Subject: questionaire

From: "Mark P. Young" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 18:49:44 -0500 (EST)

I'm sorry to disturb some of you but I'm doing a report on video games 
and I was wondering if some of you could answer a few questions for me.  
I would really appreciate any response.  Thanx alot.
It's on video game addiction.
If your not interested just go ahead and skip.

Questions:
----------

1)  Do you have any experience with video games?  (I know sounds stupid 
but bear with me)

2) At whay age did you first experience video games?

3)  Do to consider video games to be more beneficial or destructive?  Why?

4)  Would you consider most video games currently on the market as too 
violent?

5)  Should limitations be imposed on video games and the violence within 
them?

6)  Who do you believe should impose these limitations?

7)  At what age should children be exposed to video games?

8)  Have you ever experienced or witnessed in another person any adverse 
effects of video games?

9)  What are some solutions to the problems of video games?

Again thank you for filling this out.  I owe you one!!

				Thanx!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I   Mark Young           I   "They shall come all for violence,         I
I                        I     their faces shall sup up as the east     I
I   'A.B. Normal'	 I      wind, and they shall gather the         I
I 	U.C.F            I       captivity of the sand."                I
I     Orlando, Fl        I                    -DUNE                     I
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

	You like picking on smaller people?!
		Well, I'm smaller!
			PICK ON ME!!!!

			-Wolverine

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 14:49:53 -0700

Hello there.

1) Yes I do.  I have been working with computers since I was 5 (making
it 10 years now!) and have programmed a few (if you've ever seen Rubber
Man, let me know!)

2) As I said before, 5.  Actually, I guess it was 3 - I played Pong.  (I'm ancient!)

3) This is a mixed answer.  They seem to be both, but for different
reasons.  To the programmer, games provide experience.  To the user,
games provide mental challenge (in some cases).  However, they
sometimes also provide users with bad ideas, i.e. the violence in Doom
and Mortal Kombat 1-3 (i.e. Doom is just one notch below NC-17, yet
5-year-olds have played it more than me.)  Fortunately, many games,
i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog and Tetris, are popular yet do not advocate violence.

4) It is hard to tell, as I have not looked at many recent games. 
Mortal Kombat 1-3 are definitely too violent.  Doom is even more
violent, making it hard to stomach (for myself; I have a weak stomach
when working on the computer for hours on end).  Puzzle games, i.e.
Tetris, etc., are in most cases not too violent.  (There must be ONE
out there which is violent, maybe?)  In many games, the violence is
like that in cartoons, such as the Mario Brothers games, so they should
be considered in the same way as cartoons; there is nothing wrong with
a drawing falling off a cliff and then being impaled on some sharp
rocks.  (Prince of Persia, however, should NOT be considered a cartoon,
on this note.)

5) On violent games, the same limits should be applied to these as on
movies.  For example, Doom, like Total Recall, should have monitoring;
i.e. at Page One (a local book/software/coffee shop) the workers there
should not have allowed a large group of pugnacious preeschoolers play
Doom.  Also, the developers should know better; by having realistic
blood, guts, and gore, ID is probably not being exactly the model
software company; they should, instead of making their wonderful VR
engine as realistic as possible in terms of blood, should make it more
of a thinking game; instead of pushing over enemies with the chain saw,
one should be required to solve puzzles.

6) These limitations should be imposed by parents, software sellers,
BBSses (i.e. restrict access to shareware Doom to those with a birthday
of 1979 or earlier (seeing as how 1978 is my birthyear!)), and, mostly,
the software developers; without them, we would not NEED the
limitations from the others.

7) They should be exposed to thinking games as soon as possible; allow
them to develop their brains before their trigger fingers.

8) Yes I have; after watching a 12-year-old pump $5 into Mortal Kombat
II, I asked him why he liked it.  He said, "because there's blood and I
kill people."  I asked him if he would like to witness that in the real
world, and he promptly walked off.

9) The best solution is the same as that for diseases such as AIDS:
Abstain from making, abstain from transmitting.

You're welcome for filling it out.  And if you ever see a game called
Quantum the Porcupine, I have written it to be as least violent and as
most thinking as possible.  (This won't be available for a few years or
so; I need to find a perfect development toolkit under Turbo Pascal 7. 
Any suggestions?)

Joshua Shagam