"Murder in VR Should Be Illegal"

[Nadiru]

I played Katarina after the patch last week.

47 people died as a direct result.

I'm glad I don't play League anymore, I turn into an animal when I get into the comp scene.

[OrcsRLame]

As long as VR remains in the realm of stuff like the Oculus Rift, there's no issues. As many have pointed out, there's no difference between these concerns and the whole, "GTA is a murder simulator" shit we've all seen 1000x before.

However, if we ever get to the point where VR becomes almost indistinguishable from reality through brain-machine interfaces, then, as much as I hate to admit it, I think these concerns become valid. Think of something like the Matrix. Anyone that learned to fight, learned to kill in that world, would have the same skills in the real world. They may not have the physical strength, but all those learned instincts would persist.

If we had something as simple as a sword fighting simulator, where you fight and die and respawn with most of the feeling of real life; the most hardcore players would in a matter of weeks surpass the greatest swordsmen of all time. You could apply that to any kind of fighting really. There's nothing like first hand experience, and even the Samurai or knights of old would never in their wildest dreams have been able to fight 100+ duels to the death in a single day. You could literally get lifetimes of killing experience in a matter of weeks or even days.

I do think there is some cause for concern when/if this technology looks to be viable, but ultimately I do not think it would be in society's best interest to restrict the actions of the individual. We may just have to deal with the possibility of there being millions of highly skilled killers walking among us; assuming this ever becomes a thing.

Realistically though, this is probably beyond our lifetime. Maybe 30-50 years if there's some extreme breakthroughs in BMI technology.

[Deleted]

Same shit people have been saying since we started telling violent stories around the campfire as cave men.

[prwraith]

No.

10/char.

[Kaganfindel]

There's a constant supply of stupid shit being put down in writing.

There's a vast number of people out there willing to buy into stupid shit and support it with their time, their money and their voices.

It's our job as people capable of critical thought to make sure the two aren't brought together through our actions. In other words, it's our responsibility to refrain from boosting the signal when we come across stupid shit, so that we don't put it in front of people willing to believe it.

[l33t]

Yeah, sure. Because when there was no "violent" computer games, movies, music, comics, books, etc, people were nice, everyone lived in a world with ponies farting butterflies eating rainbows. Right?

Wrong.

If only, the levels of violence gone seriously down compared to some pre-19xx era.

Fear mongering of technical progress is pitiful.

[Kryos]

In my experience violent videogames are an outlet for aggression and not a cause. Every human has violent feelings and fantasies. Some more, some less. Some only when they get really angry, others all the time. Video Games can help to get some steam off. Sport is an alternative way. Boxing for example helps many young men that have lots of testosterone and violent fantasies to channel them into a sport or against a punching ball. VR would allow the same, to act on your aggression in a harmless way.

The idea that a normal person with no sociopathic mental defects would turn into a killer because he watches violent movies or played violent video games is complete nonsense that simple statistics can prove. Have the rates of murder and violence jumped after movies, video recorders or video games where sold in millions to people? Did we see a spike in brutal violence after multi million selling video games like doom or mortal kombat came out? No. That alone is a clear fact that shows that normal persons will not be "turned" like a werewolf by playing games or watching movies. In fact we see a decrease in violence since we have this new entertainment media. For me that shows that for many people videogames are a good way to channel their negative emotions in a harmless way. Making "murder in vr illegal" would criminalise people for not doing the real thing. If anything this could cause some to skip the virtual part and just try the real thing if the punishment is the same.

[3DTyrant]

Illegal VR murder? Really?

Basically how I feel when I think about this:

[Mykk]

So murder in your imagination should be punishable by death too then.

Fuckin VR is just pure virtual. Nothing diffrent from playing video games normaly.

[Shibito]

Didn't know @Xarim was into thought policing now. Learn something new every day.

Just like with porn, as long as people keep their twisted fantasies in the privacy of their own home or other private space and harm no one, there's nothing wrong with it.

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Funny because in this thread it's the liberals saying "FUCK NO" to this and the more right leaning people who are for it.

You know, just like the anti-violence anti-sex in video games, "Video games make our youth violent!" are conservative religious nuts.

I wish for one day you would change name and avatar to the Joker or the riddler.

[Magicpot]

I agree, but there are a lot of busybodies and "think of the children" types out there that see this as a threat. Because if this is concerning them now about violence... imagine what happens when the technology advances enough to feel things in VR via a neural link, and it becomes possible to have virtual sex.

Leave em, they'll mostly die out and the rest will be irrelevant.

[MatadorMedia]

Do you not remember Manhunt for the Wii??? Where you strangled people with the Wiimote cord?

[Magicpot]

Meh, its not real.

[buck008]

I always do find it amusing that it is always the small government, supposedly freedom loving conservatives that bring up things like this. Sponsors leave Breitbart and it is un-American censorship and how dare they. Actual censorship is just fine though.

If only there was a system by which people could tell the content of the games that they buy and prevent their children from playing it if they find the content objectionable. You could even call the grown up one "mature" to signify mature themes. Oh wait...

[derpkitteh]

this won't be a problem until full dive VR, like that of .hack and sword art online.

then it might actually be a problem. even facing some of the things faced in something as tame as wow would be horrific and terrifying in full dive VR. you'd experience the whole game with your full senses. smell, taste, touch, hearing... i imagine it might be capable of giving ptsd and other mental disorders.

i know i would avoid killing anything, or maybe just not play if i couldn't.

[Annoying]

this won't be a problem until full dive VR, like that of .hack and sword art online.

then it might actually be a problem. even facing some of the things faced in something as tame as wow would be horrific and terrifying in full dive VR. you'd experience the whole game with your full senses. smell, taste, touch, hearing... i imagine it might be capable of giving ptsd and other mental disorders.

i know i would avoid killing anything, or maybe just not play if i couldn't.

This is almost exactly how I see it. Full dive or holodeck level "VR" will probably have quite different mental implications. What we have now, we know that there's no correlation between the violence we see in current media and violence in real life, even if some silly people like Jack Thompson think otherwise.

[dextersmith]

Making it illegal wouldn't effect vr as killing pixels is not murder.

[Mister Cheese]

Seriously? Did Nintendo go back on their commitment to only producing "family friendly" games that cost them a ton of popular 3rd party titles? Also, perhaps this is just because I've never made serious use of a Wii, but I'm surprised it can tell if you're "strangling" someone with the wiimote cord.

Manhunt 2 was fucking brutal despite being heavily censored and having bad graphics. I can't wait for the third one.

[Aeula]

If someone wants to murder somebody and doesn't care about the consequences they'll do it anyway.

That can't be prevented or caused by something like VR.

[Violent]

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/sho...-vr-be-illegal

Murder in VR Should Be Illegal

So that is YOUR personal stance on the issue?

I'll start by saying, #1, there is NO issue. You can ONLY murder something that has been alive, literally that is the definition. You can't murder something that has no life. #2, And I believe you know very well why "murder in VR" is not illegal, or even an issue.

There is no difference between, Pretending to murder someone, Acting out a scene of murder, in a play or movie, murdering someone in a console game, ans murdering someone in VR.

It is ALL completely the same. The only thing that changed is the medium.

I dunno about you, but when I was a kid, we played outside, and we played games like "Cops & Robbers", "Army-Men", and the like. When I got older, I have played games, such as "call of Duty" or "Payday", or "GTA5". Both are PRETEND. It's NOT murder, because it's NOT real.

Don't be a pansy.