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Moron Spector Talks


Vadrosaul

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I also agree. I hate games like GTA which sole purpose seem to be to be a street thug. There are similar games like it, and I don't really see a point in them.

I mean, what's the fun about playing a character that is the asshole you would make a big circle around if you met him in the streets?

Gerhard

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I dont agree with Spector. Its inane to blame video games for the U.S. culture of violence, they are a symptom not a disease. Everyother home owns guns, we are brought up with violent sports, violent movies, and in general a culture that turns to violence to answer societies problems. (War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, War on Crime, War on Poverty, etc.) Want to lower the numbers of violent deaths on American streets? Take the cheap fucking handguns that nearly any idiot can find a way to buy off the market. Christ, I have a cousin who has a friend who can get us fully automatic AK-47s for about 300 $$. No joke. I know guys who can take an semi auto rifle, still legal here, and make them fully auto in about 3 minutes. Its insane. In some states kids are carrying firearms before they can operate a vehicle.

 

Dont get me wrong, GTA (never played em) seems over the top, but that is besides my points. The problems is not the games, but the culture that produces such games.

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Christ, not 'do games and movies cause a violent society?' again. This one has been beaten to death surely?

The answer is a resounding 'no'

The past was far, far, more violent than the present, and for most of that time those people had no media of any kind.

We can therefore assume that vilolence is a somewhat natural state.

So many millions of peope living side by side in peace and harmony is the absurd state.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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I don't think Warren was saying videogames cause violence, just that videogames don't need to be as violent as they are, and they might gain some form of acceptance were they anything but brainless bloodletting for cheap thrills. Which is what I, and others on this forum, have been saying for a while.

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Nonsense, there's no point chaning your story now, just to agree with Bunny. I'm the only one here who wants to take all the weapons out of this game, and ban the FPS genre completely.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Warren was certainly not saying that games cause violence. He was saying that games like GTA give gamers and publishers a bad name, and don't contribute anything to our culture.

 

A very different argument, and one with which I agree. Not that I think such games should be banned, I just wouldn't buy or play them.

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Well, most games by their nature tend not to contribute much to culture. It's not really their function, or hasn't been, though I would like to see some more serious, adult, non-peurile games for sure - but of course, they still have to be good games, or I won't play them.

The problem is that you can put a movie like Terminiator or Predator in game form quite easily, but you can't make a game from movies like Schindler's List or Rainman.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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I was mistaken to say Warren was saying that, upon re-reading, I should have said that the people Warren is attempting to placate would blame the influence of violent games for violence in society. Which is looney. It may be true that less violence would lead to more acceptance though.

 

I read an article once where some Army officer attributed some of the violence in American schools to FPS games, claiming it helped them to learn to shoot straight. I guess he didnt think the ready access those children (Columbine, etc.) had to machine pistols and high powered handguns played much of a role in the tragedies.

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I don't think Warren was saying videogames cause violence, just that videogames don't need to be as violent as they are, and they might gain some form of acceptance were they anything but brainless bloodletting for cheap thrills. Which is what I, and others on this forum, have been saying for a while.

 

That's exactly as I understood it as well, and this is where I agree with him. As I said in my first posting, I don't like games which have mindless violence. I don't mind playing a game that includes violence, but if it is the sole purpose of the game then it's just boring.

Gerhard

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I just laugh at this statement "To that end, Spector says the industry has to create more content besides "mindless pathetic killfests.", when his recent accomplishments are Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief 3 DS

Loose BOWELS are the first sign of THE CHOLERA MORBUS!
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Don't know Deus Ex, but Thief is certainly not about killing. You can do it, yes, but it is neither the primary objective, nor is it even needed. You can get by very well without killing.

 

Sure, but the "content" that he has been involved in has been a butchered sequel and a consolized sneaker. At least after that I lost all faith in counting him among the greats.

Loose BOWELS are the first sign of THE CHOLERA MORBUS!
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I agree to an extent--although this seems more like politics than anything else. Grand Theft Auto Vice City for me was the most overrated game I've ever played. Although my opinion, the physics were awful, you can't run and shoot at the same time, and the missions were reptitive. I never could bring myself to finish it; I never did have that much fun.

 

However, after the Hot Coffee fiasco, it seems to me that most developers are going to try to distance themselves as far away from the reckage as possible so they arn't fingered by certain angry senators. In a sense they are presenting the media that despite the exceptions, the video game industry is respectable. However, even if this is a result of politics, I still agree that we have moved past the era where games need to be mindless, but where to draw the line exactly is up for debate. Is Resident Evil 4 mindless violence? A disgrace to the industry? Where do you draw the line?

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Wasn't this URL posted here before? Can't remember. At any rate, if it wasn't, I always found it interesting:

http://gr.bolt.com/articles/violence/violence.htm - "The Truth About Violence in Video Games"

 

Rather than get rid of violent video games to appease parents; maybe get rid of religion or get everyone on the same page with the same religion. Last time I checked more wars have started because of religious differences than as a result of violent video games. Now tell me which is worse on the well-being of the world? And which would be a huge step toward bringing peace on Earth? Obviously it's impossible to get everyone on the same page with religion; so I'm just sayin', for sake of argument.

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I just laugh at this statement "To that end, Spector says the industry has to create more content besides "mindless pathetic killfests.", when his recent accomplishments are Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief 3 DS

 

If he were a modder you'd have a point, but as a commercial game producer he has a certain obligation to deliver what the publisher wants: mindless pathetic killfests. I think Thief is about as far as you can go away from the mindless FPS formula and still make a profitable game.

 

It's the independent modders that will change gaming, not the big companies. We need to show them that there is a market for games where annihilation of your foe is not the objective. :laugh:

 

[/heaps importance upon self]

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It's the independent modders that will change gaming, not the big companies. We need to show them that there is a market for games where annihilation of your foe is not the objective.

 

So basically get rid of Age of Empires, Civilization, Homeworld, Diablo, Rainbow Six, Halo, FEAR, Warcraft, Doom, Quake, etc? I think we'd only be left to play Zelda and sports titles. But even Zelda would be suspect. And I could argue that sports is about beating your opponent. Losing at a game can bring bouts of depression for some -- so maybe anything where there might be a loser should be boycotted or banned. :P

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Wasn't this URL posted here before? Can't remember. At any rate, if it wasn't, I always found it interesting:

http://gr.bolt.com/articles/violence/violence.htm - "The Truth About Violence in Video Games"

 

Rather than get rid of violent video games to appease parents; maybe get rid of religion or get everyone on the same page with the same religion. Last time I checked more wars have started because of religious differences than as a result of violent video games. Now tell me which is worse on the well-being of the world? And which would be a huge step toward bringing peace on Earth? Obviously it's impossible to get everyone on the same page with religion; so I'm just sayin', for sake of argument.

 

 

Abolishing all religions utterly and permanently wiping all record of them from our history books would be the single greatest thing humanity could achieve. Even better than interstellar spaceflight. I don't think it would stop people from being violent towards each other, but it would remove the main excuse people use to justify wars, and the main source of faith that people draw on to bring themselves to kill another human being (psychopaths aside), and if people can learn to think instead of clinging to the pathetic vices of faith and belief, I think people would generally behave themselves much more than at present.

 

I doubt very much that violent video games have any effect on the levels of violence in society, but I am sick do death of games that revolve entirely around shooting things and killing. Not because I have a problem with violence in games per se, but because it is boring, unsophisticated and cliched.

 

A fisrt person sneaker with no weapons is long overdue, and it is sad that classic adventure games have all but dissapeared. I would rather be challenged by difficult cognitive puzzles than by finding enough ammo to kill the next level boss etc..

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Abolishing all religions utterly and permanently wiping all record of them from our history books would be the single greatest thing humanity could achieve.

 

Atheist strikes again! :P

 

How would forgetting the past stop humanity from making the same mistakes in the future, eh?

 

So basically get rid of Age of Empires, Civilization, Homeworld, Diablo, Rainbow Six, Halo, FEAR, Warcraft, Doom, Quake, etc?

 

Where the hell did I say we should get rid of anything? Showing there is a market for games without killing doesn't mean abolishing those that do. Unlike some people I think creating more options is the answer to a better world, rather than getting rid of all but the ones I like. ;)

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Atheist strikes again! :P

He could be agnostic, tho ;)

 

How would forgetting the past stop humanity from making the same mistakes in the future, eh?

That was only half of his criteria. He also said: "Aboloshing all religions utterly". Therefore, he was mentioniong wiping the history slate clean and making religion something we don't even know about; where the word wouldn't even exist and we'd have no desire or incling to 'invent' it.

 

Where the hell did I say we should get rid of anything?

All the games I listed involve 'annihilation of your foes.' I was being a little facetious, as I figure you were maybe only talking about killfest games... but you did say it! :)

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That was only half of his criteria. He also said: "Aboloshing all religions utterly". Therefore, he was mentioniong wiping the history slate clean and making religion something we don't even know about; where the word wouldn't even exist and we'd have no desire or incling to 'invent' it.

 

Impossible. Like it or loathe it religion is hard-wired into our brains. Completely seperate cultures have all come up with their own gods. No one came up with the idea of religion one day. If we wiped away all traces of religion someone would start a new one pretty soon.

 

All the games I listed involve 'annihilation of your foes.' I was being a little facetious, as I figure you were maybe only talking about killfest games... but you did say it! :)

 

I said this:

 

We need to show them that there is a market for games where annihilation of your foe is not the objective.

 

I never said I wanted to get rid of any killfest games, just show that there is a place in the market for non-killfest games.

 

He could be agnostic, tho

 

Yeah right. If he were in two minds as to whether God existed or not he wouldn't be calling for a total cull of all world religions. I was refering to this atheist: he's managed to take a few threads that had nothing to do with religion and turn them completely in that direction. Should an unsuspecting forum member make even a passing comment about faith or spirituality of any flavor, Atheist will descend like one of the Furies, mercilessly hectoring all of the ignorant and delusional believers about the sordid history of the church and the pernicious effects of religion on society.

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Impossible. Like it or loathe it religion is hard-wired into our brains. Completely seperate cultures have all come up with their own gods. No one came up with the idea of religion one day. If we wiped away all traces of religion someone would start a new one pretty soon.

 

Not all of our brains. About 20% of the population are susceptable to religious behaviour, and it has been found that people with a strong proclivity to believe in god or things like that have an abnormality in the temporal lobe of their brains, that has been loosely linked to some genes. Some societies have no religion at all - most hunter gatherer societies are animists, whch is an atheistic way of looking at the world, not really a religion. Bhuddism is an atheistic religion, many would argue it is a philosphy, not a religion. So you have large populations in asia that haven't felt the need to invent a god.

 

In many cultures, mental illness is poorly understood, and people with disorders like schizophrenia are mistakenly treated as being either possessed by demons or divinely inspired, and so people erroniously trust these lunatics and put them in positions of leadership (or burn them at the stake). Once people understand that the loonies are loonies and need medication, not prophets or messiahs, I doubt they will feel the need to invent fantasies to enrich or structure their lives.

 

A bit of selective breeding might be required to wipe out the tendency to invent religion etc, but it is possible.

 

And as I've said before, I am an agnostic who considers the probability of there being a god so infintessimally small that it isn't worth considering.

 

And it is the off-topic section, I reserve the right to bag the faithful. ^_^

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