Texas news report blames graffiti problem on "Getting Up"

Kyle Orland — 2008-02-18T13:15:00+00:00

It's a well known fact that graffiti was on the decline nationwide as recently as two years ago. Spray paint sales were down, wall cleaners were going out of business, and the country's youth were refocusing their energies on local art classes and scrimshaw. Then the unthinkable happened. On Feb. 14, 2006, Atari released Mark Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, a game that went on to become a best-seller and created a new tagging boom.

This twisted view of reality seems to be behind this KRIS-TV report, which largely blames Corpus Christi's increasing graffiti problem on Getting Up and games like it. According to CCPD Detective Ramiro Torres, school children use these games to "develop a base of membership to form these tagging groups." The report also implies that "students play this type of game and get ideas." Because, really, no one had the idea to tag a building before these video games were around. The whole concept of putting paint on a wall is entirely a creation of the gaming industry.

Look, we're all for fighting graffiti and preventing costly vandalism. But blaming a recent boom on a two-year-old game that was drubbed by critics and sluggish in the sales department is a bit much. Especially when everyone knows it was really Jet Grind Radio that started the graffiti boom.

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TV report: video games 'normalize' killing

Ross Miller — 2008-02-08T16:10:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture

Time for another, perhaps sensationalized violent video game report from a local TV station. Omaha's KETV ran a story (which currently appears on the front page of CNN.com) on how video games "normalize" killing, according to doctors.

We had trouble finding studies from all the universities they cited and certainly none of them are recent publications (the above Indiana University brains scans come from a 2006 report), so why report on this now? Enter Dr. Greg Snyder, a psychologist at Omaha's Children's Hospital.

After citing three university studies that only go so far as to conclude games can desensitize children to violence, the report then inserts the following quote from Snyder: "The more normal it is, the more likely it is they're going to activate or engage in those behaviors when provoked or even unprovoked." Though we're not trying to discredit his opinion, the evidence presented in the report does not lean towards that conclusion (although, given the report's structure, that's what the reader is led to believe).

After contacting a doctor for one side of the argument, does KETV find an equally reputable contrasting viewpoint? No -- or at least, there's no indication that gaming researchers or industry officials such as the ESRB or ESA were reached for contact. Said the report, "the video game industry notes that the research also finds that teenagers have similar responses to violence in movies or TV" (no studies or quotes are cited). Instead, those that provide the counterpoint quotes include two teenagers playing Gears of War and a manager of general operations for Gamers in Omaha -- not two sources likely to be held in the same regard as a psychologist.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

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Texas news report blames graffiti problem on "Getting Up"

TV report: video games 'normalize' killing