Posted on 10/11/2013 10:18:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
As video games grow ever more violent and realistic, the latest sign of "progress" is the arrival of female characters you can take into combat in the latest version of the war game "Call of Duty."
You may watch a hundred commercials selling this product, but no one tells the audience what's really in it. There's a reason: You'd be shocked.
A panel of young pundits on the gaming website IGN.com recently pondered the question "How does it feel to have a woman get stabbed in the face?"
One young man admitted with a bit of shame that "I'm so, for the lack of a better word, numb to always stabbing dudes in the face" in games. But women? "It is kind of like, wait a second, it does kind of give me pause."
The others on the panel thought he was all wrong. The lone female treated him as if he was lamely holding women's progress back. Another man claimed to see the future: "I've certainly become desensitized to violence in games, violence in movies, violence as a whole. This is just the next step. I wouldn't be surprised if in five or six years, there's going to be kids (inside the war game) in 'Call of Duty.'"
And let's guess: When that happens, the gaming pundits will briefly consider -- and dismiss -- the shock of virtually stabbing children in the face.
It's absolutely necessary that every step in the coarsening of the culture be accompanied by pundits insisting that raising moral objections is the mark of the fuddy-duddy. When the new game "Grand Theft Auto V" was released in September, New York Times reviewer Chris Suellentrop spoke for the "guardians" of pop culture, insisting "as sex and violence have permeated prestige television, the controversies that once surrounded the 'Grand Theft Auto' games have begun to seem like sepia-toned oddities from another age."
Rockstar Games, the makers of the perennially amoral "Grand Theft Auto" series, can claim the high ground of commercial success. Guinness World Records just announced "GTA 5" has smashed six world records, including the highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours and the fastest entertainment property to gross a billion dollars. They sold over 11 million copies in its first 24 hours and hit a billion in sales within three days.
"GTA totally deserves to be recognized as an icon of modern British culture," oozed Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday. (Add American culture as well.) "Gaming is no longer a niche hobby, as GTA 5 has proved, and how exciting that it's taken on the might of Hollywood and won."
But after the hundreds of ads selling "Grand Theft Auto V," fooled by the news reports gushing about its sales, what do we know about its contents? Again, no one really wants to address what's inside the wrapper.
Suellentrop of the Times explained the plot. It's "still an action game about hoodlums and thieves; we start with an extended bout of cop killing and proceed to a series of increasingly ambitious heists." There are three villains you can choose to become, including "Trevor, an oddly lovable psychopathic meth dealer and gun runner."
Another villain, Michael, announces the game's cynical amorality: "Movies are about telling the same lies over and over again. You know, good beats evil, things happen for a reason, attractive people are interesting."
It's quite obvious this game is going to be opened on Christmas Day by 12-year-old boys, who will then be able to not only (virtually) slice policemen to ribbons but buy and smoke marijuana, snoop on celebrities having sex for a paparazzo, and attend a strip club and buy a lap dance. They can go online and check out the "GTA 5 Prostitutes, Sex, Strip Clubs, and Booty Calls Guide." This inspired Suellentrop's one criticism of Rockstar Games: the women were all sexpots. "One of the only young women in the game not oversexed and under-read is sucked into a jet turbine."
When many of us were young, we could wander the neighborhood for hours unsupervised. Sadly, parents today are too concerned for their children's safety to let them play outside. So many of these children spend these same hours inside playing in a much darker world of techno-mayhem their parents can't even imagine.
Someone somewhere will someday find himself desensitized and numb enough to endlessly stab some girl in the face. And we'll shake our heads wondering what might have been done to prevent it.
Preparing them for the world the left is busy creating for them.
Got to have those warriors for the next few decades ready.
“When many of us were young, we could wander the neighborhood for hours unsupervised. Sadly, parents today are too concerned for their children’s safety to let them play outside.”
Ain’t that the truth? I find myself surprised when I see a child who is even momentarily unsupervised nowadays.
Someone somewhere will someday find himself desensitized and numb enough to endlessly stab some girl in the face. And we'll shake our heads wondering what might have been done to prevent it.
One of the things we can do to prevent it is to fight US government tyranny that prohibits American Christians from excercising Christian morality. Right now, the government which legally supports legal moves to punish in the name of "civil rights," won't even allow Christian prayer in schools, Christmas trees, or Nativity scenes on public property, nor public signage of the 10 Commandments. "We" meekly submit -- and then wonder at this devilish turn in the application of technology. The technology is fine -- it's the amorality of the application that is the problem.
And that amorality is nourished and funded by government "programs" at taxpayer expense.
Less government will result in MORE and BETTER morality. Obama said "America is not a Christian nation." HE HAD BETTER BE WRONG.
Mr. Megan plays Battlefied 3 and I’ve suggested that the game should have innocent civilians in it to make it more realistic. The Americans in the game would be penalized for every civilian they accidentally kill while the bad guys (whoever they are) would be allowed to kill all the civilians they want.
That’d be very realistic, IMHO.
Its no big deal.
My friends and I were pretty bloodthirsty when we played outside with toy guns and GI Joes. It is just natural for boys to dream of blood-drenched heroism.
Apparently allowing girls and women to be stabbed in the face, cut to ribbons by machine guns, and turned into bloody guacamole by mortar fire is considered "progress".
I am not one of those bemoaning how it was supposedly safe for children to play outside decades ago, but it is too dangerous now. While parents may be more concerned, that reflects more on perception than actual reality. Forty years ago, I looked a mass murderer in the face and stayed far enough away that he could not grab me and pull me into his car. Twice before that, people tried to kidnap me--one by acting like he knew me, another by offering a candy bar (while standing next to the open trunk of his car).
I also do not subscribe to the notion that violent video games cause violent kids. They know they are playing games, just like kids know movies and TV shows are fantasies. I saw a study fairly recently that measured the brain activity of college students shown violent movie clips (no particular reaction) vs. shown clips of people jumping out of the Twin Towers on 9/11 (brain activity spikes and physical recoiling). People *do* know the difference between reality and fantasy.
They had that in a Star Wars FPS that I played. Killing civilians and “innocent” droids got you “Dark Side” points. I never accumulated any...
The article talks about children playing GTA V, but I’d like to point out that the game is rated M. So if any children are playing it, they probably already have problems from neglectful parenting.
Really? It’s too much fun to “force choke” someone into to submission, I could never resist the temptation :)
I agree that boys must have and should have access to bloodthirsty war play.
When it involves girls, it should be kicked square in the ass. But then again, I say that as a woman opposed to females in any combat areas of military, except as nurses and such -- women in the daily ranks of the US military is making for a guy the joining any branch of the US military about like going on to community college after high school. IT IS SABOTAGE OF OUR FIGHTING STRENGTH.
I don't think girls -- er, excuse me, that fresh-out-of-high-school 18-year-old is a "woman" *rolls eyes* -- should be serving alongside men on navy ships, and I sure as hell know they will serve to totally sabotage the submarine fleets. Women who possess the presumption to push themselves forward in an all-male province, are badly midguided, rude, and self-centered. And they are being used to weaken the fighting strength of the US military. Here is a cold fact: even in video games, a fighting force of all "men and boys" will kick the friggin' ass of a fighting force with men, boys, and girls.
It's like gravity. There whether we like it or not.
What part of the country did you grow up? What years? ‘70s? ‘80s? Just curious.
Hmmm... my husband likes CoD, but I don't think he'll care for this.
Unless the women are butt-ugly and named Yancy Belosi and Villary Winton. ;->
But this is not blood-drenched heroism. This is blood-drenched demonism.
Second: the "content" fed into imagination and memory is one of THE most important determinants of action and character. If this were not true, it would mean that a hundred billion dollars' worth of advertising money has been spent to no purpose; the Nazis and Stalinists had no mass motivational skills; and art and literature have no point because they leave no trace on consciousness.
I preferred to force-snatch blasters and let the storm troopers wander around wondering what to do next while I got on with the mission...
I am not a big fan of women in the military, much less in combat, but I am a neanderthal.
But I am smart enough to know that, until we get our asses handed to us (hasn’t happened - our defeats come at the hand of our politicos, not the enemy), that isn’t going to change and that anybody saying anything against it will have a career-altering experience. If we want a military or political career, or even to survive in the modern work place, even us neanderthals have to keep our mouths’ shut.
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