Response to Understanding Video Games Chapter 6
This is a response to a chapter of the book, “Understanding Video Games” by Simon Edenfeldt-Nielsen et al. I’m not quite sure what the expectations for our responses are supposed to be so I’ll just write about points of interest in the chapter and what they mean to me. I’ll also comment on ideas that occurred to me as I read the chapter.
The first part of this chapter discusses the place and perception of video games in our culture. Mainstream media tends to always give video games and video game culture short thrift as tends to happen with most types of market driven art. It seems to me that the mainstream media is a little hypocritical in this respect as they are themselves market drive. It is actually pretty funny when you think about it because often the media runs stories about the dangers video games can cause to our society; obesity, antisocial behavior, and a propensity towards violence. This is shoddy journalism. The only reason the media has been able to get away with such salaciousness is because video game can not sue for libel.
Video games, to me, are an art form that appropriates any and all other forms of art and pop culture and returns it to us in an interactive form. Now that games are reaching a larger audience they are becoming their own art form and influencing other forms of art in its own right. Slowly, video games are earning legitimacy as an art form, but, as with all new forms of art, the dinosaurs of the past will disparage anything that they do not understand.
A common complaint about video games in culture is the objectification of women. I completely understand this perspective. The problem with finding a better way forward comes not from programmers unwillingness to become more inclusive, but an inability to have a foundation of understanding to enact those progressive changes. As society slowly claws its way out of the ignorance and sexism of the past, video games will find their way as well. After all, art is a reflection of society and video games are just the results of the common mindset of the people, particularly the attitude of people in places of power.
On the subject of violence in video games. I never saw this aspect of gaming in any way dangerous. Regardless of how realistic graphics can get, even if they were life like, people still have a general disconnect to gaming. There is no confusion between fantasy and reality. When everyone was up in arms about the violence of the fatalities in the mortal combat series, no one asked the people playing the game why they enjoyed it so much. If they had they would have found that people gained enjoyment for a multitude of reasons and none of them were for blood sport. The combination of controller sequences had first to be discovered, and then they had to be implemented in the correct way at the correct time. This would garner respect from your fellow gamers. It was really just an aspect of showmanship, “not only did I just beat you, I’m going to show you just how well I beat you.” The violence was not the goal, and the differences in the fatalities was mostly just comedic. Again, these complaints and warnings come to us with no empirical evidence to support them.
These are just a few thoughts on portions of this chapter of the book. I am relatively certain that my ideas on the other subjects in this chapter that I did not discuss will find there way onto this publication in the near future.
