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Trigger Happy
Here's some stats that may cause jaws to drop in classrooms or around dinner-party tables.
- Total video game software and hardware sales in the United States reached $8.9 billion last year, versus $7.3 billion for movie box-office receipts. Of that, $6.6 billion of the videogame receipts were from software sales, retail and online.
- Over the next three years, sales of game consoles and software in the U.S. are expected to generate more than $17 billion.
- The average child in the U.S. plays video games 49 minutes a day -- but the average age of videogame players is now estimated to be twenty-eight.
- Increasingly, adults -- evenly split between men and women -- choose video games over other forms of entertainment. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, Americans named video games as their favorite form of entertainment for the third year in a row in l999. Twice as many people nominated videogames as chose watching TV, three times as many preferred videogames to renting movies.
Some of you won't be shocked by these numbers (especially those who browse sites like myvideogames.com and mygamecritics.com), but the vast majority of non-tech, non-gaming people -- especially those who depend on mainstream media for technology news -- will be amazed. If the Net really turned kids' hearts dark, the streets would be awash in blood.
Videogames have created an ebullient universe all their own, inspiring and pressuring Hollywood and the music industry, increasingly shaping culture and creativitity and also, and -- according to a new book by British journalist Steven Poole -- affecting military training and war.
But most education and media institutions still refuse to take this new form of culture seriously, dismissing videogamers as either a trifling teen entertainment, or a corrosive influence on young minds. They also refuse to recognize that the compulsively entertaining and stimulating nature of games makes schools and other environs seem boring, even suffocating.
Steven Poole gets it right. In Trigger Happy: Video Games and the Entertainment Revolution, he writes, among other things, about the impact of the legendary Lara Croft, the pistol-toting, ponytailed, hotpants-and-shades digital star of the l996 game, "Tomb Raider." Lara has appeared on the cover of The Face and been the subject of countless magazine features in Europe. She's become such a recognizable icon that she now advertises other products, appearing in computer-generated TV commercials for Lucozade and Nike.
Eidos, the publisher of "Tomb Raider," has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide of the first three games in the series, and was named Britain's most successful company in any industry in l999. Add in estimated sales for the fourth installment, "Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation", and Lara, predicts Poole, is close to becoming a billion-dollar babe.
One of the world's first virtual celebrities, Croft is one of the initial video game characters to break out in so global and commercial a way, as synergistic marketing propels her way beyond the videogame culture.
Poole also takes note of growing evidence that videogames are breaking film's monopoly on the moving image. They've lovingly appropriated set-piece forms from the cinematic milieu of horror, action and science fiction, he writes, citing the enormous monster, the car chase, the space dogfight. Meanwhile, movies have stolen ever more brazenly from videogames' hyperkinetic grammar, exaggerated sound effects, and disregard for gravitational laws.
Poole believes that the The Matrix is one of the best and most successful examples of the two media in-breeding with one another. "In its exaggeratedly dynamic kung fu scenes, in which actors float through the air and smash each other through walls, The Matrix contains the most successful translations to date of certain videogame paradigms to the big screen." The film is also a reminder, Poole notes, that virtual reality is a very old idea, which the philosopher Descartes conceived of as a "malin genie" or evil demon. Just like the computers in The Matrix, it caused Descartes to have thoughts and perceptions he would normally have believed to be the signs of a real, external world. Poole also relates some Jackie Chan and Hong Kong guns'n'kung-fu films to video games, and vice versa.
Trigger Happy has also caught the evolution of plot and character as they relate to video games. Poole describes the use of the Marvin Minsky's AI theories in "Outcast," one game he deems especially important because it has taken the use of NPC's (non-playable characters) to sophisticated new levels. "Outcast" has tackled one of gaming's toughest challenges: How can you make computer-generated characters behave in a convincingly lifelike fashion? "Outcast's" Gaia computational engine uses Minsky's concept of "agents," mental homunculi with specialized jobs: one agent represents hunger; another represents curiosity; another, fear. Put enough agents together and you have a crude model of consciousness.
As Poole's book makes clear, the psychology of videogames is unique. No other medium is as interactive, or offers as many satisfying opportunities to win and keep on winning. Currently, he says, the third-person game -- Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid or Zelda 64 -- has the edge over the first-person game like Quake III, which has a viewpoint that makes the player feel as if he or she were inside the digital environment.
Video games, says Poole, will never be as good as films at telling stories visually, or as good as books at weaving "cerebral tapestries" of ideas and human lives. "But video games are already extremely good at providing an exhilarating blast of the animal emotions. Fear and triumph -- that is why you play a videogame at the moment." Modern videogames are fun, a means of leisure and relaxation.
But that's not all they are. One of Poole's more interesting chapters comes towards the end, when he looks at the impact of video games on U.S. military training and the increasingly popular American idea -- displayed both during the Gulf War and in Bosnia -- that war can be fought on high-tech, video game-like terms without any real human sacrifice, the high-tech, "risk-averse, "politically palatable war. This is a dangerous notion, since it involves the use of military conflict without political risk, a radically new kind of idea. Military aircraft and tanks used by NATO now have weapons of such range that it isn't at all usual to make direct visual identification of a target; instead, icons are tracked on computerized displays and weapons are locked automatically. Since attacks in Desert Storm and Serbia were fought at the greatest distance possible to insure that there were no American casualities, there were numerous reports of ineffective bombing runs and of friendly fire. Allies tanks were destroyed, hospitals and at least one embassy was bombed. Relying on pixels rather than eyes is dangerous, claims Poole, because computers can malfunction, and pixels can lie.
This link between video game culture and war is, says Poole, reflecting a common (but rarely heard in the U.S.) European perspective, a "lethal failure of imagination. And it is in this way that I do think videogames must have a type of moral responsibility. Of course, we cannot blame videogames for the deaths of Serbian civilians, yet video game-seeded technologies have contributed to the potentially alienating culture of simulation that allowed them to be killed so easily, so cleanly. I think the duty of video games, therefore, is an imaginative one -- an aesthetic one."
In Poole's view, videogames are nothing less than a TV screen reclaimed for individual control. He's eloquent about their possibilities. "If television replaced the log fire or the wireless as a focus of domestic attention, the videogame re-engineers TV's relentless blaze as a colorful zone of play, a new world to explore, a rich and strange place to pit your wits against the dazzling inventions of others," he writes. " The pixels dance to your tune. You're not watching, you're doing. And when videogames are at their best, what you're doing is something vastly more creatively challenging than watching a docusoap or a quiz show. Your reasoning, reflexes and imagination are tested to exhilarating limits. That hunk of molded plastic, that Play Station or Dreamcast, is a magic box that allows you to play with fire."
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As a counter-example, a female friend of mine recently vanished from the face of the earth for two months. I discovered that the reason for this was that she was spending most of her waking hours on Ultima Online.
I also spend a lot of time playing StarCraft with a (different) woman. She's finished both the game and the expansion pack in single-player mode, something I never bothered with since I prefer multi-player. Similarly, she finished FFVII, when I only got about 25 hours into it, and even helped her son get through Pokemon.
Charles Miller
--
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
Non-automated war gave us the Mongol Hordes and the Crusaders, who were not exactly noted for their kindness and sensitivity on the battlefield.
There are plenty of other examples of wars where face-to-face contact did not prevent wanton cruelty on the part of the victors.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Even if you don't like Katz, I advise you to pick up this book.
If nothing else, it highlights some of the paradigm changes in the world of computer games and also all the different things that you have to think about when you're playing even a simple game.
_____
My Journal
An interesting article and an interesting viewpoint from Steven Poole. I'd like to point out an opposing viewpoint (though not necessarily one that I agree with): in his book On Killing , Dave Grossman argues that the prolonged playing of video games acts as a form of operant conditioning, training the player to act on every violent impulse instantly and without thought. (Even if you don't buy this argument, the book is interesting for its insights into the psychology of training ordinary people to kill in war.) Grossman expands on his argument in a pamphlet called Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill , which I haven't read.
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
The gamers age median is about 28, not the ONLINE gamers age median. I think it would be surprising to see a study of the demography of different types of game. I am pretty sure that youngre player would end up more attracted to online games where they can socialise with huge numbers of people (or crush them in power trips) and older players would end up playing more intrigue, puzzle and storyine oriented games.
Anyone knows if such a study exists?
"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
"When battles can be won or lost with the push of a button, both victory and defeat become miserable."
The more automated war becomes, the less that the human aspects of compassion, remorse and civility will come into play. Wars that lack compassion, regret for the lost souls, and civility towards the enemy give rise to massaceres, and wars become tragadies.
A machine will never see the death, and be able to mourn for the lost.
That's not to say that I feel the current world situation reflects wonderful amounts of civility and compassion in war, but social issues on that level are rather outside the scope of this particular post.
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- Does Katz actually think about this stuff before he posts?
Sounds like a pretty good book. I'll have to try to get my hands on a copy. But, I have to comment about two points that I don't really agree with.
Poole believes that the The Matrix is one of the best and most successful examples of the two media in-breeding with one another.
Hyperkinetic grammar?
Exaggerated sound effects?
Disregard for gravitational laws?
This sounds far more like inspiration drawn from comic books than video games. And the influence of comic art and sensibilities in the Matrix is obvious. But I suppose it is understandable that the author draws this conclusions as many video game designers draw inspiration from comic books, directly and indirectly.
One of the world's first virtual celebrities, Croft is one of the initial video game characters to break out in so global and commercial a way, as synergistic marketing propels her way beyond the videogame culture.
Initially I rejected this idea immediately, but the more I think about it, the more accurate it seems. This is probably the first video game icon to have as much appeal with older gamer audiences as well as children. For some rather obvious reasons.
But I think in any analysis of the impact of video games, one has to look back to the first virtual celebrity, Nintendo's Super Mario. He was a cultural phenomenon and Mariomania in the late eighties and early nineties was insane. From movies (the dismal Super Mario Brothers movie itself and the SMB3 promotional vehicle, "The Wizard", which still grossed over 100 million despite) to cartoons to lines of merchandise that would almost make George Lucas jealous. I can even recall (vaguely, it was 10 years ago) Mario being used in advertising campaigns for other products.
But then again, people might liken Mariomania more to the Pokemon craze than Lara's current efforts. Still, I think people respected Mario a little more.
Kryal.
This is supposedly a true story from a recent Defence Science Lectures Series, as related by the head of the Australian DSTO's Land Operations/Simulation division.
They've been working on some really nifty virtual reality simulators, the case in point being to incorporate Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters into exercises (from the data fusion point of view). Most of the people they employ on this sort of thing are ex- (or future) computer game programmers. Anyway, as part of the reality parameters, they include things like trees and animals. For the Australian simulation they included kangaroos. In particular, they had to model kangaroo movements and reactions to helicopters (since hordes of disturbed kangaroos might well give away a helicopter's position).
Being good programmers, they just stole some code (which was originally used to model infantry detachments reactions under the same stimuli), and changed the mapped icon, the speed parameters, etc. The first time they've gone to demonstrate this to some visiting Americans, the hotshot pilots have decided to get "down and dirty" with the virtual kangaroos. So, they buzz them, and watch them scatter. The visiting
Americans nod appreciatively... then gape as the kangaroos duck around a hill, and launch about two dozen Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter. Programmers look rather embarrassed at forgetting to remove that part of the infantry coding... and Americans leave muttering comments about not wanting to mess with the Aussie wildlife...
As an addendum, simulator pilots from that point onwards avoided kangaroos like the plague, just like they were meant to do in the first place...
~ppppppppö
While microsoft has made the desktop accessible to all, they did it at the expense of obscurring the power and abilities of the hardware. everything simple can be done, but once you go beyond that, everything gets incredibly complex to do.
in contrast to this is the open source model, where while there may be an initial delay in newbies picking up the technology, doing the harder things is a whole lot more straight forward.
tagline
... hi bingo
Total video game software and hardware sales in the United States reached $8.9 billion last year, versus $7.3 billion for movie box-office receipts. Of that, $6.6 billion of the videogame receipts were from software sales, retail and online.
The question is now. Is that $8.9 billion only from the consumer market. If you think about it, businesses are going to be forking out new money for hardware more often to keep their machines top of the line (in the places that need it that is).
Its not what it is, its something else.
Its not what it is, its something else.
>trainers in the United States and Germany, so
>that tankers in Germany could fight mock battles
>against tankers in the US. The reason for
>immersive video game-like tools such as this in
>a training environment is that it saves
>money, saves equipment, and often saves lives.
Actually, it was Lockheed Martin, not the army, that developed these tank simulators. And they didn't quit development when they hit "good enough" status in the '80s, they, as of last year at least, are still under continuing development.
The system in question is called the Close Combat Tactical Trainer. And it includes, now, not just tanks, but humvees, bradleys, and avaition as well. Check LMIS @:
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/lmis/level4/cctt.
I used to work two buildings over from the development/production area. A friend of mine worked on the CCTT himself.
They really ARE a very immersive expierence. From the outside, a CCTT just looks like bigass plastic boxes w/ a bunch of wireing between multiple units and the control room. For the M1 sims, there are even two seperate boxes; one for the driver's reclined position, and one for the Commander/Gunner/Loader. But once inside...
... Well, they go for EVERY detail you can imagine. For example: Ear protection is a MUST!!! They have a sound system in there that is flat out amazing. In an effort to promote realism, they try to make the sounds of combat as realistic and LOUD as the real thing. Every switch and control is there to the last detail, and it's just as cramped as the real thing. Honestly, I don't see how our army guys put up with that crap.
Of course, there were a few bugs when I was there. For instance, stuff blows up real good when you shoot it with the main gun (and set off heaps of subwoofers and mids to simulate the sound...) BUT, when I got to try the driver's compartment... well, the first thing I did, of course, was try to ram stuff (it's a TANK sim after all); and running into a simple farmyard barn caused the whole unit to crash as though I had plowed into the side of a mountain. Call me crazy, but I don't think a wood barn would stop a 70 ton M1 IRL. Fortunately, it wasn't a SYSTEM crash, just a TANK crash, and I was able to power the sucker back up (loud as fsck mids and tweeters) and tear up a bit of virtural countryside nonetheless.
What's even cooler, is AFTER a battle. The control room has a record of every movement, every shot, every kill. You can then look at a reply of the battle from a 1st person POV of any given unit, from an overhead POV, a tactical map, or even in 3D from any angle you wish (think of the 3D camera engine in Myth II: Soulblighter)!!!
Neat toys.... REALLY nifty COOL neat toys... Too bad lmco is an absolutely wretched company that treats it's employees like crap (I didn't know better when I took the job (first out of college) in the first place. after working in the bay area tho, Ill never work for a defence or government contractor again). Fortunately we both escaped from the defence contractor ghetto some time ago. Me to a really cool job in the city by the bay... and Andy wound up at a little company down in Tustin, called Loki.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
As for detrimental effects on the players, I have an interesting anecdote on that. In 11th grade, my English teacher thought video games made kids uncontrollable and violent, and she knew I played them a lot. Meanwhile, she frequently commented to me that I was such a better student than the three major jocks in the class. People only assume video games are detrimental because they see kids who play video games going psychotic on one or two random occassions and attribute that to the video games, ignoring the vastly more common dangerously violent football player, as a "good wholesome sport couldn't possibly be the cause."
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Your story is - vaguely correct.
I can't find the ausie newspaper that used to have this story...
The programmers were using infantry models with a kangaroo shell over them, and assigned the tactic retreat, so they vaguely stayed together and ran as the helocopters approached. This was done, as
I remember it, for fun - an easter egg. While yes it is true that wild animals running from dense overgrowth can indicate the position of a helicopter - this was not a "specified feature," but instead a practical joke by punchy coders. Now, here is the kicker... during *preliminary testing* - long before any visiting pilots, officers, or what have you visited they had not disabled the "return fire" option. Therefore here was a pack of retreating kangaroos shooting giant beachballs (the default weapon) at whomever the test engineer was running the thing. The story has been exageratted that they were firing missles and that there were any visiting personel present at the time of the actual event.
You say you want a revolution?
"Video games
I'd wager a guess that anyone who's finished Deus Ex would find this comment erroneous. Personally, I found this game engrossing in the way that a good book would be. When I finished it, I felt exactly the way I feel when I finish a good story; sad that it's over, wanting a sequel so I can find out what happens to the world and characters afterwards.
Maybe this is a fair statement if one just looks at games such as Street Fighter or Quake even, but I believe that there are games out there and there is the possibility to have an engrossing story line within a game world.
- Jonathan
(since nobody else made this snide comment, and I haven't posted much lately. . . )
If so-called "violent" games cause the players to act out violently in meatspace, where is the glut in the Masonry profession from all the recovering Tetris addicts?
Or were they all included in that amnesiac study? I forget. . . .
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
DDR is obviously the answer to this problem.
:/
If you havnt played/seen/heard of ddr.. check it out sometime. Its basically dancing kereoke. Music plays and arrows scroll across the screen, and you have to step on the right arrow in time to the music.
sounds silly, but its tons of fun. AND ITS EXERCIZE. Ive lost a good 10 pounds playing this game... Now if I could only pass La Senorita...
no
Steven,
;-) All this technology is only ever as good as "the people using it", and in this case the technology is performing precisely as required.
:-)
Yes, missiles do go off-target. Some stuff does have errors in it. But not "all the time" - the examples above (the embassy bombing, friendly fire, etc) are all examples of user error. This is akin to blaming Word bcos you've made a spelling mistake!
The obvious conclusion to draw is not that the technology is faulty, but that the operators are. Therefore what we want is not less tech, but _more_. Eliminate the fallible pilot/bomb aimer/navigator, and install a computer which will never hit a "friendly" target. Give it full authority to fire at what it likes, so long as it's the enemy (or so long as it thinks it's the enemy). Program it with "forbidden" targets (like embassies) and examples of "civilian" targets (like tractors). Then set it loose, and wait for the fireworks.
I'm not recommending this at all - the idea of a full-authority automaton in charge of a fighter plane is very worrying! - but it seems the more logical conclusion to draw. "The missile hit the target it was told to, but the target was actually a friendly, therefore it's a failure of the missile" seems a strange conclusion.
Having said all this, though, I've not read the book - I'm only going through the filter of Jon Katz's review. You may have another sale come Xmas, if only to get the full story!
Grab.
Without the ability to fight, how can you defend yourself from oppression?
I would find it oppressive to live in a country where people with real mental problems go on a shooting spree with a gun they bought in a hypermarket. Freedom isn't much use if you're shot before you even know what's going on.
It's also interesting to note that gun crime in the rest of the western world is virtually non-existant outside of terrorism and gangs shooting each other, perhaps because US criminals know they need a gun before they go a-robbin'. You're only free if the other side isn't armed as well, then it's just a case of who's quicker to react.
When I say the 'western' world, I mean the richest countries in the world. And over here in the UK, I am far, far less likely to get shot, because it's damn hard to get a gun here, even illegally.
"...gaming should never be considered a waste."
I have to agree. Gaming does much to expose people to the magic that is computing. How many Slashdot readers first started programming in an effort to learn how to MAKE the very games that they were playing? Plus, the technical innovation, in both hardware and software arenas, that games display make the industry move. Don't ever short-change a gamer or his games.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
----
A serious question. I'm not sure about the "size" of your economy.
How much is the porn industry worth?
How much is the cocaine industry worth?
i.e. Is $17billion really that much compared to other traditional "big bucks" industries.
I know they aren't even the biggest industries, but they are sufficiently taboo such that it's hard to estimate quite how large they are, and likewise sufficiently embarassing for people to not want to publicise them).
FatPhil
(Sex budget $0, Drugs budget 0$, FYI)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Absolutely. Same with cars, too. I think it's outrageous that the average idiot can drive a car simply by operating a steering wheel and a gas pedal.
The user interface for a car should be made so complex that only experienced mechanics can drive them. Sure, almost all of you will have to go to school for a few years to learn how, but that's just the price you should have to pay for your driving privileges.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
I remember the movie:
"What are you shooting at?"
"Buildings, cars, people..."
I think that was meant to be the biggest chiller of that scene: that any person could be semantically reduced to the status of 'target,' like inanimate objects.
While I strongly oppose out-and-out censorship of video games on First Amendment grounds, the honorable Mr. Katz does bring up (or rehash) a point: while the combat simulator can turn a person into a technically capable soldier, it will do nothing to ensure that soldier remains a person.
Theoretically, that's what *books* are for. (But wait, many of the people who oppose improper videogames also oppose improper books...)
Yes, the video game could be used as an educational forum, of practical and ethical knowledge, but who'd pay for it? Television networks all over can barely *give* it away.
Remember in the 50s when it was suggested that television would be a way to bring culture to the masses? Plays televised and brought into peoples' homes? Now what do we have? Pamela Anderson's breast implants on eBay, but that's a story for another time.
You want to talk about the decay of a nation? Let's not look at the perverting effects of either television or video games, but the decay caused by a lack of meaningful content. Perhaps I should stop now, before I get too preachy. (Too late?)
---
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Because of the impact they have on the day to day life, governments and other authoroties or even all major multinationals won't be able to get by them, because of their:
educational value
advertisement value
well-being value
-- But hey, I'm just an average Joe myself...
Yet again, stats are abused, point being the videogame industry is worth almost as much money as Hollywood. Poppycock. I think the key phrase is "movie box-office receipts". How about revenue from: - pay per view - rentals - VHS and DVD sales - collectors editions and directors cuts - additional rape everytime a new video media is released (DVD2, whatever) - pay cable stations - network television and basic cable - clothes and toys and crap (yeah sure, for videogames too, but to the same extent?) The average consumer gets his balls busted on every rung of the ladder and most of them don't even realize it. NOW let's compare revenue stats. -Jason
However, take a look at the top selling video game charts once in a while. Most of the time, at least 2 of the top 10 are going to be non-violent games. SimCity3K and Roller Coaster Tycoon are still at the top of the list. Games like Ceasar III, Pharaoh [*], racing games like Need for Speed, etc will usually come in near the top 25. The infrequent puzzle/adventure game such as Myst or Monkey Island get up the charts too. The number of these games in best seller lists tends to be disproportionate to the number available for purchase, suggesting that more people buy the non-violent games. This is probably a reflection on parents buying games for their children and staying with 'safe' titles, but it could also imply that game buyers also want to some extent less violent games. I know for myself that I like variety -- I can't play a FPS for anymore than a few hours straight before I need to switch to another genre of game.
[*] Ok, so you do have to battle enemies here, but I see it being true from an historical persective -- and your main goal in these games was not to genocide the opposing culture, but mainly to defend your own. It's definitely hard to compare the battles in these games to a q3a deathmatch.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Have been researching vidgame history and found this blurb about Ralph Baer designing video games for the Pentagon in 1966, which led to the Magnavox Oddessy, Atari Pong, etc.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The first 15 years was boom and bust- new technology and titles followed by saturatation and boredom. US companies like Atari were victims. Japanese conglomerates have more staying power through the slow times. Are we beyond the cycles yet?
What's really amusing is that the ad for this talk says that he is also teaching a 1 credit class entitled "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Unabomber." That would really be good for a laugh.
--
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
In the United States, of course comic books are irrelevant. Almost all culture is irrelevant in the United States, but comic books, in particular, never recovered from the crusade waged against them in the United States in the 1950's.
The situation is considerably different in Asia.
Oh, I'm probably going to hear some American say next, "Oh, I've seen manga, they are just as stupid as American comics... and I wouldn't call porno a big advance." Americans know nothing about the role of comics in Asia or about the kind and variety of comic books they have in Asia, they only see the ones that get imported and translated for the American market. (Which is a very narrow market, kept in its pathetic ghetto.)
In Asia, comics are a vital, vibrant form of entertainment with a great deal of mass appeal. (And this goes beyond just Japan, to places like Thailand, for instance.) In America, they are teenage power fantasies, for the most part. (Heck, computer games have already gone beyond that, remember when Deep Blue beat Kasparov?)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
> ponytailed, hotpants-and-shades digital star of the l996 game,
Lara was wearing hotpants and shades? And she had a ponytail?
[/me runs the game]
Now, how many people who spend a lot of time on the net, or even the computer, are being told by their parents to come out and watch TV with them? When computers are actualy promoting an interactive medium of entertainment, much better then vegetating.
I don't know about you, but I got heavily into online bulliten boards (aka BBS) about 13 years ago. I used to spend most of my "tv time" in my bedroom, alone, logged onto various WWIV and Renegade boards reading and responding to posts... (which made slashdot a natural choice for me when BBSing started to die out)... anyway, the point is, I was repeatedly accused of being "addicted" to my computer, though I always argued that interactivity with other people's thoughts was a much more productive use of my time than watching ESPN (which is what my family spends most of their leisure time doing.)
My parents went so far in those days as to physically sever the cable from my monitor so that I had to splice it back together (in secret) whenever I wanted to logon.... or disabling the phone lines in our house. (I ran a 30 foot phone cable over to the neighbor's box.) Eventually, they got over it and let me be.
Now, years later, I'm out on my own, still relatively "obsessed" with computers, and the only real difference is that now, my parents are online too, so they can check email & sports stats while they're watching espn.
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
Cellphones, with all their features, are what made videogame market in Japan shrink by 30% in 1999.
Youngsters there prefer to pour their money into phone bills rather than new videogames.
Interaction between players is currently also the target of most videogames. Competing with others constitutes the main appeal.. but sometimes is not quite enough. Games like Quake III are great fun but turn out rather unfair unless you have a nice T1 line or local network. Other games like StarCraft work much better on the Internet but the verbal interaction is limited and often undesiderable (insults, lame players that beg you to ally so to achieve victory points). Also during those online experiences it's very rare to spot female players.. on the other hand, cellphone technology in Japan offers wider communication, silly but entertaining mini-games and plenty of chicks.
Now I'm curious to know what will happen to the US videogame industry if and when cellphones will catch up.
But most education and media institutions still refuse to take this new form of culture seriously, dismissing videogamers as either a trifling teen entertainment, or a corrosive influence on young minds.
Ya, but havent they been saying this since the 70's when stand up consoles (pong, asteroids...)strted appearing? all of the arguments, good and bad, seem to just be rehashing old ground from days gone by. Were just not poping our milk money into machines anymore. If your woried about a corrosive influence on young minds, it helps to pay attentin to what your kids are doing for a change.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
You've got a tank commander who has to co-ordinate about 10 things at a time, s/he basically has to watch 4 different displays at once, remember exactly where their turret is pointing, which way they are going, where their other 3 tanks are and where the enemy is and what each person in the tank is doing and supposed to be doing.... Now... who would you want to be that tank commander? somebody who's never done anything more than plunk their arse down in front of a tv, or someone who's played videogames most of their life and is used to dealing with multiple flows of information... I can tell you that the military chooses the second for very obvious reasons.
As well, both the CDN and US gov'ts are currently working on multiple simulations from a full VR flight sims to full VR and interactive first person shooters (using the halflife engine of all things, as a basis) designed to be linked up over high bandwidth comms for "team play" for training spec forces units.
When's the last time a TV managed to help national defence?
If the median age is really now 28, and there are more female players, why is it that just about anything I play on the internet (Quake, Diablo) is full of 12 year olds picking the female characters, naming them stupid things like "BigBoobs" or "SexFreak" and calling each other "fag"? And of course, when finding out I'm a girl, pestering me with "what do you look like?" and stuff.
Oh well, at least it gives me more incentive to take the railgun and castrate them with a slug...
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Back in the day, when you sat yourself down in front of the TV, your parents said too much of it will rot your brain. And they were correct, you were simply vegetating in front of the tube, not expressing any creativity.
Now, how many people who spend a lot of time on the net, or even the computer, are being told by their parents to come out and watch TV with them? When computers are actualy promoting an interactive medium of entertainment, much better then vegetating.
Video games are wonderful. I play them all the time. The big problem with them as far as I can see is not violence. The violence of video games is no more graphic or realistic than what kids see in movie or TV on a regular basis. In fact it is dramatically less realistic than the real world due to the limitations of computer graphics etc. Besides, most kids are smart enough to realize that these are games.
The problem is this, americas children and teenagers are overweight and getting fatter. This is a serious problem and the dramatic increase in video games/gaming isn't helping. Video games build problem solving and other skills, this is good. However, over use means a loss of hand-eye coordination and physical fitness. America as a nation needs to get outside an play some ball with its friends.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I don't know why I was born this way but I have just never liked games. I sort of like flight simulators, and my honey and I play Scrabble quite a bit. I was always one reformatting instead of getting thumb callouses.
Some friends of mine play all sorts of things. All the time. They live for it. A friend of mine here at work with whom I was just recently relating my gamelessness suggested that I keep it that way because games are like crack.
I enjoyed putting Gran Tourismo on easy, and just wheeling around for about a half-hour. That was it. I'm not trying to sound stuck up or something, it was just not my thing. I highly respect a friend of mine, Nathan. I used to work at a computer software store in High School, and this guy would return games the next day... sometimes even the same night. "Didn't like it. Beat it too quick." It seemed arrogant, but hey, we had a nice liberal return policy and I didn't care. Later I became friends with him, and on many occasions become very interested in the quality of plots he describes in games, like Siphen Filter and Rainbow Six. I tried to play these things, but for a non-gamer having been intrigued by an uber-gamer, I didn't have much fun.
I won't even mention how badly my ass has been kicked in Teken.
My point is, gaming should never be considered a waste. I equate gaming with how I learned Linux, or PHP. To me that was intriguing, and stimulating, and worthwhile... and honestly even if it sounds unproductive, I feel that games are the same thing for those that enjoy them. I mean... they are learning.
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...a few decades ago about comic books? You know, comic books are bad, they are frivolous junk food for the mind, they are bad for the imagination and make kids stupid. Comic books were wildly popular and the "adults" couldn't understand the attraction.
Well, comic books failed to wreck the youth of this country. But they also didn't, in simulated Katz-speak, "usher in a new paradigm of creative interactivity and illustrative expression that trashes all the stale old educational and institutional models." They wound up with their niche in popular culture. Sure, I wish my differential equations textbook was as engaging as a comic book or video game, but please. Anyone who thinks that every form of media should or could somehow contain the same excitement or interactivity that Tomb Raider does needs a serious reality check. "Thrills, chills, and mind-numbing strobe-light 3d effects - it's all part of Bob Vila's Home Carpentry video workshop!" Heck, writing code for video games doesn't even have that. The thrill of video games does not replace the satisfaction of human contact, the joy of creating, or the imagination invoked when reading a particularly good book.
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If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget 'em, because man, they're gone. -- Jack