Can video games be blamed for violent occurences?

Reading that made me want to start this thread. I find it interesting and infuriating how people love to blame video games for violent occurrences. Couldn't the same thing happen if they were watching Animal Planet, or something? This reminds me of how Grand Theft Auto was blamed for some school shooting. It really ticks me off, and part of me thinks the media just wants something to villanize. What do you think?

 

Hmmm, I'm kinda doubting that Nintendogs caused the dog to attack. My cousins have two large dogs (although the other one is the most mellow dog I have met), and my grandparents (who only live a block away, so my cousins are at their place all of the time) have a slightly psychotic dog, and they have never had any reactions to the game. And like the OP said, Animal Planet could just as well cause a dog attack.

Is it just me, or is the whole 'media blaming video games'-thing getting old?

 

...Yeah, let's blame video games for making a noise that might have alarmed the dog to such a stage where it would start ripping people's faces off.

No, next time, train your ****ing dog. If the game carries any warning, it needs to be "If you've decided to be an absolute ****wit in raising your pets so that they'll respond to any sort of barking with extreme violence, do not play this game around them. Also reconsider the idea of owning a dog."

This is just bad. I'm more inclined to believe the idea that she kicked the dog, because if you would even suspect this game would cause this kind of reaction in your dog, would you even take the risk? There's a Volume Control on your DS, use it.

 

Good thing this isn't in Current Events, because it's nothing new. People will look for any excuse to shove the blame off of their own shortcomings; bonus points if it's something they don't understand or with which they can't identify. Naturally fewer middle-aged adults play video games, so it's a popular target.

Now, I will say from very entry-level psychological study--and having owned a few pets myself--that animals can be triggered by very interesting and unpredictable stimuli, and it's not so far-fetched that the sound of a dog barking in a certain way might set off another, actual dog; after all, it's a game about dogs that wasn't made by dogs, so there's less regard for their language. For all we know, your cute little virtual pet cooing affectionately for your attention could actually be saying "Sod off, asspile" in dogspeak. But it's just not the simplest answer. There are much easier ways to piss off a dog, one of the greatest among them kicking. Even then, the dog should be trained not to obliterate a slightly aggressive toddler. If your pet is not domesticated, it needs to be out in the wild, not unsupervised in your house with little kids.

tl;dr: Even assuming it was the game's fault, general human stupidity is what made it a real problem, and attacking the symptoms will not cure the illness.

 

This is ridiculous. I don't think a noise of a dog barking would even alert a dog to rip a girls lip off, otherwise whenever a dog barked someone would be attacked. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it was the fact it came out of the machine, but I can't see that being a large threat to a dog. It's a lot more likely he was acting in self defense after being kicked then over reacting to a noise!

The media seem to hate video games, they want a reason to blame all the bad things in this world and video games seems to stick. There were bad things like stabbings and gun crime before video games. The media do alter things and turn them around to get the people to see what they want them too. It makes me sick that the media control us like that but there isn't much we can do.

 

Well, that article is obviously a bunch of BS, as well as the idea. I doubt a dog would maul a little girl for playing Nintendogs. Truth is, even if that was true, it might be the dog itself. I doubt it the nonexistent dogs barked "KEEL THE LITTUL GURL!!111!". I wonder if there's any more to this dog. Could it possibly be a stray the family picked up? Maybe. My cousin has a dog with Nintendogs. She plays it all the time and I've never seen the dog attack her when the dogs barked. I just can't understand why so many people blame video games when something violent occurs. It's like saying every crime that was ever done was done by terrorists. It's just the media stereotyping video games as the worse thing ever. But what I want to know is, if video games are so violent, how come movies have never been to blame? There's thousands of movies out there that could "produce" as much "violence" as video games do.

Basically, I believe this so called "attack" was never the cause of the video games, but the girl itself for kicking the dog.

 

Sounds like the nan had a vendetta against the dog, forgot to feed it or something and the little girl who was playing her DS at the time kicked her dog as if it was the dog in her game. I've seen it happen here, some kid thinks they're being a smart arse and kicks their dog for disobeying something their virtual dog did. It's not the game at fault, it's the people who play it and then blame it for their own actions. And why do most of them seem to be little kids, chavs/thug types or the elderly.
Also, lol at them saying they destroyed the dog like it's an object and not a creature.
You can't trust the Daily Mail, it's not as bad at BSing as The Sun but it's still full of crap.

Spoiler

 

Indeed, it would appear that the dog was more provoked by the girl kicking it over simply listening to the noises of a simple video game - though indeed, such a noise may have held potential to provoke the dog, not in specific language or composition of the bark itself but more the factors of tone, volume, and general amplification, it is much more likely that such a being would react directly to physical stimuli - thus, the aforementioned kicking. Indeed, as stated previously, the Daily Mail is but a simple tabloid, embellishing and stretching truths for the sake of general amusement and entertainment and thus should not be taken rather seriously.

May video games in general be blamed for violent occurrences, however? Akin to television and perhaps a handful of musical lyrics, it is quite subjective - such a factor involved less with the video game and more with the psychological composition of the person playing the video game him or herself. Those that are reported as conducting mass slaughter and whatnot on the presumed basis of "video game influence" is but only a presumption - most usually, it is the person, him or herself, that may hold such psychological qualities or combinations of them to willingly conduct actions as viewed in the video game, usually consisting of various external social and mental factors that provide a basis or platform for such a horrid event to occur. Indeed, in certain cases of media report the factor of "violent video game playing" is embellished itself - perhaps a particularly soft and easy target due to both the interactivity and content of video games, the former of which plays a prime factor in consideration over television and other external sources. In general, however, the inspiration of carrying out such violent acts is dependent upon the person or player in question being inspired to conduct them.

 

And you once again hit the nail right on the head. That was all said just perfect, everyone needs to read that. I had never thought of psychological qualities being a factor in things like that. Indeed, they can, so to speak, pave the way for video games to even affect whether they make the choices to do things like that, but that doesn't mean the video game itself is to blame. Very, very well said, What?.

 

I simple answer to the main question would be if we start blameing every violent event on vidio games then books and t.v. should also be blamed. If people acctually started doing something about it the best thing we would have is games on making paint dry an nobody wants that lol.

 

Blame.
If life is fated, can it be blamed?
If life is created, how can we possibly know all the outcomes of what we do?
Blaming is such an easy thing to do and understand, but really it's a difficult concept to use in a true sense. Blame comes from a sense of morality. Guilty and innocent are part of morality. If you have to blame a game for your child being mauled by a dog, doesn't that show you feel guilty about what happened? Like you could've done something about it but didn't? Why else blame such a random thing about a random event?

 

People will blame anything as long as they aren't taking the blame themselves. It's always someone else's fault.

That being said, I say no. People were violent long before video games. It's just that as more "violent" games started coming out, people decided they had to be to blame. Just like TV before that, and other things throughout popular culture.

 

My main argument is that it really depends on the exact person who is playing the video game. We all have addictions, and a great deal of people get addicted to video games. Getting addicted is fine, as long as its appropriate. What I mean is that with an addiction, you have to come down to realize these facts:
-It is just a game
-These occurences are most likely not to take place at any point in real life
-You are making decisions based on what you think would be best for you in the game, not what you would actually do in real life

If we have some obsession/passion for a video game, and realize these facts, then we have nothing to worry about..


Now moving on, there are people out there who are mentally ill, who are born with a disadvantage of realizing things as quickly as a healthy-minded human being. These people take what they see literally, and spread it. And this doesn't just apply to video games, they may hear lyrics in a song promoting/talking about violence and actually repeat what they heard. But then again, it is because of THEM, not the song, due to the fact the songwriter/performer only recorded it to make money and send it out to fans, not to inflict any kind of damage.

That being said, it shall never be the game/song/video/image
It is the person, a person that will look at things literally based on their opinion before trying to figure out what the message is/the facts of what they see/hear.