'Rerflect' might be a new word describing an unrealistic reflection of reality. Where people sitting down are actually running around throwing grenades at each other in a post-apocalyptic world with invisible walls. It's rerality.
Modern violent games seem to be a way of playing out the worst possible scenarios. Actually being in that situation with guns firing would be horrible and scary. But we've made a competitive sport out of that which we try to avoid as a society - violence and destruction. Must be in our genes.
Along with the virtual gun-lovers, the best(most absurd) irony in years, that the gun lobby criticizes violent games, when most gun lobbyists would play the hell out of them! Gun enthusiasts who play video games, would play first person shooters without a doubt.
I would be able to take this seriously for a second if it at least mentioned the power trip side of it, or the greed of being addicted to collecting virtual stuff. But it's all just so great and special... why, they even mention "art" and AAA titles in one breath. I'm not sure if I should laugh or puke, really.
The role of violence in storytelling is as old as human history, and it has long served a purpose in conveying values of honesty, courage, confidence and perseverance.
It also served a purpose of voyeurism and of Schadenfreude. Again, if you want to fool anyone into thinking you're engaging in serious analysis and reflection, you should at least address one or two of the huge elephants on the couch.
/signed, someone who has been playing games since the late 80's and found this article to be a bunch of tripe. Yes, they reflect our mediocre, pitiful state, they don't create it. But mediocre and pitiful they are for the most part. They are either about being an asshole, or having irrelevant stuff. In that sense even Minecraft is crap.. and I played that, even SMP, so I'm not dissing something I don't even know; it's just I also know art, and music, and just sitting in the sun. I know books and stuff.
I know I'm not being coherent, but just consider how many platformers have collecting coins as a prominent, if not the main mechanic. And nobody ever questions that, do they.
Fuck violence; our problems run deeper than even that.
Games are not unlike books in that they allow you to experience something you would not otherwise undertake.
What is the difference between being immersed in Jack Ryan's adventures in a book and playing Call of Duty where you act as the protagonists and play through a similar narrative?
If anything the article doesn't go far enough to draw parallels between violence in video games and other forms of art: literature, movies, or artwork celebrating violent acts.
It also missed an opportunity to give a break-down of games sold by level of violence. Pokemon is fundamentally a fighting game, Minecraft involves defending yourself against monsters, Angry Birds is about violent conflict between birds and pigs, and even football games can have violence.
why, they even mention "art" and AAA titles in one breath. I'm not sure if I should laugh or puke, really.
Oh please, drop the pretentious attitude. High-budget entertainment isn't ever going to be a stream of critical darlings and everyone know this, I do however look forward to your explanation of exactly why Spec Ops: The Line is of no artistic value.
I do however look forward to your explanation of exactly why Spec Ops: The Line is of no artistic value.
You can wait until you're blue in the face. However, if you let go of the strawman for a sec, I'd happily explain to you why it's not art in my opinion. Anything and everything has "artistic value", even the way the flower lady turns around and smiles.
Of course, it's usually fruitless to define "art"... but I didn't mean to say it has to be something extremely "deep" and personal. Just consider this: most games "think" of the bits of art that are in them as "art assets". And in many cases the music, the textures, the voiceovers; you could replace those with something entirely different, or at least something generic, and the game mechanics would still work exactly the same.
I mean, we are talking about games here - well, I am, the article kinda isn't - not about "stories". Yes, games are accompanied by stories, they used to have title screens and now have backdrops for the options menu, they had cover art and now have thumbnails in the steam store, etc., there is an intro, an outro, and while you play you also are exposed to lots of little artsy pieces.
Does singing while driving your car turn car driving into art? In the same way I argue adding art to games doesn't automatically make them art, either. Which doesn't mean you couldn't theoretically make art with your car, and sing while you do it. But if you're just commuting, that ain't art (unless it's the opening sequence of Office Space :P). And that's on the level of creativity most AAA games are made.
Looking at the gameplay, they are more or less the same. What little art is in them they borrowed from movies, which still do that part so much better I really wish games could go back to actually being games, instead of just bad kitsch. Then we could find out what we still don't know; if a game - the mechanics, not how those mechanics are dressed up - can be art. We're still at the stage were anything that makes you feel something, anything, gets wildly applauded, which seems kinda of sad. Instead of being honest and just saying "hey, this one is not pure shit, which is a welcome change to the usual", people get super emotional and attached. To me that's just Stockholm Syndrome. I'm sure on this planet there is also a person who has the facebook "like" thumbs up tattooed on their body, because it means so much to them. Would it make that symbol art? Not for me. That would just make that person a really sad one in my eyes.
Again, definitions vary, but I also wouldn't call anything that obsesses about statistics, sales, and how to addict people to your product even more as "art". As in, the exact same product I might consider art or not art depending on why and how it was produced. I'm not even sure I'd allow anything produced while wearing a tie period. Artists are rare, they're kinda the original hackers if you think about it.. and just like everybody and their dog considers themselves a hacker, so it is with art. That's fine, but so is being a jaded critic.
Yes, violence can be used to tell a story about courage. But when it comes to games, and even many movies, the stories about "courage"* are actually just a pretext for violence.... duh! I doesn't take Albert Einstein to notice that, either, so it's really hard for me to assume ignorance instead of malice here. That crap hiding behind what precious few of truly great things humanity created, just bah!
* I put that in quotes because it doesn't take courage to be shot at by 20000 people and not get hit once, even if the actor pants and acts all tense.. same goes for most games, where loosing, or not getting a hint what to click within 5 seconds of starting, might loose potential customers and therefore gets cut from the game, where every slightest challenge is after a checkpoint, unless it's a roguelike or bullet hell shooter. Courage, pah. That's just dreaming. Every game has a wiki dedicated to them and in general, most gaming is about trying to avoid challenge while getting to see the art assets.
People are min/maxing because that's the best you can do with this stuff. They don't play games to grow as persons or see life from different angles; who the fuck does the article author think they're kidding? Games are played to kill time. I think it was Thoreau who said "as if you could kill time without injuring eternity". I wa...
I've yet to see "Columbine: The Game". Most violent video games are war themed, and since when did we find fighting in ostensibly just wars to be objectionable? As a nation we troll high schools to get as many 17 and 18 year olds as we can to fight wars for us and we think that's OK. Not seeing how Call of Duty turns anyone into a killer.
All kids play video games. That means killer kids play the same games as non-killer kids. What's that thing about correlation and causation again?
I agree. We've been making movies about war since the dawn of film making. I mean sure, movies like Birth of a Nation and Saving Private Ryan depict it differently, but we've still been doing it in film forever. And in terms of art, for hundreds if not thousands of years. The only difference between, Saving Private Ryan and say Call of Duty 2 is that you are in control of a soldier who is shooting enemy soldiers, and I guess it's this difference that people are harping on, not that I agree with this idea.
People have said similar things regarding books, pictures, movies, etc. and this is nothing new and it's all been for the same reasons: when it's politically advantageous and so as not to blame bad parenting.
If anyone does try playing the game, be sure to kill everyone you can in the school before going to the library. Otherwise you will be underlevelled when you get to hell.
Anecdote: My wife and I both play COD MW3 and Black Ops 2 online almost daily yet despise war and violence. We're both in our 30's and have played FPS games since our early teens.
I think a poor understanding of other cultures, a dash of jingoism and hint of racism would help desensitize us to war.
I find it hard to take any argument against such things(video games, guns, movies ect) seriously when these arguments taking place only happen when it is politically advantageous for politicians.
If these arguments being made are valid then they should be made anyways. These are not small issues, but issues that go down to the base of our society. If they are not valid enough to be made on there own ground why should i take them seriously when they are projected into the limelight by a tragedy?
Note I am not saying that i am for or against any of these arguments just stating that if they are valid then they should be able to be viewed in there own context. Of course we have to take recent(any and all) events into account but it must be done so with a clear head. Much like the current outrage regarding Aaron Swartz, is it a tragedy, absolutely, but to go out instantly and call for someones head is irresponsible and illogical.
you can't change anything without critical mass. it usually takes a national disaster or profound fear of something to mobilize support for popular change. depending on your point of view, that's either a feature or fault of our society.
They don't just reflect it, they reflect it, distort it and magnify it.
Video games produce versions of the violence in society which are unrealistic, in which everyone can get up off the floor after being shot by being reloaded and start again.
Video games produces thousands of times as many violent events as in real life.
The amount of resources (money and time devoted) in creating and playing video games rivals the amount of time and energy people spend practicing at making real life into a safe experience. Much more than a distraction, they are the centerpiece, a devotion to delusional destruction.
Violence today is much lower and much less prevalent as a part of daily life than it was a century ago.
Of course, this greatly depends on where you are. Arizona was still wild west, gold mines still hung folks they accused of stealing ore (Vulture Mine) Wars were still being waged between native peoples as well as banditos and cowboys holding up banks, transports, and the likes. Tombstone and the O.K. Corral was just over 100 years ago. And back then, media really wasn't an issue since the average person in these parts was 100% illiterate.
Not to mention in the past 50 years, violence and violent crime in the US is at a near all-time low compared to the 1970's or 1990's.
Also explain how more peaceful societies, such as the Dutch, or the Norwegians, consume more of our violent video games than we do?
I played video games from ages ~8-19, and I probably killed a few hundred thousand animals, people, soldiers, knights, Nazis, medieval soldiers and archers, spaceships, aliens, etc. Very few people in history can even claim responsibility for that many deaths, let alone committing them. But millions of people have played video games more than me.
Yes, but I hope that it didn't entice you to murder which was the intent behind the original post. :)
And yes the amount of violent activity in games far outweigh that in real life but there is another huge difference. Games are not real and even the most naive of us have a very clear differentiation: there is no respawn in real life.
If video game kills count, regular old make-believe kills should count too. And I've never met a little boy who didn't have hundreds of those. It's not as historically exceptional as you might think!
Actually I agree with you about the mental side having some benefits, but I just don't see any specific benefit from the violence. Like you say, any other video game could provide the same.
There's an upcoming game called Shootmania that is an explicitly nonviolent FPS: guns fire bursts of light rather than bullets and slain characters sort of "derezz" like in Tron rather than bleed and gib.
So maybe the violence is an optional component of this sort of game after all.
Violent crime has been declining since 1991, and we haven't had a homicide rate so low as 2011 since 1963.*
I'm not sure violence in society and violence in media are really correlated, certainly not violent video games.
Some might argue violent video games are providing an outlet, I don't know if that's true either. Maybe we've just entered an age of distraction, and Youtube is really effective at keeping criminals (or victims?) off the streets, better than any after school basketball program.
There are violent video games everywhere where kids are wealthy enough to buy them. While games are blamed everywhere some societies are more violent than others. Why isn't any discussion about violent video games international?
Also, gun violence actually decreased in the US since the late 80s, before the release of Wolfenstein and Doom so
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[ 19.5 ms ] story [ 400 ms ] threadModern violent games seem to be a way of playing out the worst possible scenarios. Actually being in that situation with guns firing would be horrible and scary. But we've made a competitive sport out of that which we try to avoid as a society - violence and destruction. Must be in our genes.
Along with the virtual gun-lovers, the best(most absurd) irony in years, that the gun lobby criticizes violent games, when most gun lobbyists would play the hell out of them! Gun enthusiasts who play video games, would play first person shooters without a doubt.
The role of violence in storytelling is as old as human history, and it has long served a purpose in conveying values of honesty, courage, confidence and perseverance.
It also served a purpose of voyeurism and of Schadenfreude. Again, if you want to fool anyone into thinking you're engaging in serious analysis and reflection, you should at least address one or two of the huge elephants on the couch.
/signed, someone who has been playing games since the late 80's and found this article to be a bunch of tripe. Yes, they reflect our mediocre, pitiful state, they don't create it. But mediocre and pitiful they are for the most part. They are either about being an asshole, or having irrelevant stuff. In that sense even Minecraft is crap.. and I played that, even SMP, so I'm not dissing something I don't even know; it's just I also know art, and music, and just sitting in the sun. I know books and stuff.
Fuck violence; our problems run deeper than even that.
What is the difference between being immersed in Jack Ryan's adventures in a book and playing Call of Duty where you act as the protagonists and play through a similar narrative?
If anything the article doesn't go far enough to draw parallels between violence in video games and other forms of art: literature, movies, or artwork celebrating violent acts.
It also missed an opportunity to give a break-down of games sold by level of violence. Pokemon is fundamentally a fighting game, Minecraft involves defending yourself against monsters, Angry Birds is about violent conflict between birds and pigs, and even football games can have violence.
Oh please, drop the pretentious attitude. High-budget entertainment isn't ever going to be a stream of critical darlings and everyone know this, I do however look forward to your explanation of exactly why Spec Ops: The Line is of no artistic value.
You can wait until you're blue in the face. However, if you let go of the strawman for a sec, I'd happily explain to you why it's not art in my opinion. Anything and everything has "artistic value", even the way the flower lady turns around and smiles.
I mean, we are talking about games here - well, I am, the article kinda isn't - not about "stories". Yes, games are accompanied by stories, they used to have title screens and now have backdrops for the options menu, they had cover art and now have thumbnails in the steam store, etc., there is an intro, an outro, and while you play you also are exposed to lots of little artsy pieces.
Does singing while driving your car turn car driving into art? In the same way I argue adding art to games doesn't automatically make them art, either. Which doesn't mean you couldn't theoretically make art with your car, and sing while you do it. But if you're just commuting, that ain't art (unless it's the opening sequence of Office Space :P). And that's on the level of creativity most AAA games are made.
Looking at the gameplay, they are more or less the same. What little art is in them they borrowed from movies, which still do that part so much better I really wish games could go back to actually being games, instead of just bad kitsch. Then we could find out what we still don't know; if a game - the mechanics, not how those mechanics are dressed up - can be art. We're still at the stage were anything that makes you feel something, anything, gets wildly applauded, which seems kinda of sad. Instead of being honest and just saying "hey, this one is not pure shit, which is a welcome change to the usual", people get super emotional and attached. To me that's just Stockholm Syndrome. I'm sure on this planet there is also a person who has the facebook "like" thumbs up tattooed on their body, because it means so much to them. Would it make that symbol art? Not for me. That would just make that person a really sad one in my eyes.
Again, definitions vary, but I also wouldn't call anything that obsesses about statistics, sales, and how to addict people to your product even more as "art". As in, the exact same product I might consider art or not art depending on why and how it was produced. I'm not even sure I'd allow anything produced while wearing a tie period. Artists are rare, they're kinda the original hackers if you think about it.. and just like everybody and their dog considers themselves a hacker, so it is with art. That's fine, but so is being a jaded critic.
Yes, violence can be used to tell a story about courage. But when it comes to games, and even many movies, the stories about "courage"* are actually just a pretext for violence.... duh! I doesn't take Albert Einstein to notice that, either, so it's really hard for me to assume ignorance instead of malice here. That crap hiding behind what precious few of truly great things humanity created, just bah!
* I put that in quotes because it doesn't take courage to be shot at by 20000 people and not get hit once, even if the actor pants and acts all tense.. same goes for most games, where loosing, or not getting a hint what to click within 5 seconds of starting, might loose potential customers and therefore gets cut from the game, where every slightest challenge is after a checkpoint, unless it's a roguelike or bullet hell shooter. Courage, pah. That's just dreaming. Every game has a wiki dedicated to them and in general, most gaming is about trying to avoid challenge while getting to see the art assets.
People are min/maxing because that's the best you can do with this stuff. They don't play games to grow as persons or see life from different angles; who the fuck does the article author think they're kidding? Games are played to kill time. I think it was Thoreau who said "as if you could kill time without injuring eternity". I wa...
All kids play video games. That means killer kids play the same games as non-killer kids. What's that thing about correlation and causation again?
People have said similar things regarding books, pictures, movies, etc. and this is nothing new and it's all been for the same reasons: when it's politically advantageous and so as not to blame bad parenting.
It's about a war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Columbine_Massacre_RPG!
That exclamation point is part of the URL. -_-
I think a poor understanding of other cultures, a dash of jingoism and hint of racism would help desensitize us to war.
I find it hard to take any argument against such things(video games, guns, movies ect) seriously when these arguments taking place only happen when it is politically advantageous for politicians.
If these arguments being made are valid then they should be made anyways. These are not small issues, but issues that go down to the base of our society. If they are not valid enough to be made on there own ground why should i take them seriously when they are projected into the limelight by a tragedy?
Note I am not saying that i am for or against any of these arguments just stating that if they are valid then they should be able to be viewed in there own context. Of course we have to take recent(any and all) events into account but it must be done so with a clear head. Much like the current outrage regarding Aaron Swartz, is it a tragedy, absolutely, but to go out instantly and call for someones head is irresponsible and illogical.
Rash decisions lead to only more mistakes.
Video games produce versions of the violence in society which are unrealistic, in which everyone can get up off the floor after being shot by being reloaded and start again.
Video games produces thousands of times as many violent events as in real life.
The amount of resources (money and time devoted) in creating and playing video games rivals the amount of time and energy people spend practicing at making real life into a safe experience. Much more than a distraction, they are the centerpiece, a devotion to delusional destruction.
Extraordinary claims...
But seriously, back this up with some evidence.
Compare the amount of violence today with the amount of violence a century ago. Oh yeah, that's also not citing any evidence.
Of course, this greatly depends on where you are. Arizona was still wild west, gold mines still hung folks they accused of stealing ore (Vulture Mine) Wars were still being waged between native peoples as well as banditos and cowboys holding up banks, transports, and the likes. Tombstone and the O.K. Corral was just over 100 years ago. And back then, media really wasn't an issue since the average person in these parts was 100% illiterate.
Not to mention in the past 50 years, violence and violent crime in the US is at a near all-time low compared to the 1970's or 1990's.
Also explain how more peaceful societies, such as the Dutch, or the Norwegians, consume more of our violent video games than we do?
And yes the amount of violent activity in games far outweigh that in real life but there is another huge difference. Games are not real and even the most naive of us have a very clear differentiation: there is no respawn in real life.
What if Hilter had civilization 5 to play and "conquer" the world?
And honestly I find violent movies more distributing than violent games.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/...
FWIW I personally enjoy first person shooters, but I don't see any great benefit that comes from them.
The Marines used Doom to train recruits in basic tactics since the 90s.
Like any video game they entrain you to mentally follow a complex unfolding scenario in real time given limited visual/auditory input.
I wouldn't recommend them for a kid, but for an adult or mature, responsible teenager there are some cognitive benefits.
Actually I agree with you about the mental side having some benefits, but I just don't see any specific benefit from the violence. Like you say, any other video game could provide the same.
So maybe the violence is an optional component of this sort of game after all.
I'm not sure violence in society and violence in media are really correlated, certainly not violent video games.
Some might argue violent video games are providing an outlet, I don't know if that's true either. Maybe we've just entered an age of distraction, and Youtube is really effective at keeping criminals (or victims?) off the streets, better than any after school basketball program.
* Wikipedia provides a table illustrating declining crime rates, compiled from US Bureau of Justice and FBI statistics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Crim...
Also, gun violence actually decreased in the US since the late 80s, before the release of Wolfenstein and Doom so