With all the discussion about violence this week I wanted to share a video that a 9th grade student made for a health unit.Students were asked to think about what they enjoy in their lives and how the things they love can serve as anti-drugs.They were asked to present their anti-drug in any format they liked.Some chose posters, oral presentations, skits, and brochures.This presentation stood out from the rest:
As I have been going back and forth about how I feel about violent video games and the effect they have on youth, I kept thinking of this video.In discussions with 9th graders I have gathered that the majority of 9th grade males play video games.Of the games they play, most of them enjoy violent or sports related games.Boys tend to be more competitive so these types of games suit their needs.One question that I asked them was why they don’t get bored with playing the games over and over again.Their response was that it is fun to beat someone they haven’t played before and they especially enjoy games they can play online against people they don’t even know.They seem to have this need for a constant challenge.
After school and on weekends they choose to hang out in someone’s basement playing video games.They are safe, their parents know where they are, and they are not running the streets.I think I prefer that they are playing video games!Teenagers are very rambunctious.They have a lot of energy and aggression that needs to be released.Playing video games is a safe outlet.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Jack Thompson, an attorney who has fought long and hard against violent video games, Grand Theft Auto in particular, wrote this letter addressed to the mother of the chairman of Take Two, the company that produces GTA. (for the record, he didn't send it to her, but rather to her son's attorneys). The full letter can be found here: http://diehardgamefan.insidepulse.com/2008/04/22/jack-thompsons-open-letter-to-take-two-ceos-mother/ . Here is a small clip that interested me:
"Mrs. Zelnick, did you train up your son, Strauss, to make millions of dollars by pushing Mature-rated video games to children? Any kid can go right to little Strauss’ corporate web site and buy GTA IV with no age verification. Strauss is even marketing the new Grand Theft Auto IV on World Wrestling Entertainment tv shows seen by millions of kids."
Clearly WWE has enough 18+ viewers to draw the three potential presidential candidates to promote themselves on the show to potential voters. It's not as though GTA advertisements are airing during Hannah Montana (though, as an avid fan of both Grand Theft Auto and Hannah Montana, such an ad placement would certainly hit at least one of their consumers). To imply that the video game shouldn't be advertised anywhere that children might see it is outrageous; not even the alcohol or tobacco industries are held to that standard, and the health defects caused by either of those products are clear and generally without dispute.
Furthermore, any kid can go on the site and buy the game... if they have a credit card. Which means they'd have to have their parents buy it for them unless they have a credit card of their own, in which case parents have plenty of opportunity to monitor their children's purchases on it if they're concerned with what their kids are buying. This is a far cry from a child walking into a store alone and buying it with their saved allowance.
He goes on to mention a boy who murdered cops in Alabama and then stole a cop car and blamed Grand Theft Auto for the whole thing. That case is especially damning because it's similar to a scenario in the game where the character is in a police station and has to free an inmate, kill some cops, and drive off in a cop car outside. When the young man was arrested, he poetically explained that life is a videogame and claimed that Grand Theft Auto made him commit the crime.
I've always been of the opinion that one's actions are one's own responsibility, or in the case of minors, the responsibility of their parents. If a parent doesn't want their child to play violent video games, it's up to the parent to enforce this. This doesn't have to mean monitoring the things their child buys; I think it's up to a parent to educate the child on their family's views and ethics and rules about such things. It's also up to a parent to raise a child to be respectful of their parents' rules (and, for that matter, to teach a child that murder is wrong).
If a child is in the small margin of young people whose use of this media might give them the idea to recreate events they see in the game, beyond even limiting their child's involvement with a game, it's the parent's responsibility to notice red flags (that their child is displaying antisocial behavior, that they are experiencing social rejection, that they are depressed or psychotic, etc) and to get their child to a psychologist.
Clearly a large majority of young people can play games like Grand Theft Auto and not feel compelled to kill cops. The remaining few who commit crimes after playing the game did so because of their own inclination towards violent behavior. But it's easier to say that the child was playing Grand Theft Auto all day long for weeks (as was the case with the boy in Alabama) and blame the game, rather than acknowledging other factors in the young person's life, such as that he was depressed, or that he had no friends, or that he was being teased mercilessly by people at school, or that he had problems controlling his anger and emotions.
It's easier to avoid addressing the reason he was playing GTA all day long for weeks at a time or to consider that dedicating so much time to a single activity for that long is unhealthy in any case. Maybe he was playing GTA by himself in his room for weeks because he was being cast out by his peers, or because playing the game allowed him to shut out unpleasant emotions he was experiencing. Maybe he was playing with his friends and the game was just another aspect of the group's acceptance and promotion of violent behavior.
When the boy in question was arrested, he claimed that, “life is a video game, everybody has to die sometime,” he was either lying to justify his actions or he was in a delusional state. If he was lying than the whole point is moot. If he was delusional, then why not address the factors that caused him to have these delusions?
As long as we keep turning a blind eye to the other important issues that these kids face in addition to their involvement with a videogame, parents will continue to fail to make the connection between those issues and potential homicidal behavior in their kids. The more we ignore it the more it'll persist.
Why I Don’t Trust Studies About Violent Video Games
Anything we read this week that calmly responds to negative claims made about violence in video games just seems like common sense to me so I'm not sure there's much more for me to add. Jenkins writes that “the overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure.” And besides that, violent video games are meant to be played by older people rather than young children. The National Institute on Media and the Family found that kids know more about ESRB ratings than parents, making it clear that concerned parents should use the ratings guide to evaluate the content of their kids' games.
I would, however, like to point out how ridiculous it is to do a study where one group of kids is given a commercial video game to play while another group is given a game about cancer and manage to conclude with a straight face that video games about cancer lead to “significantly higher gains in cancer knowledge” than games that are not specifically created to be about cancer. Gee, I wonder if they were surprised by those results. How am I supposed to take studies about video games seriously when the procedures and used systems of measurement are ludicrous to me? How do you seriously measure things like “aggression” anyhow? And how does one feel knowledgeable about the effects of violence in video games when many researchers are probably bent on believing them to be inherently good or evil even as they design their studies?
“According to the American Psychological Association, prolonged exposure to cutesy video-game violence can increase aggressive frolicking and angry fluttering in children. Paula Greer, co-chair of the APA Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media, warned that Wii games reward players for explosive girly behavior rather than enforcing proper negative social consequences.”
When I think of people who cite anti-gaming statistics, I think of Jack Thompson. But he's on a pretty far end of the spectrum and I doubt most people are aligned with him. I usually don't talk to people about video games unless they play them too, so I wish I could talk to anti-games people just to know what they personally believe. I'm guessing it all comes down to believing kids are sponges who can't judge the content they're bombarded with as good or bad, similar to what Sternheimer said about the decontextualization of violence in media-effects research and the assumption that children are passive consumers. But considering the growing number of people who enjoy video games in the world, I'm not too worried about the issue right now. It might be a while (as even younger candidates like Obama like to use video games as a metaphor for underachievement), but eventually there will be a moral panic about some other thing and I'll be playing video games with my kids. Including the violent ones, when they're old enough.
For the record, I may not play violent video games but do love watching other people play them. Over time I've come to consider playing violent video games to be equal in aggressiveness to hobbies like playing RISK, football, or paintball. Violent games are essentially spectator sports for me, so I watch my friends choose from a vast array of weapons and use all their cunning to obliterate their opponents as hard as they possibly can.
Despite being well-made and popular, games rated 'M' by the ESRB usually don't get any positive press. They deserve to receive praise for the things that make them fun to play, so I’ve written up an informal analysis of ..
My Top 5 Favorite 'M'-Rated Video Games to Watch Somebody Else Play (and Why I Think They're Great)
5. Grand Theft Auto series
It’s been a while since I watched somebody steal a police helicopter in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but I still remember the occasion fondly. GTA: Vice City is a little different from the other games in the series because it’s set in 1980s Miami. The clothes are brightly garish, the décor is as tacky as the game’s graphics looks dated, and palm tree fronds sway in the breeze as you go about forging a criminal empire. The setting detracts from the violent content and sends the game into the territory of parody, spoofing mafia movies like Scarface or just doing a send-up of the '80s in general. The side missions are what attract me to this game as a spectator. When not gunning down rival gangs (or, ooh -- using a flamethrower!), players do things like land trick jumps on motorcycles or deliver pizzas during sidequests to garner cash rewards or earn gameplay advantages.
Trailer:
4. Halo series
Halo is pure fantasy violence. Faces are hidden behind helmets, weapons and battlegrounds are often off-worldly futuristic, and there is a strange cleanliness to every environment and even to the violence. There are different maps to play on, often familiar in appearance until you notice the enormous, pink-tinged crescent moon (or is it a planet?) taking up a huge portion of the sky. When Peter Jackson is finally allowed to produce the movie for this game (and despite encountering many difficulties, he says it WILL be made), maybe Hollywood will finally be able to say “Look, we made a video game movie that doesn’t suck" and maybe non-gamers will be introduced to Halo too.
Trailer:
3. Haunting Ground
The protagonist of Haunting Ground is more similar to the terrified, defenseless women in horror movies than the gun-toting protagonists in more prominent survival horror games such as the Silent Hill or Resident Evil series. Fiona wakes up after a car crash to find herself caged in an empty castle. While solving puzzles in an attempt to escape, Fiona meets up with dangerous castle workers: Debilitas, a shambling and monstrous version of Lenny from Of Mice and Men, is bent on grabbing Fiona and playing with her until she breaks. Daniella, the coldly beautiful, non-human cook stalks after Fiona with an unrelenting sense of purpose that makes it clear she wishes to eviscerate Fiona with the enormous shard of glass she carries with her. Unarmed and physically rather weak, Fiona runs and hides from room to room of the castle. Tension builds as you wait quietly for your enemy to leave the area – and if you use the same hiding spot more than once, they start to find you more easily. The following analogy does not fit my impression that Daniella is by far the scariest video game enemy I have ever encountered, but watching Daniella chase Fiona is a bit like watching a deranged Pepé Le Pew chase after a frantically fleeing cat. The whole process is enjoyably scary and the plot that unfolds is suitably disturbing.
It's impossible to experience the subtle, slow-moving creepiness of the game in a low-quality and truncated video clip, but here's gameplay footage with a surprise at 2:15 and an example of Fiona hiding at 4:36 :
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Most successful first-person shooters are set either in the past or in a far-off future, but Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is set in a slightly fictionalized near-future. You fight Russian and Middle Eastern rebels, shifting from location to location – such as Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and others. Debris flying in the wind, blasts of smoke and light from explosions, and other effects make for an insanely hectic battlefield as you are challenged on different missions to plant C4 on tanks, snipe enemy leaders, sprint in small teams through crumbling buildings to gain territory, etc. But one of my favorite things is that loading screens are used to display thought-provoking and often anti-war quotes. For example, "In war, truth is the first casualty" attributed to Aeschylus will flash by between battles or perhaps one will briefly see Winston Churchull quoted with “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” A full list of quotes used in the game can be accessed here.
Gameplay footage:
1. Half-Life series
No science fiction fan could possibly resist the perfect dystopia that is the Half-Life universe. Physicist Gordon Freeman leads the resistance against alien invaders and the humans who collude with them, often starting out with only a crowbar. It may be rated M, but it’s also one of the most critically acclaimed video games in history. The beautiful, broken-down, violent world of Half-Life reminds me of the one found in the film Children of Men due to how immersive both their environments and backstories are in their political oppressiveness. Fans have put together an impressively comprehensive backstory along with theories about the universe that you can view here, though it would make the most sense to people who are familiar with the games.
Here is a fanmade commentary about the first ten minutes of Half-Life 2, which includes an explanation of how the environment and gameplay work together to introduce players to the fact that an alien-led totalitarian government has taken over between the events of the first Half-Life game and its sequel:
Why don't I play these games myself? One day I might try, but for now I am content to just sit back and watch. I lack confidence when it comes to learning curves and I'm pretty sure I would play most violent games in a confused manner similar to this avid gamer's girlfriend during her first time playing a team-based, first-person shooter game called Team Fortress 2 :
Being fond of video games, I sometimes wonder what I'll do when I have children who want to play violent video games. Here are some articles written about gaming parents who have already encountered this problem and also offer more general advice on what kinds of video games to give children at different ages:
Scalzi says that finding a balance between challenge and fun is key; his 7-year-old daughter can become easily frustrated if a game is too complex, and that can make it far less fun for her, even if the game is rated "E.
On our class message board, we’ve been discussing Miss Bimbo. Klara Kim mentioned The Aberrant Gamer’s take on the game Miss Bimbo. Miss Bimbo seems like a pretty bad idea as something targeted at "tweens" (I agree with The Aberrant Gamer on the cringeworthiness of this word!). But as a social satire I think it's kind of fun.
In that article, The Aberrant Gamer mentions something that's been bothering me for a long time, that even when girls take interest in traditionally male hobbies, they are still being marketed to as Grrlz rather than young consumers.
Imagine™: Babyz
For instance, in The Aberrant Gamer’s previously mentioned column, she mentions a game called Imagine™: Babyz. Here's part of the description of the game from amazon.com:
"-As a babysitter, take care of up to six babies. Feed them, play with them, take them for walks in the garden, and keep them healthy. -Spend your hard-earned money on new baby outfits, toys, or food, or on new furniture for your house. -Customize and clean your house with fun mini-games: vacuum, paint the walls, mow the grass, and more."
At least Miss Bimbo strives to be over-the-top and satirical. I guess Imagine™ Babyz is just a new kind of more complex Betsy Wetsy for the DS generation, but it still bothers me that girls (girlz?) are so deeply encouraged at such a young age to regard reproduction (especially up to six kids!) as a fun play thing. Imagine™ also gives young girls (and let there be no mistake, they’re definitely aimed at girls. The covers of the game all have (mostly white) women on them, except for Babyz, which has three (white) babies on it) a digital look at four other careers “relevant to what girls in this age group have indicated they are most interested in”: Fashion Designer, Figure Skater, Master Chef, and Animal Doctor. I won’t even begin to comment on the limited scope of careers that Ubisoft seems to think young girls should be aspiring to or the fact that only the Veterinarian—erm, sorry, Animal Doctor path actually requires a college degree.
If Miss Bimbo is alarming because it encourages eating disorders and negative body images amongst a population already fraught with eating disorders and negative body images, isn’t Imagine™: Babyz just as guilty in a teen pregnancy sense? According to Planned Parenthood, one million teenagers (97 per 1,000 women aged 15–19) become pregnant each year. This is obviously not including women under 15 who become pregnant each year. Furthermore, “teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely than their peers who delay childbearing to live in poverty and to rely on welfare.” Lucky for them, not graduating high school only knocks out one potential Imagine™ career field.
Daisy Rock Guitars
I remember talking with one of my friends back in high school about girly guitars. Our local guitar seller had a few choice items in sparkly pink and purple, much like the Daisy Rock guitars. She told me about how almost every time she went to the store whether to buy a guitar or to just pass time while waiting for her (male) friends to finish perusing the store, the store clerks would try to push her to play one of these sparkly instruments. It was more amusing than offensive at the time and we joked about it; “Look, most of the people who know me already know I have a vagina, so I don’t really need to advertise it on my instrument.” I just discovered Daisy Rock Guitars. They have a special line for younger girls called the Debutante line: http://debutante.daisyrock.com/ These guitars come in a wide variety of colors ranging from Bubble Gum Pink to Atomic Pink with the occasional Princess Purple or Awesome Blue (only available in daisy-shape) thrown in for good measure. There is only one guitar that isn’t blatantly girly and that’s the Ruby Red Rock Candy Electric Guitar Pack, though the Ruby Red seems a little more like hot pink to me. The guitars come in different shapes, as well. Four years ago, my friend and I were joking about the idea of a sparkly girly guitar being a musical declaration of vagina-ownership. Now they’re actually making girly guitars in shapes of classic vaginasymbols. They make heart and star shaped ones too. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of encouraging young girls to learn an instrument. I just don’t see why they can only achieve this with pink sparkles.
