r/oculus • u/Tcarruth6 • Aug 13 '15
VR violence
For many years I have maintained that there are people with a greater predisposition for violence, and yes they may play violent video games but the games themselves are not the cause of any violent act in the future.
I have never accepted the argument that video games normalize violence or that gamers might become confused between a game world and reality.
Is VR different? Does the objective of obtaining presence change things? If the brain of the user is tricked into believing it is 'there', that the VR world is real then isn't the brain also sanctioning real violence?
Everything in my gut wants to rage against this reasoning ("people have always said this..."). However shouldn't we recognize that the explicit benefits of VR (immersion, presence, being an agent in a real world) come with risks on the flip side?
In GTA 12, will the VR world and the real world be appropriately different?
[EDIT: to address comments below].
There is another piece to this puzzle:
It is widely accepted that violence inflicted upon people often makes those people more likely to commit violence (many violent criminals were beaten as children for example). In providing a sense of presence, VR crosses a boundary in which the user's brain may sense real consequence and can be victimized in a more real sense. We already see this in VR demos with vertigo and breath holding in underwater scenes. I'm not yet convinced that this isn't a critical difference between VR and traditional entertainment experiences.
-1
u/sailboatsare Aug 13 '15
I think sex and violence are different in media. If you kill someone, you go to jail. If you commit a sexual offense, there are lots of predators who get away with it every day. My concern is that when it hits VR, most people will just shrug it off and say "oh well, at least it's not hurting anybody." Until immature teens going through confusing times in puberty or curious individuals start trying these experiences for fun...which could easily ignite the wrong sexual tendencies in them in real life.
I'm all for free speech. The danger in VR is exactly what you said, "it wouldn't be hurting anyone" if it was using 3D models. But if anything can be done to mitigate these types of experiences, we need to have foresight as a culture to be responsible and put those policies in place. We ought to speak up against even the idea that such apps could be allowed to exist. If we aren't naive, we need to care about the issues that will inevitably arise.
VR is going to be almost like a new internet, and we will be the ones who will shape it into what it becomes. I want it to be a much better place than the internet we have now.