Open Letter To Hillary

Today's L.A. Times is running an open letter to Hillary Clinton that I wrote, responding to the whole Grand Theft Auto panic. Those of you who have been following the blog or who have read the book will know most of the argument, but there are some new little twists in this one. Here's the opening:

Dear Senator Clinton:

I'm writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious "Grand Theft Auto" series.

I'd like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids –– a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.

I'm talking, of course, about high school football.

Comments

[josh]

Conceding the "slam dunk" about lack of excercise at the end of your letter seems generous. What about active video games and the DDR weight loss revolution?

[Josh]

wow... amazing letter, excellent point about high school sports and the games of yesteryear.

[Mark]

To suggest the decline in violent crimes is a result of the advent of video games is just rediculous. The real reason violent crime has decreased over the past 20 years, according the Steven D. Levitt, the author of Freakonomics, was the advent of the birth control pill, which eliminated a lot of unwanted births, and hence unwanted children, the ones most likely to comit these crimes.

[Garret]

Bravo. It's nice to see someone on our (video game players) side for a change. All of this hoopla over GTA is, of course, just another ploy for Hillary to try and get some votes. She'd rather waste a vast amount of money on this study than to just say, "Hey, parents, do your job. Be parents." But that would just be ridiculous, now wouldn't it? Of course not, as we all know that a majority of the things our children are doing wrong that have been blamed on video games could have been corrected had parents actually done some parenting for a change. But telling parents that it's their fault does not equal votes. Way to go, Hillary. Is there actually anyone in the Clinton family who is not crazy?

Anyway, great read, Mr. Johnson. I'd love it if you could do the same thing to Jack Thompson, the radical attorney from Miami. I've been trying to get a response out of him for almost two weeks, but he still won't answer my simple questions. I'm not exactly sure on his motives for being so outspoken on video games, but he's been doing it for years and it doesn't all seem to be "for the children."

[Will]

Well done. I'm Canadian, so I don't have to foot the bill for such a ridiculous study, but I'm sure we'll come up with one too (if we haven't already). Too bad North Americans can't just accept that they love sex and violence, instead of getting all uptight about it. Getting uptight is so expensive.

[Eric]

Steven, as a working professional in the game industry I just want to thank you for sticking up for us.

We're often too busy making games to get seriously involved in politics, and are sorely misrepresented, or not represented at all.

Everything Bad Is Good For You is an excellent book, and should be the rallying cry for game developers everywhere.

I'm doing my best to make other game developers aware of it, and also aware of your actions in standing up for the game industry.

Thank you!

[bill]

Steve,
Being a 20 year old who has played many violent video games (and have started maturing my way out of them), I really appreciate your letter. We all know Hillary will probably never see it, but oh well, at least some truth is getting out there.

I'm still dumbfounded as to how a mod that you have to install illegally on the console versions of the game can cause such a stir.

I doubt Hillary even knows how to install the mod.

[Tim]

Steven,

That was probably the most well-thought out piece on video game violence that I've ever read. Thank you for taking the initiative to educate our politicians about the real issues at hand, and making it clear that there are many facets to this complex issue that need to be understood before moving forward with unnecessary and intrusive legislation.

-Tim

[Babylonian]

You're a genius. Us gamers really needed this.

[Church]

Just another member of the game industry saying thank you. You said it better than I could have and, unfortunatly, better than any of the groups representing the industry have.

As a side note, I wonder how many kids have actually downloaded the Hot Coffee mod compared to how many just snuck a look at Dad's hidden porn?

[Mark]

First of all, outstanding job on the letter.

Secondly, what people are missing is the fact that the game never came with this thing "hidden" somewhere. I'd go into detail, but it's explained much better here:
http://illspirit.com/press_release.html

The other thing that's absurd about this entire issue is the fact that no one seemed to complain a lot until sex was involved. Apparently, killing cops, gang members, random pedestrians, and whomever else in the game was okay. But as soon as sex was involved, BAM! People's heads implode.

It just goes to show that American society has no issues with graphic violence, but are perhaps one of the -- if not THE -- most uptight country when it comes to sex.

[Richard Aberdeen]

When I was a freshman in high school (1964), I did not know anyone who took drugs, nor had I ever heard of anyone in our high school taking drugs. By the time I was a senior in high school, over 50% of our graduating class was taking drugs. Some people say that the music kids listen to, the movies they watch and the video games they play have no effect on how they act. These people are TOTAL MORONS.

[Bill Seitz]

So, which 1965 video games led to that behavior change?

[John Taznar]

You say that "A hundred years ago they were playing stickball and kick the can." That's true. But they were also playing "Cops and Robbers" and (dare I say it) "Cowboys and Indians".

So mayber Senator Clinton can tell us which is better. Kids running around "firing" fake weapons at each other, or sitting in front of a TV doing the same.

[Valentine]

Mr. Johnson, thank you.

Although I'd like to see a bit more statistical analysis on you comment regarding hijacking, you've basically written a letter that says exactly what everyone in my demographic is thinking.

While I do believe that Rockstar Games is at fault for basically lying to the public (first via representation to the ESRB and then their statement on the issue) this feels like another parental responsibility scapegoat issue that usually follows any non-puritanical singularity in the media.

Furthermore, I've yet to see any compelling arguments that justify why gut wrenching violence is better than any sexual situation.

Mr. Aberdeen, your statement doesn't produce any corollary to further your ideas. Your tact isn't too hot either.

[Hilary Clinton]

Vote for me in 2008!

[Jose Villeta]

Make me proud

[Albert Yale]

I thought it was a rhetorical question

[disanpoter]

John, did you read the article? Mr. Johnson, himself, concludes with the point that video games don't supply kids with the exercise they need. He also made a point in his letter in emphasizing that a. it's great that there's going to be an intensive study and b. that that study should take care to fully evaluate the merits and drawbacks of video games in comparison to other realistic passtimes for children. To expand upon your points, kids "firing" guns on tv don't physically harm their adversaries when out of frustration they take the rifle and use it as a bludgen. As Johnson makes a far more convincing case for the cognitive benefits of video games versus their live counterparts, I won't waste space here.

Why isn't this discussion more focused on how the study ought to be structured to actually be of some benefit? If Grand Theft Auto correlates to a steady decline in actual hijackings, perhaps the model can be applied to steer other thrill-seeking activities. 90 million dollars is a lot of money that can be spent well as well as poorly, if people care enough to push for it.

[Mike Armstrong]

Today's popular culture making you smarter? Not according to the aerospace industry. Here is an excerpt from an article several years ago in Aviation Week & Space Technology:

Perhaps the most startling discovery by the AIAA-led workforce/education collaboration has been in the area of early childhood learning and its unquestionable impact on the future of aerospace.

"Our research shows a definite correlation between media and the brain development of children," said Alberto Gedissman, a physician and member of the Committee on Public Education for the American Academy of Pediatrics. For example, kids exposed to "light screens"--television, computers and video games--for extended periods at an early age do not develop the sensory pathways that enable imagination and creativity. In fact, these children are considered sensory deprived.

"A colleague wrote about an astronaut who visited an impoverished school district, wearing his [flight suit] and being the role-model image," said Michael Mendizza, founder of Touch the Future, a nonprofit learning design center in northern California. "That would have been a fairly impressive thing when I was growing up, but these kids couldn't care less. They'd been so saturated with intense stimulation by television, commercials and movies that you'd have to go way beyond 'Star Trek' to compete for a young person's fantasy. These kids, through TV, have already been to the moon and back 400 times. You'd have to teleport them now to impress them." Motivating the next generation of aerospace professionals pales when compared with the challenge posed by "brain wiring" differences, though.

"The problem of 'endangered minds'--and the near-collapse of our educational system--is literally a diminishing capacity for abstraction among the general population," Mendizza said. "Because we're so saturated with data, the ability to think deeply about content, then abstract from that [to obtain] meaning and consequences--to connect the dots--is diminishing. Children can still memorize quite readily because that's a basic neurological process. But they can't come up with meaning. If they have to think, they have a real difficult time imagining--and I emphasize that word 'imagining'--what's being asked of them. Developmentally, this diminishing capacity for authentic creativity is [linked to] a lack of imagination." Just as the physical body can be trained to achieve peak performance through practice, a child can only develop imagination by being mentally "nurtured, stretched and exercised. That must take place in a specific period when the brain is plugging itself in, or the [person] is literally retarded in its capacity to imagine, to do creative functions," he said.

Playing and being exposed to language via spoken descriptions and the written word are key to developing these brain and sensory pathways. "In 1950, the average 14-year-old had a speaking vocabulary of 25,000 words. Today, the average is 10,000 words," Mendizza said. "Before the 1950s, childhood had a rich, descriptive narrative as its primary environment--storytelling and radio. Descriptive words were used, and they demanded a child create a corresponding internal mental image of what those words meant. He painted his own mental picture. Now, when we see [the movie] 'Star Wars,' we all see Yoda the same; we all have the same image. There's no real imagination involved in seeing Yoda. Creating a mental image of that creature--if we hadn't seen him--requires a completely different set of brain functions than just calling up a concrete image of what we've seen previously."

THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY, which requires creative, innovative people to design, develop, build and test cutting-edge products, is trying to draw from a pool that, in general, no longer has the capabilities to perform these functions. "This is one of the fundamental challenges [technical] industries face, because the media presents concrete images. That undermines the use of descriptive language which is related to how many hours young children are watching television, playing Nintendo and doing things on computers. It's infinitely more difficult for the brain to process and derive meaning from symbolic and metaphoric language than it is to just look at a picture." Optimum development of imagination and creativity must occur in the period between 2-10 years of age, he added.

"This is the period when kids are playing, making up stories and pretending. The most basic capacities that we draw upon in the [workplace]--emotional intelligence, language skills, imagination, even intuition--open up and are in place by age five." Consequently, aerospace/defense industry and government leaders need to become actively involved at a much earlier stage of education than previously believed, Boeing's Stephens suggested. "We need an integrated educational system. One role the aerospace industry could play is to [draw on] our expertise as system thinkers and integrators. But we first have to develop a common language across all the major stakeholders, leaders and organizations that affect this thing called 'education.' Our industry is beginning to talk about it. But it's not clear that we've figured out how to integrate our efforts so we're all pulling in the same direction."

[Symon]

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[kreskin]

I'd bet money that in next few days we'll see a GTA mod featuring a Senator Clinton character engaging in obscene acts.

[jeff]

Whoa Mike, way to put a damper on a conversation...

Your post seems to have some interesting points, but since I can't tell where the article came from, nor any details about the study, I'm forced to conclude that it's bunk. OK, maybe not bunk, but anecdotal evidence masquerading as research. No? Then give up the source. No deep throats here.

[Mike Armstrong]

The article can be found here, along with a lot of other very interesting information on the subject:
http://ttfuture.org/services/projects/pbs.html

[nicolegants kidman blog]

how do you know my name?