As you may already have noticed, a massacre has happened at a german school a few days ago. While we all should pity and feel sorry for the victims, a few german politicians now use the massacre as a reason to attack egoshooter players unjustly – wanting to have egoshooters prohibited. You will probably laugh about this – but millions of cambodians stopped laughing when their dictator forbade 3g phones for a similar reason.
I have participated in many discussions about the topic and feel that these points should be publicized more:
Egoshooters are completely surreal – you can’t do them in practice
The average egoshooter is totally unrealistic – who can get a M60(and fire it alone, haha) or a tank in real life? Egoshooters are simply a ‘funny’ game – and everyone can see the paradoxity of running around the subway with a chainsaw killing clowns.
Egoshooters push hardware development
Today’s PCs have graphics subsystems capable of calculations mainframes couldn’t handle teb years ago. The reason for this is simple: the need for better graphics and more effects keeps pushing developers to the limit of hardware power – and that presses hardware makers to produce faster stuff. Games are the main engine that press new hardware into the market – they fund many developemts(extreme edition CPU’s, anyone?) that we all profit from in the end.
Windows Vista’s UI would never be possible without high-powered graphic engines. And these engines would have never been developed if gaming hadn’t paved the road with ample cash.
Many of the studies come from attention-seeking, unsuccessful doctors
I never believed this until I experienced it myself…this is a true story!
One day, I was at a bar programming. The DJ kept playing Rap(hey, its a LOUNGE) – and I walked up to him to ‘motivate’ him to play something else. Ok- Assemblage 23- and back to coding. Suddenly, I noted a gal slipping next to me talking to me about how Rap makes people aggressive, etc. Hmm – interesting gal, lets talk. She openly confessed that she decided to write her thesis on this topic for only one reason: to get media attention. This media attention should help her repay her student loan – mad but true!
Egoshooters are a popular topic for the mass media – and where there is demand, supply will follow! Freud worked very much and got a little rich – these guys work little and get very rich.
Statistics can prove everything
I drink Schweppes Bitter Lemon and wear suites. By appropriately selecting the sample of the study, one could probably prove that all suits drinking bitter lemon use a PocketPC – but damn, why do I use a Treo 600 then?
If the examinor takes enough time to find the right sample, he can prove anything – ….
Sickos stay sickos – without egoshooters, they went their frustration elsewhere
This is probably gonna make a few of you mad, sorry, but I have to put this example. Lets take the average german skinhead Nazi. There are two scenarios:
a) He plays a round of Doom and vents his anger/frustration/racism/whatever; and then goes to bed with his blonde girlfriend and falls asleep.
b) He can’t vent his frustration. Thus, he sets out and burns a Synagogue killing 500 innocents. He then shoots himself in the forehead after blowing the Synagogue up killing another 100 innocent bystanders.
I prefer scenario number 1 – no innocents get killed, a girl gets made happy and no life is lost. Obviously, the media would prefer b(bad news is good njews…yeehaa) – but everyone somewhat sane should understand what I mean.
A frustration vented inside of a PC on a data structure is 500000 times better than a frustration vented on another person, animal or even just someone elses property – all jerks, dogs, cats, weak guys/girls, doorsteps, burnable matereals and bus stops in the world thank you for beeing sensible.
What can you do
OK, you probably thought similar about this before. But the problem and goal of this post isn’t to convince YOU – the goal is to convince the REST of us. Please share this post with others, print it out and hang it on a whiteboard, participate in public discussions, or do just whatever you wish. But don’t sit in a corner and cry – this helps no one!
Please tell me what you think!
) – and flash looked like a bad idea too.
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