This week’s lectures have briefly introduced game
hypes and main themes surrounded video games such as sexism and violence. The
first two lectures emphasised on the technological and culture aspects of games. I find this
paper interesting although I don’t play games. Before the first lecture, I
thought I must be disadvantaged, as I have not play any game systematically and continuously.
However, I am more relax after the first lecture as Kevin mentioned that the
course is equally designed for both gamers and non-gamers, which increased my
confidence to continue taking this course. Also, on the other hand, I think this
paper should expect engagements from
both gamers and non-gamers. It needs different perspectives to be generated
from people of different backgrounds.
As being told that a
decent part of this paper will be focused on social impacts caused by game
industries in recent decades, I have thought about the recent incident of
elementary school shooting in Newtown, where criticism on video games always became
crucial in public media after incident like this. Firstly, it is fair to say
that the technological revolution and accelerated period of video games developments
in the recent decades have had great influence on people’s insights and ways of thinking.
However, it seems like video games will only be mentioned in mass media when serious social incidents related to violence and sexism had happened, and they had often been taken out
of context on the issue as well as been negatively distorted. Linking
back to the elementary school shooting incidents, mass media have overstated
negative impacts of online games, and at the same time, few media agencies are
willing to be moderate toward game culture when serious social and violent events happen. General speaking, video games and
online games have not yet gain mass recognition. As this course will incisively
touch on culture influence of games, I think throughout this course, there
would be some negative debates about the social impact of online game
development. Nevertheless, I believe this paper and vast majority of us would always remain
a neutral point of view when considers social and culture influences of games.
I agree with you that being a non-gamer will offer a different, possibly more critical view of this course as one would be looking in from the outside and not be biased or misguided by their opinions about certain games. Also touching on the shooting incident, I believe that blaming videogames for something as horrific and grave as murder is "too easy". Videogames have taken quite a lot of flak for negative social issues but I potentially see it as just a "scapegoat", a way out for investigators to pin the blame on something, as the victims would want closure or assurance of the "perpetrator". But I believe we must look at the psychological history of the individual, as it would be more credible and could potentially aid us with future social outbursts rather than blaming videogames. You also have to think about that although people may derive violent outbursts from playing violent games, the decision and steps in order for these incidents to occur are really unrelated to games in my opinion. The suspect had perhaps a bad upbringing and poor parents unable to teach the person basic behavioural and social concepts which may lead to being a disobedient outcast and rebellious towards society. They may find “peace” within the confines of a video game world but other factors must be taken into consideration instead of pleading ignorance with narrow-minded, judgemental views on electronic gaming. I find it ironic that the National Rifle Association is blaming games such as GTA, Bulletstorm etc when gun control is lacking in America as a whole. This Gamasutra article http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JayBedeau/20121222/184059/Elephant_in_the_room_The_NRA.php talks about how groups are “passing the buck”, not owning up to their deeds. The author does state how today’s generation in gaming is increasingly violent yet mentions that the ignorance of parents and other media outlets (film, television, books) which have been around longer than violent videogames should be acknowledged for their part. I may be quick to defend videogames as a gamer and I recognise that there are others with different views, but nevertheless we must come to a solution quickly before more incidents occur.
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