Boys who don't play videogames 'are at risk'

News.com.au ^ | May 9, 2008 | Andrew Ramadge,

[GeorgiaDawg32]

Don’t forget Orcs..I’ve smashed them numerous times..

[Digger]

I’ll bet boys who don’t play video games are also at greater risk to be physically fit, have a job, and date real girls.

Good one.

[Beowulf9]

You beat me to it. Harvard, liberal spawning ground.

[ovrtaxt]

The modified gravity gun is the coolest weapon- the one you don’t get until the end of Half Life 2. Gotta love it, the mayhem is so choice.

[TalonDJ]

I’ll bet boys who don’t play video games are also at greater risk to be physically fit, have a job, and date real girls.

I just get my wife to play the video games with me.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Harvard psychologists appear to be making the rounds this week.

[farlander]

Mmmmm... mayhem...

[LottieDah]

My son played tons of video games until he was diagnosed with “seizure disorder”. He had to give them up for 6 months. Fortunately for him, he outgrew playing them constantly. He joined a bowling league, partipates in trivia night at a local watering hole and dates real girls.

[corkoman]

Fire is good.

[LowOiL]

I have stomped out the Elves and the Goblins. You don’t see many of them around now do you?

I need some help with some Charr later on this evening... ya free?

[glaseatr]

At least I have stomped out the Elves and the Goblins. You don’t see many of them around now do you?

So your the one thats responsible for that. I can only take credit for dispatching The Zerg and Protoss.

[Arguendo]

Most well-adjusted guys I know enjoy video games. Weird ones never do or do so obsessively.

[ChocChipCookie]

Let me be the first to say....bull###.

[vpintheak]

What a crock of BS. Get outside and do stuff, constructive stuff. Play catch, a walk in the woods, play tag, hide & seek, anything.
Kids these days are more violent because of a lack of morality. Parents don’t have it , or don’t enforce it, and the kids will react negatively because of it.

[Maelstorm]

I’ve never found “violent” video games or “violent” movies to be problematic. I do think that the context is important. There is nothing wrong with young boys or girls pretending they are heroes fighting evil monsters. I’ve played the full gambit myself.

I started out with Atari and then finally got my parents to purchase a Tandy Color Computer. There was a cool wire frame game called Dungeons of Dagorath (http://mspencer.net/daggorath/dodpcp.html)through which I learned to type fast because one had to type actual words or letter combinations to do things and there wasn’t any restore so losing meant restarting from the beginning. It was a positive thing. I learned how to program a bit and some of the games were very interesting. One called Biosphere was especially good where you could combine organisms with different traits to populate a alien world and modify the environment etc.

Then I was able to move up and get a Tandy 1000HX. My first game was a game called Thexder which was a transforming robot with cool three-voice-sound.

http://www.geocities.com/thexderhome/thexder.htm
http://www.dosbox.com/

There was also a neat game called Microscopic Mission.
I learned what drugs like Vasopressin were as I piloted a microscopic vehicle around inside a virtual person’s body.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/laser-surgeon-the-microscopic-mission/screenshots

I loved games like King’s Quest (the ones where you really had to type words) and then I discovered Leisure Suit Larry “Passionate Patti in Search of the Pulsating Pectorals”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_3:_Passionate_Patti_in_Pursuit_of_the_Pulsating_Pectorals
http://www.allowe.com/

My parents had no idea what the game was. I even got an upgrade to 512k so I could play it and spent hours figuring out the answers to the questions at the beginning of the game so I could play it with no limits for children. (oh the innocent of pixelated nudity) It was an educational experience to say the least because I had very little knowledge of sex to say the least and my sense of humor was also fairly matter of fact. Who would’ve thought that a condominium was really a condom for midgets?

I found another love with heros quest and star flight, and built up the patience of saint swapping disks. Then I got my first computer with a hard drive a 486/33mhz with 4 megs of memory. I thought I was in heaven. Especially once a buddy of mine gave me his old 486/66mhz processor. I still remember gently prying the 33 out over a period of what seemed like hours and gentle putting in place the new processor.

Then I got my first 2400 baud modem and signed up for the prodigy online service. Again my parents had no idea but for me it was “freedom”. I also learned about dialup BBS systems and downloading MOD files and graphics and door games. I became adept at setting up things like Bimodem, Zmodem,YModem and even the fantastic ZyRion protocol. This opened up a seemingly endless supply of shareware and games and of course pictures and door games.

It wasn’t long till I discovered Castle Wolfenstein. I still remember the thrill my eyes felt the first time I saw it in all its primitive 3D glory. I spent a lot of time running around blowing away Nazis and monsters. There were a lot of other games. I suppose the pinnacle came with Quake I and II and when I obtained broadband there was no limit. I don’t think I suffered from it. If anything it allowed me to socialize in ways that I never would’ve been able to in an area where hunting and farming was what we generally did in our spare time though I tended to spend a lot of time reading anything and everything. It was my interest in computers and games outside of school that led partially to my successful career. It provided me a path to success and with the occasional thrill of shooting someone out of the air at one thousand yards with a railgun. Now that is sweet.lol

[Arguendo]

Have there ever been any reputable studies showing that violent video games do make boys more violent?

[Tired of Taxes]

When I was a kid, boys played with toy guns, army men, played cops & robbers, King of the Hill, etc., and that seemed to be where they got their violent tendencies out. Now guns are bad, the Army is evil, cops are demonized, etc., and there is no outlet for little boy behavior. So, maybe video games are a way for boys to be boys?

I think so. We have three sons who are very active, play sports, are healthy and in good physical condition. But, they love to play videogames, too. We don't let them play the mature, violent, gory games, though. The article above goes on to say that the more mature games may lead to violent tendencies. Most of our kids' games involve auto racing, sports, etc. The only violence in their games involves boxing matches or shooting down planes.

For us, their parents, as long as the violence is not graphic and it involves a clearcut line between Good vs. Evil, and the player is on the side of Good, it's OK. For example, they would not be allowed to play a game like Grand Theft Auto or Doom.

[PROCON]

Let me be the first to say....bull###.

Well said, I agree. :)

[RandallFlagg]

[Bastiat_Fan]

I agree correlation does not equal causation, but if video games actually CAUSED violence, given the explosion of popularity in gaming over the last 20 years, wouldn’t violence pretty much HAVE to go up?

I grew up with video games (21), I don’t have a single memory where a console was not in the house, as my older brothers bought their first Nintendo when I was 3 or 4. Every single person my age that I know plays video games at least on occasion, be they playing college athletics, in the military, in college, or just fat slobs. EVERYONE plays them, either on consoles owned by friends, or on their own consoles. My Marine recruiters play them, my old roommate (a firefighter) plays them. GTA 4 made more in gross sales (400 MILLION) in its first week than any movie will likely make all year. With all this, why are we not living in a country where violence is up 100, 200, or 300%?

This is no different than the comic book fear-mongering of the 1950s. It’s just plain STUPID. I’m just glad that the video game industry is powerful enough to stop these nanny-staters from ruining video games like they ruined comic books 60 years ago.