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Maine GOP attack Dem for playing World of Warcraft!

I remember that. I have absolutely no problem with that section of the game. Its fake violence. Just like fake violence on T.V. or movies which very few people seem to have a problem with.

Aside from that being an issue to me, there were a number of things happening at once with this:
1) Russia banned the game (receiving criticism from the gaming community) due to a long-history of such violence themselves
2) Our post-Sept. 11th issues
3) The game developers and scriptwriters offering half-assed justifications that directly contradicted each other and stood in the face of reality with how the game actually worked.
 
It would seem that while it would make sense that it would desensitize people to play games that are just about mindless violence the research would suggest otherwise but I'm not sure how biased the studies were or if they were biased at all.

I don't know how biased or not studies are or what questions they would ask to determine that. I do know, that when my oldest was in 1st grade, they asked the parents that we turn off Power Rangers before school. They noticed the fall that arrived on TV, there was significantly more trouble on the play ground and that it migrated into the classroom. I did, I didn't see the problem with waiting til after school, but I didn't follow up to see how well the suggestion was followed nor how much it may have helped. Anecdotal, I know.

I remember that. I have absolutely no problem with that section of the game. Its fake violence. Just like fake violence on T.V. or movies which very few people seem to have a problem with.

I have to disagree, it's not like on TV. A player is interacting with it, making the violence happen. Violence on TV, which I'm not a fan of as you can see above, is a passive activity. TV is watched, one has a physically passive response, until like a video game where the player is required to physically take action.
 
Aside from that being an issue to me, there were a number of things happening at once with this:
1) Russia banned the game (receiving criticism from the gaming community) due to a long-history of such violence themselves
2) Our post-Sept. 11th issues
3) The game developers and scriptwriters offering half-assed justifications that directly contradicted each other and stood in the face of reality with how the game actually worked.

Russia banning the game doesnt really mean anything to me.

I dont really care about the 9/11 issues either. Its a video game after all. Its not real.

I dont think they need a justification to include that part of the game. If you ask me it helped the storyline out. It made you understand why Russia invaded the U.S. so you dont look at the Russians as the real bad guys.
 
Russia banning the game doesnt really mean anything to me.

I dont really care about the 9/11 issues either. Its a video game after all. Its not real.

I dont think they need a justification to include that part of the game. If you ask me it helped the storyline out. It made you understand why Russia invaded the U.S. so you dont look at the Russians as the real bad guys.

It's just a game, but you make the defense based on the plotline? Sounds similar to the Infinity Ward man who decided to wear sunglasses to the interview which provided equally contradictory messages.
 
I don't know how biased or not studies are or what questions they would ask to determine that. I do know, that when my oldest was in 1st grade, they asked the parents that we turn off Power Rangers before school. They noticed the fall that arrived on TV, there was significantly more trouble on the play ground and that it migrated into the classroom. I did, I didn't see the problem with waiting til after school, but I didn't follow up to see how well the suggestion was followed nor how much it may have helped. Anecdotal, I know.



I have to disagree, it's not like on TV. A player is interacting with it, making the violence happen. Violence on TV, which I'm not a fan of as you can see above, is a passive activity. TV is watched, one has a physically passive response, until like a video game where the player is required to physically take action.

Kids are going to have a harder time understanding the difference between fantasy and reality then adults. Thats why we have the rating system for video games and movies and what not.

The point is that both are fake violence so I dont see a moral dilemma. The vast majority of people who play video games dont think its ok to go and kill hookers or shoot someone with a sniper rifle or anything like that. They understand that video games are fantasy. So why does it matter if you are physically controlling an electronic character to shoot imaginary bullets at a fake enemy or watching it happen? Thats what I dont get.
 
It's just a game, but you make the defense based on the plotline? Sounds similar to the Infinity Ward man who decided to wear sunglasses to the interview which provided equally contradictory messages.


Huh? What does wearing sunglasses to an interview have to do with contradictory messages? And as I stated they dont really need a justification. I just personally think it added to the storyline. Without it you wouldnt really be able to understand why Russia attacked the U.S.
 
Huh? What does wearing sunglasses to an interview have to do with contradictory messages? And as I stated they dont really need a justification. I just personally think it added to the storyline. Without it you wouldnt really be able to understand why Russia attacked the U.S.

The guy was being a jackass while being confronted with the controversy. He pulled out the same lines.

Without the interactive portion, you could have just as easily explained it. There was no need to have the player contribute or directly observe the mayhem.
 
The guy was being a jackass while being confronted with the controversy. He pulled out the same lines.

Without the interactive portion, you could have just as easily explained it. There was no need to have the player contribute or directly observe the mayhem.

Who cares if he was being a jackass. That doesnt make him any less right. It just makes him a jackass.

Have you actually played MW2 and specifically played that level? After playing that level I actually started to hate the main terrorist. I wouldnt have if they had just explained the events.
 
I don't know how biased or not studies are or what questions they would ask to determine that. I do know, that when my oldest was in 1st grade, they asked the parents that we turn off Power Rangers before school. They noticed the fall that arrived on TV, there was significantly more trouble on the play ground and that it migrated into the classroom. I did, I didn't see the problem with waiting til after school, but I didn't follow up to see how well the suggestion was followed nor how much it may have helped. Anecdotal, I know.


I have to disagree, it's not like on TV. A player is interacting with it, making the violence happen. Violence on TV, which I'm not a fan of as you can see above, is a passive activity. TV is watched, one has a physically passive response, until like a video game where the player is required to physically take action.

sometimes i feel anecdotal/real life evidence is more applicable then a research study.
 
Kids are going to have a harder time understanding the difference between fantasy and reality then adults. Thats why we have the rating system for video games and movies and what not.

The point is that both are fake violence so I dont see a moral dilemma. The vast majority of people who play video games dont think its ok to go and kill hookers or shoot someone with a sniper rifle or anything like that. They understand that video games are fantasy. So why does it matter if you are physically controlling an electronic character to shoot imaginary bullets at a fake enemy or watching it happen? Thats what I dont get.

It is not equivalent to watching TV and that's what I most want to address. I find it distasteful to even fake kill people. It bothers me, greatly. Extreme violence, cruelty and torture in a movie, bother me terribly as well. I cannot watch some movies at all or turn it off because of scenes like that. "Scarface", a scene with a chainsaw. "Casino" the guy's head in a vice. There was a film where Lindsey Lohan was tortured with burning, I didn't realize was going to occur.

So my opinions are just that and if those illustrations are lost in translation, I'm sorry. Taking an active role in perpetrating even fake violence, is a greater problem, for me, than observing it.
 
Who cares if he was being a jackass. That doesnt make him any less right. It just makes him a jackass.

Have you actually played MW2 and specifically played that level? After playing that level I actually started to hate the main terrorist. I wouldnt have if they had just explained the events.

Yes, I have. The screenwriter said the following:
1) You can shoot the terrorists
Answer: Yes, but like all matters Call of Duty, if you don't do what it wants in the way it wants, it will punish you dramatically. Try to fire on the terrorists. You'll die in 2 seconds flat. Try that same thing facing a whole crowd of policemen minutes later: takes a long time to die. It steers you in the direction of being complicit in the wanton murder.
2) You can choose to not shoot the civilians
Answer: So you can destroy life, but rarely protect it in this game. The only moments where that does exist is in the breach sections. Throughout the invasion, American civillians are curiously missing from a nation-wide invasion.
3) It's just a game
Answer: But you just got done explaining the awesomeness of the storyline.
 
Yes, I have. The screenwriter said the following:
1) You can shoot the terrorists
Answer: Yes, but like all matters Call of Duty, if you don't do what it wants in the way it wants, it will punish you dramatically. Try to fire on the terrorists. You'll die in 2 seconds flat. Try that same thing facing a whole crowd of policemen minutes later: takes a long time to die. It steers you in the direction of being complicit in the wanton murder.
2) You can choose to not shoot the civilians
Answer: So you can destroy life, but rarely protect it in this game. The only moments where that does exist is in the breach sections. Throughout the invasion, American civillians are curiously missing from a nation-wide invasion.
3) It's just a game
Answer: But you just got done explaining the awesomeness of the storyline.

So? I dont really care what he said. Its fake violence. I fail to see a moral dilemma here.

This all reminds me of the song Vicarious by Tool lol.
 
So? I dont really care what he said. Its fake violence. I fail to see a moral dilemma here.

This all reminds me of the song Vicarious by Tool lol.

Then don't pretend it is a crucial part of the story-telling, and admit its sadistic qualities.
 
Then don't pretend it is a crucial part of the story-telling, and admit its sadistic qualities.

I think that part is crucial to get an emotional reaction from the player though. Like my hatred for the main bad guy after I finished the level.
 
Perhaps others are able to distinguish that which occurs in a game world, and that which occurs in real life. She expressed the thoughts in the context of a game, and that's really al there is to it. If she's done the same in real life, I'd love to see your evidence. Until then, you're grasping at the same desperate straws as her opponent.

Actually she did express those thoughts in real life.

It's always real life.
 
As a rebel against irrationality, I can't help commenting on another article about the Nobel Prize winner finding something in two places at once. This is nothing but confined entanglement, and entanglement is nothing but the same particle going back and forth through another dimension at ultralight speed (6 light-years a second), leaving and re-entering this universe. It travels so much faster than measurable velocity that it appears to be either two particles affected by events they have no contact with (Corsican Brothers fable), or this alternative impossibility of being in two places at once. There is no measurable difference between ultralight speed and no time at all. "It's here, then it's there" seems no different from "It's both here and there" at these speeds.
 
sometimes i feel anecdotal/real life evidence is more applicable then a research study.
Research filters out real life if the researchers don't like it. All their data are taken from anecdotal evidence on the side they want truth to be on.
 
Scientists' own isolated, excessive, and unrewarded training turns them into weirdo escapist freaks themselves. So I wouldn't trust any studies they do about normal human beings and their self-reflecting opinions on what is psychologically healthy.

Right. And with those sorts of preconceptions I can totally see how your opinion is valid and unbiased. If you've got any info or reasoning to bring to the table, go for it. If not, I'm sure you can understand why I don't take you seriously at all.
 
Right. And with those sorts of preconceptions I can totally see how your opinion is valid and unbiased. If you've got any info or reasoning to bring to the table, go for it. If not, I'm sure you can understand why I don't take you seriously at all.
My revolt is against the idea that people deserve to be in the positions they are in. For example, we can criticize the politics of journalists but not claim that their ignorant and dysfunctional English disqualifies them from having their jobs in the first place. My preconceptions were the same as yours when I looked up to researchers, so just because you've maintained this worship of success by giving professionals the benefit of the doubt when doubts arise due to their personalities or to contradictions of what you've seen in real life, that bias towards the status quo doesn't give you the authority to define what "preconception" means. Because those who control our language don't want us to think independently, there is no such word as "postconceptions," but those are the conclusions I come to based on logic and experience rather than acceptance of the authority of the neurotic ambitious imbeciles who get ahead in these backward times.
 
That's just not true. I played WoW less than a year, and had several characters at lvl 70, then the highest one could go. I played an average of 4-5 hours in the evening.

To criticize people for their hobbies is utter rubbish. Look how many hours it takes to become good at playing golf, yet most politicians play golf and nobody says a thing about the hours and hours they spend on the game. This kind of partisian hackery is what has poisoned the average American against both political parties, and the slanderous slime with which they gleefully fling at anyone on the other side, no matter how dishonest or deceitful.

I play WOT (World of Tanks), I am pretty decent at it, and more importantly I like playing it. I also play Soul Calibur when, I just absolutely have to bash some poor bastards head in. I am very very good at that.( Ive been playing some version of it since I was in high school. To put to you this way. It was on an arcade machine(remember those?) when I first started playing it. It was called Soul Blade then. Anywho it gives you an idea how long i've been playing it in one form or another.) I definately would have been right at home on some medievil battlefield, to steal a catch line I saw around these here boards. That said if I ran for office why the bloody hell would any body care? Hell killing things and people online prevents me from putting an ax in their head in real life. Its carthetic for me. Whats the big deal. I swear sometime the Republicans just ich to shoot themselves in the foot. How is this even relevent to the race?
 
I'd just say it's too much of a time suck, especially for the money involved. I feel that way for all MMORPGs, actually. Too many expansion packs, too long to do quests...etc.

I got sucked into Wow for a bit. The competition is too much of a draw! I always wanted to do the top raid and get the best gear and found I spent waaaaay too much time trying to compete in a virtual world.
 
This kind of hysteria, so like the hysteria over entertainment thing from D&D in the 70s-80s up to "violent" TV shows, "violent" music, games like DOOM, and onwards is one of the many things turns me off of the idiocy of the Mrs Lovejoy-esque extreme social conservatives in the major party I most closely identify with.

A state candidate on the GOP ticket stooping this pathetically low and frankly retarded would go a long way in making me cast a vote in a manner that's a specific rebuke against themselves

Full diclosure I am a gamer myself. That said the Repulican is a moron. The Democrat in this case seems to be and idiot. That said I would vote for the idiot just to make a statement to the Republican party that they need find someone who has more than one brain cell and some modicum of common sense. Wow is all these twits have on that idiot? Really? If it is then they just dont need to be in office anymore.
 
An update for the thread

‘World of Warcraft’ State Senate Candidate Wins Election

Add another demographic to the list of winners on Tuesday night; in addition to Democrats, women, and marijuana advocates, gamers scored a political victory in Maine’s state senate.

Colleen Lachowitz, the Democratic state senate candidate in Maine whose race drew national attention when the state’s Republican party attacked her for her world of warcraft persona, won election on Tuesday, ousting Republican incumbent Tom H. Martin Jr. by a little over 900 votes, according to the Morning Sentinel.

Lachowitz drew criticism from the Maine state GOP for comments the candidate made online while playing World of Warcraft (Lachowicz is a level 85 orc in the popular multi-player online role-playing game.) Only, it wasn’t Lachowicz herself who made the comments–it was Lachowicz’s warcraft alter-ego, Santiaga.
 
First of all, I would like to say that it is more than possible for her to reach 85 without playing 22 hours a week. The game has been out for 8 years now. At this current time, playing 8-12 hours a day, a person can make level 90 in less than 15 days (I saw level 85 Pandas/monks running around within a week of Pandaria being released). I had my level 85 about 2 years ago, within about a week of Cata coming out. I had reached level 80 about 2 years prior to that. It can be addictive, but it really doesn't take a lot of time to reach a high level, particularly not anymore, now that they offer all kinds of leveling incentives, such as friend leveling and guild benefits with leveling.

As for the comments I've seen from her from her toon, they really aren't that bad. I've seen much worse playing the game. And lord knows I've thought such things.
 
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