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Up, Up, Down, Down: Part Two
In much the way the late anthropologist Margaret Mead predicted, the older generation and many of its leading institutions -- education, politics, media, education -- has unleashed a furious attack against gaming and its culture, so that the term has become synonymous with addiction, obsession, even violence.
Unlike any other cultural identifier, gaming is associated almost entirely with negative imagery in the non-virtual world, dividing notions of society and culture further. Gaming and its allegedly evil affects were central issues in the presidential election, and the notion of an amoral generation of thieves and narcissists crops up again and again in the public perception of computing and the Net, from hacking to free music.
The media cover technology poorly as a rule, but their shallow portrayal of gaming culture as destructive and profane is a particular scandal, more so all the time as gaming becomes sophisticated, creative and intellectually challenging.
This is the locus of the "moral panic," a severe societal response to some dramatic development that institutions don't understand and can't control, so therefore fear.
What characterizes a moral panic?
According to Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, authors of Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, the concept is defined by at least five crucial elements: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility: They involve:
- Heightened concern over the behavior of a particular group and the consequences of its behavior for the rest of society.
- Increased hostility toward the group believed to be engaging in questionable behavior.
- Agreement among a wide segment of society that the threat is serious, and caused by the group in question.
- Perceptions that the group is more dangerous than it really is, generating fear that's disproportionate to the threat.
- Sudden eruptions -- moral panics are by nature volatile -- that reappear from time to time and often, just as suddenly, subside.
On all five criteria, gaming qualifies as causing a moral panic. There is great concern about its consequences, sometimes said to involve everything from the violence of Columbine to distraction from schoolwork, athletics and other "healthy" activities. We see plenty of hostility towards gamers. The fear of gaming has always been wildly disproportionate to any real threat, and the panic over it is episodic, frequently triggered by incidents like school shootings or other media-transmitted scares.
The moral panic over gaming has also managed to obscure its growing social, cultural, even political signifance.
"Our toys, writ large, echo profound revolutions in simulation, the science of materials, and digital communication," author Mark Pesce writes in The Playful World, recently published by Ballantine Books.
"The technique of the Furby has been a hot topic of computer science for a dozen years; artificial life -- simulation of activity of living systems -- has taught us a lot about how we learn and grow into intelligence. Computers, which just a decade ago seemed useful only for word processors and spreadsheets, are now employed as digital gardens, where the seeds of mind grow into utterly upredictable forms."
Gaming has evolved far beyond play. Arguably the most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now, it's transforming the imaginations, attentions spans, reflexes and strategic thinking of an entire generation, perhaps even our neural systems themselves. Yet few people have bothered to study what this might mean.
With the release of Sony's PlayStation 2, writes Pesce, the founding chair of the Interactive Media Program at the University of California's School of Cinema-Television, "the machinery of infinite realities will be within the grasp of millions of children around the world. Unlike any videogame console released before it, the PS 2 will have the power to create realistic imaginings of breathtaking clarity. Million-dollar computers -- in l999! -- have only fractionally more power than the Play Station 2, which will challenge our ideas about simulation by making it look at least as real as anything else seen on a television screen."
But how many parents, business executives, educators, politicians or journalists recognize that so powerful and creative a force is now available to children? That future ideas about creativity, imagination, work -- and individual relationships to institutions -- will be shaped by such tools, just as they were by the PS2's more primitive predecessors, from the early Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to game-playing computers? As pundits sound alarms about how videogames are ruining children's moral lives, as both major presidential candidates did repeateadly, during the campaign -- who in our culture is preparing for the radical changes in imagination about to be unleashed?
Pesce is right, of course. The PS2, designed to connect to the Net, is a window into a larger universe. It could easily simulate a Furby or Mindstorms, and it creates as well a million other interesting forms, if only for the eyes and ears. In fact, says Pesce, the PS2 could well be seen as a spaceship for scouring the universe of ideas.
The cultural gap between the young and the old first widened noticeably in the l960s, when younger people turned their generational backs against their elders. The explosion of the Net and the Web, which have triggered a revolution in the way information and ideas move, has exacerbated that division. The Boomers talked a lot about revolution but didn't quite make one; younger Americans are making one but don't always seem to realize it.
Our civilization hasn't begun to come to terms with this split. Panicked moralists, pundits and authority figures point to all sorts of reasons, from the decline in the authority of parental figures to the influence of new media to the lack of discipline in schools, but the truth is there is no real understanding either of this widening chasm in our politics, or in our social and cultural consciousness.
Part Three: How does gaming change people?
more specifically: teamkilling in UT, but i got over it after a few months.
:(
with the new aimbot however i got hooked again and all i live for now is teamkilling AND having the most kills of my team...
The article makes a lot of assertions, and many of them need to be backed up with evidence. For example... "Gaming has evolved far beyond play." I don't buy this -- games, except in the euphemistic military sense, are devices for play. If they've 'evolved far beyond play' then they're not games anymore but something else. Since I don't see much productivity coming out of the games in question aside from possibly sharpened reflexes, I question your assertion. You might actually be right here, but you really need to back up this sort of statement. "The media cover technology poorly as a rule..." At best, this statement is overly broad. At least some of the media do an excellent job covering technology. Over the last nine years, WIRED has published countless well-written, thoroughly researched, and in-depth articles covering all aspects of technology. A number of newspapers have added technology sections. And then there's the web... Doesn't /. itself count as media?
"The cultural gap between the young and the old first widened noticeably in the l960s"
I think the 50's and the introduction of rock and roll provide a convenient counterexample to disprove this assertion. The 20's certainly saw a cultural gap as well.
"The Boomers talked a lot about revolution but didn't quite make one; younger Americans are making one but don't always seem to realize it."
This is laughable. Have you read nothing of the social revolution that was the civil rights movement that took place 35 years ago? Or the sexual revolution? The microprocessor was invented circa 1970, and the foundations for the Internet and for modern operating systems were laid in 1969. Are you telling me that Quake, Doom, and the like have changed society in any way CLOSE to what any single one of these events brought us?
Finally... Gee, I wonder why gaming might be associated with violence?
Let me just say that I've never been so thankful that my father refused to buy my family a Nintendo. I enjoy being out of JonKatz's pop culture loop, here. :)
-Dean
However, keep in mind that the civil rights act of 1964 occured _before_ the big protests of the era. The baby boom started in 1946. That makes the oldest boomer in 1964 18 years old. Personalities like Mario Savio at UC Berkeley, who finally eliminated the anti-political "speech codes" at the university came of age in a much more conservative era... before Vietnam became a major concern.
The "baby boomers" are best associated with the anti-war protests of the late 60s and early 70s (which disappeared after Nixon ended the draft), as well as the "sexual revolution."
The boomers _benefited_ from things like civil rights, desegregation, and the birth control pill (all late 50s to early 60s developments), but they did not create those new freedoms.
-Dean
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
You might want to check out the stats before stating "...most girls of said "entire generation" still don't play video games to any significant extent." According to Fox News about 40% of gamers are girls and they are playing the same games as the boys.
So that means back up the generational revolution.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
Gahhh.. It was (For 1 player) Up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right,b,a,start (For 2 players) Up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right,b,a,select,s tart
The select just made the game two players.
Vermifax
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Because 20 somethings play video games? People older than me play golf, which is just another game. My retired grandma plays bridge every day with her assisted living buddies. Same activity, just different format. You need a bit more info to support the idea that 20 somethings are acting less like adults and more like teenagers.
Vermifax
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I've read (somewhere) that part of the reason these heavily violent things can exist in Japan (and England and other European countries) is the homogeneous nature of these societies.
I dunno -- could be, I guess. It seemed kinda KKK-ish to me when I read it, but there may be a point there. I notice there aren't a lot of homicides in Episcopalian neighborhoods (at least, not on the news).
If you hang around people like yourself, you may be safer, but you're also pretty damn bored (it seems to me)...
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
I have been playing Quake for several years now. I have been exposed to the idiots that have been playing along w/me. There are several of them that actually believe that the game enviornment is better than real life. They think that their "Quake friends" are better than their "real friends". They hold practices at 8pm EST on Friday nights. They have weekly matches at 9pm EST. They are giving up their regular daily lives for a video game that is 4+ years old. I personally don't understand it.
--> And, yes, it was uphill both ways to school back then...
Thru 30 feet of snow while walking on our hands backwards. And by gum, we were grateful for it.
It's scary when you catch yourself doing this unwittingly.
the young are increasingly coming to believe that older people have less and less to teach them.
I used the think this way too.....
What I didn't know, is exactly how much, I didn't know.
--fatboy
We're talking about an atrociously high risk of heart disease, and a lifespan that is altogether too likely to be twenty years shorter than for healthy people.
Yea, those last twenty year where you piss and shit on yourself. Mmmm, I really want to live a healthy life to look forward to THAT! No thanks!! I will live fat and happy!
--fatboy
This article pushed me over the top.
Katz is on crack
The technique of the Furby has been a hot topic of computer science for a dozen years; artificial life -- simulation of activity of living systems -- has taught us a lot about how we learn and grow into intelligence. Computers, which just a decade ago seemed useful only for word processors and spreadsheets, are now employed as digital gardens, where the seeds of mind grow into utterly upredictable forms."
Right. That MP3 player at your elbow is about to rip your heart out and giggle while eating it.
Gaming has evolved far beyond play. Arguably the most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now, it's transforming the imaginations, attentions spans, reflexes and strategic thinking of an entire generation, perhaps even our neural systems themselves. Yet few people have bothered to study what this might mean.
Right. Interacting through virtual worlds is warping our minds. Are you not the same man who defended virtual killing as an amusing pass time about a year ago?
With the release of Sony's PlayStation 2, writes Pesce, the founding chair of the Interactive Media Program at the University of California's School of Cinema-Television, "the machinery of infinite realities will be within the grasp of millions of children around the world. Unlike any videogame console released before it, the PS 2 will have the power to create realistic imaginings of breathtaking clarity. Million-dollar computers -- in l999! -- have only fractionally more power than the Play Station 2, which will challenge our ideas about simulation by making it look at least as real as anything else seen on a television screen."
Right. "Infinite realitys". "[C]hallenge our ideas about simulation". Are you really that obsessed with the Great New Thing, or are you screwing a PR bunny? Really, I'd like to know.
But how many parents, business executives, educators, politicians or journalists recognize that so powerful and creative a force is now available to children? That future ideas about creativity, imagination, work -- and individual relationships to institutions -- will be shaped by such tools, just as they were by the PS2's more primitive predecessors, from the early Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to game-playing computers? As pundits sound alarms about how videogames are ruining children's moral lives, as both major presidential candidates did repeateadly, during the campaign -- who in our culture is preparing for the radical changes in imagination about to be unleashed?
Right. "But what about the children"?
With a twist of, "Corporations are r00tng your mind!".
Swirl. Serve with a twist of lemon.
Pesce is right, of course. The PS2, designed to connect to the Net, is a window into a larger universe. It could easily simulate a Furby or Mindstorms, and it creates as well a million other interesting forms, if only for the eyes and ears. In fact, says Pesce, the PS2 could well be seen as a spaceship for scouring the universe of ideas.
Um, OK.
I'd tend to call the PS2 a bit better than the last round of kit. Um. What's the problem again?
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
unfortunately, he was a little too broad.
because night trap alludes to sexuality, all games must suffer.
(I admit, without physical proof, my statements are pretty hollow. so if anyone really wants me to scan the magazines and newspaper clippings, I'll dig 'em up, and find a scanner somewhere to post 'em.)
Unfortunately, Lieberman's Crusade spawned the "great video game violence controversy" that created the ratings board for video games... I'm just grateful that the morality these people were pushing only went that far.
however, you're right on the statements that JonKatz used to come to his conclusions. they're not even largely grounded in fact. The PS2 won't change anything any more than the Super NES or Atari 2600 did. but that really was arbitrary to the point he was trying to make.
The defination of 'obese' has grown larger (haha) over the past fifteen years, too. Yes, there are more truely obese kids, but not 'double'. We're just calling thinner kids obese. Medically, redefining obese is good, but, statistically, it screws everything up.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
This is not meant as a flame, although I'm sure many of you here will disagree with me.
What is the point of the video games people play these days? They bore the hell out of me.
I was talking with my girlfriend about this the other day. I don't get it. She doesn't either. And we're both weird and geeky... yet extremely bored by video games. Why do people spend most of their free time playing these games like Quake?
Are you learning anything? How is it rewarding?
I suppose the standard answer will be "because it's fun/entertaining"... can you explain how? They all seem the same to me. What is the thrill of sitting down for 3 hours (or more) to just run around and shoot aliens?
I used to be into video games back in the late 80's and early 90's when games were simple, and took less than 3 hours to finish. Now most games these days are just crazy, taking days or months to finish.
What about the real world outside? Do you hardcore gamers actually go out and walk around and appreciate the real world around you? Do you prefer to interact in real life with other people?
I guess the reason I don't play games is the same reason I don't really watch TV much... I feel like I'm doing absolutely nothing, my life just ticking away...
Please, somebody, explain what it is that attracts you to video games and what satisfaction you get from it. I'm (and I'm sure others) are genuinely curious.
Ben
Sure there are a few oddballs who are covinced that Doom et. al. are a tool of Satan, but most reasonable people recognize that games are just games.
I demur. While not many people think of Doom as a tool of Satan, MOST people think of it as an inciter of violence.
The classic example of the child that watches cartoons and believes he's Superman is frequently used. Only a small share of the population remember that we're not children, though. As if that weren't enough, consider that children _know_ in their hearts that they're not Superman, in ana analogy to the youngster that wants to believe in Santa because it feels good.
But a society that questions itself is the only healthy kind of society.
One thing is to criticize. Another is to attack without basis...
Flavio
1) Gaming is not entirely viewed as bad.. Myst was never accused of being violent!
Neither was Tetris. Myst played by society's rules.
You are trying *WAYYY* to hard to tie this to hellmouth.
It's the same thing. People may not say it all the time because they're a ashamed of themselves. It feels and looks stupid to criticize a game. After all, it's not REAL, is it?
The idea's out there, though.
I'm really starting to get sick and tired of "Waaah.. I'm a misunderstood genius, Waaaah.. they pick on me cuz I'm a geek, WAaaaah.. they are mean to me at school so I'm gonna blow it up" crap.. GET OVER IT!
True. Geekdom is becoming mainstream, anyway. Technology is suddenly cool and the misunderstanding is fading away. In any case, we've had enough on the subject.
Flavio
The title you're looking for is "Dark Dungeons" and is one of the most laughable of all of Chick's tracts (no mean feat either) I suggest the excellent version with commentary at http://www.xentertainment.com
> The Boomers talked a lot about revolution but
> didn't quite make one; younger Americans are
> making one but don't always seem to realize it.
Hmm. The Boomers, or at least certain active
members of that generation, effected more
revolutions than anything video gaming will
do within any predictable time (even with
promises of opening new vistas of virtual
exploration, etc.).
Let's consider just one, as an example: civil
rights. Boomers gave us student activists, people
working to register black Southerners to vote, and
a groundswell of support for a more equal
treatment of humans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
is just one of the major effects of this and
others' actions. The gains from this were much
more significant than, say, the damage the DMCA
will cause.
Let's try to keep a sense of scale.
I believe that most of the 'adults' who are creating the moral panic, just need to sit back, relax and play some video games with their kids. Not only will they see that games aren't so bad, they will help bridge the gap between the older and younger generations. Spending time with your kids, doing activities which your kids like, is a good thing, and it also allows you to be there for them and to help them learn to distinguish between the gaming world and reality. This is the first step to making the gap between the generations smaller. Understanding your kids and their interests is one of the key elements of being a good parent. Ignorantly, passing the blame onto gaming, or other media is not.
Needless to say, they were a bunch of idiots. I wonder if it's the same people who have just grown up, or if it's actually a new collection of idiots in charge of the recent anti-video game response. Hell, I wonder what George Bush thought about the Doors... because we all know what he thinks about all of us with our " darkened hearts " from using the net.
--
RumorsDaily
Should we be in a "moral panic" because youth are wasting time on entertainment instead of doing to learning something useful? I would rate this a 4 on the panic scale. Youth have always tried to avoid being useful from time immemorial.
Should we be in a "moral panic" because youth are learning violent and sexually abusive behavior from games? I would rate this a 6 on the panic scale. I simply don't accept the argument that there is no effect if you view and (virtually) do this behavior over and over and over again. How else do you learn except by watching and practice?
We realize they're just games. But too many times have I heard people at work/home/skewl/bars disparrage gaming/ers. I don't think this is anything new. Prior to gaming on computers, it was gaming with friends ala d&d. That was evil, and satanic, and violent, and kids ended up 'killing themselves' because their character died *riiiight*. People as a large group that don't get it though...
The fact of the matter is, it's a decent release, noone gets hurt (besides ppl that are mentally damaged to begin with). Sure many popular games are violent, but we humans are hunters (& gatherers). Hell they let us have guns, but we can't use them. Sometymes it's a little better to go get fragged a few times, rather than respond to that email, much less painful.
Society questioning itself is fine, but when Uncle Mom wants you! to stop anything that might be dangerous. Someone has to tell her, let go, we'll be ok. Too bad I don't know anyone that she'll listen to. Good thing the gaming industry is a buncha fat capitalists pushing innovation to the next level, they could buy enough votes to keep em in business.
Secondly, several commentators have noted that the Dreamcast (which cost less than a million dollars in 1999) may be from a practical standpoint a superior console (http://www.segaweb.com/features/ps2tech.html), yet despite this fact, Dreamcast users seem to have not yet achieved the digital nirvana predicted for PS2 users. It must be the trippy black and blue case.
Admittedly, it is amusing to think of John Carmack as the Shaman of the global village.
The platonic reality is that general purpose computers and the hackers that use them are what is transforming society beyond recognition, computer games are simply one of the most accessible and thus the most tangible shadows on the cave wall. To extend the analogy past the breaking point, the PS2 is a corporatist shadow puppet show on the cave wall.
----
Moral panic is something America has experienced time and again throughout our history, but it seems to be at a heightened level lately.
The extreme level is exactly what concerns me. I am going to school in S.E. Kansas. I know people personally who feel that theories of evolution are immoral; the internet is literally the devil's spawning ground; & some groups of people here won't own T.V.s because of fear of cultural contamination
Gaming has evolved far beyond play. Arguably the most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now
Gaming may be a part of the changes in culture that are occuring because of increases in computing power. To say, however, that there is no more important cultural force in the entire world is a very broad statement. Even in the United States, not every child has a computer, and certainly every child does not play computer games. Some children (including teenagers) play soccer, some concentrate on studies, others play musical instruments. Many children in less developed countries are so busy worrying about surviving that they have no idea what computer games are.
I will agree that there are major cultural changes taking place in the world. However, you seem to be excluding a large portion of the culture on this planet in forming your opinions.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
With out one you can't have the other. So they gamers basically put clothes on the developers back and food on the table. They are also the people that decide what the developers create. ONE
You state that "The creativity and imagination unleashed have been from the designers and developers" and forget to mention them as "players". I mean it's simple, you can't design and develop a game and then not play it. TWO
Games might not benefit you (even though inadvertently they do; I mean you aren't running a 386 to play the latest and greatest) but no one is saying that you must play them or reap any of the fruits from what the gaming industry has offered up to this point. In any event IMO I believe that not only do games help with strategic thinking but they also are great relievers of stress. I also believe your comment wasn't thought through. THREE
Have a good day.
If you're going to be a social commentator, then do a little homework. Go back to the rock-and-roll era *BEFORE* you tell me, "But that was different!" Look at the moral panic then; it wasn't limited to the music, naturally, but to the whole fabric of social change wherein we younger people were migrating away from the ethic and mores of the WW II era. Our parents' cohort had nothing to offer us. Nothing. At that time, rather than "addiction, obsession and violence" it was "addiction, obsession and sex." The reality was quite different, but the social change was a reality. As always happens, the fifties' upheaval greased the skids for the much more publicized sixties' upheaval. There was even *more* sex (perceived) in the sixties!
What you don't know might not kill you, but what I know could.
Isn't that about the funniest thing you've ever heard? I could barely believe that Gates wrote the game I was so nostalgic for. I certainly didn't know who he was back when I was playing it as a kid. I found that out in the very interesting interview that google popped up with Bill Gates. Unfortunately, getting dos 1.1 to run on modern hardware is apparently nontrivial, so I'll have to wait until I get my hands on an 8088 again...
Walt
A "good christian mother" drives her car into a lake and kills her children, including an infant.
Stupid people do stupid things, this has always been the case.
Middle-aged day-trader shoots up an office center.
Again, same as above. Did you know a child shot up his entire school....in the late 1700's. These things have always been happening, human's crack after awhile, it's human nature, not a "moral panic"
Decades of spousal and child abuse in America.
Again, always been around, in fact, I would guess it has gotten better in the past few decades.
Blow jobs in the white house by an intern, with a married president.
Oh no, an unfaithful president. John Adams had an affair with his slave. It is rumored Washington has several affairs. Rumored that Kennedy slept with Marilyn Monroe. Again, always been happeneing.
So, what's the point? I agree video games are just that, games. But none of these other things are "moral panics" either. And, while we're at it, who's moral's are we talking about. A christian set of morals? A western world set of morals? Moral's differ person to person.
- *Normality Is The Root of All Evil*
EOM
i don't think its valid to not cheat if not doing so ruins the gaming experience. regardless of the effect on someone else.
cheating is bad. maybe we should just filter out the word cheat from everything, so nobody will know about it.
Ok, maybe the sequencing is wrong, but Pokemon, IMO saved Nintendo from being totally blown away by Sony.
I mostly agree with this paragraph:
As for the rest of it...well it's not so much that I think that it's wrong as it is that I think it's being way overstated. Like making Mount Everest out of an anthill.I don't think people's reactions to video games in general meet the requirements for "moral panic" (are those like kernel panics? ;)) mentioned in the article. I will grant you that people have reacted rather negatively to first person shooters and (in the past, at least) to D&D, but {first_person_shooters, RPGs} is a proper subset of the set Gaming. i.e. (fps && D&D) != Gaming
Even when it comes to fps && D&D, I don't think we've quite met the standard (given in the article) for moral panic. When it comes to gaming in general, we certainly haven't. If people are so terribly concerned, why aren't they trying to ban the sale of PS2's? What about the upcoming D&D movie? (my friends and I are going to K.C. to see it--if the Christian Coalition attacks us, I'll be sure to let ya know.)
I think Katz has a couple nice ideas in there somewhere, but not really enough info to flesh out a three-piece article. The Jargon File defines this kind of article as content-free.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
An interesting collection of essays, with references to D&D and moral panics, is "The Satanism Scare". (I forget the editors.) Despite the name, these are essays analyzing various elements of the interest in Satanism during the '80's (remember those Geraldo episodes?) I found them an interesting investigation of a brief media panic, that has left only vague and uncertain memories for most people, of the "wasn't there something about some kid who (insert disturbing behavior or tragedy here)" variety.
Unlike any videogame console released before it, the PS 2 will have the power to create realistic imaginings of breathtaking clarity. Million-dollar computers -- in l999! -- have only fractionally more power than the Play Station 2, which will challenge our ideas about simulation by making it look at least as real as anything else seen on a television screen.
The PS2, designed to connect to the Net, is a window into a larger universe. It could easily simulate a Furby or Mindstorms, and it creates as well a million other interesting forms, if only for the eyes and ears. In fact, says Pesce, the PS2 could well be seen as a spaceship for scouring the universe of ideas.
These types of statements are exasperating. The PS2 isn't the second coming, people. The hardware is only as good as the software written for it, and the hardware itself isn't much more powerful than (if even as powerful as) current PCs and the other next-generation consoles. Anyone who thinks the PS2 is going to change the world, gaming or otherwise, in one fell swoop hasn't paid any attention to the evolution of games for the past twenty-five years.
I'm 28, and therefore 3 years too old to know anything, but this 'moral panic' about games is the same 'moral panic' about games that they had over 20 years ago with the atari 2600. If games haven't become part of the 'culture' by now, they probably never will.
Some of you may not like what I'm about say, but I have to say it - look outside of the USA. In the UK, it is very, very common for people to own sony playstations. We rarely hear anything about gaming being morally wrong. It's just something people do.
Ok, another part of the UK's 'culture' is often blammed as being morally wrong when it comes to luring children into violence - namely the violent VHS tape like the Child's Play series. For some reason, which I have never figured out, the video tape, as oppossed to the video game, is the easiest thing to blame when children kill in the UK - as oppossed to the parents/educators etc.
So, what I have to say is that video games (like home video) have been around for more than a generation. Any moral outrage at them is by a small, yet very vocal, community who want to press thier views on the majority (as the prohibitionists did in the 1920s), using Video Games/Home Video/Alcohol etc as a 'demon' to scare people into following thier beliefs.
Like I said, there is nothing new here. As for young people making a revolution - yeah right. All I see of young people is that they are doing the same stuff we did - perhaps black clothing, piercings etc. or even better trousers with wide legs which seems to be in amongst the 'young' at the moment - how many times has this been in and out of fashion? Or the times I've heard badly done covers of 80's songs on MTV:UK (New Music? I don't think so). The young aren't in the middle of a revolution - they're retreading the past. Was I in a revolution when I logged on to a bbs in the late 80's? Was I in a revolution when I tried to look different from my parents (who as boomers, tried to look different from thiers). Was I truley in a revolution when I played with my atari, let alone my nintendo that came after it years later? No more so than my grandparents using the telephone, listening to the radio and wearing the latest fasions of the 1920's.
TK
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
"...when you can quote a guy..."
And if you had bothered to read my comment, you would have noticed that I was clearly complaining about Katz quoting that guy.
"...Million-dollar computers -- in l999! -- have only fractionally more power than the Play Station 2..."
Katz, you know enough about tech to know that this comment complete crap. How can you expect us to take you seriously when you can quote a guy who spouts drivel like this, expecting us to believe that the Playstation 2 is some sort of miracle machine that can revolutionize our lives?
One thing I do like about Katz, he always makes the rest of us feel smarter!
This whole moral panic this is interesting, but I have two things to comment on
1) Moral panic is a clever synonym (damn this english language) for labeling the attitudes of the older generation towards the younger generation.
2) There is no "panic", this is the way its always been.
Humans by nature reject change overall. The only humans that do are human maverics in their fields(either philosophically, economically, politically, or scientifically), or young people. The young have no reference to "the way things were". Therefore when you change something, its no big deal. The older you are and the longer things have been a certain way for you, the more likely you will reject something different.
This isn't panic, this is a refusal to analyze and understand.
My son loves Pokemon. Personally I can do without them. But I understand (perhaps too well, it's scary) why my son enjoys them. I buy them for him because its a good sane collecting hobby, it de-emphasizes bloody violence for good old fashioned rough-housing and competition (you'd be surprised how kids can easily understand the differences in these concepts), and it gives him something in common with a lot of kids he wouldn't otherwise have.
My grandmother doesn't understand anime or Pokemon because her brain refuses to accept an attempt at analysis.
This is the human condition and it has existed for eons. Its not something new. Nor it is a panic.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
i thought it was just one "B, A" not two. also, later Konami games changed it to "... B A Select Start" .. that crazy Select threw us all off for minutes! :)
- j
I Beg to differ. Yes, they are around us, but they wouldnt (and dont) know an ethernet dongle from a modem dongle. Maybe I'm just bizarre, but I find that satisfying, in a way, that I'm bottom of the food chain (second level hardware tech, onsite contractor) yet the entire operation of their multi-million dollar company hinges on me. And yes, I do see the people who whupped my arse in school now, and they are very very nice to me. If they arent, I get my boss, who was also a geek in high-school, and he makes *their* lives a living hell for a while. It all works out in the end.. Karma takes a while, but it gets there.
I'm warmed, from the heart, every time I hear "All I did was install AOL 7.. I know I wasnt supposed too.. but then nothing worked.. am I going to get in trouble?".. *GRIN*
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Umm.. Jon?
A few *more* points on this:
YOu state that the generational gap appeared in the 60's when the younger generation turned it's back on it's parents. YOu seem to be forgetting one important point here.
VIETNAM! "young people" were turning thier backs because that older generation was drawing them by birthdate to send them into a meat grinder from which they likely wouldnt return for a cause they didn't believe in. That is a much greater stimulus for rebellion than a video game.
Another thing to remember, that which is credited for the "change".. rock and roll, drugs, the tune in-turn on-drop out TV culture.. co-evolved over the previous ten years, and became a tool for them to use in their rebellion.
However, they *were* rebelling against something specific.. a very real fear and chance that they might be chosen by the bean counters to die.. rather than not being allowed to have a game, or not being allowed to have the credit card to go to the mall. There is a world of difference here.
At 31 years old, all I can say is my generation and the ones closely following it are in a unique situation.. we have never seen a war in which anyone who didnt *want* to go had to go... that is a galvanizing thing that most young people today dont realize, and cannot imagine. But I think that if it came to that point, (and it well could, viewing the middle east right now) I think Video Games would be the *last* form of rebellion or back turning going on.. overthrowing the government would be much more likely.
I think my generation and those slightly younger are actually bright enough to realize that they dont *have* to follow the rules if they dont want to, and that is not the influence of games or movies, it is the influence of everyday life.. how many times does one have to see a high profile celeb or politician slide on charges that someone you know has gotten hung on before one realizes that it is possible to say "screw the system" and make it stick?
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
If the stats have changed that much, right on! I will gladly eat my words (Last I heard the high estimate was 25%, and that was from '97). But I'm still skeptical. How does Fox News define a gamer? It could range from anyone who's ever picked up a controller to people who spend every spare waking moment smashing buttons. And are they talking about adults or kids?
There's also the issue that, regardless, successful games are still generally made by guys for guys... at best, games are very gender-segregated, just like toys. And my issue is, I can't help but think that will put some kind of a crimp on that huge potential and impact of video games that Katz is writing about.
Female gamers play the same games as men, but once you've outgrown or outplayed the rather juvenile and unchallenging "girl games", there's not a lot of alternatives. Not that I think I'd want to see a "women's game" put out by the industry as it is now, if the current crop of "girl games" are any kind of indication... (Martha Stewart's Garage Sale Shopdown! "Fight for the antique table lamps, but watch out for the radioactive Fiesta ware!")
Arguably the most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now, it's transforming the imaginations, attentions spans, reflexes and strategic thinking of an entire generation, perhaps even our neural systems themselves.
One issue: most girls of said "entire generation" still don't play video games to any significant extent.
If they do, it's an utterly different experience from what Katz is talking about, and certainly subject to much less moral panic. Perhaps not deservingly so... most such titles are obsessed with consumerism, appearance and conformity in ways that can arguably have more real negative effects on a kid in the long run than some fantasy violence, but they're socially sanctioned as "educational".
I know that "girl games" are just a small fraction of the industry, and the lack-of-female-gamers issue can be tiresome, but it's hard to have a generational revolution when (as yet) only half the generation is even there to see it.
That which is unknown is feared
That which is feared is avoided
That which is avoided will remain unknown
The unknown will continue to grow and deviate from which was once largely unknown to something completely alien to the group that fails to comprehend it. Thus making fear become panic.
A bit off topic from that part is that people always use historical or cultural trivia to "prove" that kids aren't learning and then blame it on games. For example: "Kids don't even know who Cathrine Hepburn is!" (quote from my reletives). My reply: "Do you know how to burn a CD-r?". General cultural knowledge is often confused with common sense, when this happens age gaps widen at astonishingly fast rates. Often this evolves into culture rifts where even older technical people end up shunning younger non-technical people.
This is the point where gaming is about to be. As gamers grow into maturity and pass it on those who fear it become thought of as hermits and even outsiders of the main group.
Games are not going to go away, they just provide a different way to have enjoyment.
Often videogames are said to "increase aggression" yet no comparison is done to mainstream sports. If someone claimed football didn't "increase aggression" I'd wonder what drugs they're taking.
It's okay to not understand something, so long as you do not fear it, but accept that you do not understand.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Good old Nes 8 bit games ... The Konami cheat code is practically cultural knowledge.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
The first time rollerskate arena's came into popularity they were lambasted as being demonic temples where child rapists gather to rape the children at play.
when comic books were popularized, there was a massive campaign against them. They formed the comic code that many people still adhere to, but most dont.
I used to have an essay i did on this for my entertainment in america class. I was the only gamer in the class and i was constantly on the defense over topics like quake clans and fighting games.
Gee look. something that brings different people all over the world together in a friendly competition. BUT ITS EEVUUL. most of them havnt even played any games but were trashing doom and quake as worthless garbage.
oops, im ranting..
Anyway, there is nothing unfamiliar about the trouble popular media has with videogames. It will calm down in a few years.
Sorry katz, this isnt the revolution your looking for... move along.
no
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
If the great contribution of the Internet and the new media is to offer an interactive experience, lots of forms of art could evolve toward gaming. For instance, some musicians have experimented with music where the user changes some parameters as the piece proceeds.
You want to talk about Pokemon being dangerous? This'd be a good thing to go off on... *grin*
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
God, I CANNOT believe I remember this. I haven't played one of those games in 10+ years.
Isn't it UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, B, A, START ?
That's just weird, if I got that right.
I remember using that in the game "Contra" to get 30 or 50 lives or something.
Oddly enough, that is the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of the article, too.
My memory failed me. Oh well. Good thing I haven't been in a life or death situation where I had to cheat in an old Konomi game.
Yet again, we have an intelligent message modded down as a "troll". "Troll" seems to be by far the most abused label around here. Really, you could interpret any message as a "troll", even this one, if you're so inclined. It's just a convenient excuse to mod down anything you don't want to see.
My suggestion: get rid of the troll mod entirely.
I think every one has a fair grasp of what is real and what is only fantasy.
The people that you are referring to, the people who become completely entangled in fantasy, still know how to distinguish reality. These are the people that are so disgusted with reality that they choose to keep a wall of separation between themselves and reality.
Perhaps if society and reality weren't so grim and disturbing, then people wouldn't mind living in them.
Society should concentrate on fixing reality not fantasy.
--Ryan
"And if I could change the future,
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
look at Japan. The most violent anime, twisted porn, and violent video games. Yet a low crime rate.
The thing is, I really don't think I'd call Japanese culture "healthy." To me it seems like the violent Japanese media doesn't spark wild behavior because the conformist and repressive Japanese culture overpowers it.
As a completely off topic comment, do you know who wrote DONKEY?
:)
Bill Gates.
C=64
This article uncritically assumes that the difference in perspective between young and old - the so-called generation gap - is somehow a new phenomenon (if you can call something that supposedly started in the '60s new anymore). Baloney! This is as old as humankind, and has been recorded ever since people have been writing.
Just because people keep repeating such nonsense doesn't mean it's true
LOL. Lets see, someone who was sixteen in 1956 would be... umm... sixty today, about the age of many of the people shouting 'moral perversity'. An interesting thought, that. I hope that when i'm sixty i will remember this.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
As someone with a great deal of interest and study time in both video game history and sociology, the topic of the article fascinates me. I enjoyed reading it thoroughly. However, even though slashdot readers are an absurdly irrascible lot, the problem people are complaining about here with JonKatz' writings is real. At the end of every article, I have to rethink real quick and strip out any bold claims or sensationalistic points in order to make sure I learned something objective. It's similar to reading analyses by Jupiter or Forrester, you have to parse out the sensationalism and keep the clean fact and solid conclusion. Here's the big plus I can say about Katz, his finger is definitely on the pulse of what I'm interested in topic-wise, even if I don't agree with his execution.
Lord loves a workin' man. Don't trust whitey. See a doctor and get rid of it.
Not sure that vodka is the best thing. Any half-decent bourbon on the rocks will do Katz far better.
That being said, I agree. Send him by sometime in May. I've got a spare flyrod or six and I guarantee that a six-pound rainbow on a five-weight will shake him out of his rut.
Or make it next autumn and pheasants. We can, after all, use many different methods to lighten up this gentleman.
All of these are good examples of stuff to do. I don't think anyone is arguing that you can lead a full life with gaming as your only activity. The point is that gaming is active, not passive entertainment. I wouldn't say that any of the things that you listed are better than gaming, or visa-versa. The attractive thing about your list is variety. Those things, collectively, are better than gaming is alone. Well, duh. ;)
I would also include on-line gaming as a social activity. Limited as it is, participation (not just number of players but interaction amoung them) increases every month.
So, go ahead, after you put your girlfriend to bed, stay up late playing TFC.
-Brian
"Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness." -Robert A. Heinlen
You missed the point... Gaming is active entertainment, meaning that is requires active engagement. Not that it is physically active. You are not entertained by a video game, rather you entertain yourself with a video game.
"Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness." -Robert A. Heinlen
Others have made the arguement that Katz is exagerating the importance of the generation gap in this article. That this has happened before (Prohibition, the Jazz age, Rock and Roll, the Hippie movement, etc), and is merely the latest incarnation of a continual cycle. I would argue that the same can be said for your comments. Our grandparents generation had th esame worries about our parents generation. There was serious concern in the heads of the World War II generation that these "Hippies" would one day inherit the riegns of power and have to run the country. Well, they did. The country doesn't seem to be much worse off than it was... When the Twenty somethings and teenagers of today take power we will be in the same boat as our parents are now.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I know exactly what you mean. I can't play counterstrike anymore because its turning me "violent". She says she is scared of me, and violent games, if I keep playing them, will eventually make me do violent acts. I have no idea where she is getting this, as I have never physically hurt her, and don't act as if I would.
It's the same thing with my music, my books, my movies... everything. If I am ever interested in anything, she is against it. I haven't really figured it out quite yet, but I will be 18 soon. Then I can do what I want with my life.
First, this passage:
Gaming has evolved far beyond play. Arguably the most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now, it's transforming the imaginations, attentions spans, reflexes and strategic thinking of an entire generation, perhaps even our neural systems themselves. Yet few people have bothered to study what this might mean.
I doubt that gaming is arguably the most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now. The Internet as a whole takes the award for that one way before gaming does at this point. Also, what's up with you claiming that gaming is a conduit into another universe where imaginations and intellects soar? Last time I played Quake I definitely thought it was fun, but I didn't think that it was expanding my mind to any great level.
My second critique has to do with the moral panic idea. When I think of moral panic I think about senator McCarthy. I don't particularly think about Joseph Lieberman. The reason for this is that McCarthy had a following while Lieberman's following at this point is very slim. Not only that, but the people who argue that video games might cause violence might not entirely be incorrect. Certainly it isn't the video games themselves causing the violence directly, but they could be increasing the frequency and intensity of violence as part of a greater phenomenon in the media-based culture, where violent imagery is culturally legitimized every second. I'm not saying it's true, I'm just saying it's a logical possibility.
One final thought. Isn't it more plausible that by sitting in your room all day and playing video games with yourself with no other social interaction that you're just developing a high level of narcissism? Here's how the DSM-IV defines Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
- has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
- is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
- believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
- requires excessive admiration
- has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
- is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
- lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
- shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Not that I'm trying to say that video games aren't a great new form of expression and could lead to some really cool stuff in the future...I just think you're going a little far, Katz, and expecting too much from an as of now very limited field.That's what Jon said in his first article, more-or-less. The implication of his statements regarding Teenagers needing the wisdom of their elders less, and finding online has, indeed, caused them to "morally age" much faster than they otherwise would.
Only being a quarter-century old myself, I can't recollect many teachings from my "elders" That even applied to my lifestyle - then or now. I don't think he's wrong, just that he left this important fact out. Yes, the gap between the "older" generation and ourselves is widening. But at the same time, the next generation is definately closing in as well.
Elvis Presley was only shown from the waist up on Ed Sullivan because his gyrating freaked out oldsters. So what? He still became a millionaire and "The King."
Gaming is the "scourge of society" and going to ruin a generation. Every parent knows it! Yeah, right. Have you tried buying a PS2 lately? Do you think they have all been bought by kids who "get it," or have many been bought by parent who don't? How many preteens have some kind of gaming console? Do you think they all bought them themselves? Or did some of those panicked parents buy them for their kids?
I am one of those "oldsters" raising the next generation. I have a circle of friends, most of whom are also raising kids. None of us are panicking about gaming, even those if us (unlike me) who have never been into it themselves.
Maybe I'll change my tune when my kids grow into teenagers. But it seems to me that every generation panics about their teenagers. I'll panic too, I'm sure, but probably not about gaming, because I'll be right there with my kids, enjoying the latest and greatest.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
There are other sections on Slashdot??? Geez I guess I'm not the only one who may have just realized this, seeing the number of posts.
-- b0rk.
First the
"HURD is still coming" and now, "the young are increasingly coming".
I somewhat understand the "moral panic" out there...
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Video games are just a modern form of art, and merly reflect our feelings as a culture. If our media is violent, then we as a culture are looking for it.
And parents getting all pissed of because they are convinced the "violent" video games have turned their child into a monster is the dumbest thing that I've ever herd of. You can see more realistic and graphic material on the nightly news.
I'm the consumer, I have the money, and I have the say in this situation. so f*ck 'em
-makoffee
A lot of parents will be buying video games for their children this year. If a sizable portion of society honestly thought games were very harmful, I doubt that would be the case. It would be a small portion of parents who bought their children games, and they would be stigmatized as being bad parents, isn't what's happening at all.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
But I am arguing for MORE censorship, even so. Not like banning, or burning, or Big Brother, but more SELF-censorship. As more and more parents get worried, if they see the people that create games do nothing, they will turn to the government for help, almost surely overreact, and the gaming industry will be shackled.
On the other hand, if companies take action NOW, and make normal parents (not the Right-Wing extremist parents) content, they will defuse this whole growing situation. The warning labels on games have been a good step. (I would like to see less age-discrimination and more labels like 'mature audiences only', but that is a separate discussion).
This is only one good step. What the industry needs to do now is to advertise these warnings more prominently, from television, to the stores they sell these games to, and let everyone know that they are actively interested in helping parents choose games appropriate to their children. This is GOOD censorship. If parents feel that they have the power over their children's lives, then the situation over gaming violence will defuse, without game banning, and industry restrictions, and nasty unconstitutional stuff like that.
------------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
Can't we have one discussion about the socialogical concept of "moral panic" and cultural identification without someone quoting Goode and Ben-Yehuda?
Reality, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
I'm sure there's some old foggies out there that might remember the details, but back in the fifties, pinball was seen as a source of juvenile delinquincy, along with comic books (led to homosexuality don't you know). Police would actually go on raids where they would bust up machines! Crazy!!!
In the future, when the robots are doing all the real work, economic and social standing will be determined for most people by how well they play online games. Heck, some people can already earn a fair amount of money selling EverQuest, Diablo 2 and DragonRealms items. Online gaming will be the location for most of anything that can be called "society".
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Society goes through phases of fearing for the morals of its youth. The imagined threats seem to come from two common sources: Drugs and Nerds.
Nerd threats:
- Comic books (50's)
- D&D (80's)
- Video games (late 90's/early 00's)
Drug threats
- Alcohol (20's)
- Reefer madness (60's)
- Cocaine (late 70's/early 80's)
- Crack cocaine (late 80's/early 90's)
- Anabolic steroids (late 80's/early 90's)
Along the way there were attempts to drum up threats that never really caught on (does anyone remember the threats about "Ice" (meth) during the late 80's/early 90's, that all the news outlets claimed would be a blight worse than crack?)
I'm not sure what this pattern means, other than the fact that the media needs crises to write about in order to sell papers or page hits, but it's nothing new. Adults/parents will worry that the destructive behavior of a minority of youths translate into a broad threat to their precious little ones. The only real threat I've seen from any of these trends is the obvious criminal economy that has sprung up from the outlawing of the different drug threats. Of course, legalizing drugs has its own set of problems as well.
-BbT
Or a violin.
I can do ya one better than this. Think Vienna 1888. Think Johann Strauss. The generation gap is nothing new. It dates back way far. From dimestore novels to the waltz, the young have for centuries thought the old had little to teach them, and the old stood around confused by "decadent" music and kids who are "promiscuous". Youth violence has been a concern since the dawn of industrialization. Liverpool toughs or bloods and crips or geekgamerz, its all the same.
Katz, learn some history.
Read City of Dreadful Delight
Read A Nervous Splendor
Think before you misunderstand the PC evolution as something it is not (revolutionary)
Cheers,
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
I have to agree completely. I'm old enough to be the grandfather of some of these gamers, so I've lived thru a few 'crises' in my time. I recall how the adult world went into hysterics when we started questioning the sense of fighting and dying in a war which we didn't seem inclined to win. I remember how the nation started hiding under the bed when Sputnik was launched and we thought the Russians had a huge leg up in space. We immediately started castigating ourselves for our youth's sloth in the hard sciences and quickly launched programs to address these perceived deficiencies. When Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, we went through a long period of national soul searching regarding "what sort of people we've become." These panics are a natural response to an unwelcome surprise. Unfortunately, the latest responses have become increasingly draconian, as the urge to "do something" becomes irresistable. The present zero-tolerance policies in force at many schools and businesses, not to mention determinate-sentencing laws are the over-reactive efforts to try to fix the unfixable. We're increasingly taking independent judgement out of the equation, likely because we've come to distrust our ourselves and our institutions, and have started to substitute unwavering policies for common sense.
Since we are relating subjective experiences and extrapolating them to the outside world - an honest and perfectly valid method of gaining insight for most sane people - lemme relate my experiences on my personal gaming addiction, Starcraft.
Kids of ten, eleven, whatever age, seem to have no qualms with being just as nasty as they can while enagaging in the game. SOME kids, of course! But it is accepted behavior. Slim Shady is a big hero to many there, and backstabbing and map hacking are so commonplace that we losers routinely suspect the other of cheating, and must guard against even our partner during a match.
But pro football is no different anymore. There was a code of ethics, I recall: you didn't spit at your opponent, taunting was beneath your dignity, and self-respect meant respect for others. Honor is gone from sport for the most part, as it is in on-line gaming, politics, and every other aspect of our culture. The nasty element of SC behavior will only spread due to the PS2 effect, as on-line gaming becomes more commonplace. The only answer is for parents - once again, here I go - to participate in their children's lives as a group.
It's the only answer I can see, anyway. The parents who are experiencing moral crises are parents who cannot relate to their children. You cannot help a situation if you refuse to understand it.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I always knew my PONG addiction would come back to haunt me. I just never knew that Katz had the same problems. I mean.. whats so bad about playing a game of pong to decide who gets to murder the nighbor/rape the mailman/anally sodomize the milkman. It was all just honest fun back then.
Through broken glass.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
HA! I was thinking the same thing... What an AWESOME title. Left Right Left Right .... I'll let someone else finish it off....
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
This is some off-topic editorial advice for web authors.
One should not use an 'l' (el, L), when one means to use a '1' (one). On some fonts, the difference is unnoticable, but on others it is quite annoying. And as you know, on the web, you have no control over which font your user will see.
Compare:
the l960s (L)
the 1960s (one)
True, i just turned 21 but i never want to feel older than 16. I guess this is why i want to become a professional gamer (i.e. slacker).
What is the line from that Sting tune? "Scientific means to bliss, will supercede the human kiss".
It is truly unfortunate that some parents who scream about games ruining their children miss the real cause of their child's errant behavior. It's easy to blame it on gaming, since providing the attention and social adjustment skills every child needs (including teenagers) takes a lot more energy and thought. When a child of, say, 16 cannot relate to his or her peers, he may indulge himself in gaming, where it's easy to pretend you're someone else and there is some sense of virtual participation.
This can in fact lead to an unhealthy addiction, but gaming itself can surely not be blamed. And how can you heap blame on a misguided 16 year old? What is important above all is to find a way to engage the child in real social interaction so he can see for himself the difference between 'real life' and 'virtual life' as well as find the true richness within the characters of real people. He may also discover his own richness, which is the first step toward becoming truly creative.
I believe gaming is a real counter culture, but I don't see it as the seed of a revolution. A true and healthy revolution can only come from those who are educated in the arts and history of humanity and gaming by no means provides this. Who'd have the energy to lead a revolution when you can sit at Diablo II for hours, mindlessly hacking at zombies and demons? Perhaps it's the gaming manufacturers who are leading the culture, not the gamers themselves.
Being the Unreal Tournament addict that I am, I can understand the attraction to gaming over, say, a walk in a public park. While I don't think this is dangerous to the fabric of society, I do believe it can harm the future social abilities of young people. Perhaps a mass social malaise is imminent -- or perhaps gamers will awake one day and realize the scent of a garden, or the shade of a tree, is far more satisfying than a frag with a rail gun.
-Brian
--
if ($good != $safe) {
eval(++$risk);
&take_action(rand($decision));
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Agreed. The moral panic is nothing new and far from exclusive to gamers. Just another example of well meaning, but reactionary parents who have grown up enough to forget all those stupid things their parents over reacted about when they were kids.
You can see the analogy with the attack on rave culture. You would think a youth culture based on peace, love, unity and respect (PLUR) would be tough to demonize. You hear precious little media coverage of PLUR, just hard-hitting stories that warn parents of sex and death and undercover exposes that identify innocuous glow sticks and pacifiers as signs of rampant drug abuse. "Parents: Your kids could die tonight!, news at eleven!". Far from the bigger truth but good for ratings and it makes all that overzealous police response to these kids seem justified.
The attack on youth culture by parents is not going to go away as long as parents have all the political power and their children have none. It's easy for politicians to disenfranchise those that are too young to vote and those too apathetic to once they have that power.
JonKatz looks like too much of an ubergenius-wannabe to ever 'waste' his time with videogames when he could be studying nuclear science, retropsychology, quantum physics and of course buzzonics (the art of taking a single tiny bit of information and writing it up to 4 pages of flashy intelligent-looking words).
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Overall Katz is confusing the role of the increased popularity of electronic games. It is not a revolutionary phenomena so much as it is a result of a much larger shift brought about by the personal computer and the internet, and yeilds as much importance in the grand scheme of things as chat-rooms, celluar phones, PDAs or CGI in grapically violent movies.
The Internet is generally stupid
The PS2 isn't that powerful and I think Sony knows it. Why else would they market the PS9 in the same ad as the PS2? :)
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
Games don't teach you morals unless you were raised on them. Parients teach you morals becuase their the ones rasing you. And one factor alone, such as games, isn't going to turn ordinary kids into blood thristy killers.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
As someone else mentioned, you never hear the politicians denounce Myst, or say that the ship date of Riven would be marked as the point of decline of civilization. It's the violent, first-person shooters that concern the folks that always get concerned...
There are definitely different types of games out there. Some, like Mortal Combat, Doom, Quake, etc., feed our animal instincts - quick reflexes, high adrenaline, violence, repetitive motion, to name a few. Teen-agers love these games, for obvious reasons, and much the same reason my grandfather would never play them at his age. It's a lot like other sports (American football, for instance), except that you get almost no health benefit.
Other games take thought, contemplation, attention to the rules, and a certain level of imagination and personal involvement. These games (Civilization, Myst, many role-playing games, even the Warcraft / Starcraft real-time genres) excercise a different part of the mind, the more intellectual side. Again, however, no health benefit, but then chess players were never that buff, either.
I've played both kinds, and enjoyed both kinds. But I still believe there is a difference, and that one may be better for you than another.
Since the adrenaline games do tweak that animial part of you, it is possible for your brain to get trained on those neural passageways. Atheletes, or at least those for whom athletics is their life, may deserve the "dumb-jock" label. Part of it may be nature, but part of it is probably a decision to exercise one part of the mind at the expense of the other parts. Next time you go on-line, look and see if the banter would be easily converted to the playing feild or the locker room. You may be suprised.
Not that the intellectual games are perfect. They help exercise a part of the brain, but that's it. Look at Bobby Fisher, or others who are solely in the realm of the intellectual, and ask whether that is a desired goal.
One thing that these games have a hard time exercising is the social instincts. For all the chat rooms and Everquest mariages, it still is JUST A GAME, and does not map well to the "real world". Like other "game" skills, social skills built in the context of a game are mostly limited to the context of the game. If "real-world" social skills could be taught by a game, then Leisure-Suit Larry would be one of the top sellers, teaching young teenage males how to talk to sexy women.
This is where the politicians may be correct. I'm not concerned with the Internet or Quake "turning hearts dark", or any other such nonesense. I'm worried about a generation of computer-literate types who are either used to the instant animal gratification of first-person shooters or whose minds are drifting in a virtual reality world. I'm worried that a talented generation will be unable to effectively move in the real world, and thus loose the ability to be effective socially and politically, leaving the computer illiterate to run the show.
up up down down left right left right select start. The default cheat code for many a Konami game?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
When I was a kid, I played Cowboys and Indians (you know...the game where kids run around shooting each other) and I burned bugs with a magnifying glass.
If I started a software company now that made a game "Cowboys & Indians", where virtual kids ran around shooting each other, or "Bug Burn", where virtual kids burned virutal bugs, people would jump all over me.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority. They show disrespect for elders and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
(Socrates, 425 BC)
Heh.
Nephs
I remember DONKEY... But not from the IBM PC... I have it on a C64 disk... Wasn't very impressive by CBM-64 standards, but it was damn entertaining :) ... You can still find it on the 'net... Both the C64 ROM version and the "abandonware" IBM version...
"Preview Comment:
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
Junk character post. (Score:) by iie1195 on soon (#)"
I actually had a role playing club closed down at my middle school (this would have been in the late eighties). The administration found a satanic bible in the locker of a student who was not even in the club, but everyone freaked out and blaimed the role players. They brought in some "expert", who advised them to shut down the club, which they did. The funding for the club was diverted to floor hockey (seriously). Man that sucked.
at least with a game your'e getting exercise for your fingers. o, and you're using your brain too, sometimes. confound
!-- wit --!
- That wasn't my point at all, and you can use real curse words here, not "!@#$%^ ".
- My point was that Jon brushed off addiction like it wasn't real, and was just a part of the popular anti-gamer panic. My point was simply that Bad Things Can Happen.
- I didn't mean to imply that because addiction is a possibility that the medium (or chemical) is bad
- If we are working with two different definitions of Addiction (casual craving Vs. Dependency), so be it. BUT developing a dependency or need on things like games, or a drug, or the endorphin rush when you step on a tack, is dangerous to you, your health, and those who may depend on you.
-Ross...Don't shrug off addiction to games, It happens, and it has plenty of historical precedent. While video games don't offer the real world risk and reward potential of gambling, it is easy to get hooked on winning, or almost-but-not-quite winning, and can lead to dangerous, unhealthy situations, as the game becomes more important in the gamers life...
They work in Marketing.
Just take my word that I'm funny
I remember that game. It came with the IBM(I think)-DOS 2.1 BASICA. I used to write text adventure games in BASICA when I was 7 or 8... ah, the memories...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Gaming is great. With the constantly increasing population, it is the perfect way of keeping them inside, brainwashed and sedate. Kidz, play more games - spend more time at it! This way the rest of us can enjoy less traffic and humanity where ever we go in the real world.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
I got to this topic late, but it's a relevant one for a project I'm working on. The project eventually includes images from Terraserver, other real-time sources, and environment rendering software to create 3-D images which duplicate our everyday life -- in real-time. Instead of flying over a terrain someone created months ago, you fly over terrain which is only a few minutes old--or even real-time, as our ability to render and catalog huge databases of imagery gets faster. It's like a cross between The Matrix and a video game. This type of technology, if applied with care, can help modulate the panic which older folks may have about video games. Of course, applied without care, can help accentuate it. Remember the holodeck in Star Trek? We're within twelve years of that, roughly. Remember where the Internet was in 1988? -Water Paradox
information is immaterial
Actually, it is part of the "most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now," but it is invisible to people who watch television. This is the first truly peaceful revolution. Count up all the people who've been killed in virtual war in the past 20 years--it's more than the population of earth several times over. This is the revolution no one knows how to see if they've been trained in other revolutions...
information is immaterial
Although I feel the original authors thoughts are a bit skewed on the subject, I have to say that he is correct in pointing out that games are not the cause of our problems. I believe there was a response previously that mentioned the importance of good parenting. I think this was under-stated.
To be frank, MOST children are products of their upbringing. If left to their own devices, they will be forced to make their own conclusions on life and what is right and wrong, and these decisions will probably be "feel good" decisions. BY that I mean, if there is nothing or nobody teaching them about moral virtues, and what is right and wrong, they will tend to choose what makes them FEEL good. Right or Wrong is then determined by what is "fun".
Being an avid gamer, I think I can tell you that this "I want what I want and I don't care about what you want" attitude DOES exist in a great number of gamers. I don't think it's the majority of us though, but, the fact that their are A LOT of them, makes it easy to point a finger and say "See! Right there! An uncaring individual! See what these evil games are doing?!".
Never mind that the parents may be divorced, the father or mother may have run off in the night, or maybe the parents are alcoholics and place higher value on their own "feel goods" than the feelings and upbringing of their own children.
IMHO, society is far too focused on the symptoms of the problem. Pointing fingers at games, music, movies, television, and the Internet does nothing more than call attention away from the root of the problem: The decline of the family unit.
In the USA, marriages are lasting increasingly smaller and smaller amounts of time. In fact, most people are already planning for their divorce right from the beginning. They open a separate bank account, keep their retirement funds separate, and keep enough in those funds to support themselves alone. They sign prenuptial agreements, and all this in the name of "safety". Covering their butts.
Then they're happy for the first little while, until the novelty wears off, and the real test begins. Can they REALLY put up with each other? Can she really put up with his laziness and unwillingness to help around the house? Can he really keep up with her financially high standard of living? Will they be able to work through their debt problems without walking out?
And then how will their decisions effect their children? Have they taught them right from wrong? Have they nurtured them, helped them grow? Or have they just bought a TV and/or computer and let the kids teach themselves?
Bottom line: If children are not thought properly, they will develop their own ideas on what is right and wrong. Proper teaching comes from proper parenting. Proper parenting is less likely to occur if both parents are working, or in a single-parent household. The parent(s) are less likely to be around to observe the things they need to teach their children about, and that child will make their own decisions. Some will hopefully be the right ones, but, in a society where natural affection of our fellow men is dwindling, I think you will see the WRONG decision made more and more often.
We must stop pointing fingers at the symptoms, and start working at the root of the problem. Video games do NOT cause violence. But they CAN be an influence to do violence if proper guidance and parenting is not present.
It is the purpose of leftwing uberliberals to always try to one up someone else?
Gaming ain't JACK SHIT in the world. A third of the world wakes up wondering if its going to enough to eat, or if some local military is going to hack them to bits.
The effect of games on AMERICAN culture already blew by you Jon. I come across many 40+ year old online gamers, and usually their kids are there too.
No, your article comes across as the typical "SCARE and SEGREGATE" crap that typically comes from the ego-centric social elitist... talk about one helluva a delusion... how long did it take for you and your friends to learn how to blow smoke up your own respective asses?
?*** oooh... this will cost me karma BIG TIME... but hell if I am going to listen to crap like this...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why's everybody still ranking on Katz all the time? I don't get it, his stuff isn't bad, or objectionable.
Could it be that you are jumping on a bandwagon here, and slagging Katz whenever you see his name, or are you really objecting to his piece?
Your argument:
"yeah, FUCK OFF with your bullshit, Katz!!"
while beautifully written, doesn't give us much of an insite into your reasoning, and the other Katz bashing posts seem to just attack his "Holier than thou" attitude, which isn't as offensive as some of the other crap that gets posted and certainly doesn't warrant the teenage responses.
How about jumping off the Katz bandwagon, and coming up with something worthwhile. (At least first posts and goat sex aren't constant personal attacks.)
Now wash your hands.
Yeah, it's probly a good console..but so is the Dreamcast, and the GameCube and XBOX will be too, when they come out
And, I totaly disagree with the people who are against violence in moves/games/music/whadever
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
From my own limited vantage point, America seems to be gradually accepting gaming culture more and more.
I build on one aspect of this argument (which I wholeheartedly agree with): Katz's comment about the growing generational gap is arguably contradicted by the gaming industry rather than supported. His own previous article pointed out how gamers were getting older and progressively reaching a wider and wider audience. Wouldn't this tend to suggest a greater shared entertainment experience between young and old?
Ok, lets get something straight here, I am a 15 year old student. And on that comment the Master Of BS katz wrote, i feel its comming from a fools point of view. I know some people my age feel that way, but some of us with the intelect to realise who right now is running this computer revolution, MUST Realzise that adults DO have stuff to teach. How are we to learn C++, a book? Sure, but who wrote the book????? Think about it.
$posting =~ s/They are just as/Most of them are jus as/ :)
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
Analyzing the effects of Video Games on youth is about .05% more useful than analyzing the effects of those big, baggy-ass pants alot of them like wear.
So teens think that older generations are dumb? Wow! I remember thinking that when I was a teen! I guess I have alot more in common with teens than they think I do. But of course, after my emancipation from my parents and the assumption of financial responsibility for myself, I began to realize that my parents weren't quite as dumb as I thought they were.
A casual assessment of teens today reveals... nothing. They are just just as vapid and senseless as when I was a teenager!
The time that teens spend playing video games makes them (drumroll, please) good at video games!!
Give kids a freakin' break, already! Quit analyzing them to death! They will become adults soon enough.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
A quick gamer's reference... In the new Shiny Game, Sacrifice, the ultimate evil unit is a flying death dragon named- you guessed it- a HELLMOUTH. Just a coincidence? I think Shiny developers read Slashdot! ; -)
PS2 more powerfull then million dollar super computer in NINE-TEEN-NINETY-NINE! Puh-leeze! This artical picks on the media, yet it demonstrates profound ignorance of gaming technology. But then again any artical in favor of gaming is progress I suppose. As to strategic and tactical thinking enhancment, I know a lot of people who play networked computer games around the campus every saturday night. Then sunday afternoon they go out and kick the football teams collective ass at paintball. Connection? If so, thats one scientficaly documentable proof that gaming is a positive influence. Hey...maybe I should go get a phd, publish great research paper (on gaming) then send it back in time to the trenchies at Columbine and save a bunch of people! Then my little brother would be allowed to use scissors in highschool!
Pappy just put bigger mirrors on his shoes, and went on about his day.
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You sure got a purty mouth...
/. me, I am an illiterate. what does the title mean. oh, and yeah, i am 30 ;-)))
I have a cool sig too.
Funny, that's also how we refer to your mom's house.
Time to die, nerd-boy!
Certainly not everyone who grew up playing games like Legend of Zelda on the 8 bit NES would agree, but the majority of people that say 'Wizards and Warriors is the Devil!' thin out as they realize that they spent four hours a day in an arcade.
I'm also curious if there was ever any sort of concern similar to this with Cowboys & Indians?
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
Actually, you spelled Pokemon fine, now let's do a little bit of work with 'phenomenon.' heh
Part I of the Katz "gaming" series was annoying, but Part II is infuriating. Why? Because Katz is using a forum that purports to be a dialogue, and yet he evidently paid no attention at all to the comments on his first misbegotten article.
His article looks like culture studies and smells like culture studies, but really is just a tepid assertion in search of evidence.
I'm reposting a post from last Thursday which I think is still relevant but was buried under normal thresholds because I posted it as an anonymous coward:
This smacks of Alvin Toffler's Future Schlock and the implication that we somehow inhabit a privileged place in history such that the pace of cultural change is just too much for us.
One can find similar quotes from Roman commentators. I bet there are cave drawings somewhere attempting to convey the same thing.
I'm wary of such claims. I'm wary of the claim that gaming has become our "ascendant culture." More ascendant than, let's see... consumer capitalism? Electronically-mediated communication? Mass media? The way that our notions of self are linked to the consumer choices we make? I don't think so -- gaming is just more of the same.
And, by the way, if adults "can't grasp" these cultural and technological advances, and are no longer passing along their "traditions and wisdom," should we assume these games are being designed by the "adolescents" who play them? Again, I don't think so. In fact, one could just as easily say that games are, for a portion of an emergent subculture, precisely the way that stories are passed along: stories about building culture, stories about economic systems, detective stories, warfare. How is this any different, at least in the cultural sense if not the experience, of a previous generation weaned simply on television?
Games are cool. Games point the way to a more interactive relationship with technologies, certainly. Games may be a significant way of, well, indoctrinating people, especially the young, into new technological forms. But such forms, especially the rush into the virtual, have been fully embraced by capitalism as the newest and most effective way to both publicize itself and intercede in people's daily lives. Is this a bad thing? I don't necessarily think so. But the notion that gaming is a counter-cultural or revolutionary act when it exists along the same socio-cultural axis as emerging and increasingly dominant forms (seen a dot.com billboard or TV ad recently? How many U.S. armed forces recruitment ads show cool, gamelike displays?) is too simplistic a take on our culture. And is, I think, a little too self-congratulatory. Like it or not, gamers aren't revolutionaries but are culturally complicitious in a different way.
You're right, Jon, that "gaming has evolved far beyond play" and that "few people have bothered to study what this might mean." Unfortunately you haven't augmented their number.
Cheating is context dependent. I think it's valid to cheat if you're not getting the enjoyment you expected when you purchased a game. I don't think it's valid to cheat to ruin the gaming experience of someone else. Either you're being sarcastic or I'd really like to discuss this with you. *shrug*
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
I fail to see any ethical dilemma at using a cheat code in a single player game, if you've gotten to a point where you're stuck. On the other hand buying a game just to cheat seems like a waste of money on the game to me (if you have a good reason for it feel free to share).
It's a different case when you're playing against other people imho. Cheating to gain advantage over people who want to play a game by it's rules seems immoral. I can never seem to convince my brothers that changing the light settings in Q3, so you can see normally shadowed areas, is in fact cheating. Their argument is that anyone can change the light settings, and my argument is they're gaining an unintended advantage.
*shrug*
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
A but off topic... but I love Angband, a Rogue derivative, and I'm only 23. Games can be creative, but most aren't. The possibility of a unique experience is why the rogue/nethack/angband/zangband games are so good. I don't think that most games are as imaginative as Katz claims.
Game HW & SW developers may be players as well, but they represent a small minority of that population. I did not think JonKatz was claiming that gaming improved the creative capabilities of just the developers. He seemed to be saying that the majority of the players themselves somehow benefited in terms of their creativity. Does it affect all or just the elite who do the development? TWO
You may believe that games help with strategic thinking and relieve stress. I may believe that some games help generate automatic responses along narrow paths and generate stress. The point is that the article did not give any evidence that the gaming activity itself generates creativity in the player. Pavlov's dog was not a scientist even though he was a part of the experiment. THREE
That's what he said. He's just presenting it in an intentionally misleading way. =)
OK so if violent games make people do violent things, why dont you just make a game where all the characters do is listen to their parents, clean their rooms and get good grades?? Sure, some take it too far but they are just fucked in the head. Write them off as stains on the grout of Darwin's gene pool and let the rest of us be.
Just to toss in my proverbial coinage to what i can only hope is an already large heap of similar such opinions: i have no intention of making a judgment on the moral implications of gaming. I hate to pull out the "people are starving/earth is dying" card, but let's face it, there are a lot more important things to be doing these days than playing video games for 50% of one's day, as I've personally experienced people doing. I do understand that some games are resulting in fundamental changes in the way people approach problems. I understand that we all need to play. However, i think that we can only start truly modelling alternate realities when those alternate realities take into account the welfare of all of our fellow human beings who just happen to be born into societies and/or circumstances that don't offer them the same opportunities for physical and intellectual development as others. As someone who was fortunate enough to be born and raised in a relatively affluent environment, I view it as a *responsibility* to devote a certain percentage of my life to helping others who weren't as fortunate as I was. If you want to play and help people out at the same time, then become an artist. That's what I want to do. But i don't quite buy the argument that you're playing twelve hours a day because you're training to benefit humankind by optimizing trade routes for your city-state or something to that effect (this is an observation based on no experience with recent games, but I think that it does well in illustrating my point). Ever read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card? Highly recommend it. ****note:if you don't want to know what happens, then don't read again until you see three more asterixes!!! Child gets hired to train in a military program for his country due to an imminent alien re-invasion. Trains with computer games. Plays what he thinks is the final simulation, but then is told either right before the final battle or right after winning it (here's where my memory gets a little blurry, though I'm leaning toward the former option) that he's destroyed the alien civilization. He then realizes the error of his unconscious action tries to make amends for his actions, etc. After this the book gets a lot more, shall we say, mystical. Personally, I think that it points toward men (the sex) realizing that they've destroyed their feminine, creative instincts in their virtual worlds. But I've also been reading a lot of Hesse, Jung, and Wilhelm Reich recently. **** But I think that those who have read the book or just read the summary will surely agree with me when I say, "Q.E.D., baby!" (well, maybe not the "baby" part...).
One problem with this article is that it points to an ignorance in the media concerning technology reporting but doesn't really bring to light what is peculiar about the danger concerning this issue. Is it just that they are more ignorant on this than anything else? Or is it the ignorance coupled with fear? I think it's the latter. But the fear is poorly established, or rather, the irrational aspect of attitudes towards gaming is poorly established. Katz gives us criteria gleamed from one writer who is, I suppose, invested with the mighty authority of sociolgy and thus science in general, and so we should accept them as leading to real and useful knowledge. This is doubtful in and of itself, but there are problems with establishing that the phenomenon he's describing is even classifiable under the criteria he's given. The real problem is with the fourth criterion: Perceptions that the group is more dangerous than it really is, generating fear that's disproportionate to the threat. In order to establish that they are being irrational and simply fearful, we'd have to show that the group wasn't as dangerous as was thought. How could we possibly show that and prove that they were mistaken? We couldn't. So then how does it make sense to claim that the threat is less than assumed when we too have no access to knowledge which could possibly justify that claim. Katz has assumed that the media and those against technology are generally ignorant and thus fearful, and then infers that they are ignorant again. Whether or not you beleive that fear is caused by ignorance at all, Katz has made the mistake of claiming that all fear is caused by ignorance insofar as he holds, without the possibility of demonstration, that they are ignorant of the real nature of gaming's effects on society. If it is not clear that more knowledge would falsify the claims of those against gaming, then perhaps they are eminently rational and understand quite well what they're talking about. He has made a circular argument, introduced an inapplicable concept of knowledge (in intorducing ognorance), and borrowed the authority of science and logical reasoning simply to demonize some group of people traditionally against the high tech society. It may be a small point, and I might be pedantic in going on so long, but it's important not to let this sort of thing go without mention if we are sincere in wanting a more open society. , and they are fearful of gaming as evidenced buy their angry rhetoric theirThe US didn't fall into the pit of Hell with the end of slavery nor with women's suffrage, but it certainly was changed dramatically. Leaving aside the point made by others that Katz overestimates the influence of gaming on American society, what is irresponsible is his pretense of logical demonstration through a very shaky set of criteria that what is at work in discussions of the damgers of the chnages being seen is mainly fear of change, technology, youth, whatever.
i for one am fed up with our elders blaming the problems of the world on video games and the internet. i am an 18 year old male, and i have been spoon fed this fabricated garbage as far back as i can remember. games are not the reason the youth has these so called "faults." The internet does not cause violence. the reason the youth of today does not meet the moral standards and expectations of our elder generation is that they did not raise us right! they blame video games and the internet because they dont have the courage to take responsibility and admit the err of their ways. the reason the youth of america, particularly the males, act out the way they do is a form of rebellion. the weight of the expectations that is placed upon the shoulders of the white american male teen is far greater than it was 30 years ago. and when one of us undershoots the expectations the *tiniest* fraction of an inch, we are told we are not good enough, that we need to try harder, and at that point it is as if all of our previous accomplishments are forgotten. for that one moment when we are told that we arent good enough, it is like everything we have done in the past means nothing, no matter how great of a feat it was. the chance our elders had is gone, there is nothing they can do to change what they have done. what we, as the future leaders of this country need to do, is remember what our elders have done wrong, and vow not to repeat it. we need to take the time to care for our children, and give them the nurturing they need, the nurturing we didnt receive enough of. the answer to stopping violence is not placing bans on video games and restrictions on the internet, but trying harder at home. if we want our children to have morals, we need to take the time and make sure they understand why they should and shouldn't do certain things, not just tell them to do this or not to do that. We need to teach more than what good morales are, we need to teach our children WHY they are good morales. and when we have done this, we wont have to worry about video games, and we wont have to worry about the internet, because our children will be able to determine what is right and what is wrong on their own.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Blarg. This is just a bunch of high falutin horseshit. Gaming is not a cultural tide shift. It's just another way for middle aged people to claim that their kids don't underastand them and need to be restrained. Pure and fucking simple. I'm 41. My parents didn't understand why we would play airhockey all day and thought it was a huge waste of time that had to be controlled. My kids play TWINE all day. I don't get it - its not that interesting to me. But I'm not going to say that culturally they're that much different from me. After all grown ups have grown up games and toys and kids have kids games and toys:
Kids - soccer, dirtbikes, N64, PS2, chat, reefer, E
Grown ups - golf, guns, home theater, scotch, good blow
And then sometime there are crossovers like my neighbor who bought a dirtbike for his 8 yr. old yeah right or kids who unlock the gun cabinet....
It's tough to get rid of the fat kid playing Pokemon (or Nintendo or DnD) because it's more true than not.
Over the past fifteen years, the number of obese children aged 7 to 13 has *doubled.* This is as school physical education programs have been been slashed, simultaneous with the rise of couch-potato entertainment.
Kids that get off their asses and go play sports, walk the malls or do other out-of-the-house activities tend to be healthy.
Kids that play video games, card games or role-playing games a lot tend to be unhealthy.
And it's not just fat: we're talking *obese.* We're talking about an atrociously high risk of heart disease, and a lifespan that is altogether too likely to be twenty years shorter than for healthy people.
The images are accurate. The exceptions -- probably you, for instance -- are not representative of the general population of game-playing kids.
Feel free to type "fat kids increase video" into Google. Learn about the problem. And demand better of yourself for your children: feed them well and keep them active.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The problem Jon makes is that he picks up some new toy, bashes it and doesn't see a finger in front of the real issue. Jon what you are seeing is "generation wars", something that has been happening since Industrial Revolution. The traditionalist patriacharts and matriarcharts were destroyed by the huge power Industrialism gave to each individual. However, some roots remain inside the cultural and familiar relations among relatives. Specially on those members which their root cultures have only recently touched the "wheels of progress".
People today has a huge freedom to accept new values, material and moral. In my grandparents time, it was cars. In my parents time the TV. In my time the computer. In my children time Internet and VR. Values change but the issue is one and the same. We now are more free to choose things. And your bashing on PS2 consoles is the same blind kicking my dad did on PC's. The issue is not the computer or the PS2 but the fact that our values are changing too radically from generation to generation. Look at how people dress today and pick up some photos of your parents. Listen to how people speak. That's a Revolution. In Middle Ages, such level of changes would take 200-300 years. But now it takes only nd only 10-20 years. Less than a generation. Even I feel too different from the teenager I was. In the 80's I heard Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and Depeche Mode. Today I hear Prodigy, Rammstein, Enigma and underground music. But my fathers are still stuck to old 50's-70's and don't seem to change a lot here.
Look over the cost of the PS2 console and the fact it's Japanese. I wonder if you would note it if it was made in Taiwan and cost half-price... Try to see how your kid does value HIS OWN world and not the objects that help him value it.
Pick out Katz and get him into some Rocky Mountains resort. And get every TV set and VCR out of his hands. Strict rest, mountain air, and walks in the open under the cold breeze of winter. At night three water cups of good Russian vodka and sleep, sleep, sleep.
It seems that Katz is seeing too much films recently... And it looks as if he got a nerve break... That is the only way to see his part two. A typical base script for some low-rated Holywood stuff. Frankly I read it and it seems I'm seeing some "Invasion of Teenager Mutants - the rise of the PS2 Kyborgs". Dad, mommy crying "MOMMIE, DADDDIE" and son running with a fly head and a robot arm after them... And Katz playing the ingenous detective, who occasionaly falls on the track of an old WWII Japanese Doctor plotting to cover the World with robots. And the evil doctor does this right from a XVIII century mansard, somewhere in Kansas. Which occurs to have belonged to Dr. Frankenstein himself...
Ok Katz. At least be faster than Stephen King to end this...
But how many parents, business executives, educators, politicians or journalists recognize that so powerful and creative a force is now available to children? That future ideas about creativity, imagination, work -- and individual relationships to institutions -- will be shaped by such tools, just as they were by the PS2's more primitive predecessors, from the early Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to game-playing computers? As pundits sound alarms about how videogames are ruining children's moral lives, as both major presidential candidates did repeateadly, during the campaign -- who in our culture is preparing for the radical changes in imagination about to be unleashed?
I'm imaginging shooting my high school cafeteria up. And man, does it look good at 130M/polygons a second!
...video games are *not* the world changer you are trying to make them be!
Exactly right. The fear-mongers need to be reminded of that.
in case anyone missed it:
http://www.pushove.com/mp3/
when Push Comes to Shove
Right on man. Rogue on the Tandy 1000 EX was my first gaming addiction, and every year or so I get disillusioned with the slick cinematic sequences and linear plots and wander back to nethack!
Nethack should be the official game of Slashdot. Open source, runs on Linux, and it's a great game! The complexity and scope of nethack match anything out there today, to say nothing of it's replayability...
And the roguelike games are still influencing new games (ever play Chocobo's Dungeon?) and still innovating and improving (go download the latest version of nethack!)
- StaticLimit
JonKatz wastes no time driving right past the heart of the problem, going down the ramp, and out the door.
The problem is not with gamers, the problem is not with the public conception of gamers, the problem is that, assuming that this load of overreaction and poor writing is true, the general public is too damned stupid to differentiate between facts and propaganda. Let's examine, for instance, Mr. Katz's own offering. A factual report regarding this topic (as introduced by the article, the article discusses the postulate, "Gaming has dramatically widened the growing cultural schism between the young and old") would perhaps include poll results from a sufficiently randomly selected sample of the discussed groups. Not this article. In fact, Katz offers nothing factual which supports any of his claims. Let's examine:
"Historians and sociologists call the adult world's response to gaming a 'moral panic.'" With this statement, Katz introduces the theme of the first section of the article to the reader. However, his claim, that historians and sociologists have stated that the adult world's response to "moral panic" is supported in the article by not one single quotation or reference. Which historians and sociologists? This is the Internet; can you, Mr. Katz, provide us with a link? If a whole block of this article is based upon the situation having been termed a "moral panic" by a given authority, even one such example of this would help.
"In much the way the late anthropologist Margaret Mead predicted, the older generation and many of its leading institutions -- education, politics, media, education -- has unleashed a furious attack against gaming and its culture." This statement would be a powerful example of the public reaction to gaming. However, Mr. Katz refuses to give his audience a single example of a "furious attack against gaming" or its culture. Have schools taken a strong stance against gaming, either by banning gaming-related clothing, or by teaching against the evils of games? What has been said by politicians against gaming? And by the media? And by the schools? (Um, what? I said schools already! That's okay, Mr. Katz didn't proofread either - education was mentioned twice. Perhaps longer lists seem more convincing?) Again, Mr. Katz offers no proof that this statement is not entirely unfounded. What has Ms. Mead said on the subject, and how do her statements support the argument?
"[G]aming is associated almost entirely with negative imagery in the non-virtual world . . . Gaming and its allegedly evil affects were central issues in the presidential election, and the notion of an amoral generation of thieves and narcissists crops up again and again in the public perception of computing and the Net, from hacking to free music." Wonderful! With such an influence upon public perception, there must be plenty of examples of such negative imagery. Unfortunately, none of them were referenced by Mr. Katz.
"[M]edia cover technology poorly as a rule, but their shallow portrayal of gaming culture as destructive and profane is a particular scandal, [causing a] 'moral panic,' a severe societal response to some dramatic development that institutions don't understand and can't control, so therefore fear." From this statement, we can assume that the media's coverage of gaming, though sparse, is suggestive enough to cause strong public reaction. However, if public perception is as biased as Mr. Katz would have us believe, surely even a single example of even the results of such influence should be easy to locate.
Moral panic "is defined by at least five crucial elements: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility." Mr. Katz then gives what we can only assume are his own definitions (q.v.) for each of the five elements; he at least does not credit an external source. This clarifies the intended meaning of these terms to the reader, who may have otherwise associated a meaning other than that intended with the terms involved. This in itself would not be noteworthy, except in that Mr. Katz does not clearly note the source of these definitions.
"On all five criteria, gaming qualifies as causing a moral panic . . . . We see plenty of hostility towards gamers. The fear of gaming has always been wildly disproportionate to any real threat, and the panic over it is episodic, frequently triggered by incidents like school shootings or other media-transmitted scares" Where are the references? An explanation of why and how gaming meets the criteria? Examples of hostility towards gamers, and of "school shootings [and] other media-transmitted scares"?
"The moral panic over gaming has also managed to obscure its growing social, cultural, even political signifance." Gaming has political signifance? Do tell! For lack of elaboration, can we (please!) assume, then, that the Presidential election will be solved, once and for all, with Rocket Arena 3? No? Then, Mr. Katz, could you explain what this actually means?
"'Our toys, writ large, echo profound revolutions in simulation, the science of materials, and digital communication,' author Mark Pesce writes in The Playful World, recently published by Ballantine Books. 'The technique of the Furby has been a hot topic of computer science for a dozen years; artificial life -- simulation of activity of living systems -- has taught us a lot about how we learn and grow into intelligence. Computers, which just a decade ago seemed useful only for word processors and spreadsheets, are now employed as digital gardens, where the seeds of mind grow into utterly upredictable forms.' Unfortunately, the reader learns nothing of who the author is, what he knows, or the overall subject matter of the book. Possibly knowing nothing of Mr. Pesce or Bellantine Books, the reader can only hope that Mr. Pesce is qualified and Bellantine Books is reputable. Furthermore, Mr. Katz fails to explain what is meant - what is to be conveyed by "digital gardens, where the seeds of mind grow into utterly upredictable forms"? What is a "seed of mind", and into what "utterly unpredictable form" does it grow? In other words, "Huh?"
"Gaming has evolved far beyond play. Arguably the most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now, it's transforming the imaginations, attentions spans, reflexes and strategic thinking of an entire generation, perhaps even our neural systems themselves." Mr. Katz seems not to understand that placing the word "arguably" before something totally absurd does not excuse lack of research. Much appreciated would be Katz' knowledge the effect of Quake 3 and Tribes 2 upon Ethopia, how those living in Cuba feel about fill rate verses rendering quality, or which is the Bosnians' preferred console.
"With the release of Sony's PlayStation 2, writes Pesce, the founding chair of the Interactive Media Program at the University of California's School of Cinema-Television." Finally, we learn who Mr. Pesce is.
"'[T]he machinery of infinite realities will be within the grasp of millions of children around the world. Unlike any videogame console released before it, the PS 2 will have the power to create realistic imaginings of breathtaking clarity. Million-dollar computers -- in l999! -- have only fractionally more power than the Play Station 2, which will challenge our ideas about simulation by making it look at least as real as anything else seen on a television screen.'" Unfortunately, Katz goes on to remove any credibility from Mr. Pesce's earlier statement, however vague it may have been, by expressing Mr. Pesce's claim that the PS2 has almost as much computing horsepower as any million-dollar machine available. Mr. Katz failes to realize that for a million dollars, any qualified individual could have build one hell of a Beowulf cluster, even in 1999. Where are the benchmarks? Any reader should hopefully recognize the folly in Mr. Pesce's statement; assuming this is true, Mr. Pesce cannot be relied upon to provide accurate statements. Resultantly, the second half of the article, based upon the work of Mr. Pesce, loses all credibility.
"'[F]uture ideas about creativity, imagination, work -- and individual relationships to institutions -- will be shaped by such tools [as the PS2], just as they were by the PS2's more primitive predecessors, from the early Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to game-playing computers'" Pesce claims that children's "ideas about creativity, imagination, work" have been shaped by systems such as the NES and possibly the Apple II. Missing, however, is any reference to psychological study or any conclusive work. Is the reader to assume that Pesce, like Katz, fails to justify his bold statements? If so, then Pesce is right up Katz' alley.
"'As pundits sound alarms about how videogames are ruining children's moral lives, as both major presidential candidates did repeateadly, during the campaign -- who in our culture is preparing for the radical changes in imagination about to be unleashed?'" Thank you, Pesce and Katz, for showing us the way.
"Pesce is right, of course. The PS2, designed to connect to the Net, is a window into a larger universe. It could easily simulate a Furby or Mindstorms, and it creates as well a million other interesting forms, if only for the eyes and ears. In fact, says Pesce, the PS2 could well be seen as a spaceship for scouring the universe of ideas." First of all, from where is the "of course" derived? Pesce has failed to make a justified point at all, in what is he then so obviously correct? Yes, the PS2 can [reportedly; I have no personal experience] connect to the Internet. Even if PS2 could potentially simulate the actions of a Furby or Mindstorms (which I have no reason to doubt, though I've used neither Furbies nor Mindstorms), the PlayStation 2, as far as I've seen, does not create new devices or concepts, it simply displays existing ones. For what, then, could the PS2 be used to explain how the "PS2 could well be seen as a spaceship for scouring the universe of ideas", and furthermore, what the hell does this phrase mean? Also, have we given up even trying to relate this to public reactions to gaming?
"The cultural gap between the young and the old first widened noticeably in the l960s, when younger people turned their generational backs against their elders. The explosion of the Net and the Web, which have triggered a revolution in the way information and ideas move, has exacerbated that division. The Boomers talked a lot about revolution but didn't quite make one; younger Americans are making one but don't always seem to realize it." Generational backs? Revolution? What does this have to do with public reaction to gaming?
"Our civilization hasn't begun to come to terms with this split" Here Katz continues in his tradition of making a meaningless statement and carring on as though it proves something conclusively.
"Panicked moralists, pundits and authority figures point to all sorts of reasons, from the decline in the authority of parental figures to the influence of new media to the lack of discipline in schools" Reasons for what? The "generational split" in the 1960s? The PlayStation 2?
"[T]he truth is there is no real understanding either of this widening chasm in our politics, or in our social and cultural consciousness." Wait, first the chasm is between generations, now it's political?
Making paper-mache mountains from conjured molehills, Katz once again shows his inability to form a point or maintain a theme.
Well, if you've read this far, hopefully you've been convinced that the likes of Katz should not be allowed to post on the front page. I say, let's take up a collection. I would gladly pay $10 a month to know that Slashdot finally rid itself of a troll. Perhaps if enough Slashdot readers feel the same, we could offer Katz more not to post than Slashdot offers him to post. Any takers?
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Nahh. To get ahead you need either brains or social skills. We are the people with the brains. The people with the social skills are over in marketing, and the people in suits at the exclusive health club generally have both. None of these people felt the need to take out their frustrations on others at school.
The people who made our lives a misery at school have neither brains nor social skills. And yes, their place in society really is to say "Do you want fries with that?". At least until they get married, after which they say "Doh".
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
A gulf between the young & the old isn't exactly new. In the 50's and 60's the great moral threat was Rock & Roll. In the 20's & 30's it was Jazz. In 15 years time it will be mainstream, because the teenagers & twenties of today will be the old farts of 2015, and their children will be finding something new and exciting to do and shock their parents with.
After we get enough donations we will find some pop pyschologist to run us up a feel-good clone of AA or something, print some bumper-stickers and tee-shirts ("One Level At A Time") and then set folks up running sessions in vacant strip-mall spaces. Get on the local judicial lists as a treatment agency, and rile up some college students to write us grants for local and federal program monies.
Have you seen that recent movie, "But I'm a Cheerleader"? It's kind of like that, pretty funny.
Historians and sociologists call the adult world's response to gaming a "moral panic,"
Which historians, which sociologists ? And on what planet do sociologists always agree on what people do. To quote Rutherford "All research in the Human Sciences can be summed up by the phrase 'some do, some don't'".
I'm sorry I don't buy this persecution crap. Games can be good, games can be bad. This isn't society ganging up on a few "good" people, its about the fundamental right of people to disagree with each other, and the American politic that means he who shouts loudest is right.
Jon, I'm sorry but this just sounds like a whinge based on the old "Well I don't like it so blah" of which you accuse your accusers rather than a balanced approach to the subject. Its after all easier to be a bigot, what ever your flag, than be balanced.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Well, if you look at it from a pure rendering power standpoint, yes, the PS2 is nearly as powerful. Yes, there are $140,000 graphics cards used to drive 6 screen "powerwalls" but these really aren't that much faster than the PS2.
Walt
I would equate the hysteria towards video games as similar to the Temperance movement. These were people who talked about "Demon Rum" with straight faces, and they were convinced that alcohol was destroying the moral structure of the country. In a frenzy they managed to get Prohibition enacted, which did exactly the opposite of what was intended.
Neither games nor alcohol by themselves cause any harm. However, when one reaches the point where one is dependent on games or alcohol for one's sense of well-being, there is a problem. If you turn down invitations to spend time with your (non-drinking / non-gaming) friends because you won't be able to (drink / game) with them, then there's a problem. I could go on analogizing, but you get the point. I like video games, and I think progressively more immersive games are indeed the future of entertainment. The reason this hysteria is so ridiculous is that if one simply follows the maxim, "All things in moderation, nothing to excess," everything will be fine.
Walt
P.S. [OT] Does anyone remember the IBM PC game that had CGA graphics and was called DONKEY? There was a road and a race car that could be in either of the two lanes. Donkeys would come randomly in one lane or the other, and you would have to press the space bar to switch lanes and avoid the donkey if it was in your lane. The car moved progressively closer to the top of the screen, making it more difficult to avoid the donkeys. I once left it on all night to see how often all the donkeys would be in the other lane, and thus allow you to win without doing anything. I recall it only happened once in ten hours of letting it run.
Is it really like that in USA? newspapers, teachers and politicians condemning gaming? Because i don't see any of this in Europe. Maybe the occasional newsheadline "Quake made child run amok" but there's not that many childs running amok and there's not that much of a public echo to this, so maybe that newspaper sells a bit better for a day.
So either the whole thing was blown out of proportion on slashdot or the americans are less tolerant than they'd like all the rest of the world to be.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
How people are effected by gaming/the influence that games play does not have a concrete answer that fits everybody. There are several factors that contribute to how a person will react.
First, above all, is context. Currently, I work for GameSpy Industries, as the site director for 3DActionPlanet, plus I also work on PlanetQ3F. The work that I do REQUIRES that I am up-to-date on the latest 3DAction games, 90% of which are 3D shooters. I play them not only because I like too, but because it is also part of my job.
The second is the game itself. I am currently playing Hitman: Codename 47, which I will then be reviewing. It isn't a shooter; rather, you play a Hitman, and you're given missions that involve killing somebody. The issue I have with the game thus far is that it is WAY to realistic for some gamers. The weapons you can use include a piano wire, which you use to strangle people. (The animation is very convincing.. there is even gasping, if you listen closely.)
When a game is ultra-realistic, some people may get the idea to try some of the things they have seen.
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CitizenC
My name is not 'nospam,' but 'citizenc'.
"
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Actually its interesting that you bring up Pokemon (your spelling was correct except for the backwards ` over the e).
;-) ) generation Y come into power the fear and hype will fall out an air of normailty and expetedness and dare I say it maturity to video games. But, like music there will always be a leading edge that the new adults will not apprecaite.
Pokemon is actually its own cultural phenomenon. What Nintendo has achieved is an unbeliveably effective horizontal marketing campaign built around a simple kids video game.
They have taken some simple characters and driven the marketing of them across multiple industries. You have video games, card games, toys, TV, movies, food products, and the list goes on. In my opinion, one of the best horizontal marketing campaigns ever (based on sales figures garnered by buying this stuff for my son).
But unlike Katz's doom and gloom appraisal of gaming, the Pokemon influence is IMO regardaded as positive, even though its all being generated from video games.
Society is not as fragile as Katz would want to belive, this is just Rock and Roll all over again. Someday video games will be a mainstay of pop culture, they almost are now. PS2 is the third wave of video game consoles, dating back over 20 years. As generation X and (god forbid
That's the way of things, not some great cultural sczism.
I'm not exactly old (I'm 33), but I've been playing computer games since pong and Spacewar, and my six-year-old son is also an avid gamer (bought him a new Alienware screamer for Xmas). I am into computers and games largely as a result of my father, a 58 year-old baby boomer and electronics engineer, who got started in the PC revolution way back in the 70's by building his own computer. I know a lot of people who more or less grew up the same way.
I think for the majority of the population, gaming is an accepted activity. I know I'd rather have my kid playing a game that's at least partially interactive, than sittinng in front of the idiot box. It's an activity that brings he and I closer together, and at the same time helps to build interest and familiarity with technology that is a permanent and important factor in our society. Heck, my kid already says he wants to go to Digipen and become a game programmer when he grows up.
I think the problem is a whole lot less serious than Jon makes it out to be. If there were rampant fear of gaming, then the game industry wouldn't be surpassing movies as America's entertainment of choice. Pundits and fear-mongers will attempt to sensationalize and blow things out of proportion in an attempt to get ratings, but this is only a passing trend. Americans in general, who see their kids playing Pokemon stadium and the latest incarnation of Mario Brothers see gaming as it actually is. Not some evil mind-control ultra-violence training ground, but as a fun diversion that can engage a child's mind and creativity.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
It sure is good to see that ever single poster so far has seen through Katz's BS...
Gaming is far from the "most revolutionary cultural force in the world right now," and it was not a major point in the presidential election. Yeah, it got mentioned a few times, but I don't think any candidate made it a platform point. And you know, I'll bet that most of the people in the world haven't even noticed that there's been a lot of press about video games and their effects. You want to know why? Because when it does get mentioned it's usually a small point in a story, and non-slashbots don't get it shoved in their face for a week after the story comes out!
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Addlepated - punk & metal
I dont think it is getting any *more* violent.. after all.. violence has existed since the dawn of time. (OG discovers a rock is harder than OOG's skull.) The disturbing thing, to me, is the paralells one can draw between this civilization and it's "entertainment" now, and Rome, or Greece, or France right before the Revolution. (Or Japan, Germany,.. you can find a paralell just about anywhere). The problem I see, to use Rome as an example.. the more violent the games got, to the point where women were forced to kill their children, where people were stuck in an iron bull and bets were taken on how long it took them to stop kicking and screaming after a fire was built.. etc.. built a catharsis in their society.. always looking for a bigger kick. Not that I think for a minute that someone playing Doom is going to get a *real* shotgun.. but they will keep looking for a bigger, better game. This is touchy then, at what age they are exposed to them. An adult, or a 17 year old, is much better suited to discern and to control their impulses about gameplay or reality than, say, a 7 year old.
The more violence is accepted in film, games, TV, etc, the more people are inclined to accept it in every day life, as it paralells, and the human mind doesnt necessarily discern it when its in the background. Whether this is good or bad, I dont know.. and I dont pretend to know.. but if you look at the historical trends in other past cultures, it tends to snowball to a point and then go *POP* loudly. (Of course, no democracy has ever lasted very long anyway, and we are about at the end of the projected lifespan.. so we shall see, eh?)
Just my two cents..
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Gaming is not entirely viewed as bad.. Myst was never accused of being violent!
Sure, if you don't count the dozens of gamers who, frustrated at poorly constructed puzzles and slow gameplay, finally snapped and started shooting up suburban MacDonalds franchises until the Federal Marshalls came...
And, yes, it was uphill both ways to school back then...
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
I am epileptic, and while strobing or flickering lights give me a righteous headache, they've never actually induced a real seizure.
Anyone have some more specific information about this?
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They're not working at McDonald's. A comforting thought, but it's bogus. They're all around you, wearing suits, having power lunches, going to their own happy hour, meeting at the health club for racquetball games that you're not invited to. They still laugh at you, they still think they're better than you, and most of their perceived success is still driven by their membership in a virtual fraternity. They're merely constrained by law or company policy from grinding your head into the dirt of the recess yard. And they still resent you. Never forget what they are, or they'll make you pay.
I believe it comes down to a lack of understanding on the part of the older generation. 60s rock was frightening because the musicians were saying things that 40 year olds though would corrupt the youth. My mom doesn't like the music my band plays, she thinks it is 'just a bunch of noise'. Games are in the same category, people who grew up without them don't get it, they think their children are going to be harmed by all of the fantasy and imagery involved. In some cases they might be right. I've seen kids who take gaming far too seriously and let it displace other activites. Unfortunately the critics tend to use kids like that as examples, which is a powerful way to turn the opinions of the folks who don't understand gaming.
Icebox
It is, rather, usually defined as a reaction -- usually out of proportion to the actual severity of the problem -- to a perceived social crisis. Though arguable, the general idea is that the problem is perceived as new and unprecedented (and therefore calling for new and unprecedented measures), while it is actually a long-standing practice/problem/phenomenon that has not previously come to light in mainstream society, and is now being defined as a Bad Thing. Let me reiterate: it is seen as a dramatic development, but is not actually development.
And if I can pick up this distinction with my casual reading of a few (~10) books about social science, why can't Mr. Katz?
Carousel is a lie!
Prohibition, to name one, fundamentally changed the way people think about substance abuse. Before prohibition, substance abuse was thought of as a failing of character, like infidelity or dishonesty. Even though it eventually failed, prohibition created a cultural consensus that substance abuse was a criminal problem. The so-called "war on drugs" the latest effect of this attitude.
But Prohibition was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the scariest or most destructive "moral panic" of the era. During the war era some of the worst attacks on civil liberties since slavery were carried out with consent from the "moral majority".
Criticism of the state was squelched for fear it would jeopardize the war effort. The film "The Spirit of '76", which was about the American Revolution, was censored and its creators jailed because it depicted the British, America's allies in the Great War, in a negative light. One could expect to be jailed and possibly tortured for the offense of "rable-rousing", otherwise known as giving a protest speech. Congress went as far as to pass laws, still on the books today, banning such terms as "sour Craut" and "hamburger" because they could be seen as positive depictions of America's enemy in the Great War, Germany. You should be careful to refer to these dishes as "saulsburry steak" and "victory cabbage".
But that wasn't the worst. If you want a political litmus test of the times, read the transcripts of the trail of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Venzetti, two Italian immigrants accused of a murder they could not have committed. The prosecution was awarded a conviction after offering only cursory presentations of such arguments as motive, opportunity or intent. The case rested firmly, and one could argue solely, on the fact that both men were immigrants and anarchists. After protest from nearly the whole world, Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted in 1927.
This is to say nothing of the MaCarthy trials, and the "moral panics" that came later.
Today's "moral panic" about alleged pornography, profanity and violence in assorted media is rather tame in comparison to what's happened in the past. It it important to point out that without the erosion of civil liberties that took place after World War I and II, the censorship proposed today would be utterly inconceivable.
This is not meant to trivialize the current situation - in fact, one should be more concerned about this trend having realized that it is not isolated, sporadic or random. It is, in fact, the latest outlet of a social flow that has tributaries running at least a hundred years into the past.
So, if anyone is going to take a stand against the advocates of censorship today, they should take caution from the lessons learned by people who fought these forces in the past. They should also understand that, in taking a stand for personal liberty, they find themselves in very good company. While Kevin Mitnick has a lot less to complain about that Sacco and Venzetti, the battle is one and the same.
This is the fundamental question of living in a democracy - the liberties of the individual verses the wishes of the majority. In my mind, the question is not as sticky as it seems at first. It is a matter of determining when you are truely dealing with the "wishes of the majority" and when you are dealing with opportunists who claim to be acting on behalf of the majority. I suppose that it might also be possible defend the liberties of the individual by understanding the diffrence between the "wishes of the majority" and a "moral panic".
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
The context in which it must be placed relates to the accelerated pace we are living in. My children know much, much more about sex than I ever did, but their attitude toward it is different, tainted by music and TV.
We are struggling, still, to become a nation with an identity formed by the land. We are a unique culture, one immersed in shiny objects and glittering prizes. Never before have so many been showered with such an array of stimulating toys, images, sounds, and ideas. In our numbness we seek out authentic experiences and find them - ironically - in virtual realities. Michael Crichton has something to say about this in his book "Timeline": the only authentic experiences left for modern man are to be found in the distant past before reality was processed and fabricated by service providers.
We bemoan our children's development proportionately to the extent that they are growing up differently than we did. The village that is raising the child today is electronic and immediate. Our children feed on all this information indiscriminately until we the parents provide them with the filters they need to separate good nutritious food from brain candy and mind poison. It is our role in this society to resist and temper the development of our culture, because it is the traditional role of parents (the 'village') to help shape the culture. That role has been largely usurped, and we feel and respond to a great lack of control over our cultural destiny as evidenced by our children. We become alienated from each other.
I personally have become alternately fascinated, shocked, intrigued, and bewildered by the aspects of all this technology. I can only stand in awe of the rapid pace of gaming development and hope that those who are greedy purveyors pandering to the baser instincts of our children today, will someday learn to listen to the small voice in their souls as they gain wisdom seeing the awful consequences of their evil and stupid mistakes. But first they will have to admit to their own culpability, and that will take an awful lot of growing up.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
...and parents everywhere scorn the moral perversity that he brings to their children and to the general culture. The year was 1956; young teens everywhere were easily corrupted by his swaying mid-section and his sexual intimations, and the parental populace was outraged.
This isn't a new inroad into the development of societal and cultural abnormalities, and their adoption into general society; this happens all the time with culture, it is how it expands and grows. Whether religious outrages, musical inventions and divas, or video games; cultural changes often represent subcultures which are likely scorned before gaining acceptance. Many times they are simply fads that come and go, and other times they are changed and instituted into the definition of a culture. Either way, it is assimilated by the system by some extent, and helps to expand our definition of society. Video games will be percieved as bad, evil and wrong for a long time, and this is what drives its sub-culture for many people. I predict that it will eventually become accepted more generally by society and its violent imagery may change...or maybe it will continue to be it's driving force. Either way, we must realize that games are here to stay, and if we don't like their atmosphere we must work to change it.
"This is where god would go if he wanted to get off blow!"
This article seems to be heavily slanted towards the United States and gaming. There's nothing really wrong with that, but there are other cultures out there. Japan is definitely more hardcore when it comes to gaming and have risen violence in the media to an art form. They have violence down to a science. Watch any old John Woo films, any one of dozens of animes or play any Resident Evil or Castlevania game and watch the bloody violence in all of its insane glory.
And yet there is no moral panic in Japan over video games. It's as much a part of their culture as pachinko and tentacle rape cartoons, and has been for years. It's much more integrated over there into daily life, where the premiere of games like the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest/Warrior series' are so huge and hyped that they actually have to close schools and businesses because so many people line up in anticipation for the game's release.
With all video games so embedded into their culture and violent cartoons, movies and games the way they are in Japan, you'd think that they'd all be violent criminals, at least if you went by Lieberman logic, and that there'd be a huge moral panic, given Katz logic. Well, there isn't. (At least not that I know of.) The violent crime rate is much lower, and the acceptance of video games as art and as culture is higher there than anywhere else.
But why bother with Japan. It's not part of the United States. The United States of course is the basis of all culture, so to hell with the rest of them.
As a side note, way to go there, Katz, prove your technical ignorance by quoting somebody else who is obviously technically inept. The PS2 is not that powerful. If you want to write for a geek site, at least research the specs of the machine and compare it to those million dollar systems of 1999. Don't take some chair for a television school's word for it. He probably hasn't played a video game in his life.
J
Have you ever had to live with a mother how was absolutely convinces video games were evil?
I think my mother was more evil than the supposidly evil nintendo. Instead of raising me to shun evil and violence, she tried to force here anti-gaming views on me and took a hammer to my nintendo. Yeah, then went the Super Nintendo, the Sega, the PlayStation. Thank god I'm not living there anymore.
And people wonder what the hells wrong with the children in today's world...
-Kefabi
Now we get the gritty details of what that really means.
Among other things it means a shift in the rules of what makes up your personal reality. Some folks do not deal with this well.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think you nailed this dead on. I read voraciously, game quite a bit at times, and use music, and poetry the same way - as an escape from reality. Still I can not understand anyone who would confuse reality with fantasy. Like I said, I used/use it as an escape, usually it was at the times I suffered from depression, where reality was painful. But to cope with that pain, immersing yourself in games is useful in helping to get through it at times. Does it screw up your productivity? Absolutely, but at times like that you're going to have productivity problems anyway. Does it make you a little more anti-social? It may certainly seem that way to outsiders, but the reality is you'd be anti-social anyway, games are just something to occupy your time while you are that way.
I'm not advocating games as a cure-all for mental illness, but many people who suffer self-medicate someway or another. Gaming is certainly physically healthier than developing an addiction to drugs or alcohol.
I don't know how many other people the above is true for, but I've met quite a few: Entertainment , be it gaming, watching sports, reading, music, poetry, alcohol, drugs, etc - is an escape from reality for many people, a coping mechanism to help get through painful times. Are there other ways to help cope? Sure, some people use religion and faith, some people use modern medicine... But the point is, that these things are quite often used for this purpose. Myself, I'm glad to have had gaming for this kind of outlet, it helped me immensely in coping with the symptoms of bi-polar disorder, until I recognized the problem and was able to get medical help for it.
And in the mean time, much of the gaming I've done has helped sharpen my ability at logical and strategic thinking, as well as lay the foundation for my fascination with computers and technology which has led to my career choice. So all things considered, it wasn't a complete waste of time either...
As for the corruption of my morals? Well, reading has done far more for that, than gaming managed at all... Of course, I wouldn't say my morals have become corrupt, simply different, and not necessarily mainstream. But then, ever since I started contemplating my ethics at all, I began to diverge somewhat from the norm. Games had nothing to do with this, and I think a lot of people confuse cause and correlation in respect to this issue.
-Nez
But my dreams they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be...
What I have seen are the non-profit executive director's homes and automobiles...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I will set myself up as the executive director of a non-profit corporation, drop some money on production of some public service announcements, roll them into the Ad Council list, and sit back for the ride.
I figure if our clients have enough cash to buy games, they have enough to afford some pretty heavy dues. All we have to do is get the relatives in an uproar, and maybe they will pay for it.
After we get enough donations we will find some pop pyschologist to run us up a feel-good clone of AA or something, print some bumper-stickers and tee-shirts ("One Level At A Time") and then set folks up running sessions in vacant strip-mall spaces. Get on the local judicial lists as a treatment agency, and rile up some college students to write us grants for local and federal program monies.
Any investors, er, executive vice-directors? How can you go wrong? Isn't this America's traditional way of dealing with morally paniccing issues?
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
It's hard not to visualize the typical gamer's image when reading this story and even easier, I assume for an adult. This is the type of stereotype that the gaming community has to erase.
Why is it so hard to get rid of the image of the fat kid playing Pokemon or the 'freak' playing D&D? Because these are the images that we are given by the media. We are not given accurate images. The accurate images are the ones that show a huge variety of people taking an active part in gaming.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
For the most part, it comes down to good parenting and instilling good morals into your child. Time and time again, the children who get into gaming and real violence/crime are those who don't get enough positive attention from their parents.
Most young kids don't know better. They act the way they are taught to act (or allowed to act).
Most teenagers sometimes know better, but not always. Being a teenager is tough. You are almost an adult, but without the adult responsibilities. Not being quite adult, teenagers emulate whoever appeals to them most.
Unfortunately, it is the media (owned by the older generation) that glamourizes violence. The media does indeed tell us what is cool and what isn't. Teenagers and young children are very susceptible to the media.
For the most part, if it's on TV (or the Internet now), it must be true. And the kids just gobble this stuff up.
Some will point out that I am generalizing. Of course I am. Having worked with kids, each one is a different case. I have to generalize and classify in order to get a decent grasp on the problem.
I'd like to point out that there are a lot of good kids out there who play these violent games who grow up to be upstanding citizens. It was only less than 10 years ago that I was one of these kids.
The biggest problem is that we are looking for a single source for this problem. Unfortunately there is no single source. It is a non-point source problem. All the little things from failing to spend time with your child, to the media glamourizing violence, to violent gaming, to the schools that they attend, to genetic pre-dispositions, all contribute to the way a child grows and acts.
We have to stop looking for a single source. It doesn't exist. We (as adults) have to start taking responsibility for our actions and the consequences they have.
Anyway, I am just thinking out loud here -- I'd love to hear discussion pro/con wrt my thoughts.
the cultural age gap is closing fast in north america. 20 somethings are acting like teenagers and teenagers are acting like adults. teenagers are growing up fast and then don't ever want to fully grow up.
I suggest you hit your mother with the hammer. Sounds like you'd be doing us all a favor.
Time to die, nerd-boy!
Seems to me that the media / politicians / parents only recognize the few people that take gaming to the extreme. I enjoy a good stress-relieving deathmatch at the end of the day, but I've also known people who have made gaming their lives, rather to live in a RPG than in the world. Its funny because, gaming can have that effect on people, and others tend to see only the extreme side of the gaming culture.
I'm not surprised. How many other examples of this thing happening has life shown us? A few I can think of are Slashdotters (Not all loud-mouthed script-kiddie anti-anything-but-linux zealots), Christians (Not all mindless unintelligent science-defying people), and Canadians (They don't have those floppy heads like on South Park).
This article reads more like an election speech than an essay written to elicit new thoughts. You pose the question - "who in our culture is preparing for the radical changes in imagination about to be unleashed?" In reply, I ask what radical changes in imagination have been unleashed by the last ten years of game play? There are benefits when we can look at more sophisticated home computers and graphics chips that were (in part) developed to meet the needs of gamers. The creativity and imagination unleashed have been from the designers and developers - not the players. What evidence is there that playing these games benefits the player in any way. The phrase "get a life" came into use for people such as these.
That's a very good article, Katz. You've summarized our society's latest fears quite well.
Society has this craving to find scapegoats. There's always got to be someone to blame for its problems and usually the different group gets the title.
This is nothing new, of course. What I'd like to add is that society is arrogant and lives in a constant state of denial.
Where is it written that men are bound to become "better" as time goes on? Where do people find proof of that?
What Katz calls the "new culture" has been attacked vehemently by everyone that belongs to the "old culture", as if the world underwent some bizarre overnight change.
Nothing changed!, and that's what must be stated. Some games may have the in-your-face attitude regarding death and violence, but what exactly does that prove? It tells us about a new way of seeing things. A new way that opens an ideological gap between different kinds of people. To top it all, a new way that won't last forever, for it WILL be superseded.
The "wide segment of society" attacks the "group" looking for the scapegoat and refuses to see the demons that lie within us all.
Flavio
Each one of them, with the exception of 1 (in a group of 20) had some serious problems with reality. The funniest of them was a kid (about 16 at the time) who tried to cast a spell on a guy who was sizably bigger (why i'm not sure.. I dont even know if he had a reason) - after the spell casting he shouted something about how he had some special token and couldn't be harmed, then punches the guy. Well, he didn't last more than a few seconds, and ended up bleeding on the ground thereafter. It was funny, but somewhat sad. The most messed guy used to flash freeze rats (not sure of the method of it) and then break them or use them as displays. He also used to speak Klingonese (or so he said, no one actually verified this) and dress up as a star trek character for fun (no reason).
The problem isn't video games.
Whatever happened to just plain crazy?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
As much as I disagree w/Katz's articles (usually) and, point by point, arguments (ditto), the "Up-Up-Down-Down" title is great. After Part I, I asked a plethora of friends and acquaintences to finish the sequence: "Up Up Down Down ..." and, as expected, the (currently) 16-25 year olds could, while no one else had any idea.
Of course, my youngest brother can explain the phenominon that is Pokemon, while I can't even spell it.
The others will just have to use their imagination.
JonKatz actually followed up on one of his "first in a series" articles! The world as we know it is over!
Actually, Jon follows up on a good deal of his 'series' articles, just they don't always make it to the front page. If you check the side sections on the left, you'll see a story or two of his that wasn't big enough.
Now, that isn't to say that there's no legitimate concern over things like desensitization to violence, couch potatoism, and other alleged societal ills that people associate with games. But a society that questions itself is the only healthy kind of society.
I know this example is used any time 'video game/television/movie violence' but look at Japan. The most violent anime, twisted porn, and violent video games. Yet a low crime rate. Similar comparisons made with gun ownership, citing England as an anti-gun nation with low crime, and other European countries as pro-gun nations with low crime on the flip side of the argument. Given all of these comparisons, I think it's unfair to say that gaming itself is the cause for a high crime rate, violence in schools, etc. The sum of society, including gaming, must be looked at here.
I agree with you totally, games are just games for all but those who have no hold on reality. Another point is, those people will find their escape anyway. The kid who plays Doom for a week then kills his classmates would probably have killed them even if he couldn't download Doom. In fact, he might just have killed them a week earlier without that outlet for his rage.
As Dave Mustaine (lead singer for Megadeth) once said in an interview for MTV hack in 1988 - "They scream and piss and moan about the kid who kills with a metal tape in his back pocket, but what about the kid who offs with a Barry Manilow tape in his back pocket? No press there!" I wonder how many kids have killed classmates after playing freecell or minesweeper religiously.
Like this guy has the chance to change the world. I don't think he even has a chance at procreation.
I'm not stereotyping all gamers, just those who subsitute gaming for real life experiences.
This is another view of the world.
This article relies on a straw man argument that there is some sort of moral panic about video games in our society. There are no serious quotes from mainstream sources to back this up, other than the ubiquitous political fear-mongering related to the entertainment industry as a whole. So first Katz sets up this panic using circumstantial evidence (since direct evidence, like masses of parents burning their childrens' video games in quantity just doesn't exist), then he proceeds to almost knock it down.
I say almost because he goes on to equate the very limited modeling capabilities of a Playstation 2 to that of a supercomputer and then talk benignly about the wonders of technology in a discussion that avoids that issue and instead supposedly reinforces his other strawman argument: that there is some ever-widening rift between the old and the young. Then he assigns (as is typical of the rose-tinted worldview) to the younger generations' supposed side of the rift values that are supposed to convince us that the geezers just don't get it.
What he fails to recognize is that the only rift (i.e. that of the teenage wasteland) is mostly a marketing ploy used to sell kids stuff they wouldn't normally buy.
That is "hey kids, your folks just don't get these baggy pants and those stringy tanktops. Shop at the Gap and assert your independence!" The young are no more auto-dissidents than the old are auto-conformists. Much of what passes for generational rift is simply the by-product of living in a society where teenagers are given no real power and no real meaning other than consumer choices. The only way the PS2 is going to change all this is if kids suddenly start using it to hack into school computers to change their grades, or mess up the computers that control nuclear bombs.
I do not have a signature
If you want an emotionally and experientally rich life: Go swing dancing; learn to cook a new dish; learn to sail, or to roll a kayak, or to SCUBA dive; do anything that will get you out and interacting with other people of similar (or even different) interests; have great sex.
This is from a 36 year old computer professional. I program as a hobby, and do like computer games, though I don't think the current generation is any more enjoyable than the old tty-based "rogue". But I don't confuse computers with life.
Ciao
I consider this the only interesting point of discussion here.
We all brazenly assume people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. But I have always found the most "into-it" people, including me, have some trouble with reality.
Whether the people who play this way were out of touch with reality and therefore play compulsively, or simply play compulsively for another reason and then become out of touch with reality is interesting to me personally. I believe the first is closer to the truth.
Many other compulsive hobbies, like reading, poetry, other games, or obviously D&D other hobbies over the years have been used for these purposes. Video Games, in their current incarnation are only slightly more interactive and encompassing, though some would argue less so than D&D.
-Ben
I recall a slew of superficial Reader's Digest-type articles in the mid-80's that attempted to scapegoat Dungeons & Dragons as an insidious, soul-sapping plague infecting our nation's youth. This hysteria -- fueled by small-town Parent-Teacher Associations and lazy journalists -- spawned specious allegations of high-school satanists and the ubiquitous urban legend of the college kid who "got too into the game" and disappeared into the steam tunnels.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
You see politicians crying out against not just video games, but content on television, in movies, in music, and so on. For Katz' stories to be truly insightful and effective, he needs to show how video games and gamers fit in with the other forms of mass media in terms of behavior, content, and criticism. That'd be most interesting.
As usual though, I think Katz is on the right track, and exposing us to ideas that make us think, even if we think they're crap. Just my two cents before the usual Katz-bashers rear their ugly heads.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
-John Lennon
Middle-aged day-trader shoots up an office center.
More than half of marriages do not last.
Decades of enslavement of an entire race in America.
Decades of spousal and child abuse in America.
Blow jobs in the white house by an intern, with a married president.
And it's the VIDEOGAMES that are causing moral panic?! Holy shit . . . Talk about blind.
---
seumas.com
1) Gaming is not entirely viewed as bad.. Myst was never accused of being violent!
2)This was *NOT* central to the presidential election, anymore than the health concerns in Rwanda was. PLEASE Katz! Stop turning a single media reference into War of the Worlds! Liebermans crew want to stop TV.. and the "furor" during the campaigns was about movie ratings, and how they screened films, *NOT* about games. Basically, with the price of games and the price of game level systems, especially on the PC, (which are the *most* violent games) few people under 18 are getting them without their parents knowledge anyway, and anyone over 18 is out of the hands of the gubmint censors in that arena.
You are trying *WAYYY* to hard to tie this to hellmouth.. its not going to work.. I'm really starting to get sick and tired of "Waaah.. I'm a misunderstood genius, Waaaah.. they pick on me cuz I'm a geek, WAaaaah.. they are mean to me at school so I'm gonna blow it up" crap.. GET OVER IT! Most of us went through it.. and where are we now? In IT.. where are "they"? Would you like fries with that?
Cmon.. video games are *not* the world changer you are trying to make them be!
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Million-dollar computers -- in l999! -- have only fractionally more power than the Play Station 2
What, like 10000/1 ?
-... ---
Seriously, I think Katz is overstating both the severity of the "moral panic" that society has supposedly created over gaming, and the importance of gaming as a cultural force.
They're just games, people! Sure there are a few oddballs who are covinced that Doom et. al. are a tool of Satan, but most reasonable people recognize that games are just games.
Now, that isn't to say that there's no legitimate concern over things like desensitization to violence, couch potatoism, and other alleged societal ills that people associate with games. But a society that questions itself is the only healthy kind of society.
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The most valuable commodity I know of is information. - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street