Slashdot Mirror
What Game Violence Can Teach
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Murdoch from GamersWithJobs asks the question 'Can game violence be good?' in a provocative article entitled The Red Suit. After a week playing Introversion Software's Wargames-inspired nuke game Defcon, his answer is that it can be, if not good, then at least informative. 'I admit that in a rousing teamspeak game of Defcon I am not drawn into bouts of real-time reflection. But on closing down the game for the night, I find myself oddly thoughtful: sad, reflective, a bit fragile. But not upset, and not wanting to wipe the game off my hard drive. Violence in games can teach us things. It can reach us in ways beyond mere titillation. It's all about context.'"
ie.: Manhunt taught me that sneaking up behind an enemy, surprising him with a chokehold then ramming long shards of glass in his eyes works very well.
That knowledge has helped me a lot in recent months.
Trolling is a art,
Many people know what MAD means. However they can't quite graps WHAT it means. Defcon can kind of show you that. When it announces a"winner" it almost feel sarcastic to me. Then you look at your casualties.
You mad
Games are supposed to be a way to virtually get out frustrations that are illegal and wrong to do in real life. If you aren't capable of making the distinction between fantasy and real life, and if your fantasies involve killing people or whatever, then violent games are NOT FOR YOU!
stuff |
Where can I get in on the "write absolutely anything about video games and violence and get paid" gig? :(
-- pupkick
oh, cats are microwavable, the results are just less than pleasant.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
That freaking soundtrack in DEFCON is incredible, but always puts me into a rather meloncholy mood. Reminds me of highly emotive version of what some of the Fallout themes were.
...that the already low standards for becoming an attorney can be lowered even more by the right dingleberry objecting to it.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
This demonstrates one of the dangers of discussing violence in videogames: there is no way we can experience the same visceral reaction to videogame violence that we do to real violence. Trying to compare real world violence to videogame violence is like reading about climbing about Mount Everest and actually doing it; a superficial similarity, but not the same thing.
Dreamers, shapers, singers, makers... Elric, the Techno-Mage
The results were much more interesting after they put that metal pin in Fluffem's hip.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
Of course it can be good.
War sims, like America's Army, can obviously be put to good use in training and preparing soldiers for urban settings, teaching them to think critically in a "big picture" sense and visualize the entire battlefield, etc...
The more important question is does violence "teach" gamers anything in a real world sense of the issue, and I'd say the answer is a resounding no.
Not that they're incapable of it, but rather that games today aren't developed to teach us life-long moral lessons. For the stickler that's going to point me towards a lonely moral-laden game, suffice it to say that popular games aren't made with this intention, or, conversely, games with a moral intention don't become popular.
Until there's an audience of a reasonable size that is demanding this sort of moral game that induces self-reflection, it shouldn't surprise anyone that those types of games don't get supplied, at least not in any significant quantity.
-TheBaron2
I suggest people checking out Defcon. It is a lot of fun. I showed my buddy a game last night. When explaining how to tell who won, I explained that it wasn't so much about who won, but who lost least. :-) I don't get quite as much into this game, as the author does, though. It is a fun diversion, that I am surprised no one thought about doing years ago.
The poster writes that when he comes away from a game of Defcon, he feels reflective, kind of sad, about it. I think that's exactly what Introversion Software wants. It's a great game, yeah, but when you play for a while and then notice, for the first time, distorted coughs and crying played randomly as part of the soundtrack, it kind of makes you stop and think. It's like, damn, I did that.
I think most games are not capable of teaching the dark side of violence. I hate to keep going back to it, but GTA is convenient here. You get points for killing. Other, less controversial games, too. Most FPS's, to an extent. Even that one racing game (Burnout?) where one game mode involves causing as much damage as you possibly can. Most games depict a cartoonish, unreal, detached violence.
Not to sound like an advertisement, but I got the same feeling of the violence making you think in Introversion's Darwinia, too. You get attached to the Darwinians, and then you have to send hordes of them to battle the virus infection. And when they do kill viruses, you have to go collect the souls of virus and Darwinian alike.
Personally, I'd like to see more games that have a more realistic depiction of violence.There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
Is it strange that I keep seeing that game being plugged everywhere?
I mean it's cool and all, and yes, I've seen the movie "Wargames" and I've expected a game like this to ventually be made...
But I'm seeing it everywhere on the sites I normally frequent, and in casual talk, and I expect it'll be in the news for a bit, and I'm wondering if we're unwittingly participating in some sort of "Snakes on a Plane" type of marketing scheme.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who in their right mind would enter a real war scenariou after playing a few rounds of counter-strike?
I used to be very good, top of the server for ten games streaks. Almost never did I survive every single round. If I can't survive after extensive in-game training with nerfed weapons what makes me think I'd survive a real war where people are really honest trying to make my life stop.
GTA is a tonne of fun, but how much would I pay it if every wrecked car involved watching my character sit in the hospital for two weeks? Only a moron doesn't make that connection.
Killing thousands of zombies in Dead Rising doesn't make me think, 'hey killing people is easy' except to the extent that I think 'hey, if it's this easy for me to kill somebody, then it's that easy for someone to kill me. Shit.'
Personally I'd like violent games to come with the insane warning stickers you see on appliances:
WARNING: If you try this in Real Life you will LOSE LIMBS, ENTER A VEGATIVE STATE or DIE PAINFULLLY.
WARNING: Save game technology DOES NOT EXIST in Real LIfe
WARNING: Acceptable in-game behavior may result in getting A KNEE SLAMMED INTO YOUR CROTCH in Real Life
GTA teaches two really important lessens:
No matter how good a driver you think you are, if you drive recklessly fast your car is going to get banged up and will probably end in a fiery crash.
If you push the law, you can run but in the end the police are going to bust you and usually in a particularly violent manner.
Interesting article, reading it felt like a short story competition. I love to hear about positive violence in games, but what is positive about violence? What your fighting for could be positive...or like max payne you could be getting revenge for the death of your family...somewhat positive..? I still don't understand the difference between what is portrayed in a movie and what happens in a pixelated game. Games are entertainment, it is the entertainment industry, what is so different about pointing and shooting digitized people over watching it happen to actors?
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Have you watched that show lately? :P
The secret is to poke holes in it with a fork first.
... was Chu Chu Rocket. There's nothing like putting four friends in a high pressure timed situation where your sole objective is to not only accumulate points, but to screw over the other players in the process. Chu Chu Rocket was the only game which made my taciturn friend Chris (who never says anything mean or nasty) curse like a sailor and made my friend Mike physically hit me. To this day, the words "Cat Mania!" evokes the war cry "Defend yourself, violently if necessary!" *grin*
I'm told that Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. has a similar effect on other gamers.
I always play as the Soviets. Partly because nuking the living crap out of America is enormous fun, but also because I've no idea of Russian geography and wouldn't know what to aim at. Is Skahaterakinskograd a major city? Fuck knows, but if I nuke Chicago I know I'm going to piss someone right off.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's easier to kill people in a game than it is in real life, and anyone who isn't a crazed Muslim is more or less afraid to die. If real life was like CS, every SWAT or special forces operation would result in insane amounts of casualties, and the US military death toll in Iraq would be in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
In The Godfather, which I've been addicted to lately, you are taught that violence has consequences.
While it is an open world game in the GTA style, consequences can be much more serious than getting chased by police. There are multiple rivals gangs, and taking back Corleone turf means taking it away from them. There are several ways to do this, but some of them require violence (it is The Godfather, after all).
If you anger a gang enough, they'll start a mob war, and all hell breaks lose as your family and their family start fighting. Suddenly the streets are a lot less safe, and your businesses become the targets of firebombings and such. There are 3 ways to end a gang war: bomb one of their businesses, pay a visit (and some cash) to the FBI, or get iced ('killed' and sent to some unlicensed doctor)... the last option will cost you more businesses while you recover.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
The big difference is, a lot of the people who kill the server leaders are the ones who die in every round, because of the risks they take. If those people take that risk in real life before they have an oppurtunity to kill you, they don't come back in the next round...
I've only gotten to play the demo so far, so 1v1. I near the end of defcon 2 i send fighters out and find the silos, by then my bombers tend to reach enemy land, the AA is tied up on the massive number of fighters and my bombers launch nukes so close to teh target that i can hit most of their silos with 3 nukes. The moment they lanch a nuke my subs hit thier silos, then i retreat. I might lose one or 2 cities, but usually less. If my subs survive , i lose some to fighters, they come back in around the time my icbms are about to hit and i launch 1 on each radar and airbase i can find. Then i line up all my stuff on my coast lines and hope for the best. I use the bombers to hit the rest of their cities. Now in game with 3+ people, that won't work as well.
You mad
I learned several things playing GTA:
* Don't run from the cops. You'll probably get killed.
* Don't get involved in drugs, violence, gangs, etc. You'll probably get killed.
* If you lead 1/10th of the life of this character, you'll probably get killed about 1/10th the number of times you die in the game. Which is about 30. But in real life, you don't auto-rez at a hospital after plummeting off a cliff on a BMX or kamikaze dive-bombing a cessna into a crowded mall.
I strongly think extreme video game violence is OK as long as it is clear that the character is DYING, not just being hurt. The resurrection is OK to resume the game, even a child knows you don't come back after about age 6 or so. The most important part is making it ABSOLETELY CLEAR that the death of a human being occurred. I like the way it's handled in the Brothers in Arms series - the death of your squadmates is an important, emotional event. They're not disposable automatons.
# Erik
"WARNING: Acceptable in-game behavior may result in getting A KNEE SLAMMED INTO YOUR CROTCH in Real Life"
You mean there are no games were a guy can get kneed in the crotch? Bogus! I want my money back.
"WARNING: If you try this in Real Life you will LOSE LIMBS, ENTER A VEGATIVE STATE or DIE PAINFULLLY."
Emergency Room 3
Playing Day of Defeat has taught me that my life expectancy as an infantryman in combat is about three minutes. Which just so happens to coincide with real life. Generals use these life expectancy numbers to determine whether or not enough of their men will survive to hold the ground they expect to take.
And it's also taught me that everything you ever learned about combat in movies is bullshit. But then I kinda knew that already anyway.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
This is a great book which debunks much of the nonsense about this subject and presents good common-sense arguments about why fantasy violence is not something we should fear. http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/k/killing- monsters.shtml