. Lieberman couldn't cite a specific study that showed that video games cause rape but she argues that it is a logical conclusion to reach: "That fits under the idea of people becoming more violent or aggressive, the more violent media they consume," she said.

She described her comments, part of a longer interview with Fox News about violent games and media, as "just stuff that's second nature to me. I've been talking about this for years.

And so, games do cause rape?

"I would have to dig into the things I have in hard copy or search the Internet," she said, "But rape [pause] there have been sexual crimes and the video games have become more sexual …"

Kotaku was putting Lieberman on the spot. We called her and she answered. So even though she'd been getting criticized by gamers over e-mail for a couple of days, she didn't have her notes handy. She did, however, wind her way into an articulation of her concern about the changing nature of video games. "They've become more sexual," she said. "And, according to Freud, our impulses… we're born with natural drives toward aggression and sex. The aggression drive is normally socialized, when we grow up, to become ambition. The sexual drive, as we grow up, is connected to love, if we grow up in a healthy way.

"When people combine sexual and violent images, particularly in video games where you're not just passively watching, you're pushing buttons, you're getting physically involved in this act, it has a particularly stimulating impact. It stimulates the sex center of the psyche and the violence center of the psyche and make the whole effect more stimulating. And so it's natural that the more the violent impulses are stimulated...[she paused] it's not that everyone goes out and kills but people become more aggressive with getting into parking spots or everyday things… so when there are also sexual things, like words in this new game they are using, or images, it stimulates the two centers in the psyche and makes the overall impact linking sex and violence — and desensitizing people to violent sex — more impactful, more inciteful."

Lieberman was demonstrating some familiarity with the game she was describing. Bulletstorm is many things, including both a game we've written positive impressions about and a first-person shooter that celebrates a player's ability to kill multiple enemies with verbal accolades such as "gang bang."

Lieberman is not a gamer, says she's never even played Pac-Man; though she suspects that Jared Lee Loughner, the man who allegedly tried to assassinate a Congresswoman last month, was a player of violent video games, a theory that has yet to be confirmed. She doesn't think games alone trigger any of this. She believes that troubled upbringings are a major factor and explain why so many gamers don't resort to the awful behaviors that concern her.

For the effort of sharing her perspective with Fox News, Lieberman has suffered the brunt of gamers. They've bombarded her with negative e-mails. She plucked one at random for me, a missive from someone who signed their name as JohnnyMassiveHomoCunt

it continues here

face it lady, your making up s*** and gamers are not happy about it.
 
I believe that Freud has been discredited in the psychiatric field.
 
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