The violence-in-games debate 'didn't matter,' says Carmack

by Jordan Mallory on Jul 30th 2011 5:30PM

People have been arguing about violence in video games for as long as video games have had violence for people to argue about, and few titles have come under as much sustained fire as Id Software's Doom. It would stand to reason then, that John Carmack, a man who was instrumental in the game's development and the FPS revolution that followed, would be chief among those most affected by the debate's wide-reaching ramifications. Not so much, it turns out.

"I never took seriously the violence in video games debate. It was basically talking points for people to get on CNN and espouse their stuff on there," he said, speaking with IndustryGamers. "In the end it didn't matter, it didn't make any impact on things. I never felt threatened by it and it turned out not to matter." Carmack also believes that violent games help calm agressive players and are, in-fact, good for us: "If you go to QuakeCon and you walk by and you see the people there [and compare that to] a random cross section of a college campus, you're probably going to find a more peaceful crowd of people at the gaming convention."

Via: Eurogamer
Source: IndustryGamers

Tags: Carmack, DOOM, iD, id-Software, John-Carmack, mac, microsoft, mobile, pc, playstation, ps3, xbox

Reader Comments (55)

Hell yes, I can agree with his last statement 100 times over. If the kids (yes, I'm calling them kids) in my University dorm were gamers, they probably wouldn't get drunk and riled up 2 nights a week.

They don't even need to be playing violent games, really.

@Kirkpad

Ironically, getting drunk and riled up and playing video games twice a week is what I plan on doing at University.

@Kirkpad

OLD MAN TALK: I my day we actually played Doom and Duke 3D in college and we had to haul heavy 486 computers to each others rooms. The only thing that was causing fits of violence was trying to get networked over IPX. You kids have it so easy with your fancy Internet.

@Kirkpad

Thank you. And yet, you don't see Fox News complaining too much about, specifically, drunken kids on campus. Probably because the Faux staff themselves were one of those kids in another day.

And here they always are, whining about a foreign piece of entertainment to them, becaus

@Kirkpad

Rats, don't know what happened there.

I was going to mirror Cappy Proton's statement: Hate is what people crave to be present in their everyday lives, which is unfortunate.

People have to hate something. It's the American Way.

@CaptainProtonX

I hate the hate, its so ugly

@CaptainProtonX I'm against those things everybody hates!

@CaptainProtonX
No, you mean thats the German Way. Germans and their government get their panties in a wad about violent video games WAY more than Americans. Germans pride themselves on how many games they can get banned. Its like a national past time for them. Hell there are several countries around the world that do this. At least in the US the government doesn't ban games outright (unless you live in the Peoples Republic of China.... uh, I mean California). We have it good here in the US. Sure some Americans shout and scream about it, but thats the beauty of public discourse.

Well said sir

They should make a game that you kill people from fox news and other news outlets... I'd buy it. And toss in a couple republicans for good mesure

@CleanUndies
Thats kinda much don't you think

@CleanUndies

Fox news doesn't care about violence anymore than other news stations,

but God forbid a game contains so much as implied sexual content...

@Qehb
Double standards man. Double standards...

@CleanUndies

You know liberal Democrats are responsible for that stupid California law? I have a feeling you are just like people who watch Fox news. You want to hear what you want to hear and believe what you want to believe. You want to believe your political team is on the side of some kind of black and white correct side. The truth is both parties suck.

Democrat = against violence in games
Republican = against sex in games

@CleanUndies MUGEN. Toss in custom fighters for the Fox News crew and there you go.

@CleanUndies
I wish I could get a game where I get to kill people that bring up Fox News in articles that don't even mention them.

@CleanUndies
Jackass.

people just want a scapegoat. Now its video games years ago it was Rock music.

@Qehb
I still remember the mass effect sex debate, which in the end they realised that none of them knew what they were talking about.
Then there was also when they said that playing Bulletstorm could make you a rapist...

Yeah gaming sites tend to overreact to a few talking heads talking bad about video games. I know people are always looking for things to rally around but it always seems like an over reaction to me. Nobody is coming to your house and taking away your video games. People always say "sure require kids under 18 to have there parents there and next they won't sell them to adults." If you have to say it is a slippery slope, I stop listening.

I'll worry about it if there are really laws that effect my gaming habit. There are really bigger things to worry about.

@FriedConsole
And it's been ages since Jack Thompson blasted himself off the radar. How does gamepolitics.com even get any new material?

I totally agree with his statement. I think the target of the violent video game debate was younger kids. Like really really younger kids. Well, even then I personally played violent games since I was close to 9 (Heck my first R movie was 8) and I'm not inclined to start fights with everyone I meet.

@Nicker600

Those individuals who got on news networks (or so called news networks) and presented violent video games as causing violent events often showed incidents one sided. They take a high school teen who had emotional issues who killed or attack several classmates. Finding out that he played one video game with violence in it and point the finger at the game as the reason for his actions.

I have been playing video games since I was 4 years old with my Atari 2600 in 86. I have been playing games with violence in them in some form most of my gaming life. I would consider myself a average relaxed kinda guy. I mean at the age of 10 playing Mortal Kombat in the local arcade doing fatalities beating people 10 to 20 years older than me.

I get tired of seeing games being used an excuse or reason for events that happen in our world, that has always happened in history.

Salma hayek's voice and likeliness = Greatest game ever

Wait, what were we talking about?

That last paragraph says it all. Basic understanding of the world sometimes makes the most sense. He seems pretty calm, too.

Agreed with that he said up until the 'violent video games are good for us' portion. Anyone who studies media and its effects on society know the Catharsis Hypothesis has been proven false. Research has shown that playing violent video games doesn't 'purge' ones hostile tendencies.

Having said that I don't think they are inherently bad for us either. Each person is going to take each piece of media a different way. Watching violence and sex on TV (or in video games) will effect me differently than the next person. It's just science...

@ZAXBY [Citation needed]

@ZAXBY

agreed 100%.

While his last statement is absurdly stupid, his larger point is most likely valid.

Well, I'm still glad the ESA took it seriously. If they didn't we'd have multiple states passing laws that successfully ban violent video games one way or another.

Violent video games affect you just as much as a violent book, movie, or TV show would. Kids shouldn't be playing GTA IV just like they shouldn't be reading Slaughterhouse Five or watching Saw.

@CorneliusPrime128

Wait, why is Slaughterhouse Five considered violent? It's nothing like that - I found it a deeply moving and human experience. Kids SHOULD be reading Vonnegut.

@haikuhaiku

I guess in retrospect Slaughterhouse 5 and Saw don't belong in the same category at all-- I agree with you completely, it's an incredible book, but at the same time, there's constant death. It's of course not as visual as Saw (yet a lot more meaningful). I guess it was just the first dark book that popped into my head.

@CorneliusPrime128

American Psycho.

I thought it was a fantastic read, but I wouldn't recommend it to kids.

I'm just going to leave this here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWr4htYp9dM

Citation needed for the opposite side too then. I don't know about you but whenever I played a fighting game with my brother, it just riled us up. Not the other way around.

@D3m0sthenes

That has more to do with you and your brother interacting than it does the game's content. I don't have siblings, but my best friends growing up were twins, and it didn't take much to get them riled up.

Its also worth mentioning the difference between real violence and "play" violence. Lots of kids play video games like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat and then go out and imitate the moves (or try to). But that's not real. There's no real intent.

And yes, on the other hand you do have kids on rare occasions that go out and commit real violent acts, but in those cases, there's often more than one possible trigger and its incredibly difficult, if not impossible to prove violent video games had a significant influence in the matter.

And as always, it all comes down to responsible parenting. There's really no other excuse.

He speaks of catharsis, but he is wrong. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/08/11/catharsis/

Ahh, but alas, it did matter. The industry ended up creating the self regulating system. and for better or worst that kind of decides which games can exist in the commercial mainstream. Now, I'm not saying Rapedick: Whore War 3 deserves to exist. Just that, because of that debate, ad bland and pointless as it was, it CAN'T. And that sort of matters, if only in a relative, "what if" kind of way.

@Batzarro The worlds WOrst Detect

Doesn't Japan has an entire genre devoted to rape simulators?

@Apakal

have*

Thou speaketh words of truthfulness in these days of woe, O'Carmack. But why has thine masterworks Doom and Doom the 2nd not graced PSN by the virtue of their holy presence?

@Pure Black World Tendency

I Agree but probably the same reason Duke 3d never came to us ( easier to port to 360 then PSN. bring it to PSN you have to recode ETC ETC . ) * well that's what i read for the reason why we didn't get Duke 3D on PSN *

@HardBoiled2009 But weren't both Doom and Duke released for the PS1?

@Pure Black World Tendency I'm still surprised that Doom DS never happened. With ad hoc multiplayer! And wi-fi support! I mean, I had a lot of qualms about the uncomfortable controls in Metroid Prime Hunters, but in Doom you never have to look up or down, so I think it would have translated well. Heck, you could even put the map on the touchscreen.

I never thought that the violent games act would be passed - it would set one of the worst precedents for the control of media outside of places like China or North Korea.

What I hated were the idiot politicians bullying their way to some sweet camera time by pretending to care, all the while doing stuff like denying medical benefits to 9/11 first responders who risked their lives and long-term health breathing poison to search for survivors.

Ugh...

"If you go to QuakeCon and you walk by and you see the people there [and compare that to] a random cross section of a college campus, you're probably going to find a more peaceful crowd of people at the gaming convention."

...and that's probably because they know that trying some of that same in-game aggression in the real world will get them slapped up and sobered quick to the reality that just because they spend 8 hours blasting pixels doesn't mean their spaghetti arms are gonna back their smack talk up in the real world, lol!

@PANdaRUS

Or it could be because they're being responsible and blowing stuff up in a pixel environment, rather than trying to prove their "manhood" at every moment by posturing on his great they are and trying to beat the tar out of each other. Y'know, like at those "manly" things you folks call "sporting events", or as I like to call them "drunken men relive their high school glory days by punching each other senseless over teams that play with balls".

@PANdaRUS
I'm sure quite a few gamers these days could kick your ass.

You're sitting there telling people they wouldn't do shit because they've got no computer to hide behind, all the while you're hiding behind a computer. Funny that.

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The violence-in-games debate 'didn't matter,' says Carmack

Reader Comments (55)

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:35PM Kirkpad said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:43PM Yuglyoshi said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:06PM FriedConsole said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:13PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:15PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:40PM CaptainProtonX said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:06PM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Jul 31st 2011 12:26PM rhododragon said

Posted: Aug 1st 2011 9:44AM Fermie Prime said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:43PM Maximo said

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Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:54PM Nicker600 said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:57PM Qehb said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:03PM Nicker600 said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:03PM FriedConsole said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 10:18PM Jetleo1 said

Posted: Jul 31st 2011 9:31AM mcnichoj said

Posted: Aug 1st 2011 9:48AM Klearwater Killer said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:52PM adr916 said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 7:50PM Rubbishy Me said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 5:58PM FriedConsole said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 11:15PM Haggard said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:00PM Nicker600 said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:23PM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 8:55PM Punisher M1911 said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:07PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:09PM ZAXBY said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:43PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Aug 1st 2011 10:07AM eat it said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:10PM Apakal said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:20PM GPrime101 said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:27PM CorneliusPrime128 said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:52PM haikuhaiku said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 9:54PM CorneliusPrime128 said

Posted: Aug 1st 2011 10:44AM Uphillbothways said

Posted: Jul 30th 2011 6:34PM Faceless Troll said

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Posted: Jul 31st 2011 12:21AM Apakal said

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Posted: Jul 30th 2011 7:05PM Batzarro The worlds WOrst Detect said

Posted: Jul 31st 2011 12:23AM Apakal said

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Posted: Jul 30th 2011 7:12PM Pure Black World Tendency said

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