Battlefield 3

[AdamA]

Does anyone else think this is eerie and a little disturbing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPDaxWayEQY

Nothing to do with the PP, but I always like to hear opinions from the posters on this website.

Be sure to skip the ad prior to the actual video (one of the ads is another advertisement for Battlefield 3).   

[melveyr]

I grew up playing video games. Not going to lie, that game looks super fun.

Have you ever played video games? I have been shooting people in the head over the internet since I was 6, I am a totally non-violent person in real life

[AdamA]

Have you ever played video games? I have been shooting people in the head over the internet since I was 6.

I gotcha, and I'm not saying the game isn't fun, or that it makes you want to shoot people in the head, or that it should be banned or anything like that.

Maybe "desensitizing" is the word I'm looking for.  There's something a little creepy to me about soldiers basically wearing US Army ACU's running through the streets shooting things to "99 Problems." 

Not placing a judgement on you for being into the game.  Just curious what people think because it made me mentally flinch a little bit when I saw the commercial on Comedy Central earlier today.

[Tortoise]

I know what you mean, Adam. The trivialization of war by marketing an ultra-realistic war game to a rap soundtrack is a bit creepy and distasteful to me. Then again, the marketing profession in general strikes me as creepy and distasteful.

The issue of desensitization is an interesting one, and I have mixed feelings on it.

On the one hand, I grew up in the '90s (I'm 32 now) playing a variety of extremely violent video games and feel like it had very little effect on how I feel about real violence. No matter how realistic a violent video game is, the knowledge that it isn't real makes a huge, huge difference to me. A world of difference.

On the other hand, I am very disturbed by people who become desensitized to watching or participating in real violence--whether watching Faces of Death videos, joining a gang and getting in gang fights, or anything else of that sort. (I still can't watch video clips of real people getting killed--it literally makes me nauseous, despite my years of violent video game-playing.)

[MediumTex]

I've been playing a lot of Angry Birds, and I do notice lately that when I eat bacon I tend to snarl as I do it.

I haven't, however, stopped eating eggs, so I don't know if the game is affecting me or not.

[Coffee]

I've been playing a lot of Angry Birds, and I do notice lately that when I eat bacon I tend to snarl as I do it.

I haven't, however, stopped eating eggs, so I don't know if the game is affecting me or not.

LOL.

[Coffee]

My problem with these games is neither the violence or the realism: It's that I can't figure out how to control the characters. 

But then, I can't figure out how to use my TV's remote control, either.

What I've seen is that there really isn't a lot of cross-over: Go to your local gun range and watch teenagers learn to shoot a gun the first time.  It's totally foreign to them: The bang, the kick-back, the flinching....

Take a city kid hunting and watch how adverse he is to both pulling the trigger and butchering the meat.  (Even though he's grown up playing super-violent video games).  There just doesn't seem to be any carry-over, in my opinion.

I remember when I was a tween, and everybody said playing Dungeons and Dragons was going to be a gateway to devil worship and a Wiccan lifestyle.  We played anyway.  And we all grew up to be accountants, engineers and lawyers. 

And none of us have dabbled in devil worship.

Well... except maybe for the lawyer.  But that's another story.

[ahhrunforthehills]

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[AdamA]

What I've seen is that there really isn't a lot of cross-over: Go to your local gun range and watch teenagers learn to shoot a gun the first time.  It's totally foreign to them: The bang, the kick-back, the flinching....

Take a city kid hunting and watch how adverse he is to both pulling the trigger and butchering the meat.  (Even though he's grown up playing super-violent video games).  There just doesn't seem to be any carry-over, in my opinion.

I remember when I was a tween, and everybody said playing Dungeons and Dragons was going to be a gateway to devil worship and a Wiccan lifestyle.  We played anyway.  And we all grew up to be accountants, engineers and lawyers. 

And none of us have dabbled in devil worship.

I didn't mean to imply that video games cause people to become sociopaths.

It was just off-putting to me for some reason, mostly because of the song.

What does "99 Problems and a Bitch Ain't One" have to do with armed combat?  They actually had to bleep portions of the ad to air it on television. 

[Storm]

I think violent video games are fine.  I'm personally not a big fan of shooters because the 15 year old kids have lightning reflexes and can kill me too often now that I'm in my 30s and have "old man reflexes."  But, I do think that most people are able to tell the difference between reality and a game and will not have an issue with desensitization.

In fact, if you did a study, I suspect you might see a similar correlation to the studies about pornography availability and rape (when porn is readily available, incidents of rape go down).  Violent video games are similar to "violence porn," so if people that need to get some aggression out of their system can take it out in a way that doesn't harm other real people, more power to them.  I suspect that if you did a study on one population that had access to violent video games and one that didn't, you might see real life violent crimes decrease in the population that had access to violent video games...

For those of us that are male, testosterone is a real thing and you can try to control your urge to punch someone in the face after dealing with assholes at work or in traffic all day.  Or you can go home and kill some people in a game and feel a whole lot better afterwards... 

[ahhrunforthehills]

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[AdamA]

I think violent video games are fine.  I'm personally not a big fan of shooters because the 15 year old kids have lightning reflexes and can kill me too often now that I'm in my 30s and have "old man reflexes."  But, I do think that most people are able to tell the difference between reality and a game and will not have an issue with desensitization.

In fact, if you did a study, I suspect you might see a similar correlation to the studies about pornography availability and rape (when porn is readily available, incidents of rape go down).  Violent video games are similar to "violence porn," so if people that need to get some aggression out of their system can take it out in a way that doesn't harm other real people, more power to them.  I suspect that if you did a study on one population that had access to violent video games and one that didn't, you might see real life violent crimes decrease in the population that had access to violent video games...

For those of us that are male, testosterone is a real thing and you can try to control your urge to punch someone in the face after dealing with assholes at work or in traffic all day.  Or you can go home and kill some people in a game and feel a whole lot better afterwards...   ;D

What'd you think about the song selection?

[Storm]

Well, I bet a lot of real US army soldiers over in Iraq or Afghanistan are blasting Jay-Z through their comms while they work, so I thought it was fairly authentic.. Then again I'm just a deviant WoW player that listens to stuff like this: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tOPRcDmHkQ

Seriously, the music/soundtrack is just there to add energy to the video.  It's not like people don't listen to that kind of music while playing.

[AdamA]

Well, I bet a lot of real US army soldiers over in Iraq or Afghanistan are blasting Jay-Z through their comms while they work, so I thought it was fairly authentic.. Then again I'm just a deviant WoW player that listens to stuff like this: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tOPRcDmHkQ

Seriously, the music/soundtrack is just there to add energy to the video.  It's not like people don't listen to that kind of music while playing.

Okay...I guess I'm just getting old and cranky.

Just to be clear, I was in no way suggesting that the commercial should be banned or anything.  I was just surprised by it. 

[Storm]

It's no big deal, really, I think a lot of gamers want to listen to music that will pump them up while they play.  I guess to them this commercial might be appealing.

I guess if anything I kind of have an issue with the glorification of war and the US military.  All of these games glorify the wars we are in, in the same way that war movies glorified WW2.  In my father's generation, the war movies of WW2 glorified the war, in the same way that war movies and video games (being a new media) glorify the wars of today.

It is just propaganda, but it's economically viable for media companies to feed into it, so it happens.  I'm not sure what you can do about it other than tune it out, if it doesn't appeal to you.