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Salon On The Anti-Gaming CSI Episode
On Monday we mentioned an upcoming CSI episode using GTA as a prop in a tale of violent gamers on a murder-spree. Well, via Gamepolitics, Salon has a feature on the episode in all its game-hating glory. From the Salon piece: "In conjunction with the venom and disgust that infuses the word 'gamer' when it's spoken by star David Caruso, aka 'Horatio Crane,' it is made clear... that people who play games are but one step removed from pedophiles or suicide bombers in the social hierarchy of evil."
Methinks that Gabe and Tycho prove you wrong. Gamers have the capacity to be good people, just like everybody else.
e2 | LJ
I love CSI but this one was so bad it was funny watching the guy play the game. What they never herd of gamefaqs.com?
Getting infuriated by bad TV is a spectacularly useless kind of rage, an exercise in futility akin to bemoaning the badness of "Star Wars'" romance scenes or the stupidity of intelligent design advocates. It's always better to just change the channel.
:)
But getting mad about bad TV depictions of video game culture takes such pointlessness to truly stratospheric heights of inanity.
He's right you know. So why are we here? If seeing stuff on a TV screen influences your behavior, then they're right that video-games are a bad influence. If seeing stuff on a TV screen doesn't influence your behavior then why do gamers care if gamers are depicted negatively on TV?
So why am I posting? I noticed only one person posted before me and I'm hoping an early post will get modded up and help my karma
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
that children play games and anyone who wants to play a game must be doing it to get close to children to impose their evil desires on them.
but one step removed from pedophiles or suicide bombers
or bad television...
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
i'll carjack them and shoot them in the head!
I'm sorry, don't you mean I thinks?
Us evil gamers are getting bad press on slashdot . Not all gamers are good upstanding people who just enjoy playing games to de-stress and have a good time . Some of us gamers actually do go on killing sprees , eat babies and Worship Satan whilst sacrificing virgins .
I cheer CSI for giving us forgotten gamers some press .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Nope. It seems to me.
e2 | LJ
that people who play games are but one step removed from pedophiles or suicide bombers in the social hierarchy of evil.
Stop me know if you heard this one.
So a priest, terrorist, and gamer all walk into a bar...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The problem with this whole position is that it reinforces the premise that you get your values from TV and that willful ignorance is "normal".
The fact that a majority of the (voting) population get all their information from the media is the outrage here. Complaining about the values conveyed is just as mindless as "The war on terror" (coined by foxnews hours before the first government statement on 9/11).
Damn, video game is like the One Ring, you can't escape its influence and it will put us all in beserk trance and we will all destroy the world....
*going to check if my DOOM'S DAY device will be ready for this date*
When trying to figure out why some form of entertainment is made in a certain way or made to promote a certain message, the obvious and usually most simple reaction is to follow the money. Who writes the checks to get CSI: Miami made? Jerry Bruckheimer, the number one purveyor of non-cerebral entertainment in the U.S. He's been responsible for such gems as: The Rock, Con Air, Armageddon, Enemy of the State, Coyote Ugly, Kangaroo Jack, and more. Not all his projects are bad; in fact, I really enjoyed Black Hawk Down and Pirates of the Caribbean. However, all his movies are highly dependent on manipulating his viewers' emotions into what he thinks they should feel and rarely do they engage the viewers' intellect. He does this voluntarily and overtly, and his quotes listed on imdb even allude to that philosophy.
All that being said, when someone makes entertainment this way, his product is going to be emotionally engaging (either positively or negatively). Obviously, the write of the article was affected very negatively. On the other hand, i'm sure there were many people who were affected in a way that they did take the viewpoint of the show: that gamers are sheep and game companies will promote murder in order to sell games.
...and eating it too! Heaven forfend someone pick up and play one of the 5 CSI games (for three platforms mind you). The ones that have been rated by the ESRB are all rated Mature(17+) and feature healthy things like Bood and Gore, Violence, and , ooh hey, Sexual Themes if you pick up the CSI:Miami one.
blarg.
can someone post the text so others dont have to go through that hideous ad?
I just saw the cbs blob and it doesnt quite sound as an "anti gamer" episode to me, it clearly mentions "psychopats acting out a game" the bad guys are the "psychopaths" not the game, the game is just something they are imitating, if it had said "teens" or "innocent children" or "my innocent, innocent clients" then we will had a Jack Thompson like statement in all its glory. CSI is looking for some idiot serial killers acting out a game.
I would like to reserve judgement until I see the episode (which is difficult because I dont watch that show, not because is bad, I just find it too morbid for my taste.)
feel free to correct me Im im wrong. I ussually am
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
I keep saying this, and people keep denying it:
Video games have an image problem!
*We* know what the truth is, but we're involved in games, either as players or makers. The perception outside the gamer niche is that games are involved with crime, murder sprees and all sorts of bad things. Enough mud has been slung at video games that the general perception seems to be negative.
Sooner or later, politicians will do their usual 'tough on crime' thing, and crack down on the gaming industry.
What can we do? Plenty! Game makers need to start focusing more on realism and less on caricatures shooting the crap out of each other. Stuff like Hot Coffee should *never* have been included in the game, even if the code wasn't enabled. Extreme content like that is nearly always weak compared to even a cheap movie, and only serves to reinforce the negative image about games and game players.
Video games have an image problem.
The show isn't the problem. Anyone who watched this episode knows it's a joke and most gamers (I'll wager 99.9% of gamers) will never act this way. However, there is a problem with society. The majority of people watching this episode who are compliment to the set of gamers will now have a very skewed view of the set of gamers. Ths is the problem. Jack Thompson's of the world rejoice.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
If you notice things that are wrong with a TV show, fiction or non-fiction, or book or movie, in your area of expertise, you can be damn sure that they're getting heaps of stuff wrong in areas that you know nothing about. You can keep watching in ignorance, or you can write it off as junk. More often than not I do the latter.
Let me see, we have (1) people who love children, (2) people willing to give their lives for the greater good, and (3) gamers.
Personally, I'd say it's much easier to care about children than to sacrifice your life for the greater good, so I'd peg them (2), (1), (3), but I think there's a big gap between (2) and (3) in this case.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I often see hot girls make huge efforts to fit in with guys that are addicted to video-games. When the female actress in CSI was crying and said (paraphrasing), "You don't know what it's like. If you're not a gamer they don't care about you" to explain why she went along with the guys on their crime spree, nothing more true has ever been said. We live in a culture where hot women are forced to conform to the video game habits of young men. When I'm out at a bar or club I can't help but feel sorry for all the rejected hot young women I see. They just didn't have what it takes to conform to the gamers they so desperately want and they flock to bars in packs to drown their sorrows.
This is a major problem in America. Young women should not be forced to "fit it" with the gamers just to get some self-esteem. I don't know about you, but tonight when I'm out at the bar I'm going to make it my duty to help out some of these rejected non-gaming women.
Wow. It looks like somebody is taking the show too seriously. A crime show always makes "somebody" look like satan. One time is was a housewife, once a judge, a few times a lawyer was the criminal, sometimes it's a child, a delivery man, postal worker, convenience store clerk, whatever. I watched that episode (as a game fan), and I thought, "they sure made COLLEGE KIDS look like low self esteem morons". The opinion on Salon is flat out wrong. Gamers in general were never presented in a negative light. To call the episode anti-gaming is quite naive, and is like calling every other CSI:Miami episode anti-boating (because it seems people always seem to get killed on or around boats) or anti-beach (for the same reason), or anti-college student (for the same reason). I think it's irresponsible to call it anti-gaming. The producers of CSI know who their audience is, and guess what...it's gamers...guys who like action and enjoy movies like The Rock and Armageddon.
It means that it is still a non-mainstream industry! As soon as everyone understands and accepts gaming it will become as boring, banal and mundane as Hollywood. Viva La Difference!
BTW Games are also a direct competitor to Bruckheimer's style of TV, he may not like that.
Now that we've had this accurate portrayal of crime and gaming in Miami, I think now we can all understand where Miami-resident Jack Thompson is coming from!
Actually I was fairly normal until some malevolent force put David Caruso back on prime time TV. I swear it's enough to make anyone an axe murderer.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
David Caruso and his character are both flaming wads of shit. Don't believe me? Watch one episode of CSI: Miami, and you will be treated to what is possibly the worst acting on primetime TV. I like the original CSI, but the spinoffs all suck. Showing a controversial issue like this is a last ditch attempt to get people to watch. CSI: Miami is dying, and I'm sure Netcraft will confirm it any day now.
...at "Readers beware: Motivated by pure venom, I'm going to spoil the hell out of this episode."
Gamers should have seen this coming around the time "Fur and Loathing," the anti-furry episode aired.
Help us build a better map!
The character of Horatio in CSI Miami is intended to be a very one note charcter. He is Intense. And not much else.
Horatio sounds grim and intense when going after murders. Or drug dealers. Or pornorgraphers. But he also sounds grim and intense when going after gamers, parking tickets, littering, and jay walking.
I bet he also sounds grim and intense when doing a presentation about bike saftey to kindergarten students. Or when he is playing with a box full of puppies. Or when he is squeezing on off while reading pornography. Or when he orders a pizza. Or when he talks about the weather.
Anyway, this particular CSI episode is no worse then the comparable Law and Order episodes. All crime dramas try to use current events to seem relevant and pop a rating when they can.
END COMMUNICATION
CSI: Miami - The Game!
The kids running around the bank shooting it up to the latest mall punk/Xtreeem soundtrack made me choke with laughter and I had to turn it off. Seriously, CSI: Miami is even worse than the New York one (is that still on?) Caruso is a ham that could put Pacino to shame, the nasty orange filter they put over every goddamned shot that takes place outside a building gives me a headache and the plots are contrived by Joey standards.
In the pilot episode, there's a brief conversation between both when Nick asks Greg if he has a Dreamcast. I got this from "Elyse: CSI Site" (http://members.aol.com/JRD203/csi-episode-000.htm ):
"Nick is apparently a videogame buff. He asked Greg if he'd gotten the NFL-2K for Dreamcast yet. Of course he had. He got it the day it came out! Greg's team is the Falcons, while Nick chose Randy Moss."
-C2
If I play GTA, Prince of Persia, AND Burnout 3....I will become a dagger-using thug who thinks he can turn back time while driving into other cars in the hopes of making them explode so I can get more cars in my garage? I love these shrinks who wholly believe in that kind of drivvel. The games may influence the weaker minds, but that does NOT make all of us who play them one step away from rampaging psychopaths. BTW, I thought we denounced all this in a previous Slashdothttp://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/1 0/2223202&tid=149/?
" i r 1337. j00 a l0z3r "
That talk kinda makes you cry, doesn't it?
That's right..cry those nerdly tears
So it is OK when games are overdramatic, unrealistic, and misrepresent reality in order to tell a story or to contrive a desired situation, but it is not ok for TV to do so? And god forbid that gamers be the target of this artistic license. The majority of posts on slashdot seem to either (1) make the CSI episode earn an "insightful" rating for depicting gamers as a selfabsorbed and antisocial or (2) reveal gamers to be a whiney childish lot that can dish it out but not take it, that others can fairly be portrayed in a negative light in their art but go ballistic when they are portrayed in a negative light in someone else's art. Perhaps some of the gamers around here should reflect on how they reacted when various police orgranization attacked GTA. Wasn't the prevailing attitude "its just a game, no one takes it serious"? Well shouldn't gamers be saying "its just a TV show, no one takes it serious, every family has a gamer or two and people know they are not really like that"?
Yes, I've spent a lot of time playing games. Yes, I realize that the majority of gamers do not share the whiner's attitude and that they don't really have a problem with things like the CSI episode, that they don't take it any more seriously than the games they play.
I saw the episode and it wasn't that bad. They weren't nessesarily blaming the game, but they did keep some very strong sentiments towards the game, in both the visuals and the dialogue. To start, there were only a few partial shots of the box, which was suprisingly similar to the GTA boxes. CSI members had quotes along the lines of "I had this game but stopped after the first hour, it's horrible of society blah blah blah". What I find particularly amusing is the sort of weapons these teens had. Being from Canada, and living without guns I'm not aware of what people can get, but it seemed a little extreme. It was also funny that they touched on people who have died from playing too many video games...