jay

After watching the whole interview it's apparent she wasn't actually making any sort of blanket statement saying no writer should be trying to make gamers cry. In other words this is a typical blog post made of nothing trumped up to be sensational.

I'm actually playing through Metroid for the first time on the VC. Already knowing Zillion very well, I too thought there were many similarities. Though I'm not sure SMS games looked a certain way, unless you mean "better than NES games." Oh snap, 8 bit console wars are back on!

Something that happens every single day is not news.

Silence: Pot may do very little to make someone violent, but drugs, legal and illegal, directly change the chemistry of your brain. To say their influence over people is as vague and intangible as the effect of violent games is silly. You're comparing hard and soft sciences.

Pedro, you can't post 4,000 stories a second if you actually look into what you're posting.

When exactly does he "flip out"? He gets excited and goes on too long about the beating a game thing, but I agree that it's a very American and competitive way of speaking. He is also kidding about the Pac Man thing. The guy didn't say George Washington was a syphilitic child molester, stop waving your flags.

@36
A great basketball player isn't competing with only two other basketball players. Sony was #1 of 3. And even if Sony were #1 of 103, people are generally turned off by arrogance, which is different than confidence. Confidence is, "Yes, the PS3 will be great because it is being built with Sony's know how." Arrogance is, "Our competitors products are for children and in no way compete with our products."

How much time did the author of this article spend playing each console on this list? 4 minutes? 9 minutes? http://videolamer.com/index.php/1161

Spinal Tap is pissed that their song may no longer be the best intentionally bad song on Guitar Hero 2.

What an absolute waste of time and money this research is. I don't agree with the idea that media is what causes problems in the world. Violence is generally caused by lack of socialization, poverty, and mental illness, not by reading a violent book.

While I respect the gathering of any and all knowledge, what she spends her time researching is an indication of her values and beliefs. A more conclusive study on the long term effects on media could possibly make all of her research moot, though, so I wonder why she doesn't start there. My guess is that she or a superior thought, "Violence in the media is a big topic today, let's run with that. Finding out if the media actually has a negative or positive effect on people is hard, though, and would take much to long. Why don't we just measure how often there are violent acts in some games? Think of the publicity."

There's a concept you never hear politicians and activists talk about...the positive effects of violent media. Or is Othello worthless because he kills Desdemona?