also 25% is too nebulous.

how many crimes did you start with? increasing from 4 to 5 is worlds different than increasing from 400 to 500 yet they are both 25% increases.

"You see these kids - their hands are wringing wet with sweat because their bodies are taking in what’s going on on the screen and they are acting it out."

So, why not arrest athletes as well?

OMG. This cop should look at himself in the mirror while he says such stuff, and would then realise how silly he looks and how mis informed he sounds.

"You see these kids - their hands are wringing wet with sweat because their bodies are taking in what’s going on on the screen and they are acting it out."

Yeah. Because the same thing hasn't been happening with movies for years. Seriously.

It was desensitising him to violence. It was shifting his norm about how he would deal with conflict.

Really? Care to be more specific, or are you just speculating?

You see these kids - their hands are wringing wet with sweat because their bodies are taking in what’s going on on the screen and they are acting it out.

Yeah, I'm sure you wouldn't POSSIBLY find the same one someone who's trying to break Pacman's record. Or even trying to build an extremely elaborate house of cards.

It's called stressh. It happens when you do something challenging or exciting... Sheesh.

As a point of clarification, was it the New Zealand Herald that also wrote up those violent games lists at the bottom of the article? I see some discrepancies in the game summaries.

Maybe it's just me, but it felt like the writer gave far too much emphasis on Harrison's statement instead over Dr Ian Lambie's testimony.

so i got Rock Band yesterday and my band (the wife, some friends and i) rocked out for 6 hours. i played drums most of that time and by god i was sweating. no violence, just rocking.

Does this mean I can blame Tetris for my car breaking down?

Prehaps we have this guy drive a car (or do nearly anything) and ask him why his palms sweet.

If a kid is wringing with sweat, chances are he's too young to be playing violent games anyways. Last time I was that into a game, it was Super Mario Bros. and I was 6 years old.

"You see these kids - their hands are wringing wet with sweat because their bodies are taking in what’s going on on the screen and they are acting it out."

...what games are those kids playing, then? As far as i could remember, i never got sweaty when playing games... at least not my palms.

Not counting DDR, but you get my point.

Nothing like blaming video games for your failure as an organization to get crime under control.

BTW... Video games also cause:

Tsunamis
Earthquakes
Hurricanes
Tornados
and colon cancer

It's true. It's in print. You just read it.

You see these kids - their hands are wringing wet with sweat because their bodies are taking in what’s going on on the screen and they are acting it out.

Hmmm The Superbowl (or other major sports events) has much the same effect (acutally hits adults harder then the violent kiddies). Guess that has to go as well. War movies, crime movies, Transformers, Harry Potter (devil worshipper) etc, ie most Movies... yep have to go. Game consoles (not games just the console) yeah they have to go. As displayed here, the list can be targetted at just about anything and goes on and on.

In the name of sanity stop. Look to yourselves and how you raise your kids before pointing fingers at everything else. Adults you might want to remember that you are responsible for your attentant minors. Act the part and stop trying to pawn off the blame.

Oh btw they sell a controller for the PS2 and X-Box 360 that has a built in fan for those that suffer with heavy sweating palms disease. ;)

The only games where I break a sweat are DDR/rhythm games, and a few fighting games. In fact, you would break a sweat faster in some games for the Wii, than with an XBox 360.

Sweat comes from stress. You also sweat a lot more fighting in a war (or being caught up in one). When veterans come back from a war, are they desensitized from the violence and the people they shoot? Probably. But do they turn their nations into havens for robbers and murderers? Not at all. In fact, the US WWII veterans became known as the "greatest generation". Playing video games won't make us heroes, if grown up boys with real guns, despite being mentally taxed, come back without a sense of bloodlust for society, so can younger guys playing around with fake ones.

If it weren't for the fact that Jack is in court today, this would be just the sort of thread I would expect him to reply to.

Is this person even the least bit qualified to discuss the correlation of exposure to multi coloured, pixelated images on a TV screen and a supposed 'increase' in violence?

Slow news day, I think.

@Apok

****.. Damn, i'd planned to enjoy my time away from super-troll.

Desk, apply directly to the forehead.
Desk, apply directly to the forehead.
Desk, apply directly to the forehead.

Well if there is a rise in crime, it is because im not impaling people on spears.

An increase of me impaling people on spears will cause crime decrease a sharp ammount.


Say yes to Impalation.

Well, if it is considered a crime, apperntly i didnt impale the right people.
Either that or i should have used fire.


Though the point im trying to make is..

The rise incrime could be, well i dont know, maybe attributed to the increase in population?

@ Internet Hate Machine

NZ represent!!!1one!.

@ Everyone

I watched a debate yesterday afternoon with the police guy (and before you all start claiming he has no background with this sort of thing, he is the guy in charge of youth offending), a psychologist and some game reviewer.

It was quite a reasonable debate where Harrison merely pointed out that he would like to see the results of a study done on whether violence in games is a factor in the likelihood of someone becoming a violent offender.

I was actually pretty pissed off after reading the comments in the Herald yesterday, but then they are known as conservative types with no compunction about selective quoting (I was surprised that they even bothered balancing there article with the comment from the Auckland professor.

So, all in all, nowhere near as bad as the crap you Americans (JT) and the Pommies (BBFC) have to deal with.

Just so you know, this was not my work
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article...

That is not the properway to deter crime through impalnation.

You see these kids - their hands are wringing wet with sweat because their bodies are taking in what’s going on on the screen and they are acting it out.

umm, okay......

This sounds more like something that would happen to a druggie after just getting their latest hit.

Instant Action Sarcasm News Update,
Turns out the kid was playing "Barbie Horsie Adventure"
Hmmmmmmm

"You see these kids - their hands are wringing wet with sweat because their bodies are taking in what’s going on on the screen and they are acting it out."

Alright, can someone translate this from bullshit to english please?

The only thing I can surmise is that his kid has a glandular problem or something. The only time I've been "wringing wet with sweat" is after playing a good long DDR session.

But yeah, he needs to take his kid to some kind of specialist.

no comment

My work is done...

I'd probably act calmer*

/add edit button

Why do all these anti-game critics act like aggression is the ultimate evil? Aggression can save your life in the right circumstances.

And why is it always video games? Don't cheerleaders cheer sports teams with the phrase 'BE AGGRESSIVE'? Aggression is a natural part of the human psyche. As long as it's not being used to wrongfully hurt other humans, what's the problem?

@Mysticgamer

No the sun rotates around the earth and the earth is flat.

Its also because Teens are treated more and more like children as well.

you know like "Johnny, i dont care if your 17 and dating. You will be in bed by 8:00pm."

People who have been lobomizted create no violence what so ever.

@ Vladmire Triskavanski

I don't know, I think all those people who are worried about the effect of violence on children should sterilize themselves, that way the evil xbox can't get their precious children.

well still have nine planets... the prove is that i still have my text book from college 1999......

All right. Sorry for any offense to Kiwis.

@onlybirdlad
Let me see if I follow your logic:
We can't hit our teens.
Therefore, our teens don't respect us.
Therefore, they commit crimes.

Yes, because, as we all know, the only way to make a child respect you is to hit them.

[...] (Source: GamePolitics) [...]

*was about to lunge at Landica with daggers when we sees the apology*

Oh... umm... *puts the daggers away and walks off whistling*

Granted this guy is a dickhead with no legitimacy, however actual academic research has in fact connected violence in games to aggressive behavior:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071128/tc_nm/media_violence_tech_dc

So while you're having your knee-jerk "this guy is an asshole" reaction, don't forget that there is an actual health issue to be addressed.

@ yobs

You realise that the study you linked is already on GP? If you would care to read the actual study you'd find it quite devoid of anything as crass as facts. Whole lot of opinion though, which we all know makes for irrefutable scientific proof...

@ Landica

Apology accepted.

And here is the debunking Janarius posted yesterday from Dr. Christopher Ferguson:

I’d have to disagree entirely with their conclusions. The research on media violence in general has been very poorly done, as other scholars have noted (Freedman, 2002; Savage. 2004). Briefly, major problems include the use of unstandardized, unvalidated measures of aggression, the tendency to ignore negative results in a manuscript and focus only on positive results, and the failure to eliminate “third” variables such as family violence, genetics or personality. These are widespread failures in his field, and as such it’s impossible to really assess much of value from the field as it exists.

The statement that media violence exposure risk is close to that of smoking and lung cancer has been debunked. The effect size for smoking and lung cancer is (r = .9), (Block & Crain, 2007) not (r = .4) as once claimed (Bushman & Anderson, 2001). This larger figure is supported by the American Cancer Society’s data noting that 87% of lung cancers are directly attributable to smoking with a relative risk of 23 (meaning smokers are 23 times more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers).
The effect size for media violence on violent behavior (even if you ignore all the significant problems I mentioned above) is (r = .1). There are many, many, many, many risk factors in life that are of much greater effect than media violence exposure.

and when I asked him about Block & Crain (2007) about the effect size and whether there was a response to their criticism:

Yes they responded, but not adequately in my opinion. They replied that they couldn’t replicate Block and Crain’s statistics…although I can’t understand why not, as I could replicate them easily enough (in fairness, I can replicate how Bushman & Anderson, 2001 get their very different results too…it’s just that their technique is not very good for converting medical data to psychological effect sizes). Despite Bushman & Anderson’s response (2007) the data used in most medical studies can not be converted into the effect size r (Rosenthal & DiMatteo, 2001). My observation is that attempts to do so greatly truncate the observed effect size…which looks good to psychologists who want to think that our effects are as good as those seen in medical research…but they just aren’t as even a little digging can reveal (I encourage anyone to read the American Cancer Society’s statistics on smoking and lung cancer and see if they’d agree that 87% of violent acts can be attributed directly to media violence as is the case for smoking and lung cancer).

There just might be a direct relationship between violent video games and violent crime... check out this graph!

Link

So you have a new initiative were you actually do your jobs and somehow there are more arrests now? jee I wonder why...

I wonder why there woud be more arrests if you add more crimes to the list of those that police enforce???

I think I know the real problem, even top cops in his country don't have even high school education...