The lights are on
The former host of X-Play gives an excellent take on the role of video game violence on social ills live on Fox News in this must-watch YouTube clip.
Sessler brings up excellent points about the long history of concerned groups seeking censorship of every form of media from opera to comic books. Seeing a figure knowledgeable about the medium speak coherently about video games and violence without falling into any traps about "murder simulators" or similar is a breath of fresh air, to say the least.
Who should Sessler debate next? [UPDATE: Lamar Alexander, perhaps?]
Email the author Adam Biessener, or follow on Twitter, and Game Informer.
I feel like I have a better chance of defending my hobby because of him.
Someone asked me to give my opinion and alas I started typing and before I realized it I had a huge wall of text... sorry but, at this point I'm gonna submit it and feel free to simply scroll past if you are looking for an easier opinion to digest:
I realllly don't like to sound or feel like I'm being ranty, I'm quite aware that my opinion falls into what I'm describing below... my opinion that may simply not make sense to someone else. My experience is that as a whole we can't and should not tell other people how to live. And actually, for the most part nothing we do can actually change how other people are living so telling them off about it will only pi$$ them off. I mean, if you tell someone not to do something, they want to do it more than ever lol. Secondly, who's to say our (my) way is right?
Now that said, in general I feel as people we look at things in a more reactionary way, we study the effect more than the cause... or seem to think the cause is binary, in that a causes b without factoring in c, d, x, y, z... Then there is our ego, we have a hard time understanding and relating to how others think, we may think we know but, in the end we really don't know without asking or finding out more about the person. Something that is hard to do, even when you are conscious of it and want to make an effort at it. We are guilty of mapping our own reactions onto a given scenario, assuming that's what the other person would do. While this serves us well in many parts of life and shows how brilliant our brains can be, when it comes to each other and understanding each other… it causes problems.
On that, as fans of games, when someone attacks (censors, judges, tells us we shouldn’t be doing it) what do we do? We don’t try to understand their point, we argue with each other, our ego’s kick in and we think we have the answers. Just a proof to my previous paragraph. But, if we try to remain open and think through things, maybe as a community we can find an answer. To find that answer, I suggest we strip away all of the ‘causes’ to get at the root of things. Each cause can definitely be found to add to any given problem, make the root grow as it were, but it can make the root grow in a million directions not only towards the ‘bad’ (for example, it took me playing games like COD, GTA, etc to know that I don’t like that content, I don’t like the way it feels, I object morally to what it’s teaching and telling me.. yet, someone who maybe sees the worth through a lens of fear and suspicion, maybe depression or paranoia, or maybe even someone who is a phycopath who have been clinically proven not to really feel emotion could grow from that experience something very different.. maybe they get pleasure and maybe the darkest of us all [the 1%] use it as fuel for their fire). So yes, I’m sure we can find a way to relate many things to horrible acts and beautiful acts in society, I mean my god we are willing to kill innocent people because one man made us look bad!! But, I digress, I don’t want to argue, only find the root.
So what is the root? So what can we do? It’s a tough question! Should we do anything? Do we have a right to do anything? Why do we want to do something? Why do we want to do something, hmmm interesting question. Why? Because, on a whole we are mostly good people, we want love, we want to protect those that we love, we don’t want terror in our lives. Funny enough, we often cause terror to others, to prevent it in our lives… when driven by fear, this is often the result, yet fear doesn’t tell you that you will only bring yourself more misery by acting upon it. Anywho…. I think the root is humanity… it’s from humanity that all of the wonderful and horrific things of the world are born. We all love the wonderful, so focusing on the horrific for a moment which is what this article is about; What causes people to do horrific things? Do you believe in evil? Maybe it’s environment? Brain chemistry (i.e. mental illness)? FEAR?? Laziness or lack of understanding? (it’s been shown.. often people become members of a gang, because it’s the easy and safest route.. They get a sense of belonging, and it’s so much easier than doing the ‘right’ thing as doing the right thing puts your very life in danger.. fear kicks in and… you see where this is going). It’s very complicated, and something that complicated simply can’t come down to “Oh it’s the fault of video games”, “Oh it’s narssicism”, “Oh it’s music”. I think about this stuff all the time, I value and desire community, morality, peace so much that it drives me a little insane at times, wondering if I’m living in a dream land or if anyone else out there wants the same as I do and how can we accomplish it. The only thing I’ve come to understand and believe is this… The sooner we open ourselves to the idea of community and study emotion and behavior, the better. In schools where they are teaching us math, science, geography, music and art.. why not also teach us about the most important thing required for life! Society, culture and human behavior. Lets dig into fear together, understand what it is, and teach people how it makes us act. Teach each other about what it means to be a type A or B personality, or what extroversion or introversion means and how to identify it. Teach people how shy people behave, they are not being stuck up or thinking they are better than you, they are too shy to make eye contact and if you say hi you will make their day. Understand that personal achievement and the pursuit of goals really only gets us so far, once you achieve something… you are looking for what’s next, the cycle is never ending as you measure yourself against others more and more trying to achieve more. You mind becomes confusing and messy like this, making it harder and harder to see the light. Yet, one simple act of making someone you love laugh makes you realize that the pleasure is ever lasting. You don’t try for a bigger smile next time, any smile at any time lights up your day. Ok ok, this is all touchy feeling fuzzy stuff but, this to me is they true basis of life and humanity. The more we put into our own morality and believe systems and increase our focus on cultivating our communities with rich organic ingredients, we will grow healthier roots into more wonderful moments and less of those we just don’t want to believe can happen.
Adam Sessler was a great person to talk to about this because fox news just tries to destroy things when someone slips up just a lil but not sessler holding gamers down since g4 and beyond. take dat take dat take dat fox news lol
Damn you Fox! Taking off the internet!
Adam is awesome, nice to have someone talk about it who actually knows what their talking about.
F**k you, Fox news. Seems you must have gotten pwned.
Sessler did an excellent job at defending video game violence through his perspective. I'm also glad at Fox News for once for making this a 1 on 1 discussion where the conversation feels natural rather than have the other annoying newscasters join in to gang up on Sessler.
damn it got taken down. before i could see it at that.
Of course the video has been taken down when I want to watch it.
This is just bugging me here is the video down below.
www.youtube.com/watch
The video isn't playing, it seems that it has been taken down?