Video Gaming
- Thread starter Gringoboy
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Not your fault, because it IS one of the things that is bound to be talked about with video games, but it's quite annoying how "video game violence" seems to be the one topic that the mainstream press turns to when the subject of video games pops up every few years. As a lifelong gamer, this topic is very snooze-inducing. It's as if the "violence in literature" and "violence on television" debates had never subsided, but kept coming back for more. There's so much more interesting stuff going on in the medium. I feel like it is just now hitting a point of self-awareness. By this I mean that for a while all gaming was essentially experimental. (What can we do? What kinds of games are possible?) Then, they settled into a kind of imitation of film, with story and cutscenes and the like. Recently, with indie games and the subsequent bleeding effect into more mainstream games, I feel like games are just STARTING to figure out how they can be their own medium, where the very notion of player interactivity with the world and the story become integral to the story and artistic commentary in and of themselves. The Bioshock series pretty explicitly plays with this, while other games do to different extents as well. I liken the current era to that of the first feature-length films in 1910s. I'm excited to see where we are going.
Anyway, I've been watching violent movies since I was a kid in the 80s and playing violent video games since the 90s and I've never murdered anyone. I guess I do feel somewhat desensitized to on-screen violence, but I still always looked away in horror at the sensationalist rags in Mexico that showed murder victims splayed across the front page. I guess it's about context. And hey, I'm not knocking anyone who personally doesn't want to see violence in their entertainment. I just find it annoying that some of them tend to make judgments about me because I do.
Anyway, I've been watching violent movies since I was a kid in the 80s and playing violent video games since the 90s and I've never murdered anyone. I guess I do feel somewhat desensitized to on-screen violence, but I still always looked away in horror at the sensationalist rags in Mexico that showed murder victims splayed across the front page. I guess it's about context. And hey, I'm not knocking anyone who personally doesn't want to see violence in their entertainment. I just find it annoying that some of them tend to make judgments about me because I do.
Mano Negra
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I think you hit the nail on the head. "Why are video games violent. Because they would be pretty dull if they weren't" To quote you. For me that quote justifies writing the whole genre off as worthless rubbish. And yes, I would quite agree that any book, film, or other media that solely relies on violence not to be dull is equally worthless.
Most of it is not high art, true. But even the most twitchy action games can be quite transportive and exploratory. It's the same reason we travel. Sometimes we just want to go see it.
But, as I was saying, video games haven't been around very long. People probably had this very same argument about the edificational merit of watching a 30-second clip of a train speeding by or a man on a bicycle c. 1900. Or heaven forbid the cheap, artistically meritless form of the novel as it came to be known in the eighteenth century. Play something like Mass Effect and sure, you spend a good bit of time optimizing your stat sheet and cutting through bad guys, but there's also a huge and deep universe, hours of in-game conversations, and the rudiments of moral dilemmas to puzzle out. The games Tell-Tale is making these days (The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, etc.) go a step further, cutting out the hordes of enemies altogether and simply telling a story that you get to direct in key places. That's to say nothing of Antichamber or the Portal games, which have next to nothing in the way of traditional violence. There are also farming simulators and investigative adventure games...hell, I learned a great deal about mixology from an iPhone game called Nimble Strong: Bartender in Training (it has an outdated early iOS interface but it's still great). I also get to still keep in touch with friends of mine back in the states by spending time together online. Games give us something we can do together from separate continents.
I understand your sentiments because, quite likely, you didn't know any of these things and haven't played any of these games. But now you do. We'll just have to try to educate people, one at a time.
But, as I was saying, video games haven't been around very long. People probably had this very same argument about the edificational merit of watching a 30-second clip of a train speeding by or a man on a bicycle c. 1900. Or heaven forbid the cheap, artistically meritless form of the novel as it came to be known in the eighteenth century. Play something like Mass Effect and sure, you spend a good bit of time optimizing your stat sheet and cutting through bad guys, but there's also a huge and deep universe, hours of in-game conversations, and the rudiments of moral dilemmas to puzzle out. The games Tell-Tale is making these days (The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, etc.) go a step further, cutting out the hordes of enemies altogether and simply telling a story that you get to direct in key places. That's to say nothing of Antichamber or the Portal games, which have next to nothing in the way of traditional violence. There are also farming simulators and investigative adventure games...hell, I learned a great deal about mixology from an iPhone game called Nimble Strong: Bartender in Training (it has an outdated early iOS interface but it's still great). I also get to still keep in touch with friends of mine back in the states by spending time together online. Games give us something we can do together from separate continents.
I understand your sentiments because, quite likely, you didn't know any of these things and haven't played any of these games. But now you do. We'll just have to try to educate people, one at a time.
Not hard to understand how sexual fantasy and marginalized, sexualized females started popping up in video games either. It was bound to happen, just as it did and still does in movies, comic books, and any medium, especially the visual ones. Just go to http://bechdeltest.com/ to see how poorly our films are STILL fairing in this regard. As my generation ages, the average age of gamers is increasing as well. It only follows that games start handling sex in a more mature (i.e. sophisticated) way. Not all of them, of course, just as not all other media portrays it thoughtfully, but it is already starting to happen.
I agree with most of what you say about sex in games, gringoboy, except for your implication that the media gives sexual violence in film a pass. That is partially true with films, because mainstream movies tend to steer well clear of that topic, while they sort of "expect" that kind of thing from indie films and French movies. But when the mainstream does intersect with sexual violence, it can still throw them in a tizzy. Just see the internet's stormy reaction to a certain ambiguous handling of a rape scene in last season's Game of Thrones (S04E03).
I agree with most of what you say about sex in games, gringoboy, except for your implication that the media gives sexual violence in film a pass. That is partially true with films, because mainstream movies tend to steer well clear of that topic, while they sort of "expect" that kind of thing from indie films and French movies. But when the mainstream does intersect with sexual violence, it can still throw them in a tizzy. Just see the internet's stormy reaction to a certain ambiguous handling of a rape scene in last season's Game of Thrones (S04E03).
