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Just How Violent Is Pacman, Anyway?
from the yikes dept
A couple months ago, we wrote about a bunch of politicians grandstanding against video games, an event that was later mocked successfully by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. It appears that the hearing is still getting plenty of attention. Slashdot is pointing to an ongoing debate over some of the research that was presented at the hearing. Aaron Stanton, at About.com, took issue with a Harvard researcher who testified about how the ESRB (the organization in charge of rating video games) did not accurately rate the games. Stanton notes that in the report, Dr. Kimberly Thompson, also put in some stats about classic video games, noting that Pacman was considered 62% violent. Yes, the game where you run around a maze chomping dots. Apparently, having the ghosts chase you is considered "violent." The blog Joystiq decided to ask Dr. Thompson to respond, which she did in great detail, pointing out that the Pacman issue was only a tiny part of the overall work and was more for comparative purposes. She also notes that games like Pacman may be played by children who are only 2 or 3 years old and cannot yet distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy. Stanton, however, responds to Thompson's response and makes some important points.
While Thompson says people are only focusing in on this one element, Stanton is absolutely right that the fact that her methodology recognizes Pacman as such a violent game should raise an awful lot of questions about the overall methodology (and that doesn't even get into the game Centipede, which is judged as 92.6% violent). While Thompson isn't trying to make public policy positions based on the research, the politicians she presented to will be making public policy decisions on it. And, given the way most politicians act, you can bet that they'll be using only the elements of the research that support their position while conveniently ignoring the points that don't. What the 62% Pacman number shows is that the scale and system that Thompson is using probably is quite different than what most people consider "violence" to be. However, when that same scale is used for the sake of public policy making, no one will note that the scale is not calibrated with our common sense views of violence, and that's a problem.
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Very Violent.
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I blame pacman for the rave scene...
- Marcus Brigstocke www.marcusbrigstocke.com
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Pacman is violent?!
Yeah... I think they might be exagerating a bit... I mean, statistics can prove anything.
Just out of curiousity... If pacman is 62% violent, how violent is Grand theft auto?
Or even manhunt?
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Re: I blame pacman for the rave scene...
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what??
Erm, wait a second. Maybe games have made me violent.
In which case---better not let politics me mad.
Sure hope politicians don't start blaming video games rather than the fact they are raping society with politics.
Screw video games, back to thumb-wars for me.
Tom
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Wal-Mart's Violence Rating?
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Re: Pacman is violent?!
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Politicians want kids to do something else....
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It gets worse
For instance, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion scored only 5% violent using the same methodology. At the other end of the scale, Galaga and Galaxian both scored 100% violent. Heck, even Kirby64 scored 71.7% violent. KIRBY!
Unfortunately they didn't give the violence rating that GTA got but according to the article, GTA3 scored as less violent than games like Space Invaders. So I guess my 10 year old son would be better off playing GTA then huh?
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Ignorance is Bliss...
The only reason the politicians even bother with it is because it is a newer medium that is interactive. The movie industry had these kind of growing pains, as did the music industry, after all Rock n Roll was branded devil music when it started to grow. So video games are just the latest platform for politicians to latch on to and protect the children. After all that has come before, risky movies and rock n roll are mainstream, video games will eventually make it there as well.
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Ignorance is Bliss... Part 2
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Re: Pacman is violent?!
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video game violence o my!
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on a more serious note.. lets take away the violent game of pacman. let the kids go outside and play war with pretend guns and play with action figures that can decapitate one another... because that is far less violent than pacman.
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sure are evil
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Re:
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Re:
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Pong!
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Re:
"The ESRB should play the games when assigning a rating."
Aside from how idiotic it is to expect them to play every game to rate it (what if they aren't good enough to get past some parts or find secret content), this kind of suggestion ignores the fact that the industry is self-regulated. They don't even have to rate games, they do it as a service to consumers. Next thing you know you will be demanding that all books are rated.
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Re: Politicians want kids to do something else....
Or autistic, or shy, or abused, or lacking in imagination, or...
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I always thought Mario...
PacMan-
See's Ghosts...
Has food cravings...
Takes Drugs known as 'power pellets' that then allows him to consume said ghosts!!!...
Mario...
Finds hidden 'stashes' of cash...
Proformance enhansing drugs in the form of Mushrooms, and Wild flowers and other such things...
Hidden 'vines' (drug reference) that take him to 'warp pipes'...
Lets face it people, Mario and pacman are a major reason alot of people smoked pot and did other Rec. drugs!!!
(PS dont get me started on sonic...)
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Re: Pong!
(WARNING, VIOLENT!!!!)
http://www.elfrigo.org/flash/pong.htm
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99.99999%
So GTA is prbably 99.995% violent :)
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Re: Wal-Mart's Violence Rating?
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You know, for some odd reason I really DOUBT they connect themselves with the yellow circle thing enough to actually think, HOLY #$%^!!! I just DIED!!! or YES!!! I absolutly slaughtered that ghost!!! It died a horrible and painfull death!!!
Which is basically what she was saying in her response as far as I could tell.
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Drinking and smoking are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year (I don't think you can pin a single death on video games) but they're still allowed to be used, why? Because the politicition drink and smoke!
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The Study Methodology
On the other hand, a game like Hitman which is mostly sneaking with a tiny bit of violence at the end would rate extremely low on her scale.
So, just on this little glimpse into the study, you see that it is so flawed as to be completely useless.
There's also the matter of what exactly she defines 'violence' as...
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How violent is my fist?
These people keep saying that kids can't tell between fantasy and reality. But they are assigning violence percentages to make-believe fantasy worlds, as if they were the real thing. So, who doesn't know the difference between fantasy and reality? Alarmists and politicians, naturally. Kids seem to have a pretty good grasp on reality.
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watch our soldiers kill people with guns on TV is acceptable.
a yellow circle eating white dots is not.
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Idiotic? No, that sounds like common sense. We expect those who rate movies to actually watch every movie they rate, even SNAKES ON A PLANE!
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A video game is typically somewhere around 40.
That's why it's absurd. Working 8 hours a day, a reviewer can finish a short game in one week.
Then they have to go back through and search for easter eggs that may or may not exist. So it has to be a thorough playing.
Let's say 70 to 80 hours then, going through different combinations. 2 weeks.
That's the speed that we play games when we aren't looking for things that COULD be sexual. There's time to stop and write these things down, note, debate, look up references, etc.
We're looking at a month a game.
One whole month to be reviewed for one game.
There are 8 systems pumping out games daily; not to mention a backlog of recent "playable" games that would be catalogued between the XBox, PS2, and Gamecube.
It's. Not. Possible.
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A video game is typically 40 hours of redundant play after 5 mintues of uniqueness. If you such a dumb fcuk that you have to complete the entire game before you can tell how violent it is, then you should not be allowed to reproduce.
Quite frankly rating a game R would problably increase it's sales since any kid would rather play a R-rated game than a PG-rated one, but the point is that the consumers (parents and kids) should have the information to make knowledgable choices. What's so wrong with that.
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Let's do the math. Let's say a person plays a game for a mere 8 hours (one work day) before rating it. That means it's only one-person day to rate a game. If 50 new games come out each month, which is WAY MORE than reality, then it only takes 50 person-days per month to rate all the games. That's 50/20 or 2.5 person-days per work day.
So a company with only 3 employees would be sufficent to rate all games. Oh, that's so fcuking hard.
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It never ends
Anyway, I wonder what Legend of Zelda scored. Not to mention multiplayer online FPS like Counter Strike.
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It never ends
Anyway, I wonder what Legend of Zelda scored. Not to mention multiplayer online FPS like Counter Strike.
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