Video Games
As a nonvideogamer, I was only mildly interested in Nielson, Smith, and Tosca’s history of video games. I remember playing some of those games, but it was hard to get into a history of something you actively chose not to follow while it was happening. One thing I did find very interesting in the chapter was the sentence, “it could be argued that many potential design paths are simply not options for today’s designers because …fans… have become accustomed to conventions…established by titles released a decade ago” (49). I think this constraint is one that we can apply across many mediums. Actually, it takes us all the way back to Manovich’s discussion of how new technologies must not be too different than the ones they are replacing. We are all constrained by expectations, whether it be with video games, novels, academic papers, or web design. We don’t get to pick our constraints; we are born into them. These designers cannot all of a sudden alter the entire structure of a first person shooter, just like a news show has to do certain things because of what news shows did before. I think these constraints are also why what we are doing is so exciting. As academics, we have a chance to be in on the ground floor of many new technologies. We could be the ones who set the constraints.
Last week, I praised Jenkins in class because he was the first author we read in a long time who wasn’t a total negative-nancy about new technologies. However, this week I come to bury Jenkins, not to praise him. His article on video game violence struck me as one of the more laughable things we’ve read all semester. I am not for censorship. I am all for the “be good parents and control what your kids are doing” argument, especially since I don’t plan on having kids who I then have to the control and watch what they’re doing. Just because I’m not for censoring violent games though, doesn’t mean I agree with Jenkins. He seems to fall into the “technologies are good or bad” division that I hate. We came across threads of this in our mobility articles, and I am not a fan. Mcluhan was wrong when he posited that a technology is what it is (in his criticism of that General’s comments on Nukes). Technologies are what we make them. Videogames aren’t good or bad, they’re both and neither. They can either be used for good (education) or not good (GTA3). Just because you want to defend video games and their educational benefits doesn’t mean you have to pretend they can’t have a negative effect He looks at GTA3, says it’s not that bad, and one of his reasons is when the player destroys something the “violence leaves physical marks” (214). Uh…..not really. You kill people and they get up. He also says GTA3 lets users act and then forces them to face the consequences. Yeah, so if I shoot down the police helicopter and hide in the right alley I’m fine. If you want to write about children learning lessons through videogames, what do they learn when their violence doesn’t actually leave a physical mark or have any real consequences because the random character the player just killed gets up and waits to be killed again?
Oh, and we can’t forget that Jenkins says GTA3 has much learning potential because there is now the potential to create a game like GTA3, but instead of being violent, “a richer game might offer a broader range of options—including allowing the player to go straight, get a job, and settle into the community” (218). Yep, cuz kids play GTA 3 only because the “get married, have 2.5 children” game hasn’t been invented yet.
Turkle’s chapter struck me as one of those seminal works that makes such an impact that it’s hard to go back and read the original. The idea of the second self has almost reached the point of assumption by this point. You know you wrote a good article when the reader comes to it knowing exactly what you’re going to say. I had never read Turkle, but the way I think about games comes from this work. Like authors such as Bush, Englebert, and maybe Mcluhan, she shows an amazing prescience in her writing, recognizing something that we now assume.
Liesol’s article was an interesting read. I really liked how she juxtaposed the Duke Nukem imagery with images from classic art. These juxtapositions strike me as a great example of criticism. When we play games, we become involved in so many things and miss allusions. Liesol shows us how we can play the game and then step outside and examine it as true critics. I think a few comparisons she made stretched a little much, but for the most part, she was right on.
Her article also made me think of Black and the second persona. If a text can show it’s audience, can a game do the same thing? I think the answer is yes, so what can we draw from this audience? Does the text show that all these game players are at least subconsciously sexist? I would not go that far, but much of the game’s imagery is overtly chauvinist. Just the choice of words in the battle cry, “It’s time to abort your freaking species” can tell us something about the audience playing the game. This is an interesting example where I think a rhetorical theory can play an important role in our understanding of different media. Of course, if we can derive an audience from the text, what audience do we construct from GTA3?
To end with a possibly off base aside, I wonder how much of our view of things like World of War Craft and other MMORPGs are colored purely by our use of the word 'game'. We have spent two months and read so, so much on the power of words, and I wonder if our discussion is controlled by the word 'game'. We have associations that come along with games. If MUD’s or MMORPGs had been called something else from the start (experience instead of game?) would we be having these discussions in this same way? I think the word is difficult to break from. Do we need a new word? The idea of words can be a contentious one (see “ TEXT” Jacob vs. Jordan, 10/29/08), so I’m just wondering. It seems to me that the same word should not be the overarching descriptor of things as dissimilar as MMORPGs and barackobamaeatsbabies.com.