Citizengamer

@ostratego: That's a good way of putting it. I didn't really touch on the Vox Populi's rebellion and how that's depicted, but you could argue that the second half of the game unspools the consequences of building a city upon a foundation of racism and hateful ideology. I somewhat agree with some other critiques that suggest the game's story didn't do full justice to Daisy Fitzroy's character in terms of fleshing her out, but that didn't interfere too much with my enjoyment of the game.

Hah well, different times? To be fair, I think we can find racism in many cultures. But the guys carrying the biggest boom sticks are the ones who get to shape the world through their particular viewpoint.

Also, Imperial Japan did a pretty good job of imposing its own rather racist views on much of Asia. (Plus Japanese troops were involved in China during the Boxer Rebellion along with the Western powers).

That misreading of the post title as "hysterical racism" is actually pretty funny.

I wrote this story for Motherboard as I was finishing up my playthrough of "Bioshock Infinite." I really enjoyed the historical threads that tied into the game's setting, even if much of the depictions of historical racism fall by the wayside in the end.

I don't spoil the game's big revelation or ending, but I do include in-game examples of references to certain historical events and mindsets. Feel free to read, comment, and critique.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-scientific-racism-at-the-chicagos-worlds-fair-shaped-bioshock-infinite

This game made me wait longer than I've waited for any George R.R. Martin novel in the series "A Song of Ice and Fire."

I'm very ready for this.

Came here to see if anyone had posted this on the forums yet, but was glad to see Alex already on it with the news post.

As for the film premise ... well, it's Castle Wolfenstein. I'm sure there are screenplay writers who can still mess it up, but Avary seems like a solid choice.

Even if Funcom is basically passing the football to Tornquist's new startup, at least they're doing something that makes me think the next "Longest Journey" installment will actually exist. I had basically written it off after all the focus on "The Secret World."

Just wanted to say that this is a mark of a good community and good people.

@Slag said:

@kmdrkul said:

@Citizengamer said:

Pretty much this. What he's saying is plausible and probably has happened in certain cases, but the few studies he cites seem to have correlation/causation problems (e.g. it sounds like the CDC study on porn is way overreaching with its conclusion). So basically he concocted a grand-sounding theory about the demise of guys, backed it up with no sound scientific evidence connecting either porn or video games to what he's claiming, ignores any other possible social factors/explanations, and gave a BS Ted talk that is now being turned into a book. It's really sad for me to see professionally lazy stuff like this getting into the Ted talks.

For the record, there are plenty of very recent studies on video game addiction by itself. And then there are plenty of recent studies on pornography addiction... again by itself. Thus it's easy to reach a conclusion that POSSIBLE video game addiction + POSSIBLE pornography addiction MAY = some new image of a modern male. I agree that the article is biased and definitely didn't dig deep enough with any sort of empirical statistics.

I could think of a rather harsh and hamfisted connection between video games and pornography, however - people who play video games for hours on end are usually alone, isolated, with an internet connection... hmmm... what to do in between rounds/matches/quests? Heh. Just a thought - again, to me, this is all more hypothetical then factual.

Whether that research is convincing or not I can't say because I haven't read it. Like you said a lot of this does sound plausible so I'm inclined there is some merit to it.I suspect this has happened to some people.

But I'd be very surprised if anyone has done a study on an "entire generation of men". And if they had attempted to, I would question its' validity.

And that's the big issue is prevalence. What % of men are we talking about here 0.01%, 5%, 37%, 100%? How widespread is this problem?

Zimbardo's article unfortunately gives us nothing useful in that regard, other than exaggerated unsupported claims. Which makes it completely useless.

I think we're all more or less in agreement that Zimbardo isn't backing up his grand assertion very well. If he meant to simply throw out a hypothesis, that's fine -- but I think he's just playing connect the dots without studies to back him up. True, there are studies about video game addiction and pornography addition, respectively, but I think Zimbardo's hypothesis is making a huge leap from point A (studies on the individual addictions) to point C (saying video game and porn addiction are primary causes of social awkwardness/isolation among an entire "generation" of males).

@Slag said:

This concept should not just be dismissed out of hand (which is basically a rehash of 2011 Ted talk). For one Dr. Zimbardo of Stanford university has an excellent track record and what they are saying certainly is very plausible in many respects.

I think it's very possible, heck even probable, that games and pron and what have you make it easier for shy people to isolate themselves. With the internet today you can earna living and provide yourself with basic necessities without ever leaving the house.

However the article provides zero empirical support for its' claims and most critically takes the concept to a very exaggerated extreme

It's one thing to say a portion of the population is being negatively impacted like this by games, quite another to claim it's ruining "an entire generation of men".

Pretty much this. What he's saying is plausible and probably has happened in certain cases, but the few studies he cites seem to have correlation/causation problems (e.g. it sounds like the CDC study on porn is way overreaching with its conclusion). So basically he concocted a grand-sounding theory about the demise of guys, backed it up with no sound scientific evidence connecting either porn or video games to what he's claiming, ignores any other possible social factors/explanations, and gave a BS Ted talk that is now being turned into a book. It's really sad for me to see professionally lazy stuff like this getting into the Ted talks.

I interviewed Peter Singer (Brookings Institute defense expert and author of "Wired for War") last week about his work for Black Ops 2, and he mentioned this fun tidbit -- an (unnamed) Pentagon office was inspired enough by the game's armed quadrotor drone to consider the possibility of making it a reality.

***

Downtown Los Angeles is being torn apart by hijacked U.S. military robots. The U.S. and China are locked in a new Cold War over control of rare earth minerals. It's a chilling glimpse of the world in 2025, but luckily it's just a video game — at least until the U.S. military turns one of the game's fictional drones into reality.

The upcoming video game "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" has somehow managed to inspire the U.S. military well before hitting store shelves in November. Treyarch, the game's producer, released a viral marketing video on April 23 showing a mock "real-life" demonstration of an armed quadrotor drone similar to flying robots featured in the game. That led a Pentagon office to wonder if the U.S. military could make the same thing, said Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institute.

See rest of article here, or check out the version on this site if you don't want to click through a survey question.