to those of you, such as myself, that grew up playing coin operated games like pacman eating goblins, asteroids shooting down aliens, to games with a little more graphic violence on atari, colecovision and intellivision, to games that are far more realistic on the PC like unreal tournament and quake, has violence in video games have any pyschological impact on how you deal with stress and/or deal with the general public everyday?

my answer is a big NO .  i say it doesnt create stress, it relieves it. 

I'm not much of a gamer.  About ten years ago, I used to play a lot of Doom.  I was living in a university dorm at the time.  Immediately after playing, I'd leave my friend's room, and go out in the long corridors.  I'd feel just a bit jumpy about what might be around the corner.
;D
It was more humerous than anything.

There are similar questions about pornography.  Violent video games or hardcore pornography may provoke the anti-social into more anti-social behavior, but I don't think such media are the genesis of anti-social behavior.

There is a problem with kids who start with explicit games or pornography at too young an age.  If they are not given enough proper stimuli in their formative years, then these media might give them a lower opinion of the value of life in the absence of positive messages.

PacMan always was a fun game and it relieved my stress. :)



Howard

games today seem a little too violent. i don't play many console games but i have friends who play and talk about these games. especially with those criminal games, i don't know the names, the one where you can rape prostitutes and shoot cops, i'm sorry but thats going to far. i don't want my son playing games such as those. so i definitly welcome a rating system that will be enforced under penalty of fines.

i'm not speaking as a prude either. i've been playing dungeons and dragons and other dice and paper RPGs for twenty years now. we all know what controversies that game produced. most of what was said by opponents had no real ground, the accusations of murder and suicide running amongst gamers was unfounded.

i find violent games as cathartic, it's a wonderful stress reliever but i do find issues with the content of some of these games. the few console games i do play the violence is cartoonish, i believe thats the way it should be. i want to blast away an alien or slay a dragon; theres too much real violence in the world to see it in a game.

Video games are quite violent now.  But I don't find that when I play them I get affected by their motives.  I have been playing games since the 80's with atari, and many many weird dos games.

I think that there should definitely be some penalty paid for under-agers playing games like vice city.  (I love vice city, and would not want it banned)  I think to any certain degree something can have an artistic merit.  Whether it is through sarcasm, irony, or just absolute pointlessness. 

I am one of the people who believe that games/movies/books with explicit content does not create violence.  Instead it only manifests violence in its own realm.  The problem with the people(those involved in these activities) is that they probably are crossing some memories, or reliving a past problem that could have been created many years ago without them even knowing.  And it is so vague to say that, and that answer is pretty unacceptable for our "need to know basis" Western thought.

Sometimes things are just too in depth to discuss some fair basis for a general audience.  And there are no right and wrong answers.

Nowadays most games today have sex,nudity,violence,blood,gore.20 years ago you never saw that.It probably would've been illegal in 1984 compared to now,2004. ???



Howard

I have Unreal Tournament 2004 on the PC and I have no desire to recreate in real life what I see on the computer screen.

Gaming in all forms releases tension.There was only one game I really objected to my girlfriend's son playing and that was 'The Suffering' on X-Box. I played it first to find out if the game deserved an '18' certificate (I know House of the Dead 3 didn't  ::)). It wasn't primarily the gore I objected to but the amount of swearing and the overall context of the game (it mentioned sodomy crimes in one part - something he can do without).

Can't even tell you the name of the game....House of the Living Dead? Some kind of gun game where you shot and killed (primarily) zombies. Used to play it when I worked at Wal-Mart. The manager had it taken out, said it was too violent. Well, releasing my stress on what I KNOW to be a game keeps me from taking it out on people, doesn't it?

I also used to whip out of the parking lot real fast when I got out in the morning, and some people took offense to that too.