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Is society ready for rift+omni or vr in general?

ricard2798
Honored Guest
Let me first start saying that i already preordered a rift, got a hydra and backed the omni kickstarter.. So this is not a trolling thread or trying to be discouraging of the tech.. In fact i think this is the coolest thing ever. Anyways, as i started to watch the videos of the omni in conjunction with the rift and gun controller... I started to wonder if anyone has put some serious consideration into studying the age restriction on usage with violent games.
Like, i would not let my 7 year old play COD or BF3, since they are too violent.. But with my 13 year old i have a bit more flexibility.. Since i know he can clearly separate game from reality... But now heading into a new dawn of Virtual REALITY, it makes me wonder if age restrictions for games might need to be revisited.
Before, there was a big breakup in immersion thanks to the display and controllers.... Now that we change that... If there is ANY truth ( and i am not saying there is, just entertaining the notion) to the fact that games can influence behavior and violence in peoples minds, it is only reasonable that as immersion increases, this effect could possibly be augmented.
The good news for me, is that my kids are into minecraft, so my level of concern is limited... But if my kids where into COD, that would perhaps open a new can of worms... Any thoughts?
18 REPLIES 18

AnotherAtreyu
Protege
From the numerous studies I have read regarding video game violence, the one that disturbed me the most perhaps was that although researchers never found any conclusive evidence of a correlation between on-screen violence in games and real life acting out of such violence (in the majority), they did find that people who are subject to violent imagery with any degree of regularity are less likely to react when they witness real life violence.
In other words they had discovered that if a person had frequently viewed violent images, whether in video games or otherwise, then witnessed some real life violence (a girl getting beat by a psychopath for example) they would be less prone to react and do something about it; it was demonstrated that it would not bother them as much as it would bother somebody who spends the majority of their time looking at more pleasant things, and would be more likely to turn the other cheek rather than rush to help.

Of course all things are variable when it comes to the human psyche. Everybody is different, but I do believe desensitization is not exactly a good thing.

Both of my older children have zero interest in violent games, but they are young yet (under 10) and I would not be surprised if that changed in the future. For the time being though they will turn away at anything even remotely violent in the visceral sense; We have raised them to believe that life is something to be respected and they see the gory violence in games and movies as contrary to that end.

Now as far as VR and violent imagery goes, well that is a different can of worms altogether I would think. I am very interested to see what kind of changes VR brings to the human experience, and I can only surmise that it will be a mix of good as well as bad. I would like to hope it will be mostly good though, it has a lot of potential for helping people deal with problems in a safe manner that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
“If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time cease to react at all.” (~I really gotta remember this shiz~) ― Yogi Bhajan

JOHIsaac
Honored Guest
Most people have empathy for the suffering of other people and just a few don't. Right now we think that empathy is inborn and that mirror neutron are responsible for it. But on the other had, if you raise a child with the body of thought that it is ok to kill animals or humans, the child will take over that into it's behavior.

A game alone will never change a child but without love or care or just disinterest it can be the the last straw to turn a child into a killer. But all other factors are so much more important than gaming that it makes nearly no difference.

And another but.
When i read that some people post that the immersion of a demo was so great that they literally had to rip of the Rift it could be a greater factor as it was before.

As posted before. It's in the hand of us, the parents to protect and lead our child to differ between game and reality. Without that direction it can be a problem. And this problem get greater with the immersion of the technology. But lets a assume a holodeck would be real, I still think that the effect would be rather small in regards of the other problems a child has when turning into a bully or even a killer.

fadedace
Honored Guest
At some point, we'll achieve total immersion or something close enough to it. If there's a theoretical game that reproduces the experience of killing with perfect realism--you feel your hands pulling the piano wire around the guard's neck in a Thief-like game, and you feel the effort it takes to restrain his struggling and the gurgling sounds he makes before he dies and you move on to "win" that level--at that point, I start feeling queasy about this as a form of mass entertainment. Obviously, that's two-, three- or four-generations away from the OR, but it's coming.

mscanfp
Honored Guest
when playing a Wii game where you kill serial killers you use the wiimote and nunchuck to strangle them and the idiotic feed back makes it possible to feel realistic, so its not that far away
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TheGiantRobot
Honored Guest
A long time ago, in a galaxy not far away at all, the Catholic church (among other institutions) burned books in an effort to make sure people remained "pure" and weren't influenced by the "evils" of reading.

In the 1800s people were afraid to have their photographs taken.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a man started touring the states with a "moving picture show". This picture show was SO realistic, SO unnerving, people ran from the theater in fright. Some proclaimed the DANGERS of the cinema. Below is that film:




In the 1950s and 1960s, white kids were told not to listen to that "n****** music", which would later become Rock and Roll. Church-going folk from all over claimed that the gyrating of the hips, and the "sleazy" lyrics would corrupt our youth and turn them into devil-worshiping heathens!

In the 1990s concerned parents everywhere, and the majority of our elected officials, got behind an effort to "curb violent video games". Probably the most notorious of these violent video games would be Mortal Kombat. Some claimed playing this "grotesquely immoral" game would lead kids to trying some of the same acts on their friends. Games like Diablo attracted attention from the conservative religious crowd, claiming the game would turn us all into devil-worshipers.

Guess what happened... books enlightened the masses, bringing upon the "Age of Enlightenment" and the birth of America in the midst of it.

"Moving picture shows" didn't cause people to die of fright, and films became an international art form, crossing all national/political/racial divides.

Rock N Roll music didn't cause everyone to become Satanists.

Mortal Kombat did not influence me in attempting to rip my best friends heart out of his chest cavity with my bare hands after a booming voice spoke "Finish him!", that was all my doing.

And VR isn't going to turn yours kids into desensitized, children-of-corn, cyber-soldiers.

The ONLY evidence that has ever been used to try and support the theory that entertainment somehow correlates to real world violence is that sometimes violent offenders have violent video games/movies/loud music in their house. This is the equivalent of saying "well 5 out of 20 of the last few serial killers had Rice Crispies for breakfast, obviously that must be the reason they went out and did those terrible things, they should've gone with something more filling!"

No form of fictional entertainment will turn someone into a sociopath, for the very reason it is fictional.

faust
Honored Guest
"mscanfp" wrote:
being in a vr environment can cause memories that feel as real as real world memories


You're gonna need to cite a source on that. That is a huge, huge claim and one that can be pretty patently disproven by casual observation in this very forum. Lots and lots of us have played HL2 in VR. If anyone here believes they remember gunning down combine soldiers in a way indistinguishable from real-life combat, it's the first I've heard of it.

so if my eight year old is in a vr environment and witnesses a guy get h his head chopped off i don't know how that's not d supposed to mess her up in some way worse than if she saw it on s TV screen.so i think parents have to be even more involved in what their kiss experience in vr.excuse typos as i got a toothache and am in no mood to correct. :lol:


You nailed it right there. This isn't a VR problem. It's a parenting problem.

VRoom
Honored Guest
I'm not on public "games are cause for violence" bandwagon at all, but to be honest, the increasing realism of violence you are performing in games does bother me. With the Rift you get another big push toward realism and I seriously think parents will have to be careful what their kids will play. Cause for real life violence or not.

mothhive
Honored Guest
"VRoom" wrote:
I'm not on public "games are cause for violence" bandwagon at all, but to be honest, the increasing realism of violence you are performing in games does bother me. With the Rift you get another big push toward realism and I seriously think parents will have to be careful what their kids will play. Cause for real life violence or not.


Parents should already be careful about what their kids play. Kids aren't supposed to be playing violent/bloody games, which is why those games are age restricted.

While I don't think any sane adult will become violent from playing video games, VR or otherwise, kids on the other hand are likely to be more affected by violence, whether it be games, VR, TV, domestic, etc. I very much doubt VR will increase the effect, but it's certainly not going to lessen it.

TheGiantRobot
Honored Guest
"mothhive" wrote:
"VRoom" wrote:
I'm not on public "games are cause for violence" bandwagon at all, but to be honest, the increasing realism of violence you are performing in games does bother me. With the Rift you get another big push toward realism and I seriously think parents will have to be careful what their kids will play. Cause for real life violence or not.


Parents should already be careful about what their kids play. Kids aren't supposed to be playing violent/bloody games, which is why those games are age restricted.

While I don't think any sane adult will become violent from playing video games, VR or otherwise, kids on the other hand are likely to be more affected by violence, whether it be games, VR, TV, domestic, etc. I very much doubt VR will increase the effect, but it's certainly not going to lessen it.


First off you just combined REAL violence (domestic) with fictional violence (VR and TV). You also didn't make a distinction between that which is real footage of real things happening, versus fiction.

Ignoring that, and assuming you just meant fictitious violence: That's the thing... everyone keeps saying that because it "sounds" right, and because we have everything from sci-fi parables to over-hyped news stories saying it's correct, but the truth is there is ZERO evidence to support this theory. ZERO.

In fact, if there is a correlation between the two, and you compare the violent crime rate to the popularity of violent video games, it's actually caused a DECREASE. However, personally I do not buy that there is any correlation, positive or negative, between the two.