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."

Comments

Why write it then?

[BladeMelbourne]

"I did not and do not believe that."

Then one must ask why did you write that? Bad hair day? Boy-friend dump you? Broke a nail? ;-)

Re:Violent games

[Kwil]

Two other points: that there are crap very violent games doesn't seem to be particularly pertinent, unless one is arguing that more violence = more sales. The argument instead is that violence, even extreme violence, has appeal. But even if correlation were the argument, one would have to compare extremely violent crap games against generic crap games with similar marketing budgets, and we all know that there are tragically a very large number of crap games.

What a non-argument that is.
Everything has an appeal to someone.

The person you were replying to was making the point that violence does not sell games, even if publishers think it will. The amount of violence or non-violence in a game is completely orthoganal to the game's likelihood to sell.

So why are violent games made? Not because they sell any better, but because they're easier to conceptualize and easier to market.

Violence is a very easy thing to conceptualize. You against the other thing, and if you don't succeed, you die or are hurt. Everybody understands the idea of hurting or dying. It's a lot harder to conceptualize a game where if you don't perform better than someone else you receive a more nebulous penalty, and more difficult to make the choices the player makes in the game feel like they matter or have significant impact on the player's experience. (eg, explain what the game is in Unreal.. now try and explain what the game is in "The Sims")

Violence is easy to market: People understand what's implied by a picture of a guy with a rifle. People have a more difficult time understanding what a game would be if it has a picture of say Gallileo sitting at his desk writing letters.

So it's not a case of publishers choosing violence for the sake of being violent. It's a case of them choosing violence as a convenient, easily understood mechanism for game-play.