6 responses so far ↓

• 1 Tenyu // May 28, 2008 at 7:12 pm

  Play GTA with him? Man, fo sho an oliue peace. But how the hell are you going to trust this G-Man like mumbler to kick his political stuff off from his brain for a real play? Leave this clown alone spewing his proganda over there.

• 2 Patrick Bradley // May 28, 2008 at 7:17 pm

  And yet, he doesn’t care.

• 3 fred // May 28, 2008 at 8:43 pm

  I think we as gamers need to accept that not everybody likes videogames. And it aint ’cause they’re ignorant, or they hate us, or they’re scared…ok, well maybe a little. But its not like we don’t give them any reason to point and say “look! See the unwashed masses of bespectacled computer nerds at their computers ranting and raving on the internets!”. We do rant and rave. Alot. And its really silly.

  Im not calling proffesional bloggers silly, I hold them in higher regard than most journalists nowadays, however the general gaming populace seems to be oblivious to the fact that alot of people just don’t care about videogames. Just like alot of people don’t care about art, or movies, or comics, or basketball, or guns, or any number of other things that I could list here to make it seem like I’m smart by having a big post.

  Hey look, I’m rambling.

  While I don’t agree with this beck guy, he is entitled to his opinion, however uninformed. While I suppose it’d be only fair to play the game before lambasting it in public, It’s not like the ESRB actually does that either. Perhaps the industry itself oughta step in and get the ball rolling.

• 4 Mike Myers // May 31, 2008 at 11:08 am

  Until just now I wasn’t aware who Glenn Beck was. Now that I’ve read his Wikipedia page I realize he’s a Class A mainstream media douche bag. His position on games is not inconsistent at all with the list of other opinions he has — uninformed, willfully ignorant, and caustic.

• 5 Jason Lee // Jun 1, 2008 at 10:41 am

  What I’m personally afraid of is not the ignorance of people like Glenn Beck, but that even in their ignorance that they may be onto something that video game players have not fully explored. This isn’t to say that the guy is right, or that he’s justified at all in criticizing something he doesn’t understand, but I want to stop and slow down a bit about what you’d actually say if you did get to sit down and play some video games with this man. Now to be fair, I haven’t gotten my own hands on GTA4 yet, but I have played San Andreas and Vice City, so I’ll be using those as my main examples here.

  I wouldn’t say that a game lacks any sort of rhetoric or ideology that carries a certain social message across; I think this is what people like Glenn Beck and ignorant parents are afraid of, but unfortunately they don’t have their head on right, so this whole issue gets dismissed prematurely. And it is incorrect to say that the medium (Video Games) triggers the behavior (violence). Television came under the same criticism, but both TV and VG critics miss something important: that these two media are polysemic, and WHAT is watched/played and HOW it is watched/played reveals the behavior of the individual. A video game like any of the new GTAs can be played “differently” for each person: one may rampage through the streets and create random mayhem, another may meticulously speed through each and every mission and follow the game’s story, and another may simply even cruise the streets taking the time to obey all traffic laws and be an obedient citizen for an hour or two, then shut off the game and throw a tea party afterwards. What is important though, is the algorithms that run the game structure each of these types of play. For example, Ian Bogost in his book “Persuasive Games” talks about GTA San Andreas’s food system and how it functions as social critique: As a poor black man, you need to eat but the only food available to you is fast food, which keeps knocking up your fat score. There is no alternative of “better food” offered, because (Ian Bogost feels) that this algorithmic representation actually is a statement about the reality of poor black people in LA. Now what I’d say is that the GTA games don’t cause violence like Glenn Beck says, because really it’s just in tune with all the other violence that’s already in our culture. The game ultimately is something of a “cinematic” game, and although you control Tommy, CJ, or whomever, you’re ultimately watching someone else create the carnage and deal the drugs (especially during the cutscenes). The effect is less of “you” killing people, but more like watching a Stallone movie where we spectate Tommy Vercetti killing people, and us both involved in the gameplay but also sitting back and enjoying the show to a degree. So yes, at least GTA Vice City (and probably also GTA 4) is as innocous as your usual rated R fare of action flick.

  If you want to talk about violence in video games, then lets look at all those flag-waving patriotic military games that Glenn and others fail to let off the hook. The thing is that games like “America’s Army” are specifically designed to recruit and train soldiers for the army: it is a propaganda tool. Certainly many people who play the game realize this and still play because they think they are “safe” from the ideology once they realize this, but to these game players violence has in fact become “gamic” and “unreal”, such that when they enlist and are released on the field, the battlefield invokes the memory of the video game, not the other way around. Think about it: every military FPS advertises a new level of “realism”, either in graphics or physics or AI behavior. And to top it all off, these games are FIRST PERSON: You are not a player watching a soldier in war, but your perception is collapsed into that soldier’s – you are that soldier. At a certain point, the effect to the human being becomes reality mimicking the game. GTA games, on the other hand, have a certain level of “unrealism”, of playgroundness: Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas do not behave like the real world, nor are they literally meant to. GTA 4 may be advertised as “more realistic” (this is my own ignorance here, so please excuse me if I’m wrong about GTA4 specifically), but the GTA3 series as I understand it never really set out to “mimic” the real world, but create a fictional simulacrum of it, like an action movie. Hence the cinematic sequences, the 3rd person perspective where we “watch” Tommy Vercetti blow up cars and run over people, and this confusion between spectating and participating.

  Check out Ian Bogost’s writings on Persuasive Gaming when you get the chance. You can find his blog here: http://www.bogost.com/ Also, another vital read you should consider is Mckenzie Wark’s writings on Gamer Theory, especially his chapter on gamespace entitled “Agony”. You can find the constantly updated book/text here: http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/

• 6 James // Jun 20, 2008 at 5:29 pm

  I was enjoying just silently observing this very nice site for the first time but I have to comment on this one.
  To all people who think video games can teach you to kill any more effectively than you could do on your own or by watching “Rambo”; I am a combat veteran U.S. Marine with a fair amount of combat experience. If you think a video game can teach you to fight, you WILL die, even against local police.
  Also, please take note of the fact that crime rates in the U.S. have not risen appreciably (relative to the average increase) since the introduction of violent video games. Anyone who plays GTA or any other game and is inspired to go on a killing spree was already psychopathic and was inevitably going to do it anyway.
  For any normal person the thought of killing someone and actually pulling the trigger are two VERY different things, even if they are your enemy and you are completely within your rights to kill them.
  I think the problem is just the generational gap. The people who thought nothing of getting high and sleeping around in the 70′s and 60′s now sound to today’s gamers as their own parent did to them, whining about their “newfangled ” and “satanic ” rock music. (Grammar check?)
  All people learn most effeciently in childhood. The reaction to video games echoes the cultural upheavals over things like the nuclear power plant, the computer, the automobile, the steam engine, Gutenberg’s (sp?) Bible and so on. Those who stand resolutely against progress without care to consider their perspective are ultimately doomed to be the laughingstock of history.
  My goodness, I’ve ranted longer than I had intended. A final thought; video games, I believe, have done more to further the advancement of artificial intelligence and computer capability than any other influence, including the military. The day will come when people look back at our times and see them as a revolution that was only infrequently impeded by idiots.
  I would like to develop this argument further but in the interest of brevity I will not.

  Thanks for considering my view,

  James

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