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Solving Violence and Videogames

The trouble is. We are the dictionary definition of stupid. We as a industry cannot seem to learn from previous experiences. This doesn't help when we are Dr. Frankenstein dealing with our own creation.

Game Developer, Staff

January 22, 2013

3 Min Read

As the summary sates, and as the title states. This is not about the violence I'm waiting for some more inconclusive government studies. 
I think we need to trace the problem to the source.
And the source of the problem is a tricky one. It's all about Bias.
The thing is on the internet it's impossible to convince some one otherwise.
This is because of their Bias. Bias is not a bad thing, it's one of the things that (IMO) seems to determine your personalty and who you are as an individual. Your biases are as simple a I do not like that and I do like that.
Now, in pretaining to children and violent video games, I'd like to litterally trace the problem to the source.
Violent VGs are not the problem, like any drug, it's the dealer. No, not the litteral dealer, just the source. It's not the factory, or the developer's fault. It's not the actual retailer.
It's the consumers. The kids who's videogames were destroyed recently, I can only imagine where on earth they got them. 
I can only imagine why.
Sure, there's a lot of bad egg parents out there, who know what they're buying and buy it any way. But these people are probably the kind of people who wuld buy their kids a Rated Bluray/dvd anyway and thus are moot and irelevant.
Plus they're probably like a 0.005% of any AAA fps's sales anyway so agian. Leave them alone they're irelevant, they wish they were relevant but they're not.
The reall damage is comming from a higher percentage.
The reall damage is comming from the fact we treat the gullible parent as a demographic to market to and it works and we'd probably loose around a few million dollar$ if kids did not want our AAA FPSes and parent did not  buy them.
Let me explain why these parent's are pissed. They've been tricked.  


By this: 
The real face of marketing gone rogue.

For ages 8+

 
Into giving this. Not for ages 8+

Gotta love'er

 


To this:
Target audiance for those toys btw (8 yrs old)

Ain't gettin' any Cortana

 


We're just as guilty for selling this stuff this way as they are for the way they're buying it. Those kids are manipulative little fucks! They turn on the water works and suddenly M17 means nothing. You sit through one christmas tempertantrum and you'll probably buy your kid anything to avoid having to buy another bay window and christmas tree. 
I'm not pointing the finger at one one individual group here. The NRA is not being helpfull in preventing gun violence and our industry isn't being very responsible either. 
The problem here is still in my opinion, is in the fact every one is looking for the single right answer. There are a bunch of right answers here. Because there isn't one single question to answer. When it pretains to kids getting M17 games, the parent's gullible or not are to blame, end of discussion. But we aren't and haven't been very helpfull pretaining to that. I'm not calling for a bigger ESRB rating but maybe this. 



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