Slashdot Mirror
Child's Play-Spawning Game Critic Praises, Apologizes
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out a HeraldNet editorial praising online comic Penny Arcade for their 'Child's Play' charity effort, in which the author apologizes for having written the original anti-gaming article which helped the Penny Arcade authors to their decision that "the media seems intent on perpetuating the myth that gamers are ticking time bombs just waiting to go off." The controversy eventually spawned the Child's Play charity fundraiser, which ended up raising almost $150,000 worth of toy/game-related donations for the Seattle Children's Hospital, and the HeraldNet columnist praises the "speed and power with which this network of gamers mobilized their effort on behalf of children and Children's Hospital." He also apologizes for his previous views, commenting: "Certainly many gamers read my column as a statement that I believe that they are bad people. For that impression I am sorry. I did not and do not believe that."
So, lets review. 3 articles about Penny Arcade's Child's Play, 251 about Violent Video Games. Hey, and that 3 will go up to 4 when this article on Slashdot gets spidered by news.google.
The Child's Play charity run organised by Penny Arcade is simply amazing.
But the column cited at its inception doesn't really seem to be demonizing video game players, but a class of very violent video games themselves. The column certainly uses language that while not outright stating it, does imply that ultra-violent video games lead children into becoming sociopathic serial killers, and this was unfortunate rhetoric clearly used to increase the impact of the piece. But there are certainly (at least) two valid points being made there.
Firstly, and most simply, age-restriction ratings on video games are having little actual effect. Either they are not being observed by retailers, or they are circumvented very easily in all the traditional ways. How they could be made more effective, or even if they should, is another question.
Secondly, and more contentiously, there are indeed some few video games which are incredibly violent in a spectacularly brutal and callous way. Interaction does make for better learning than passive exposure, and it's intuitively the case that a steady diet of this material at young ages is probably having some malign effect on the more marginally sane in the population. This leads to the question: why do game companies and publishers produce such games?
Video games can certainly be regarded as a form of creative art. And they're fun, too (or ought to be.) But they're also really expensive to produce these days, at least for any major title. I don't think any large publisher is going to pick up a title unless they feel it has a good chance of being a good seller. And so in turn, it must be that violence sells, even really nasty stuff.
In film, the extreme end of the spectrum is certainly available, but it's not trivially easy to access for minors. Especially for films which are refused cinema release. The creators of such films are almost certainly not doing it for profit motive, because no exposure means few sales. As such, the movie classification systems of (say) major Western countries generally work as a comprimise. They rarely achieve outright censorship, but do for the most part keep the most violent films away from people deemed too young to view them. It also removes the profit motive from exploiting violence as mere titilation.
So maybe stronger classification and enforcement is the answer after all, if it can be placed on par with film classification?
The author gives a detailed description about the child's play project, telling about how touching the effort was, etc. And they mention penny-arcade.com many times. Yet they don't seem to have any clue about the content of the site, even saying that the readers of the site are 'apparantly gamers.' Perhaps they should've checked out the site a little more...I suspect that the content of certain strips could possibly offend people who would regularly read a column written by a 'child advocate.'
hot foreign sheep.
In the meantime, seeing a positive article, where an author actually admits he was initially wrong, is a BIG step. If we could get more people to admit they are wrong (getting them to learn may be another, more difficult step) in their assumptions, we'd be in the midst of amazing progress.
I like Penny Arcade's response to the article, though. Especially this:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2004-0
Let's hope the progress continues...
Well, you can tell he's not too bright by the way he claims that the original Child's Play challenge was written on Penny Arcade by an "unidentified author", when every single post on that site has either Gabe or Tycho's name and face right next to it.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
I feel like posting to his new article, but I really can't be gracious about his apology. I'd like to be, and I'm pretty sure he learned a hard lesson when he's seen so many gamers spending hundreds of dollars for kids they've never met, in a year when Toys for Tots and Coats for Kids barely register.
But then, his apology carries too little credibility. He could have retracted his previous statements that gamers were warped and the most dangerous animals, and I'd probably take his word for it. But he has to claim he never said what he said, which pisses me off much more than the fact that he said it to begin with.
See, words have meanings. When you put the words, "Gamers," "are," "bad," and, "people," together in that order, people generally assume you mean, "Gamers are bad people," and not, "Ducks have orange cocks."
The way I read this, not only has he said gamers are sick twisted child rapers, but now he seems to think we're either illeterate or have no memory span.
Hate to tell him, I can read, and I have a hard time forgetting.