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Comment by throwaway8879 | Hacker News Reader

>is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes.

I'm not sure I agree. I can listen to all the "violent music" I want, but can't stomach through a contemporary or even classic horror film. I was really weirded out and had to stop halfway through while watching a documentary on the Austrian guy who kept his daughter in his basement for many years.

Also, not to be a cliched metalhead, but I'm disappointed by the lack of good death metal in this article.

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> >is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes.

It's the same old stupid argument that has been becoming popular again about games recently, and frankly, it's such a huge load of bullshit.

playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you, even if it is fun. I loved games like San Andreas but couldn’t really get into GTA:V because it felt too real to me.

> playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you.

People really tie "kills" in games to murder in real life way too casually. When I play a game it's about strategy, team work, and winning.

A lot like Football (Soccer). It has little to do with the terms or animations used in the game -- those are just for entertainment.

I don't play a game because of how violent it is, I play it if my friends have it and/or it has good/fun game mechanics.

Just an honest question: would you play the same game if the bullets were made of chocolate and all the gore was replaced by something else? Assuming that it would have the same engine: strategy, teamwork. etc.. I wonder if whats the attractive to gamers is how real the gore is or whether it's the engagement the game generates and the gore is just meaningless decoration.

Consider a game like Splatoon where you shoot ink, would that be close enough to your chocolate example? If so, it is a very successful game

Consider the bloodthirsty game of chess, despite its terrible special effects (lack of bloodbath)...

The special effects in a FPS might provide maybe 1% of the total entertainment of a game.

Another interesting analogy is PG or TV-scene edited violent movies. Despite "Fight Club" G rated TV mix only being about 45 minutes long its still interesting and entertaining without the GorePorn.

Speaking of pr0n, romance/drama movies aimed at women are essentially two hours of pr0n foreplay with the X-rated visuals removed, yet are generally pretty good sellers to the mass market.

To some extent the only reason we have ridiculous over the top gore in FPS (and horror movies) is we have recently gained the computer tech to do it, so we must do it to extremes, and there's people trying to stuff their resumes with ever higher numbers of buckets of blood. Once that market weirdness is past, the GorePorn will decline a bit in popularity.

As an example Fortnite is new and somewhat popular yet about as gory and bloodthirsty as playing laser tag. Its not exactly Killing Floor or even Half Life which peaked at perhaps 100x less popular.

> playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you, even if it is fun.

Why would it? Furthermore, does this mean we also believe that people who do stuff like karate or Judo are more desensitized to violence?

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