The New Zealand Herald is running a story ( via a Destructoid post ) that teenage reckless driving is to be blamed on the Playstations and Xboxes of the world.

"Three Auckland teenagers were killed when the vehicle they were in crashed off the Northwestern Motorway in Auckland during a high-speed police pursuit on Christmas Eve.

National's transport spokesman Maurice Williamson says today's young people think they are bullet-proof. He blames Playstations and X-boxes for making teens think they can drive stupidly and just push the reset button if anything goes wrong."

Destructoid has some pretty spot on commentary. It has slowly come to my attention that gaming is really the root of all evil. We should outlaw them all and return to when the world had no problems. Uh....

Oh god, another one of these?

I clicked "reply" thinking I would type up some kind of rebuttal for the games industry, but when it comes down to it... its not even worth it. The people blaming games will keep blaming games for anything and everything wrong in society. The world was the garden of eden before demonic hellspawns going by names like Steve Russell, Nolan Bushnell, and Ralph Baer unleashed their wrath on earth, turning everyone into fiendish violent risk-takers with no morality.

Oh noes!

Hasn't it already been proven that the over-all crime rate has dropped in the last several years?

Oh wait, we're talking about driving. Yeah, that's totally different. Video games are the only thing that can make teenagers drive recklessly. You know, aside from alcohol. And just being teenagers.

Before "street racing" there was drag racing. People used to (and some still do, I'm sure) play chicken. But no, ever since Frogger came along the human race has been doomed.

Hehe... Just wait. Someone will come along and blame Frogger for their kid getting hit by a car while trying to dodge the cars across a multilane highway.

You mean drag racing WASN'T made up by these guys? OH NO! MY IMPRESSION OF THE 60's WAS CHANGED FOREVER!

I loved Street Rod (and the sequel even more). :D

Actually, video games like Gran Turismo 3 taught me to drive BETTER, not worse. While I understand the mechanics are different, when you play the game seriously and learn the skill inherent in becoming a good driver in the game (especially one that takes away emphasis from power-slides, a movie car chase staple but utterly impractical in the real world), you actually stand a good chance of learning something that translates into the real world.

I learned how to pull out of spins, how to take a corner at speed without having my back-end try to beat me around the corner, and generally how the physics of different vehicles react in bad situations. This has probably saved my life more than once. I've found that when I get into a bad situation in my car (and with the weather like it is here in Wyoming, it's happening more frequently), instead of panicking and over-reacting, I tend to remain cool, let my reflexes take over and pull myself out carefully. I've yet to have a collision, and I've played video games in some shape or form for close to twenty years.

I'm sorry, but this only proves that people are willing to believe anything about the power of video games. Makes good audiences for science fiction and speculative fiction, though!

When will they start blaming the good stuff due to games? Like gaming is the positive effect of birth control (prefer looking at a monitor than a babe).

Or for some, gaming encourages diets/weighloss programs since there's no bloody way I'm leaving my console in the middle of battle (which is like all of the time)...plus I'm too bloody lazy to go to the kitchen.

...among others...

Yes, but GT puts much more emphasis on real-life driving than most other driving games. If you were to apply experience drawn from Outrun, Lotus Turbo Challenge or Ridge Racer, you would be in trouble.

Me and my friend Darryl have discussed in the past how rally games (especially ones involving snow) have helped us drive better in the snow. Ask any Canadian.

Yea, I feel the opposite of what these guys are saying. GTA really helped me learn how to control a car well. I mentioned this to my driving instructor and apparently he says a lot of kids have improved due to video games.

Surely an easier target would be the improved safety records in Formula One and other forms of motor racing, for making kids think they can drive at any speed and be safe?

Ridiculous. Anyone who lives their lives based on what they can do in computer games isn't going to last very long in the real world. Maybe stories like this belong in the Darwin Awards.

I remember reading about kids who've played FPS's a lot and those who haven't and how when taken to a real gun range the kids who played did frighteningly well, especially in regards to headshots. I wonder what I got outta playing Morrowind so much... probably how to break into people's houses, kill them, and take their housewares to decorate my house skills.

I can assure you that pulling a trigger and pressing the left mouse button are veeery different things.

What if you've got a left handed mouse?

Then they're completely the same. :-P

oh nos!

Well since you did I agree. Drifting and Sliding are concepts that I've learned through racing games. Although having said that, I don't find good representation of snow and ice in a lot of games, sure there's a "slippery effect"... but there's more to it then that. Then again, driving along a highway full of packed snow, it wouldn't be a racing game for very long :).

Okay, a bit of devil's advocate time here.... not that it should excuse any high-speed chases like the source article.




There probably is something to this. Cars are not bullet-proof. And yet in many of the racing games I've owned, the car has been able to sustain damage from hitting a wall or another vehicle and shrug it off with a dent or burnt out headlight. Anyone who's ever been in a car accident can tell you that it's very rare when someone gets away with just a dent. So why do videogames act this way? Well, many of these games rely on car companies in order to provide vehciles into their game. If the player wants to drive a Ford Focus or a Dodge Neon or a Mazda Miata... the game creators have to license that content from the manufacturers in order to use the name. The problem is that no car company wants players to see how the vehicle crumbles during a crash impact. And no vehicle looks good after it's been in an accident anyway... so leaving out realistic crash effects is one of the ways many videogame publishers appease these companies and obtain the trademark of the car name.

You'll also recall that games such as Grand Theft Auto and Burnout all have fictional car names in their games. So players really aren't learning about crashes properly and physics when they play these games... but then again, most gamers should know by now that reality takes a back seat to gameplay when required. I still haven't figured out how most of the characters in fighting games survive their wounds... or how the Prince of Persia is able to run along the side of walls. I'm pretty sure I would have heard about that if it were possible :)

Makes a lot of sense. Though why couldn't they just make a difficulty setting: "Real Life Crashing?". Though come to think of it, the car companies wouldn't agree to that either, unless its a cheat/code thingy.

And about running along side walls, that's "kinda" possible, martial-arts speaking. The closest I've seen was Thailand-based kick-boxing movies - no stunt doubles, no scene cutting, no visual effects.

They make Hong Kong Kung fu movies look like wrestling. And I thought Jet Lee had some moves...

Have a look at Viper Racing (better yet, wait until I dig my CD and take some decent screenshots). The car can be twisted and dented until it becomes a complete wreck. More recently, I think that TOCA 3 features cars that turn into a lot of tiny pieces on harder crashes.

The main problem (along car manufacturers not being that happy with seeing their 500K machines rolling off track slowly turning into a pile of smoldering metal) is technology. Until computers and consoles are able to calculate damage in real time depending on the materials and construction instead of a predefined mesh designed individually for each car, only a few games will have full damage. I mean, how look it would take to design damage for over 300 cars ?