GTA V actors reject accusations of encouraging violence

Parents should take more control and stop being hypocritical, say stars.

GTA’s main voice actors have rallied around to defend the game from accusations that it encourages violent behaviour in children, calling the criticisms “hypocritical” and a “misconception”.

Ned Luke voices middle aged career criminal Michael in the blockbuster, and believes that he does anything but glamourise his violent lifestyle.

“Anyone who has any conception at all about the games and hasn’t played them should go play the games before they open their mouths,” Luke told PC Advisor.

“The biggest misconception is that it glamorizes violence. It really doesn’t. If you look at my character, Michael, he’s rich, but he’s a miserable man. Even in the commercials you see that. This is a guy who’s struggling with his life’s decisions.

“If you want to take something out the game, take out of it that here’s a guy who loves his family, who’s kind of lost. He’s trying to hold it together. He’s trying to become a good guy, but he can’t. He just has all these demons that he’s battling. It’s the struggle. Take that and look at how he loves his family even though he wants to kill them and that’s what it is. Look for the relationships. Look for the humor. Look for the irony and the satire in the game. That’s another big misconception. What, do they think we’re serious?

“GTA allows you to tap into everything that you can’t do in real life,” he continues. “In real life, you don’t get to go out and rampage and do all these bad things. Gangster movies have been huge forever – Godfather, Casino, Goodfellas, all the way back to Jimmy Cagney. People lose themselves in the bad boy. And there isn’t anybody badder than the dudes in GTA. That’s why they’re so popular. You get to actually go out and do all these horrible things.

“It’s not for the kids to go get. It’s for Mature audiences only. If kids get it, then that’s on their parents.”

Shawn Fonteno – voice actor for Franklin Clinton

“As an actor, I got to go out and do all these crazy things and then go back home to my wife and my son and go out in the back yard and throw a baseball around like a normal all-American dad. I think that’s what these games are. People who take them too seriously and go, ‘Oh, this is life.’ No, this isn’t life. This is imagination. It’s just fun. You definitely don’t want GTA raising your children. But it’s not a bad release from them, when you need to get away.”

Steven Ogg, the actor who plays sociopathic Canuck Trevor Phillips, says that detractors should compare GTA to other mediums before they pass judgement, arguing that nothing depicted in the game is any worse that what’s often shown on TV or in cinema, and that there are other, much bigger, contributors to social violence than video games.

“The hypocrisy drives me crazy, it just sets the wrong focus. Why not talk about gun control? Why not talk about parenting? Why not talk of lack of family values? There are so many other things to talk about. Look at what’s on TV. Breaking Bad had that episode where ******** got his face blown off. There’s a lot of intense stuff out there. Video games are just an easy scapegoat. My nephew plays this game. I asked my sister if she was worried because there’s some pretty nasty stuff in there and she said, ‘I know he’s not going to go to school tomorrow with a gun. He’s not like that.'”

Franklin’s voice actor, an ex-gang member called Shawn Fonteno, has a different perspective on the criticism, but one that comes from experience which most of the game’s opponents will never have.

“I know a few people that live that kind of (violent) lifestyle and when they play GTA they can relate to it,” Fonteno explained. “It has an impact to the point that they’re happy that they can just play it in the game and not have to relive it in real life. And that’s the big key thing with this, man. It’s just a video game. And people that have lived that life and have done them things, as I did, can just have fun with it in a game. You can leave it there and nobody’s getting hurt and you’re just having fun.

“People already have it in their mind that GTA is for kids because it’s a game. Then they hear about the violence and they’re instantly going to attack because it’s a game. Now, if it was a movie it would be a different story and these same people would be out there supporting it. GTA V is like a movie. Once they get the game in their hands, they’ll see. It says it big as day -Mature. It’s not for the kids to go get. It’s for Mature audiences only. If kids get it, then that’s on their parents.”

 

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When Gaming Is Good for You

Hours of Intense Play Change the Adult Brain; Better Multitasking, Decision-Making and Even Creativity.

Videogames can change a person’s brain and, as researchers are finding, often that change is for the better.

Love them or hate them, online videogames are a treasure trove for researchers who are studying how all those keyboard taps, mouse clicks and joystick moves may affect behavior, perception and even cognitive skills. WSJ’s Robert Lee Hotz reports.

A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.

People who played action-based video and computer games made decisions 25% faster than others without sacrificing accuracy, according to a study. Indeed, the most adept gamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second—four times faster than most people, other researchers found. Moreover, practiced game players can pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared with the four that someone can normally keep in mind, said University of Rochester researchers. The studies were conducted independently of the companies that sell video and computer games.

(clockwise from top left) Rockstar Games; Take -Two; Blizzard Entertainment; Activision; Electronic Arts; Blizzard Entertainment; Eli Meir Kaplan for the Wall Street Journal (cyclist)

Scientists also found that women—who make up about 42% of computer and videogame players—were better able to mentally manipulate 3D objects, a skill at which men are generally more adept. Most studies looked at adults rather than children.

Electronic gameplay has its downside. Brain scans show that violent videogames can alter brain function in healthy young men after just a week of play, depressing activity among regions associated with emotional control, researchers at Indiana University recently reported. Other studies have found an association between compulsive gaming and being overweight, introverted and prone to depression. The studies didn’t compare the benefits of gaming with such downsides.

The violent action games that often worry parents most had the strongest beneficial effect on the brain. “These are not the games you would think are mind-enhancing,” said cognitive neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier, who studies the effect of action games at Switzerland’s University of Geneva and the University of Rochester in New York.

Different Games’ Effects on Your Brain

Blizzard Entertainment

Learn how different games do different things to your brain

Computer gaming has become a $25 billion-a year entertainment business behemoth since the first coin-operated commercial videogames hit the market 41 years ago. In 2010, gaming companies sold 257 million video and computer games, according to figures compiled by the industry’s trade group, the Entertainment Software Association.

For scientists, the industry unintentionally launched a mass experiment in the neurobiology of learning. Millions of people have immersed themselves in the interactive reward conditioning of electronic game play, from Tetris, Angry Birds, and Farmville, to shooter games and multiplayer, role-playing fantasies such as League of Legend, which has been played 1 billion times or so in the two years since it was introduced.

“Videogames change your brain,” said University of Wisconsin psychologist C. Shawn Green, who studies how electronic games affect abilities. So does learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating the streets of London, which have all been shown to change the brain’s physical structure. The powerful combination of concentration and rewarding surges of neurotransmitters like dopamine strengthen neural circuits in much the same the way that exercise builds muscles. But “games definitely hit the reward system in a way that not all activities do,” he said.

Cognitive scientist Mark Blair and Robert Lee Hotz answer readers’ questions

“There has been a lot of attention wasted in figuring out whether these things turn us into killing machines,” said computational analyst Joshua Lewis at the University of California in San Diego, who studied 2,000 computer game players. “Not enough attention has been paid to the unique and interesting features that videogames have outside of the violence.”

Broadly speaking, today’s average gamer is 34 years old and has been playing electronic games for 12 years, often up to 18 hours a week. By one analyst’s calculation, the 11 million or so registered users of the online role-playing fantasy World of Warcraft collectively have spent as much time playing the game since its introduction in 2004 as humanity spent evolving as a species—about 50 billion hours of game time, which adds up to about 5.9 million years.

Games People Play

Top five video games in 2010 (by units sold)

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops

2. Madden NFL 11

3. Halo: Reach

4. New Super Mario Bros.

5. Red Dead Redemption

Top five computer games in 2010 (by units sold)

1. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

2. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Expansion Pack

3. The Sims 3

4. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack

5. Civilization V

Source: Entertainment Software Association, NPD Group

With people playing so many hundreds, if not thousands, of different games, though, university researchers have been hard-pressed to pinpoint the lasting effects on cognition and behavior.

Blizzard Entertainment Inc. in Irvine, Calif., which sells World of Warcraft, StarCraft II and other popular games, did not respond to queries about whether the company supports gaming research or conducts its own studies. Neither did RiotGames Inc. in Santa Monica, which markets League of Legends.

The vast majority of the research did not directly compare gaming with hours of other intense, mental activities such as solving math equations. Almost any computer game appears to boost a child’s creativity, researchers at Michigan State University’s Children and Technology Project reported in November.

A three-year study of 491 middle school students found that the more children played computer games the higher their scores on a standardized test of creativity—regardless of race, gender, or the kind of game played. The researchers ranked students on a widely used measure called the Torrance Test of Creativity, which involves such tasks as drawing an “interesting and exciting” picture from a curved shape on a sheet of paper, giving the picture a title, and then writing a story about it. The results were ranked by seven researchers for originality, length, and complexity on a standardized three-point scale for each factor, along with detailed questionnaires.

In contrast, using cellphones, the Internet, or computers for other purposes had no effect on creativity, they said.

Several new studies shed new light on how videogames affect the brain and behavior — and it’s not necessarily for the worse. A new study suggests videogames boost creativity in children and offer other neural benefits. Lee Hotz has details on Lunch Break.

“Much to my surprise, it didn’t matter whether you were playing aggressive games or sport games, not a bit,” said psychologist Linda Jackson, who led the federally funded study of 491 boys and girls at 20 Michigan schools.

Even so, researchers have yet to create educational software as engaging as most action games. Without such intense involvement, neural circuits won’t change, they believe. “It happens that all the games that have the good learning effect happen to be violent. We don’t know whether the violence is important or not,” said Dr. Bavelier. “We hope not.”

Until recently, most researchers studied the effects of gaming on small groups of volunteers, who learned to play under laboratory conditions. Some scientists now are turning the commercial games themselves into laboratories of learning.

In the largest public study of electronic gaming so far, Mark Blair at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, is analyzing the behavior of 150,000 people who play the popular online game called StarCraft II, pulling together more than 1.5 billion data points of perception, attention, movement and second-by-second decision-making.

By analyzing so much game play, he hopes to learn how people become experts in an online world. That may shed light on how new knowledge and experience can become second nature, integrated into the way we react to the world around us.

 

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Biden meeting with game industry

White House says vice president will meet with reps of gun and game industries on policy changes to curb gun violence

US Vice President Joe Biden will meet with representatives of the gaming industry this week to discuss ways to prevent tragedies like last month’s Newtown school shooting, a White House spokesman told Reuters.

Days after the shooting, the vice president was tasked by President Barack Obama with creating a variety of proposals to prevent gun violence and “pull together real reforms right now.” Biden is expected to suggest policy changes later this month, and is meeting with several groups this week as he puts those plans together.

In addition to the game industry, the vice president will be meeting with other entertainment industry representatives, the National Rifle Association, victims of gun violence, and other groups with interests in firearms. At least one of those groups, the NRA, has already made its stance publicly known.

In a press conference a week after the Newtown shooting, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre dismissed proposals for stricter gun laws, instead calling for an armed guard in every school. He also pointed to mental health and violent games as other areas legislators should look at, calling gaming “a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against own people.”

Guns and games aren’t the only things under scrutiny in this process. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will hold meetings tackling the issue from a mental health angle, while Education Secretary Arne Duncan will discuss the issue with parent and teacher groups.

Whatever Biden’s recommendations are, the president has directed Congress to vote on the resulting measures by the end of this year.

 

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NRA blames games in wake of shooting

Brendan Sinclair

 

US gun lobby blasts “callous, corrupt shadow industry” as part of culture of violence, says the media encourages shootings

A week after the Newtown, Connecticut shootings that left dozens dead, the National Rifle Association has blamed the media in general, and violent games specifically. In a press conference today, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre cast the blame for the massacre not on guns, but on the media, and on games.

“There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against own people, through vicious violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat, and Splatterhouse,” LaPierre said.

He introduced a crude downloadable game called Kindergarten Killers, a first-person shooter that depicted a schoolyard shooting. He suggested that the media was either lazy in not reporting on the existence of such a game, or intentionally keeping it a secret.

“They portray murder as a way of life and then have the nerve to call it entertainment,” LaPierre said in reference to media companies the world over. “But is that what it really is? Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?”

LaPierre said that the media rewards shooters with attention and wall-to-wall coverage, only encouraging further attacks.

As for how to prevent future tragedies, LaPierre called for armed guards deployed in every school in America by the time kids return from their holiday breaks in January, saying, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” He also suggested a national database of the mentally ill.

The conference was broken up twice by protesters, one with a sign saying the NRA kills kids, another yelling that the organization has blood on its hands.

Founded in 1871 to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis,” the NRA has long represented the interests of gun owners and manufacturers in US politics. It is a staunch believer in the Second Amendment right to bear arms, and now boasts more than 4 million members.

 

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Newtown shooting reignites violent games debate

Lieberman, Axelrod and others raise questions about violent entertainment in wake of mass shootings

In the wake of Friday’s Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shooting, the big question for politicians, pundits, and the public is what can be done to prevent tragedies like this from happening again. The loudest, most frequent calls for change have come on the topics of gun control and mental health, but the influence of violent video games has also been brought into the conversation.

One of the longest-standing critics of media violence, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, discussed the shooting in an appearance on The Wall Street Journal’s The Markets Hub. After access to guns and proper mental health care, Lieberman brought up violent games as a third issue in need of addressing.

“We’ve got to again start the conversation about violence in the entertainment culture,” Lieberman said. “Obviously not everybody who plays a violent video game becomes a killer, but the social science is pretty clear here. Particularly for people who are vulnerable because they do have mental problems, the violence in our entertainment culture stimulates them to act out.”

Time political columnist Joe Klein raised his own concerns with violent entertainment in an appearance on ABC’s This Week.

“We not only have a Second Amendment in this country, we also have a First Amendment that protects Sylvester Stallone’s right to fire thousands of bullets in any given movie,” Klein said. “What we need to do in this society is treat people who create violent movies and violent video games with the same degree of respect we accord pornographers. They need to be shunned.”

David Axelrod, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, expressed his own misgivings on Twitter Monday night, saying, “In NFL post-game: an ad for shoot ’em up video game. All for curbing weapons of war. But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?”

It’s possible that the National Rifle Association, already on the defensive over gun control in the wake of the shootings, may try to shift some of the focus to violent media. Fox News today cites an “industry source” with news that the group’s scheduled Friday press conference will see it “push back” against those who look at gun control as a silver bullet solution to the problem.

“If we’re going to have a conversation, then let’s have a comprehensive conversation,” the source told Fox News. “If we’re going to talk about the Second Amendment, then let’s also talk about the First Amendment, and Hollywood, and the video games that teach young kids how to shoot heads.”

Outside of the gaming industry, the debate over violent games has been largely quiet since the US Supreme Court last year struck down a California law that would have prohibited the sale of violent or sexually explicit games to minors. Within the industry, it has continued unabated after an assortment of particularly violent trailers at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo.

 

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