Tag: parent

Video Game Violence

Gaming

The Senate is having a hearing on Video Game Violence, and here you can read the statements given in testamony.

The first statement is by Steve Strickland, a minister whose brother was one of three police officers killed by a teenage boy. The boy took one officer’s gun, shot him, then executed the other two officers. Of course, Jack Thompson, lawyer for the persecution of game designers, has convinced this man that this teenager would never have hurt anyone if it hadn’t been for playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I’ve got a brother who has played this game. He’s played it alot. The entire thing through, every mini-game, several times over. My brother has never shot anyone. Nor has he stolen cars, raped women, blown up buildings or anything else depicted in the game. In fact, I’d say the game has had no effect on my brother at all. He is the same easy going happy guy he has always been. Perhaps he’s just waiting for the right moment to explode.

The next statement comes from Elizabeth Carll, chair of a department of the AMA that believes that violence on TV makes people violent. So of course, they also believe that violent video games make people violent. The AMA has released this document as a call for what must be done to protect our kids. One of the bullet points of her statement I really enjoyed:

Encourage the entertainment industry to link violent behaviors with negative social consequences. Showing violence without realistic consequences teaches children that violence is an effective means of resolving conflict. Whereas, seeing pain and suffering as a consequence can inhibit aggressive behavior.

The emphasis is mine, because, well, perhaps kids shouldn’t watch the news or read history books either. Violence (war) has been an effective means of resolving conflict for a very long time.

Third we’ve got a statement from another psychologist, Dmitri Williams, who says the smartest thing so far: We don’t know. Internet media and gaming on the level we are talking about is a relatively new area. There are no 30 year studies because violent video games haven’t been mainstream for 30 years yet. As he points out, most of these studies are 10 minute and 30 minute studies, and legislators trying to pass game laws ignore the longer, more in-depth studies, like his own one month test because they show that nothing is conclusive. Also games of huge disparity are often tested together. One such study used sessions of playing Wolfenstein 3D with sessions of playing Myst. The problem is that its not just a case of one game being violent and the other is non-violent, but one game is a fast paced shooter while the other is a plodding puzzle solver.

Next, David Bickham comes in and basically says that the problem isn’t violent video games, but prolonged exposure to violence being rewarded. You know, I can’t say he’s wrong, but as I said a couple of paragraphs above, you can’t limit that to just video games and media. After watching our own government trounce people’s basic freedoms and fight a few wars, the idea that might makes right becomes pretty prevalent through just watching or reading the news. He also says that younger kids are more susceptable to this exposure and what amounts to a desensatization to violence, and again I can’t disagree. But I don’t think legislation is where this needs to be address unless we are going to legislate parents being better parents. Yep, 8 year olds playing Grand Theft Auto might end up with a warped sense of reality and violence, but what parent in their right mind allows their 8 year old to play GTA? And the funny thing is, even though he’s arguing for the wrong side, he agrees with me:

As caretakers of the next generation, we have a responsibility to provide children with a safe environment in which to grow, develop, and learn. As a society, we have decided that we should understand and control the quality and safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the food they eat. Research has shown that the media children use have real effects on their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. In the Information Age, media must be understood as a powerful, nearly universal environmental health influence. We ensure the safety of what we feed children’s bodies, we owe it to their future and to the future of our society to ensure the safety of what we feed their minds.

The only difference is that he’s fighting for more laws, more organizations, more government, while I’d prefer parents just pay attention to their kids.

Then we come to Jeff Johnson of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Basically all I have to say about him is that he’s trying to force stores to be penalized for parents not being good parents. Who lets their kids rent or buy games on their own? If you, as a parent, don’t at least look into it before they do it, you are a bad parent. Get better, please.

Now we come to Paul Smith who says, with lots of legal references, that games fall under the same first ammendment protection as books, film and TV. Did you know its not illegal to sell a ticket to an R rated film to an 8 year old? The movie theater may refuse to do it, but there is no law. The MPAA ratings are a suggested guideline. The ESRB already has in place a much better rating system than the MPAA so that parents can make informed decisions about what to buy for their kids. In short: If you don’t want your kids playing violent games, then don’t let your kids play them.

The last statement, from Kevin Saunders, kind of bores the hell out of me. He’s just reviewing the reasons behind various court decisions, and in the end says that even though they keep losing the battles to restrict game, they will keep on fighting because the Supreme Court hasn’t told them “no” yet. One of the most important statements made is:

Judge Kennelly also expressed concern over the size of the community of those studying the issue and the relationships among the scientists. He noted that, of the seventeen research articles relied on by the Illinois General Assembly, fourteen were authored or co-authored by Professor Craig Anderson, one by a colleague of Professor Anderson, and two by a scientist who relied on Professor Anderson’s research in designing his own studies. This concern might be eased by recognizing that the articles all survived peer review, but the concern might simply transfer to the peer review process and the small community from which referees might be drawn. It should, however, be noted that Professors Anderson’s and Bushman’s meta-analysis of the research in the field included studies by a significant number of scientists unaffiliated with Professor Anderson. See Craig A. Anderson & Brad J. Bushman, Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Effect, Physiological Arousal and Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic View of the Scientific Literature, 12 Psychol. Sci. 353 (2001): Craig A. Anderson, An Update on the Effects of Playing Violent Video Games, 27 J. Of Adolescence 113 (2004). While these concerns of the court do not even currently seem valid, the continuing development of this area of scholarship and the attention paid by an increased number of scientists should eventually overcome the perceived shortcoming.

While he takes the stance that the court shouldn’t be worried by the lack of variety in sources for study, its important that he mentions it because this is the real problem. Out of 17 studies used by the people trying to pass a game restricting law 14 of them were written by the same guy, and the other three were a friend of his and two people who used his research for the bulk of their work. I think the effect of games on kids should most definately be studied, but right now there just isn’t enough data from which to draw anything close to concrete that would justify the legislation of games exceeding that which already doesn’t exist for other forms of media.

Anyway, in case you haven’t guess yet, I’m against legislating access to video games. Frankly, our society fosters a lifestyle in which neither parent is encouraged to stay home with the children. Raising children is the single more important thing we as a people can do, and yet “homemaker” is a derrided job title. If the US government really want to have an impact on protecting children, institute a new tax write off: If one of your dependants is classified as a homemaker for your other dependants, you get an extra bonus deduction. Reward people for being better parents and they’ll desire to be better parents.

The Normal Progression…

Gaming

I’ve been discussing the problems with character balance in EverQuest with a few people recently, and I think we finally nailed down the problem with why the pure melees have fallen behind and more importantly why the perception of pure melees of themselves is so bad.

It boils down to the “Natural Progression” of a character through his life in game from level 1 to 65 (currently).

Let’s take the pure casters first. They start with spells. Intelligence casters get new ones every 4 levels until 24, then every 5 levels after that until 49. For wisdom casters, the priests, its spells every 5 levels from the beginning. In this progression to 49 they also gain specialization (20 for intelligence, 30 for wisdom), and through items they gain focus effects that can change the power, duration and cost of their spells. At 50 they begin to get new spells every level, 50 itself holds very little, but 51 to 65 ranges from 3 to 8 or so new spells per level, some more usefull that others, but they gain spells none-the-less. They also gain more items, and with those items can gain focus effects to further enhance their spells.

The Hybrids experience the same progression as their caster parent, only to a lesser and slower degree, with spells being at levels 9, 15, 22, 30, 39, 44 and 49. But at 50 they start to gain spells at every level up through 65 just like their caster parent. The penatly they suffer here is that they do not get all the spells of the parent class, but they also gain a few speciallized spells that they alone have. They gain also through items and focus effects, although sometimes to get these effects they will have to sacrifice other stats… but that is as it should be. They also gain melee skills as they level. Most of them get their last melee skill at level 40 (rangers get their last at 35) and those skill cap out slightly lower than their parent melee class. Above 50, hybrids get disciplines – 2 each, one damage dealing, one damage avoiding or recovering.

Pure melees get melee skills and items. Their melee skills stop at 30 or 35. Their items possess no focus effects (currently their are items in the Plane of Time that have melee focus effects, however, after strenuous testing, where caster focus effects return an average 6% increase in power per effect, melee effects return an average 0.5% increase in power, and these are not available to everyone). Above 50, pure melees get disciplines – one per level although not totalling 10 because some levels are skipped on the way to 60. Beyond this, a pure melees only method of advancing themselves is through items and pure level mathematics of the game (a level 55 monk will take less damage than a 54 monk during a fight all other things equal due to the small effect that level has in all game calculations), and their items don’t yield to them as much as the same items yield to the hybrid (wisdom, intelligence, mana, and spell focus effects).

What’s missing here is that beyond disciplines (most of which are situational, short duration, long reuse skills) a pure melee has little to look forward to as he levels except for the pursuit of more and better items. This has the effect of making playing a pure melee feel extremely one dimensional.

Pure melees, in my opinion, need to get more special attacks. I’ve written before about combat styles, and while I still think that idea has alot of merit, in my mind more special attacks would actually go much further to alter not only the game, but the perception of those who play it.

For Warriors:
As it is now, a warrior gets Kick, Bash (if he uses a shield), and Taunt. One of the current issues with warriors is that while they numerically should be the superior choice for all a group’s tanking needs, they lack the most important feature that is truely required, that of being able to reliably hold and control aggro (the attention of the mob). At first, not being able to as reliably hold aggro seems like a decent trade off for the up to one thousand hit points he may have over the other plate tanks, however, upon playing in actual environments it becomes apparent that maintaining agro is actually more important than hit points as long as the hit points of the tank are high enough to survive a few rounds of combat without healing. With 70-75% slows available to high level groups, attaining a point of survivability is almost trivial, and being able to maintain aggro (or more importantly to pull aggro back off the slower) far outdistances the other factors of tanking.

To that end, what I would suggest for warriors would be a series of special attacks along the lines of kicks, slams, slaps, pushes. There would be two lines within the warrior attacks, the first would be aimed at helping resolve the aggro issues with a low damage high taunt attack. This would allow for the warrior to juggle his taunt key with this attack for a more readily available aggro increase. The second attack would be higher damage, but lower taunt. This would allow a warrior to increase his damage in situations where he is not tanking, or does not need the additional aggro of the high taunt attack.

For Rogues:
The only problem I see with rogues is one similar to clerics. A cleric gets complete heal at level 39 and will use it forever. A rogue gets backstab at level 10 and uses it forever.

There isn’t really a problem with this except in that rogues have little to look forward to as I described above. So what I would propose is giving rogues a series of attacks similar to backstab in that they need to be executed from behind the target, but of increasing damage as the rogue levels. Similar to the warrior, I would give rogues two lines of attacks. The first would be extremely high damage line. Every new attack in this line would be stronger with a higher minimum hit and higher maximum hit. The second line would be half the power of the first line, but have a built in “evade” that lowers them on the aggro list, a distracting blow if you will. This would allow rogues to choose between the evading attack when they need to reduce aggro, but go for the high damage when aggro isn’t a concern.

For Monks:
Monk are supposed to be martial artists. As such, for them I see a simple continuation of the series of skills they already have. These upgraded attacks however would have various attributes, pushes, 0 second stun, a crippling attack that would through melee debuff the ATK of the mob, and other similar things.

In all these cases, it would allow all pure melees to have actual class related skills to look forward to as they levelled in addition to their gear, so in that respect it would allieviate the problem that pure melees don’t benefit from levels as much as other classes.