Episode 10: Violence in Video Games

one and then another. Here's the thing, though, they're sparkling, and if you hold them up too close to the mic, it's going to be like the snap crackle pot. Yeah. That's why I drink off Mike, you know, and then swing back over here. What we need is more sponsors, I feel, because all we do talk about the food that we're eating and the protein shakes that we're drinking. Well, no, don't worry, they'll be rolling in soon enough. Once they still want our condoms. What happened with that? We do

we ever? Do we get? We weren't? We can up it. We can up our spice factor. Yeah okay, yeah, Today on the show, Yeah, we're tackling something that was really important to Iffie and I that I think since we started this podcast, we really wanted to tackle, but wanted to make sure that we heavily researched it so that we could cover our bases because I feel like you and I are on the same page as far as this discussion, but we want to make sure that we're

having an open discussion. Well, it's funny because I have a long history. I've actually wrote two separate essays about this topic because in high school when I had to write, when they would give you, like, you know, a informational essay about something you care about. I've always been a big video game gamer, and I wrote two different essays

about this. So and it's funny because seeing it now, seeing it thin, it's really just the same argument that keeps get improven, disproven, and then they keep kind of circling back to it so much so that and we'll get into this later. Some some people who normally wouldn't agree with us, has condemned this being used as a scapegoat. Yeah, um, I guess we should say the title. I don't think we said it. We're talking about violence in video games. Yeah,

we're talking about violence in video games. That's so fascinating if you because you know something that's really close to me that I did a research paper on in college was about porn. And that's so funny because if you follow me, you know that I which maybe we'll be able to tackle. I don't know what it all we're allowed to tackle with our ratings, uh and our sponsors

on here, but um, I'm pro porn. I'm sex positive, and so I wrote a paper on that, and then I've definitely tweeted about it at now being in my thirties and actually had some cow State students hit me up about it, asking me to come on and speak as a woman that is pro porn. But same thing, a lot of the same arguments are still there as well. So anyways, we both have a past with writing research papers on some of these topics that are apparently ruining

our children. Yeah, so if you why don't you talk to us about like the history of when this kind of got started. Yeah, So the scapegoating video games, and it goes as far back as the seventies, and it starts with a seventies game called Death Race. But that really is just more so just the kind of overall social panic about violent video games, and that's kind of

where we'll start. But I think the most significant kind of outrage came with Mortal Kombat, because what happened after the release of Mortal Kombat kind of change gaming forever because it led to the creation of the s r B, which is the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which is something that kind of started when they figured that, all right, people are gonna want their bad games. It was kind of a fight back and forth, and really it starts

with Moral Kombat. The arcade fighting game was the first title to receive a mature rating, and along with Night Trap, which we'll talk about a little more because that one is very interesting, was responsible for the chain of events that led to the establishment of the s r B. U S Senator Joseph Lieberman came across Mortal Kombat almost by happenstance, but he instantly recognized what he called quote unquote,

incredibly violent content. Yeah, so his quote was, we're talking about video games that glorified violence and teach children to enjoy inflicting the most gruesome forms of cruelty imaginable um And that is what led to the game industry, founding the E s r B to regulate its own content. Yeah, and at first, you know, before all that, Sega tried

implementing its own voluntary rating system. It was called the Video Game Rating Council, and it would largely rate games released for its own consoles, and Mortal Kombat Night Trap were rated M thirteen and M seventeen on Sega scale, respectively.

During the hearings, Howard Lincoln and Bill White, the chairman of Nintendo and Sega's US divisions, respectively attacked each other's stance on like the objective content and video games, and Lincoln condemned Sega for even releasing Night Trap and felt it simply has no place in our society. Now, let's talk about night Trap, because Night Trap is very funny

because looking back on it now everyone's so confused. But night night Trap was this game that used full motion video, the shortened version is FMV, and it was a game where you were controlled You had cameras during this kind of like slumber party, and all these girls were getting like captured and attacked, but you can set traps to stop the attackers. And like there's one scene where he's like in a towel, like you know, just your typical TV towel, it's like over your breast and everything. But

they just were so blown away. They just felt it was too sexual and and too violent. If I do want to say, the thing that strikes me the most about that end of that sentence was that it has no what was the quote? It has no place in society. Oh,

simply has no place in our society. This is something that we will see again and again as far as the argument against video games that no one seems to be addressing to television and film that it appears these arguments continue that it is okay for movies to be extremely violent, but when video games do it, they're not.

And so you know, a lot of the argument I feel like is and I'm going to watch this, but a lot of the argument I feel like is that as an art form, which which I think a lot of video game developers, especially early on, would consider a lot of what they do as art, that is an expression of art, is an expression of creativity, that they are regulated much more heavier and blamed essentially for a lot of things in a way that television film is not. That's so true and I think it is. It comes

from the same place. Uh A lot of times this kind of like shocked, you know, reaction comes from is whereas the assumption that video games are for kids. But on this y s A, the Entertainment Software Association, they have like a great PDF that gives you, like the essential facts about games and video about games and violence, and we will be including these in the footnotes. But the average game player ages thirty five and the average

game buyer ages thirties. Who can buy games, you know, I mean granted, yeah, people have their parents, but adults with disposable income, like you said, I mean, most of our friends are gamers. I'm now watching this night Trap, which is so weird because you are essentially rescue. It's not anything I would feel that's too too different from a Superhero scenario where you're rescuing a damsel in distress um which I saw with a lot of these that

were I mean grand cheese in a nightgown. But I mean other than that, which I've seen hundreds of times in film at least. I mean, if we're talking Jason, you're seeing full on boobies. So yeah, it is this double standard, and I think it does come from the assumption that this is for kids. And it's interesting too because we're going to notice a flip when we come close to our generation in the approach. And this because this is very much coming from the place of trying

to protect our kids from seeing these things. Nowadays, it's more so being blamed. It's it's less it's less of like our kids shouldn't see this. It's because our kids are doing this and not guns. It's it's a scapegoat for the most truest sense of the word. Yeah, I did want to read um this amazing quote from James Ivory at Virginia Tech where he said racial prejudice about violence lead us to seek external explanations when white kids

commit crimes. So therefore, if an African American youth commits a horrific act of violence, it is because he is full of rage or hatred. But when a nice end quote white kid shoots up at school, he must have been brainwashed or under the corrupting influence of something outside himself, something like video games. Yeah, that's wild. We don't see that argument in the media the way that it is

perpetuated continuously. With the recent shootings that we and going back all the way to the nineties, and speaking of the nineties, Sega's rating system basically did not please Lieberman and he did not believe these systems were sufficient as a because it seems like everyone was kind of taking Sega's route and trying to start making their own age based rating system. Lieberman wasn't feeling it, and in Februar threatened to propose a creation of a federal commission for

regulating and rating games. So with the threat of federal regulations, a group of major video game developers and publishers, including Acclaim Entertainment and Electronic Arts e A this is before We've grown to hate them, along with Nintendo and Sega, formed a political trade group known as the Interactive Digital Software Association in April, with a goal to create a self regulatory framework for assessing and rating video games in and While SEGA kind of tried to get people on

the side of their VRC rating system, Nintendo representatives objected to the idea because they didn't want to associate themselves with the work of the main competitor. Because even though

this is all political, business is still business. So instead, a vendor neutral rating system known as the Entertainment Software Rating Board e s RB was developed in the formation of the s RB was officially announced to Congress on July and it was officially launched in September sixteenth, and its system consisted of five of age based ratings, which we're very familiar with early childhood gets, two adults renamed

everyone in and teen, mature, and adults only. Now something about adults only, which, because some people may not be aware, most gamers usually are. Actually nowadays, I'm not so sure because adults only basically is a death sentence for your game. You got rated, And what that means is that vendors will not carry your game, but you can still purchase it online. So that's that's the tricky thing. Feel like, that's the same with movies as well. Yeah, you won't

be able to see it in mini theaters, right yeah. Um. So the debate actually over brutality and bloodshed in video games goes all the way back to the seventies. If we were going to take it all the way back with an arcade game called Death Race, yeah, which that drew a lot of public outrage, um, because it allowed players to run over enemies for points. Now we have grand theft auto and other things. But yeah, that was it was happening all the way back in the seventies.

It's really fascinating to me because in a lot of the research that we scoured through when going over this topic was fascinating. What's known as the Goldilocks effect. Do you know what that is? Iffy? So essentially, it's where every generation thinks that the next generation is more wild or violent than when they grew up. So the generation before us, people often think is too conservative, they didn't understand,

they don't understand our art and our music. Uh, And then the generation in front of us is seen as

being more wild, too violent, to sexually promiscuous. When you look back at the sixties and seventies and it's like, really though, you know, because they had games like that, they had very sexually promiscuous times and I feel like, but that's essentially the name of that effect is when you think or your parents generation thinks that their generation was the best, and it's these new up and coming

generations that are promoting this. Yeah, but it but it just always finds a way to because I think it all started with just kind of like the idea of what may happen, especially with death races, and what I was going to say about death races, it's funny because you can feel its effect because one of the main things said about Grand Theft Auto is that you got points for running people over, which isn't true, and Grand Theft Auto true. Yeah, you can get money from people,

but you're not being scored on it. But I think that's carry over from the description of death rays because I remember my parents saying things like that, but that's not true. But let's fast forward almost six years later, so we're in let's go into which we're very familiar. If you're not, was one of our I don't want to say first, but I definitely know our generations. One of our earliest memories of a mass shooting, which was Columbine UH. Two teenagers killed twelve of their p is

and a teacher at Columbine HI. And it was widely reported that they played the shooter game Doom. And that was and they were so right away just already scapegoating that, not the fact that they were able to get access to so many weapons to bring to school, but it was the game that did it. It wasn't you know, Yeah, it was one of the most prominent times that I feel like a video game was blamed for a mass shooting. Yeah.

Well it was funny too, because just like I was saying about Death Race being just kind of carry over, I didn't even know about Doom. What was said around, you know, with my parents and and and the people I spoke to, was that it was counter Strike. Counter Strike was what made and that we specifically weren't able to play counter Strike in my high school because of that. So it's so funny that's just any game with guns and shooting, that's what's training us. But that's really not

the case. Yeah. Actually, after Columbine, the number of published research articles examining video games increased nearly three sent so less than a month after the shooting. The former House Speaker Republican New Gingrich said that Hollywood and computerized games

have undermined the core values of civility. Yeah, and there's one little sidebar I want to do while we talk about this, because I feel like when you hear us have this conversation, a lot of people may be thinking, like, oh man, yeah, the Republicans are trying to like use a scapegoat. They're trying to do this. But actually back

when our man's Lieberman, he was actually a Democrat. Joseph Lieberman was a Democrat, And we're gonna see some familiar names that kind of held the charge against this because Bill Clinton asked the federal government to look into weather media companies, including video game industries, were marketing violent content to young people. So it wasn't just a Republican thing. All the politicians were on board on this, like panic of like video games making people violent, that was it

was a panic. Yeah, Actually a U. S. Senator Hillary Clinton introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act that was in two thousand and five. That actually didn't pass, So Clinton's bill never made it out of the committee, and in eleven the United States Supreme Court ruled that all such legislation was unconstitutional and that research evidence could not support

claims that it was necessary. The court declared that video games are art and that if they are sometimes violent, this is no different from literature film or even fairy tales. That is what I think is one of the most what we were talking about earlier, one of the most fascinating aspects of this is that we are so set on restricting, censoring, and blaming video games for the violence as opposed to other media forms that are equally if

not more violent. That ruling was Brown Versus Entertainment Merchants Association, which considered whether regulation of violent games was constitutional, and they actually referred to several decades of accumulated research in the court. The Supreme Court said these studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason, going on to discuss how little such studies told us

about the real world. Yeah. Actually, the late Justice anton Uh, late Justice antonin Scalia, who is a typically right leaning justice, said that video games deserve the First Amendment protection and he also cast out on the idea that violent games would cause real world acts of aggression. And like Danny said, it was through all of the decades of research, because we have been researching it and it has been coming back false that this is not this does not result

in violence. Yet we still somehow keep bringing it up even though there's fact after fact. So maybe this is one of the like earlier kind of forms of where facts are given and just you need something to place the blame. Yeah, I wanted to bring up one more report, which was by the American psychological association. But the A p A. And they said, and I felt like this is really kind of what narrows it down, and and how yeah, I feel like this is what really narrows

it down. Is no single risk factor consistently, consistently leads a person to act aggressively or violently, their report said. Rather, it is the accumulation of risk factors that tends to lead to aggressive or violent behavior. The research like access to guns, masculinity, right, the research tribute here demonstrates the

violent video game use is just one such factor. So if you were to look at some of these because they have said, well, these school shooters played this video game, but they're not looking at all of the other risk factors and all of the other factors that might have led them to commit the crimes that they did. Instead, they need something to blame it on, and that thing is video games. And we actually have lots of studies.

And also we want to talk about the most recent use of skategoating here, but we'll just get into that after the break, all right, and welcome back to Artificent. We are talking about violence and video games, going down the history of it, talking about all the studies that strike down. Whatsever just so much info just disproving this, but we have it here all in one place for you. But Danny wanted to wanted to say something up top. Yeah, that a p a uh study that we were talking about.

The American Psychological Association. So they had actually looked at four meta analysis that reviewed more than a hundred and fifty research reports published before two thousand and nine, and then of the ones published between two thousand nine, and they looked at a hundred and seventy are articles to come up with their research. And again it said, while there's some variation among the individual studies, a strong and consistent general pattern has emerged from many years of research

that provides confidence in our general conclusions. As with most areas of science, and the picture presented by this research is more complex than it usually include in news coverage and other information prepared for the general public. So that's another sector of it, is what the media decides to latch on what is shown is like they played video games or they played violent video games, which they're not looking at the full picture. Yeah, well, because that's such

as simple. Yeah, of course, they played video games, because everyone their age plays video games that isn't you know, shocking, And it's funny because you would think after you know, that huge study and even Scalia kind of like shutting it down, it would end. But most recently Trump went ahead and set that video games, the video games, the movies,

the Internact, the stuff is so violent. He went ahead and set that, and it kind of re ignited this dead argument because at this point it is officially dead. I feel like it's reached as it's not. I mean, it's alive, but it's you're beating a dead horse. That is is not true. It is like it's having that Behrenstein bears argument. We've already proved. We already proved to you that the name was what it was. Yeah, that's

what I need to tell you. Something did you see on the White House YouTube channel, which if you didn't know, the White House has a YouTube channel, they have something. They have a video up that's titled violence in Video Games. It has um over a million views. Uh if he, I will show it to you. It is literally there's no introduction to it. It is just the most not

the most, but it is just violent. Excerpts taken from video games of people like hitting each other with hatches or or shooting someone in there some pretty prolific scenes and video games because these are some games I've played and it and they're really it is funny. They got Dead by Daylight, which is a horror game where you play a slasher. It really is like but there's no introduction.

There's literally nothing that that introduces this this video. It just is on their YouTube page with clips of violent you know, violent particular points in videos, and they're taking old games. They took the extremely controversial No Russian and it was the scene where you're you literally go and do a mass shooting like that is the scene in the context of the story, it makes sense and actually, as the player, you do have the option to not

shoot anyone. You actually get an achievement if you do that whole episode and shoot no one here that whole Yeah, it's fascinating. One of the comments that has over two thousand likes says, I mean, some of those clips you showed are unplayable cut scenes, So shouldn't you therefore be making the same argument against movies and television. Yeah, I think that's the same thing. And I do want to point out that the first half of that video no

one was using guns. It was all just access growing guns, like it was no real Like I think two people got shot and the rest were with other weapons other than guns. So you're just taking somebody else. Somebody else said, I play a lot of fantasy games and for that reason and planning to tame and write a dragon. You know, I'm not trying to necessarily make fun of people who are concerned about violence and video games, but I do

want to say it is dangerous. It is dangerous that when we have went through the proper means and the courts, your own justice, the one who is on the side of the Republicans has it doesn't agree with you, and you go and you post that like that is that is dangerous? It is on the White House. On the White House, Yeah, channel I agree, and with no explanation. I feel like that's another Like it's irresponsible, is exactly

what it is. It's irresponsible, and it's denying all the work that everyone has done and all the facts that are out there that proves this is just not true. I do want to play this clip from the Daily Zeite guys, because I feel like, you know, they have a fun way. Daily Zeite guys another show on the How Stuff Works Network. We're gonna have to bleep a lot of it because they are some potty mouse. You know, when I'm on there, I never cuss. I don't cuss

in my whole life. But yeah, this is kind of I feel like instead of kind of repeating what has happened and what is said during the recent shootings, would be good to just kind of give you you all just a clip and you know, if you don't already listen to the Daily zeite guys, hopefully this will make you want to go peep those guys out. You know, me and Danny have both been on it talking point.

It seemed like on all the Sunday shows because the n r A had to get all their people out to start spending this recent shooting to be anything but the guns. Uh, seemed to be mostly video games and movies. Now was like the I guess scapegoat tojour and Riddling, Yes, so I guess the first. Yeah, Ali North, who is the new n r A president and o G gun smuggler of America. He went on Fox and Yeah blamed

Riddling in a bunch of us. Check out this explanation we're trying, like the Dickens, to treat the symptom without treating the disease. And the disease in this case isn't the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence. Uh, they've been drugged in many cases. Nearly all of these perpetrators are male and their young teenagers in most cases, and they've come through

a culture where violence is commonplace. All we need to do is turn on the TV, go to a movie. If you look at what has happened to the young people, many of these young boys have been on riddling since they were in kindergarten. Uh, that's such a hard left on. Like it's like he even started like making a good point of like all these young shooters are male, all these young that there could be a discussion about what toxic masculinity is and things like that, right, But then

it turns into a ribbylin. Yeah, so like they at this point. And I think hearing that also lets you know that it really isn't video games. It really isn't. What it really comes down to is anything but smarter gun control laws. Like that's what and it's so funny because no one. I feel like a few people, a few French people might have said ban all guns, but no one is saying ban all guns. What we're saying

is make it harder to get these killing machines. If he did you see that in our research, there was a study they actually looked at where there are actually countries that play more video games than we do, more violent video games than we do, and and they have

less murder rates than we do. Oh yeah. As as a matter of fact, that clip that they played later in the Reporter follows up with, well, video games of worldwide and we're the only country with this mini mass shootings and you know, he does whatever, But but it's true. You're very right. Video games are accessible everywhere. There are countries like I know, the two that that I have more video game play than than us in violent video games as well is Japan and South Korea, and they

are actually lower than we are in homicide. Yeah, and that's that's what I was gonna say, like just to take a dip back into the e sports hat for all my people who listen to those episodes. Just like we said on that episode, those countries kind of dominate the sports circuit because of their culture of accepting video game The reason, you know, North American sports team have such a hard times because it's just now being known that you can actually be a uh E sports athlete,

that you can actually make money for this. You know, our parents weren't letting us play games willy nilly. But you do have these countries like Japan and South Korea that has embraced that culture and actually has has been pushing forward in strides in the sports. And yeah, they're not having the same issues. It's more and more apparent that it's being used as scapegoating and like we said, it isn't necessarily it's also but I think this is a heavily high stakes issue and debate for people that

are just like, oh, well, it's just a rating thing. No, this actually influences court decisions about what kinds of media is censored and regulated, as well as it's led to people being sentenced to jail. You know, it can it can affect people's livelihoods. Based on the testimony of video game scholars, if they think that your game is the reason why a kid killed somebody, if they can properly blame you for it, that's terrifying. And the fact that the White House has a video up on their YouTube

channel saying this is violence and video games. This is why your kids are shooting up people. That is terrifying. That has real world life effects, and especially for game developers. Oh, it's just we can go through so many as you heard, there's like hundreds of of research done and we can go through just so much, but we'll just pop into something like there's one on Silence Daily that was from March eight of two thousand seventeen showing that violent video

games found not to affect empathy. Study finds no link between long term playing of violent video games and changes in empathetic neural responses. So even when we jack into the brain and really kind of see what it's doing,

we find that it does not have an effect. And actually it was Danny saying it, or it might have been in in this episode of the Daily Zeitgeys where they mentioned that they actually found that it helps that when you're when you're violent and you play violent video games, you're putting your outlet in the video games and not into the real world. That was actually something that was addressed because of the two Columbine shooters. Um, this is

from the Fair Observer. So in the wake of the twelve murdered students, one murdered teacher in twenty one injured at Columbine, they heavily blamed Doom because the two were fans of that game in violent video games in general. The truth was that in the years before the Columbine massacre, the perpetrators were less violent in their outward behavior in writing when they were allowed to express their rages in video games. Only after they were cut off from that

outlet did they start planning the school attack. Yeah, this is just going on with their their article. You wouldn't have known this from watching the news. However, the media was more widely circulating the theories of moral crusader lawyer Jack Thompson, who was suing video game makers for liability in the depths of three people in the Heath High School shooting, which was another shooting that took place. Yeah. I don't want to just do the studies that prove

our point. I also want to tackle studies that go against us, and we can point out why they're wrong as well. For example, this Sage study says that violent video games are turning gamers into deadly shooters, and it was due to a research um that they've done where they tested one and fifty one college students by having them played different types of violent and non violent video games, including games with human targets and which players are rewarded

for hitting the targets heads. After playing the game for only twenty minutes, participants shot sixing bullets from a realistic gun at a life size human shape mannequin. Participants who played a violent shooting game using a pistol shaped controller hit the mannequin thirty three more than other participants did, and hit the mannequins had nineties nine percent more often. This is a good study, but it's also very tricky because the fact that you are a better shooter does

not mean that you will go out and shoot. That has nothing to do with the claim that video games themselves are going out and causing people to shoot. Yes, if you play video games, you will be a better shooter because video games built hand eye coordination, simple as that, and you know, yeah, you'll learn that headshots are better just from playing video games. But it's one of those things where like this doesn't have to do with the

case that you're making. Yeah, yeah, that's actually a lot of these I feel like where they lack standardization, they lack measures of aggression. I feel like with some of these aggression ones. So a lot of the research studies that we were looking into didn't really have good means of calculating aggression, if that makes sense. It's like grabbing random people, having them play for twenty minutes and then

asking them questions. But no, I see what you mean where and even like even the subjects that they tackle are tricky, like this study from the University of Buffalo.

Violent video games eventually use their ability to produce guilt and gamers and basically uh A new University at Buffalo led studies suggest that more responses produced by the initial exposure to a video game decreases as experience with the game develops, and the findings prove provide the first experimental evidence that repeatedly playing the same violent game reduces emotional responses like guilt. But it says not only to the original game, but to other violent video games as well.

But that would make sense because you know, it's a game. The it's it's the same thing where if you were to watch if you were to watch a one of those maze games where you know that it will show like the Exorcist face and all that stuff, like, yeah, it's gonna stop being scary because you know it's coming.

And the same thing with the video games. As a matter of fact, that's how people get good at video games because the initial shock and scare of someone popping out at you at corners and stuff is affecting your

ability to be accurate. But that doesn't necessarily means this research does not jump off from the page, but it's it's tricking the sense where it just gives people who want to try and make this point just enough to try and make an argument out of it, where it's like, yes, if I play Mortal Kombat and I get served up in that and I start expecting scorpions like get over here, chain, I may also be able to start expecting how dukins in Street Fighter. You're living on the same platform. You're

not jumping off into real life. And it's it's these types of research that kind of give them fuel even though they're not really saying something, Yeah, I do want to go back to that huge a p A study because I do want to point out they said, just to make sure that we're covering all of our sides. They did say that violent video gameplay is linked to increased aggression and players, but insufficient evidence exists about whether

the link extends to criminal violence or delinquency. So they did say that it could possibly lead to a rest of behavior and like you were saying, a decrease in sensitivity to aggression, but that doesn't correlate to criminal violence. Yeah, it even says it right there in the report, right, So yeah, it seems like it will. We keep dancing in this circle where people are just doing these studies and being and getting close but finding there's no links.

So I think from here on out, y'all doing these uh these studies, try and find the link. Stop doing these half baked ones. I mean, I don't want to say your research has half bake. Well. The thing too, is that they would have to if they would also have to follow these players for a large period of time, So it's not just these twenty minute little sessions or or studies. That that's a huge problem with this is that it's not heavily these studies are, so they make

it so difficult to standardize these tests. I feel like and truly, if that's what they're trying to test for, they're making it very difficult and poor like these are poorly research studies, I feel like as far as the for those that are trying to link video games and violence, Yeah, you just can't have somebody sit down in a room for a few minutes and try and apply that to

someone's whole life. I definitely get that. But uh, well, we'll lighten up a bit and we'll talk about some fun Well they're not necessarily fun, but they are banned video games, and some of those reasons are understandable in some kind of crazy but you'll get that right after this. All right, Hey, I hope you enjoyed those messages because now we're back for a little more nerdificent and we've

been talking about violence and video games. We've broken down the studies, the skategoating, and we've kind of just been real spicy this whole episode. So we wanted to, you know, touch on something lighter. But this is not lighter, if I mean this is this first one isn't lighter, but it get it eases out. But we're gonna talk about some band video games, and this isn't just in the US. These are banned you know, all different places, um, and some of them you'll know why, and some of them

you won't. The first game up is called rape Lay. Yeah. This actually came from geek dot com and they and I just want to say, just read what they said, because it's perfect. Many of the games on this list were banned simply because of cultural misunderstandings. But you can't say that for rape Lay. The insanely controversial game developed by Japanese studio Illusion, was released in two thousand six and almost immediately kicked off a firestorm of bad emotions.

If you haven't heard of it, rape Lay puts you in the shoes of a sexual predator and tasked you with stalking and having sex with a mother and her two daughters by force. Needless to say, this is incredibly screwed up and not cool. Rape Lay was banned in multiple countries after release. It's illegal to sell in Argentina, Indonesia, and New Zealand. Here in the States, it received an adults only eating, which meant that most retailers would not

stock it. But you can still get it online. And this is where I want to talk about the other side. Of this, and we'll even get to this more. We do argue for artistic expression, and we do argue that, you know, we need to stop trying to escapegoat video games, but when you have games like these, it does make it a lot harder. I don't, yeah, because I don't like this game. I don't see the purpose of it.

I don't see anything fun about it. I don't It's wild and I did want um yes, so I uh yeah, it's it's difficult to even have an excuse for this. What I wanted to say is not necessarily as on the nose as rape Lay. But the other game that I was talking with you about right before we started was that Detroit. Yes one, you know what I'm talking about, Detroit Become Human. Yeah. So Detroit Become Human, which is out on PlayStation and you can watch the trailer for it,

which is disturbing. So you are essentially playing an android woman who is placed in the house of a violent abuser. It is very triggering for anyone that has experienced domestic abuse. You watch a dad essentially beat and kill his daughter and you are given the option of stepping in. It's violent, and it's violent towards a young child, a young girl, and and I feel like we already see so much of violence towards women in media um that I would

say this is not necessary. I do want to bring up what the creator of the game said with this. It makes sense to me because with this one, this is something that is like the crux of video games because basically they the daughter just doesn't The daughter dies if you don't step in. So it's giving you the choice, and I think just naturally as a game, like without even knowing that, I don't think a lot of people would have found out because we often step in as

the heroes and video games. But it is one of those things where it's like this being the clip that you show it does like it's one of those things where it's like context is key and when you when you just have this clip to show around, it gives the other side just to be like look at this, Yeah, beating up a little girl and watching her be murdered. Yeah.

So this is coming from Detroit's development chief, David Cage had this to say, I try to tell a story that matters to me that I find moving, interesting and exciting, and my role as creator is to maybe deliver something that people don't expect. Would I be doing my job as a creator if I was making the game you want me to make. I don't think so. I'm creating something that I find moving and meaningful. And I think people should see the scene, play the game, and see

it in context to really understand it. The rule I give myself is to never glorify violence, to never do anything gratuitous. It has to have a purpose, have a meaning,

and create something that is hopefully meaningful for people. What I see in this as someone who has lived through domestic abuse, I can understand that it could possibly be therapeutic in a way that you're allowed to step in and save someone when you might not have been able to step in for yourself, or you might not have been able to step in if you watched your mom bib or you watched like I can understand that argument of this game, that that it wasn't just like, oh,

watch this little girl be murder, but it gives you the opportunity to be a hero in times when you might not have been able to in your real life. And I feel like that's what video games are a lot of. And I feel like, yeah, that's That's what it comes down to. There's like the level of like,

sometimes you gotta give that context. I mean, I can understand someone just watching this and being like, what the heck you know, but I to go back to rape lay, which was not the same because in when you are put in the shoes of the that is your task is to rape these women, which is disgusting. In the Detroit one, it is you're actually task was saving the young girl. Ya um. And granted is difficult to watch that being itself being a trigger, but that's not the

goal is not to harm her. I will say too, and this and we'll move to the next one after that because it gets just a little worse. Um. You said that these were fun, and it gets fun after these because I want I started off wanting like, you know, banning at work and we're like, yeah, that should have

been banned to like, oh, this is ridiculous. But there is something as someone who plays a lot of video games, there is something where you do get to step in in situations like that that really feels good because you do like the games have a way of just tugging on you in a way and making it feel so real that when like, I feel like living in this current world where, like, you know, bad people may not necessarily be paying for their stuff that they're doing. At

least in video games they give us that chance. Yeah. So the next one we have up is Custers Revenge. So for nearly as long as there have been video games, people have been trying to make them into porn. One of the most notorious smutty games of all time is Custers Revenge, which hit Atari two. It was produced by Canoga Park developer Mystique, who themselves were a subsidiary of

an adult movie company. So the game cast the player as a horny General Custer with a pixelated boner who had to walk across the screen through a hail of arrows to pork a Native American woman tied to a pole. Yeah geez, if it had just been him with a pixelated boner, not bad, yeah, but also just a Native American woman specifically, yes, and especially specifically being tied to the Chinno side of right Native Americans. So just just

bad on of Native American women. Yeah. Like, Basically several cities floated laws to like prohibit the game sale, but only one did, which was Oklahoma City and Oklahoma actually passed a measure in making sales of custod Revenge illegal within city limits. And yeah, that's and that's what. It's

just historically bad and tasteless and gross. And that was in This was in the eighties, you know, like like I think to just go back to your Goldilocks kind of statement, this idea that you know, oh yeah, that the games are worse now. Yeah, it's like, no, they just didn't have the technology to look as good as it does now, but the same ideal was there. Yeah, but we'll move on to more fun ones, which is uh,

mass Effect. Mass Effect, which some people are like what, because that is a beloved game and franchise that has done successful what Banded? What huh? So mass Effect? You play a customizable hero and they could be male or fee now, and you can romance different people on your ship, on your crew. And this was one of those games where like, yeah, you were able to romance you know, same sex, which is really cool and dope, and people

loved it for it. Not Singapore, Uh, Singapore banded And actually it was originally because the game didn't have a proper video game rating system and it made it harder to judge, but um the band resulted in backlash, and officials used the country's movie rating system instead, dubbing a mass effect an M eighteen and lifting the ban only a few days after settling it. So it's just one of those things where it was really bad but then it turns out to be kind of uh, just a

just a whole wacky back and forth. God. Yeah. And going in the another direction of just banning all violent video games, so Venezuela in two thousand nine leveled a ban on all violent video games and toys, an attempt to curb the nations rising crime rates. Under the band, selling violent games within the country could lead to a three to five year prison sentence. Meanwhile, selling a real gun to a real minor cannet a sentence as short

as one year. Yeah. So so it just shows you, just once again, it Venezuela was hit by the same page. Reminds me of the tide Pods. How quickly we jumped on banning and regulating tide pots, but not on other things that that killed children. Got you. We do have one other game, which is a really awful, tasteless, horrible

pos That's what I'm allowed to say. On here which is called Active Shooter um and if you I don't know if you saw this game, but it is a shooting simulation game in a school and it hasn't dropped yet, but it is dropping, I believe June six on Steam, which, if you don't know Steam, that is a platform where you can pay essentially to play video games. I think

it's like it's basically the PC gaming marketing place. Yes, so it's um the game, the game coming out will be between five to ten dollars and you are a school shooter. Yeah. This is the thing I find with marketplace for Steam because the Steam marketplace allows a lot of indie developers to try and make new games because you know, it's a little easier to you know, upload the file, sell it and instead of you know, paying for distribution and things that really only major Triple A

companies could do. What also happens, though, is you get trolley games like this that pop up and we're just left to deal with it. But the community is really good at itself at at kind of regulating because they have their own rating system within it. And there's no doubt in my mind that this is just gonna just be thumbs down to that's what I feel like. This

is exactly a trolling game. Um. The game was developed by Revived Games and published by a Russian company called Acid and Yeah, they plan to sell it between five to ten dollars on the Steam platform because of the outrage, which also involved the parents of the Parkland victims, which the fact that they have to even see this crap

is upsetting itself. But the outrage from this game, like the amount of people condoning it, has already been pretty widespread, to the point where Acid the company said the intense criticism of the game has made them reconsider whether to publish it with the option allowing gamers to assume the role of the shooter. Um. This isn't quote. I have wrote to Valve regarding this game and I'm waiting for

a reply. After receiving such high amount of critics and hate, I will more likely remove the shooters role in this game by the release, unless if it can be kept as it is right now. That was the developers response. Man, well, they also had I wanted to say one thing they had on the on the game Steam page and includes this statement, Please do not take any of this seriously. This is only meant to be a simulation and nothing else. If you feel like hurting someone or people around you,

please seek help from local psychiatrists or dial uh. And they also said a disclaimer on the preview of the game, saying its content is not recommended for children. Yeah. No, that that just seems like it's just one of those They knew what they were doing. They they wanted the shock value. They felt that that might propel it's game, They might get them a few bucks, and in the end, it's actually probably going to screw them. That was a dumb move, and I think that they're learning how dumb

it was right now. Um, but you know, we're getting towards the end. So let's just in this like we in most things. What do you think the future of this discussion will be. I honestly just see it getting worse because I don't think that we are willing to reflect on the things that are causing these shootings and gun violence. I think it's much easier to blame video games, and to blame video games when millions upon millions of

people play them and have no violent tendencies. It is also the argument that I would say I also have with porn as well, that so many of us can watch porn and can watch consensual porn, and can can partake in our sexual life consentually fantasies and things like that, and know that there is a difference, and to blame these forms of media instead of actually reflecting on the issues that we have in this country with access to guns and gun violence in general, because it's easier for

us to blame video games, That to me is something that I will I think we will continue to see. Yes, yes, yes, yes, indeedy Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel like with the evolution of video games leading to VR, I feel like just people's distance from it, but seeing it from the outside is only going to make the argument just a little easier. When they're like they're in the simulation, they're stimulating shooting, of course they're going to be more violent.

So you know, all we gotta do is keep fighting them with facts and then I hope they land And I think, you know, at the end of this episode, I feel like, no matter how you feel about guns, no matter what you feel the solution is to gun violence, you can at least after hearing this episode. No it's not video games and well that's all. That's all. Uh,

that's all you really need to know. You know, it was really difficult when we said that we were going to tackle this because I had so much hesitation that no matter what, my inbox is going to be filled with people who don't agree. And so what I would just encourage you is to be respectful. I would say, I feel it's a really heated topic. And I feel like if he and I, we're here to listen, but we're not here to take your abuse. Yeah, I mean by now you're a must all right now you don't

want no smoke with me? So I mean same, I feel like same. Um, my followers are really great in dragging people, but um, I'm here to listen in a respectful way. I'm not here to take your abuse because you're an anonymous person online that has no picture, and because I do if you don't got a picture, that's the first requirement for me to even talk to you. If you if you got that little bird or whatever and white, it's a great egg. Yeah we should touch on this again. If he I definitely. I don't know

if we're allowed to do a porn one. I am going to push on some platform. Here at how stuff works to do a porn episode, because I feel like it's also something that gets blamed so heavily um for crimes and corrupting people, when many of us that watch it are perfectly normal people because we get to get off, we are happier people because of it. But that is my that is my two cents. All right, where can people find you? Danny? I'm at you can't find me

this week? I'm at ms Danny Fernandez's M S d A N I F E r n A N d e Z. And yeah, I look forward to your respectful descent. Yeah, all right, and I'm if you I F y in w A d I d w E on Instagram and Twitter. Make sure you follow Nerdifficent on Instagram, Twitter, and follow us on Facebook as well. Five star review if you're loving it, uh, and you know you don't drop us a review. Shout at us, tell us what what what

you'd like us to talk about. We've been getting lots of suggestion and we're going to throw that right into the pot of things to dive into. Definitely want to give a shout out towards the end of this episode to our researcher Christopher hassiotis yeah, who went through so much, yeah, so much research. He also did research for quite quite a few other episodes. Let me let me give him the shout out Eve's jet for coat Christopher hassiotis, thank you so much for that research work. Let's give a

shout out to Zachary McKeever in the booth. Uh. Sorry for blowing your ears out, I yelled a really loud sup producer, Hannah hold it down from here and thanks for listening. Stay nerdy, y'all.