Mothers against video games

I stumbled upon
this while searching the internet. Apparently a group of mothers, as the name speaks, has made a site where they "warn parents about the hidden dangers in video game consoles" (Which they also call nefarious devices, murder simulators etc.)

Some of the quotes:

...and the most disturbing trend: clans and guilds, an underground video game phenomenon which closely resembles gangs. Parents NEED to be aware of the hidden dangers.

Famous landmarks shown in certain video games seem to be intellectual property theft.

...Video games are nothing more than a menace to society. Developers show no sense of moral responsibility and a complete lack of respect for intellectual property.

A part of an article where an arrest of a CS mapper is strongly endorsed:

Shocking news comes from Fort Bend of the removal of an asian high school student possessing a custom made video game level based on a local Texas high school on his home personal computer. Many swords were also confiscated from the suspects bedroom.

Some of the topics on the site read:

-Video Game and Tobacco Companies: Frightening Similarities

-EverQuest: A Threat to Society?

Why do people feel the need to take things this far? Why do people, who have never touched a video game in life, let alone played it act like experts on the area? Anyone who used a PC for a month would tell the difference between a gang and a guild.

This is just an example of the crap that's happening everywhere in the world. People impose their opinions on others, while at the same time they act like they are doing them a favor.

Out of all those, the Clan/Guild thing is by far the most ridicilous, and completely brainless theory.

People fear new technology. Look at rock music and television. They've been proclaimed to be evil as well and had all this stuff thrown at them as well

Its just a bunch of paranoid people attacking the latest "in" thing for attention or a complete misunderstanding of what it is

Agree Mecheon. The source of all this is the ignorance that (sadly) many parents are afflicted with towards technology and specially video games. Their lazyness to discover this brand new world turns into fear of what their children can find out there. In the best case, the parents may be wise enough to inform themselves about all this and understand the child (or listen to the child when he or she tries to introduce them to this world). In the worst case... this happens, preventing the child from accesing many opportunities and (in a near future) ruining directly his life as knowledge of the computer techology, society and everything related to it will become of vital necesity

Their points are all stupid or incomplete. They act as if it's simple and the same for every child when in fact it really isn't. I think that a kid with that many limits ends up to be a follower in life, and not a leader, and therefore gets less money than everyone else.

My parents let me watch any movie I want, even probably pornos if I convinced them (lol), etc. Just because they know that stuff like that is what's out there in real life and it doesn't affect me like it does to others.

I think it's better to be aware of the dangers of things like this rather than to be evasive and over-limit your kid.

Are you kidding? If they were murder simulators, that would be a good thing. People wouldn't need to get off their lazy sociopathic asses and murder people outside, where the sunlight can give you skin cancer. You should stay inside, instead of playing outside where you could be doing your-parents-know-what and breaking your fragile little arms.

#1 counterpoint to this, I heard, on a forum for an MMO, this guy saying that he wanted his kid to play that game when the kid was old enough, instead of being outside doing he-knows-what. What's sad is that I can understand and almost sympathize with that perspective, depending on the environment outside.

One last thought, you know what else guilds awfully resemble? Private security agencies, extra-curricular school clubs, the police.

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There will always be the ignorant, neophobic, "overprotective" parents. The fact remains that these parent's aren't really overprotective or responsible at all if they have to rely on boycotts to make sure their children grow up "right".

I don't even understand the big deal with censorship in the first place. Things are only as bad as you make them out to be. As long as you aren't lying or anything, there shouldn't be a problem. In fact, if the world dropped all censorship at this moment, I have serious doubts that the children of the future would be "traumatized".
EDIT: I found an interesting article, so I thought I might dissect it.

The China Post reports that a Taiwanese psychiatrist at the Veterans General Hospital in Taipei has concluded the first studies linking violent video games and 'textspeak', an awful slang language spoken by a subculture of underground gamers and computer hackers.

Textspeak is the process of shortening words and adding numbers to a text message to make it "cooler." The form of text messaging is highly annoying. One example suffice: "RU cmin out 2nite?" Deciphered: "Are you coming out tonight?"

[...] Twelve young adults were given tests in an experiment Dr. Chow conducted at his hospital. They were required to play one popular game, "PS2:Real Three Kingdoms;Nonpareil 4 Generations," for half an hour. Blood circulation in their brains was scanned. The entire process was repeated half an hour later. Chow found the blood circulation in the frontal lobes of all the samples reduced. "Reduction in blood circulation in the frontal lobe," the psychiatrist said, "indicates that it may affect language proficiency."

The psychiatrist urges parents to limit the exposure of violent video games to their children if “they don't want to receive any more 'textspeak' messages."

Gentlemen, this is a case of "not really getting it". They can't seem to grasp the concept of not having time while gaming to type full complete sentences, resulting in textspeak. Do they understand that in instant messaging, where typing is expected to come at the same speed as one might talk in a normal conversation, words might be clipped in an attempt to save time? Yeah, I didn't think so. If playing violent video games "affect language proficiency", I've yet to have felt this astounding phenomenon, and neither have just about all my other gaming peers. What I do recall in my "LOL TEXTSPEAK" days, is that my tolerance for improper English was gradually increasing as 1) everyone else talked like that and 2) I knew my English was much, much better in real life.

Yeah. That didn't take a brain surgeon.

I saw one for Star Wars Galaxies, they were going on about how you murdered the innocent animals (creeps) outside of each town. I lol'd. On one hand, I think this could be a joke, on the other hand, there are crazy people out there like this, so perhaps not.

I'd like to refer to extreme cases like when a guy starts playing max payne and a few weeks later he riddles 20 people full of holes, taking his own life consequentially. That is what really freaks out the 'overprotective' parents. They stupidly think that the guy did this because he saw it on the video game and the mass media are not helping with this at all. You can not possibly blame this on a video game, there has to be something else wrong with the guy yet parents fail to see this. Nobody goes crazy for no reason.

Unfortunately, in cases such as those the videogame was probably the inspiration for the event that specifically happened, but on a more positive note (for videogames) most likely a preventative for all events that may have happened until then.

True about that, but my point is, video game did not make the guy do that, something else did.

Originally Posted by Teh_Ephy

Unfortunately, in cases such as those the videogame was probably the inspiration for the event that specifically happened, but on a more positive note (for videogames) most likely a preventative for all events that may have happened until then.

It still doesn't matter. A video game to a psycho is like bungee jumping to a man with a weak heart. Both are perfectly good and normal, but some groups of people just shouldn't try them. However, if someone gets a heart attack while participating in a sport, no one will yell out "Ban football!". That's the only difference. As someone said before, video games, especially the realistic ones are still new, and the easiest thing to do is to fear them and shift blame for not being able to control a freaking 14 year old.

What I meant was that the videogame shaped how it happened, but still did not cause it, and in fact at stalled it... Wording it like that is something I should have thought of earlier.

The reason for that hatred is that these freaks are too scared of anything that their children understand better then they do, and make them lose their perfect little mind control.

Face it, every single one of the "anti video games" moves is either a retard or a control freak. they simply can't bare that they are in fact unnecessary, and that their kids are already twice as smart as they are.

I mean, most countries would have been better with a bunch of 18 years old gamers as the government that the current flow of old guys that don't know anything about the average man in the nation, or the world around it, or even basic level resource management for that matter.

Originally Posted by Teh_Ephy

What I meant was that the videogame shaped how it happened, but still did not cause it, and in fact at stalled it... Wording it like that is something I should have thought of earlier.

I was not disagreeing with you, i was just commenting how some people will use the fact that the video game shaped an incident caused by a lunatic, but they will not even think about a similar situation where let's say, a diabetic got messed up by a box of chocolates.