Lecture December 2

Shooters and Sims: Testing Our Assumptions about Video Games

January 8th, 2003

Course materials for this topic:


First Person Shooter
(videorecording). Dir. Robin Benger. Congent/Benger Productions with CTV Television Network, 2001.

Grossman, Lev. "Sim Nation" Time. 17 Nov. 2002. 25 Nov. 2002. http://www.time.com/time/sampler/printout/0,8816,391544,00.html


Lecture: Lauren Cruikshank - lrc@yorku.ca

 

Video Games… Who cares?

- the video game industry is massive and quickly growing
- games are becoming richly influential upon the style of other media
- the popular beliefs we hold about video games are important to test and challenge
- not much study has occurred in this area

Brief Backstory

- First Video game was Spacewar created in 1961 by student Steve Russell at MIT.
- First popular video game was Pong, offered in 1972 arcade machines by Atari.
- With Donkey Kong in 1981, a character named Jumpman is born, later renamed Mario, after the Italian landlord ofNintendo’s Seattle warehouse.
- Console wars took off 1980s, spanning the decades since with big players now Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.
- Most popular types of games now include: action/adventure, role-playing, war games, sports, flight simulators, and strategy games.

First Person Shooter

Toronto father Robin Benger & his son Griffin, who plays Counterstrike

Benger’s concerns:
• exposure to violent content and consequences
• addictive qualities of gaming
• violence to players' bodies

Talks to
• teenage players
• parents
• industry representatives
• designers
• academics
• anti-violence activist groups

Sim Nation

• Discusses the “most popular computer game of all time”, The Sims, its inventor Will Wright and the recent launch of The Sims Online.
• “The Sims is a cross between a doll house, a Tomagotchi, and the television program Big Brother… I refer to it as the Ikea game” (Pearce).
• Originality of game: no win-lose, no end to game, over half of Sim players are women in a male-dominated medium, appeal not obvious… Grossman calls it “the most boring video game possible”.
• Suggests that The Sims Online could be a “daring collecting social experiment that could tell us some interesting things about who we are as a country” (US).
• “might be exactly what America needs right now: a virtual sandbox where we can play out our fantasies and confront our fears about what America might become”

Assumptions about Games: The Perceived Perils and Promises

Are games the "Dark side of the information age"? (Benger) Or "just what this divided nation needs” (Grossman)?

• Representation
• Violence
• Physical Impact
• Social Impact
• Addiction and Immersion

Representation

Samples of prevalent stereotypes used in games:

• Racially typed terminators (Asian, African-American, Native)

• Hypersexualized females as fighters (Girls with Big Guns)
or screaming victims
Ex. Custer’s Revenge (Atari)

Violence in Video games: breaking down the issue

•Violent skills – game use in army training suggests games give players realistic simulations of firearm use (Lt. Col. D. Grossman)
•Violent emotions - results are mixed: Aggression found to rise after game play in some studies, but not in others. Some suggest catharsis effect (Robischon).
•Violent mindset – need to question whether video gamers perceive reality as antagonistic, violence as a tool for successand war as a game without important political / social contexts and consequences. (Benger)

Real or Virtual Violence?

“I’ve covered the front lines of four wars and I’ve seen more people murdered on this floor…”
"No! You haven't seen a single person murdered on this floor. You've seen animated pixilated characters disappear on a computer screen. That's not murder"
(Benger in interview with Doug Lowenstein from IDSA (Interactive Digital Software Association)

Debating violent content

“Virtual violence” view
•Violent incidents are just play in a fantasy context
•In no way threatening to mental or physical well-being of those involved
•Meaningless symbolic exchange
•ludicrous to suggest restrictions

‘Real violence’ view
•Vicious assault and bloody murder occurs on mass scale in games.
•Threatening to a gamer’s mindset and other people they may interact with.
•Strong desensitization and violent skills training
•fair and important to restrict access

Physical Impact

• Concern for violence done to the body by prolonged game play including eye strain, repetitive strain injuries, seizures and sedentary risks.
• Some studies suggest that there may be physical benefits to game stimulation, including increased hand-eye coordination.
• athletes of the cyberage? (Benger)

Social Impact

• Isolation of activity, potential neglect of other social opportunities, family strain.
• Community and culture of gaming can provide rich and rewarding social interaction.
• With move to MMORP (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing) games, social interaction becomes integral part of play

Immersion and Addiction

- As technology becomes more “realistic” and multi-sensory, immersion become more intense
- Realism is "the holy grail of games" (Hunteman)
- Benger says son addicted, Griffin says no.
- “These (game rooms) are the opium dens of the 21st century, an electronic hook deep in a brain soothed by the balm of bloodless killing” (Benger)
- Everquest known to gamers as “Evercrack” for its addictive play.
- Games like The Sims can be “ferociously addictive” (Grossman)

Suggestions for the appeal of a “people simulator” (The Sims)

Suggestions for the appeal of a “people simulator” (The Sims)

• Replacing “real life”
• Escaping “real life”
• Perfecting or controlling a cleaned-up “real life”
• Imagining and experimenting with new ways of living “real life”

*Rifkin article next*

Other sources cited

Game Over: Gender, Race and Violence in Video Games. (videorecording). Dir. Nina Huntemann. Northhampton, MA : Media Education Foundation, 2000. (Available in York Library)

•Jensen, Jeff. "Videogame Nation" Entertainment Weekly, December 6, 2002. #685 New York, NY. 20-29.

•Kent, Steven L. Ultimate History of Videogames. New York: Prima, 2001.

•Pearce, Celia. "Towards a Game Theory of Game" 2001. Available online January 2003 at http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/first-person.html

•Robischon, Noah. "Head Games". Entertainment Weekly, December 6, 2002. #685 New York, NY. 36-38.

This page last revised 9/17/02