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On the Advent of Controversial Video Games
First I'd like to discuss the basic complaints many people have over these video games. The phrase "too soon" gets thrown around a lot. But what are the specific complaints about these controversial games? I've tried to divide them up from most serious to not-so-serious attributes (which a controversial game may have one or more of, and which is by no means a comprehensive list):
- Human life was lost.
- People who survived the situation or are survivors of victims of the situation still remember it, as it happened less than one generation ago.
- It spins the situation too much as novelty or entertainment and thus disrespects those involved and/or detracts from the gravity of the situation.
- It deals with a very real life issue that some people aren't comfortable discussing, such as: race, religion, sexual orientation, slavery, politics, the law, prostitution, drug use, etc.
- Stuck in a think-of-the-children mentality, the "M" or even "AO" rating does not deter groups and people like Jack Thompson from arguing that it is not appropriate material for minors and therefore should not be distributed. Popularity of a title and great game mechanics may exacerbate this.
I'm going to start with an easy game to discuss: RapeLay — an obscure title by a Japanese publisher that focuses on forced sex situations. There is something special about sexual crimes that make them even worse than murder in the United States. I don't know why, but Hot Coffee in GTA3 drew far more criticism than the normal killing rampage in that game and games before it. This same phenomena occurs at parties where they play games that a murderer is at the party. Yet, if a rapist was at the party, people would probably be mortified. While the sentencing isn't as harsh, sex offenders are registered and tracked for the rest of their lives while murderers can be released or paroled under good behavior. I see RapeLay as nothing more than a game concentrating on a particular crime — a less serious crime than many I commit in some of the games I play. I've no desire to play it, but people who derive entertainment from that have a right to it. RapeLay is merely another adult game like Dangerous Toys for the Dreamcast.
Nothing could be more recent than making a simulation game where you're a Somali pirate invading other ships. You have an impoverished community with people starving to death and people being taken captive. A player is most likely deriving entertainment from horrible situations on other continents today. This isn't Disney making three Pirates of the Caribbean movies based loosely on a very real and life-threatening situation four hundred years ago. This is completely a function of when it happened. On the other hand, piracy on the water has been a classic platform for games, and if the game is historically accurate, how much different is this than an in depth news article? Keep in mind that this is the same game company that partnered with the History channel to bring you WWII and Vietnam games in the past. I think it is very much arguable that games based on war can be informative if done correctly.
A quick note on a more wide spread release for the Playstation 2 is a game that some Hindu groups say is offensive to their religion. Along the same lines, several online games have depicted Mohammad which is a no-no in Islam causing unrest. These situations are offensive to a small part of the population and — unless done in very disrespectful ways — aren't going to gather much more controversy. They're no Muslim Massacre: The Game of Modern Religious Genocide, but they are reportedly offensive to some groups of people. On the other end are religious games that gain controversy by targeting non-members of that faith. Left Behind: Eternal Forces was controversial because of violence against non-Christian characters in the video game. Video games like Ethnic Cleansing express extreme prejudice and hate towards a particular ethnicity or nationality. Murder and violence are still murder and violence whether you are religiously motivated, racially motivated or have no clear motivation (like GTA). It is difficult to argue that these games should be outlawed while claiming that it's our right to enjoy games like GTA. Is it because these games are used for propaganda or recruitment tools and mainstream games are not? Is it because of a controversial message in the game? If so, I would like to know why this is any more dangerous than murder in video games.
None of these games faced the wide distribution that Six Days in Fallujah was looking at. And that game is now canceled, the deciding factor most likely being that it was a big name publisher with wide distribution channels. Not that the content was any more or less controversial than some of the games Kuma has made about Vietnam and WWII, but it would have had a wider release and been about a present day war that is still in progress. Books written about the Iraq war have to be careful; news about the Iraq war has to be sensitive to families. Games — a form of non-necessary entertainment — have to be even more careful if they want to enjoy popularity and avoid criticism. As a society, we are just not ready to accept games as a dignified medium. Other mediums faced this same barrier and overcame it, and it's good to have these games testing the waters.
In the United States, it's easy to claim freedom-of-speech this and freedom-of-speech that, but the lawsuits will flow from interest groups with money — no rating system will satisfy them. Letting the popularity (or lack thereof) of a title speak for its quality and message is not enough for some people. The general populace do not yet accept games as an art form like books and movies. Entertainment and even edutainment are not seen as appropriate ways to portray current events, and they may not be for a long time.
Where do you stand on controversial video games? Should publishers and developers be able to release whatever they want? Super Columbine RPG? RapeLay? Six Days in Fallujah? Are they protected by free speech? Will games forever be entertainment and therefore never be able to cover current topics? How would you effectively regulate content if I should be able to play a game like GTA but not Six Days in Fallujah? Do these titles hurt the social standing of gamers and gaming as a medium?
I am about to become very unpopular...
Does anyone read To Kill a Mockingbird or Scarlet Letter for entertainment? Hardly. People read these books to explore the human condition and take a hard look at where society fails the individual.
Does anyone play an "adult" videogame to explore the human condition. Heck no. It's all about juvenille self-indulgence. Real adults are far past that stage and have no real desire to subject themselves to unsavory sights and sounds.
The funny part is that the Fallujah game is the type of controversial topic that can use video games for exploring the human condition. Which is exactly why it's blocked while *cough*"adult entertainment"*cough* runs rampant. No one really wants to take a hard look at the unpleasentries that need to change. Books like Mockingbird were once burned for their controversal nature. Let's see if someone has the guts to watch a few of their DVDs burn.
Ok mods. I've said my piece. Backlash time.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I have long wondered why particular actions are more "taboo" than others in the media. For instance, you can have a heck of a lot of blood and gore in a movie and still get a PG-13 rating, but if you show boobies in a sex scene, you almost automatically get an R.
Why is that? Is it "for the children"? If so, why are we more tolerant of allowing our kids to see brains scattered all over the set instead of *gasp* sexual intercourse?
And why is it that violence for the sake of violence (a.k.a. the Grand Theft Auto series) is OK, but violence for/against certain specific causes not OK? It seems to me that there are certain people groups that need to stop being overly sensitive.
I have a bad feeling about this...
No, I'm not trolling. I'm quoting 4chan when people complain about offensive (and I mean *really offensive) content.
This is the Conflict. Between those who value freedom even to be insanely offensive, and those who think freedom must be measured by some authority.
Napster thought that real world laws did not apply to them... remember what happened. For a while, it was explosively popular, then the court cases started, and the business was crushed.
But today what Napster was offering is 1000x more available.
Games authors will push the boundaries, every boundary, until they feel resistance, and when there is resistance, there will be a fight. And in every fight the Digital Majority will eventually win. There is just no way a conventional industrial intelligence can beat a digital one.
The freedom to offend is the same as the freedom to defend.
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Of course every game cited above is protected by the First Amendment. Should the government keep these games off of the shelf? No, of course not. The government should not be the keeper of the public's morals. That is the public's job.
It does not necessarily follow, however, that those games should be on the shelves. If RapeLay, for example, sat next to Disney Game Du Jure at Toys R Us, parents would rightly complain. Toys R Us would get bad press, and they would pull it for what they would call "bad judgment." And it would be bad judgment, because it would make their customers mad at them. This is essentially a self-correcting problem. Anything that, as a society, we won't tolerate will quickly be forced out of sight where most people won't have to deal with it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to actively search for RapeLay if you want that sort of thing.
Final point: the accuracy question. Does a controversial video game become more acceptable by being more accurate? The above poster has it dead right: nobody plays games to reflect on the nature of the human condition. Maybe a game could be made to get you to do that. I'm holding out hope that video games could mature into some kind of new art form. So far, though, there hasn't been much more than puerile bang and flash. Accuracy only enhances the literary merit of a work if that accuracy is used to further some artistic objective. I haven't seen any video game with a coherent artistic vision.
Sometimes people lie and claim things like "To protect the children". But you don't see people outlawing drinking in America, which kills more children than video games. Nor do we put speed regulators on cars, preventing speeds above 40 mph.
The real reason we censor is to MIND CONTROL. Not the silly tin foil hat kind, but the real kind. The ability to affect attitudes. I am talking PR, not scientific rays.
PR works. You show pictures of the Vietnam war and the war ends.
The attempt to censor nudity is an attempt to make sex shameful. It is an outright attempt to twist the minds of a population against sex. It's a beg help when it comes to population control as well as STD control. Far better than silly "Abstience only" programs.
Similarly, the censorship of violence is an attempt to reduce aggression. Not physical aggression, because we are not trying to prevent physical aggression. Censorship of violent media is an attempt to reduce mental aggression. To put it in crass terms - an attempt to wussify people.
But these are complex social issues that have NOT been well thought out. The censorship resulted from old, conservative movements that are no longer as relevant. The anti-sex taboo was very helpfull back before we had effective birth control, just as the anti-violence taboo was very helpful back before we had an effective police force. It is particularly funny that he same people that are against condoms are in favor of the sex censorship. When you think about it, a condom is really censorship of the actual sex act. You can't even touch your partner with the part you most want to touch. As for aggression, a reduction of aggression would not only reduce violence but it also in police work, in the military, and in busienss.
The US government was founded on freedom of expression. It has NO business attempting to do any kind of censorship, particular ones that are as ill thought out as the sex based and the violence based.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Spoiler alert.
The "nuclear bomb" scene in Call of Duty 4 stands out, in my mind, as a moment in a video game (one which otherwise did a middling job of realism) that really wanted to approximate a real experience. You're flying along, la de da, "What the hell?" And suddenly, you're on the ground with no legs, dragging yourself toward nothing, and then you die.
That's war. Not chucking respawning grenades.
I was crestfallen when "Six Days in Fallujah" got canceled. If really intelligent people had been on the design team, and collected oral histories from the men and women who were actually there, and built the environments from actual photos (or even a field trip to those sites), SDiF could have been extremely good--no--it could have been transcendent. It was the perfect idea, just waiting for a near-perfect execution.
I have the right to ignore it and not read it. I also have the right to voice my opposition to Hitler's policies. That's where my rights end. Unlike Adolph Hitler and Joeseph Goebbels I do not think anyone has the right to ban or burn publications. This argument extends to video games.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Exactly. As do we all. This is why discussing the games like RapeLay is kind of a red herring (as the article seems to insinuate, I'm just sick of my friends yapping about it as if it were indicative of mainstream gaming... forgive my rant). Sure, games like that make me want to puke, but who cares? Its a game for sickos made by sickos, it does not reflect on gaming culture as a whole any more than a fetish-indulging book refelcts on the entirety of literature as a whole. The real problem is that people latch on to examples and try to generalize them.
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
...those who mind their own business and those who do not.
mmmm...forbidden donut
It is every bit as expressive an art form as "the world" is an expressive art form for "god."
We build things with a variety of interests in mind. Initially, many games were designed increasingly with "realism" in mind. And year and after year, "realism" had improved. But realism isn't the only factor driving game design... just one of them.
As games become increasingly more involving, the use and expressiveness of games are expanding. Universally, games are an escape for people just as books can be. It enables people to enter other worlds and become other people and play other roles. Initially, people were VERY troubled by "Dungeons and Dragons" because it was very advanced "make believe" and some people, no doubt, took it too far or too seriously. It's not something I ever got involved in, but I recall one freaky guy in Navy technical school who attempted to convince me that a quartz crystal he wore around his neck actually burned him... I found him 'disturbing' to be around.
Eventually, we will have some sort of brain/mind interface and allow us to not only to experience what it is like to be someone else, but to actually become someone else. Many science fiction movies have been made under these notions. And I am quite certain that if such technologies were to ever come to light, they will be protested and motions to ban them will be made.
We make our real world in our own image. We make our imaginary worlds in our own image as well, in a wide range of media including books, plays, music, role play, computer games and probably numerous others that don't come to mind.
What "expressions" should be forbidden? What "ideas" should be forbidden? What "media" should be forbidden? What purposes should be considered noble and what should be considered vile?
As we seek to pass judgement upon one another, it is quite helpful if we were to actually say what we mean and to understand, if only for ourselves, why we seek to silence others.
And as to the guy who attempted to convince me that his crystal had supernatural powers? I called him an idiot and asked him not to bother me with his nonsense. I never sought to have his game banned. I recognize that there are LOTS of things I find objectionable. And as a "powerless average guy on the street" I have learned to accept that they exist and do my best to keep objectionable things out of my life. (For example, I program my TV channels to exclude religious content and spanish language content! I don't seek to have religious content and spanish languages BANNED!)
It would be nice if other people could maintain this sort of sensibility, but unfortunately, some people live in a fantasy world of their own. They find it important to objectify other people, control them, limit them, even kill them while they play their games of war, business and domination. Some people, do INDEED take their games a bit too seriously...
The American censor board has it backwards
Most hormone crazed teens are only looking for an outlet for that pent up energy. Tons of violence accompanied by a total demonization of sex can only lead to frustration, couple that with a small arsenal in everyone's basement and you get a columbine
Promote more love and sex in movies and video games along with free condoms, pills and sex education, I'm sure mindless violence will go down a lot.
RapeLay â" an obscure title by a Japanese publisher that focuses on forced sex situations. There is something special about sexual crimes that make them even worse than murder in the United States. I don't know why, but Hot Coffee in GTA3 drew far more criticism than the normal killing rampage in that game and games before it. This same phenomena occurs at parties where they play games that a murderer is at the party. Yet, if a rapist was at the party, people would probably be mortified. While the sentencing isn't as harsh, sex offenders are registered and tracked for the rest of their lives while murderers can be released or paroled under good behavior.
I think there are a few points here that often get muddled by gamers, leading to confusion and outrage. I don't feel like american parents are more okay with violence than sex. I think parents are more concerned about sex than violence because they think their kids are more likely to engage in sexual behavior that is risky and/or morally repugnant to them. And they're right, they're much more likely to get pregnant than shoot their school up.
It's still misguided in my opinion. Sex on games isn't going to make your teenager want to have sex, his hormones are. But that's a seperate point, it's not so dumb as "I'm okay with my teen murdering, as long as they don't have premarital sex." At least in most cases.
There's also a bit of going along with the group. Other parents are more concerned with sheltering their kids from learning about sex than is reasonable or realistic, so those who may start out reasonable start thinking this might be an actual problem. Again, irrational, but hey, we ALL follow the crowd more than we'd like to admit.
Lastly, the sex offender issue is oversimplifed and muddled to the point of ridiculousness. It again isn't that americans are okay with murder but deathly afraid of sex, we're overly paranoid about both. There's a belief that certain sex offenders have far more recidivism than some violent criminals. That's one of the main rationales for the tracking. I'm not going to say whether or not it's true or justified, only that that is the thinking behind it. The opinion of many lawmakers and groups is that a child molester will always be a child molester and evil, wheras a murderer sent to jail might not do it again. It's also easier to understand and sympathize with the motivations behind some murders than sex offenses. We've all had the urge, to varying degrees, to commit violence. For me, it's whenever someone suggests that censorship works, is needed, and should be done to videogames. (Also whenever Rush gets jacked up on painkillers and starts ranting about potheads, or whenever corporate suits try to put on a hypocritical PR campaign, but that's neither here nor there.)
So again, it's not that most americans live in fear of sex but are cool with the odd murder. And, not for nothing, even if we were, pointing that out is not going to prevent some moral conservatives with the urge to censor from coming after our games.
The question is, are the folks who do NOT support "immoral" games adversely affected by their existence?
My gut reaction is that yes, games like GTA and RapeLay, played mostly by men, contribute to the subjugation of women. But that's just the uninformed gut reaction of a guy who's never played either game. I don't trust it much at all. I'd like some data.
There are tests that see how quickly you associate terms. They basically work like this:
1 - A word or person's face will appear on the screen.
2 - If the word has positive connotations or if the person is white, hit the left button. If the word has negative connotations or the person is black, hit the right button.
3 - Your reaction time is measured.
I am, regretfully, faster at reacting when it's good/white vs. bad/black than when it's good/black vs. bad/white. Try it yourself if you like.
You could do the same thing with RapeLay. One group plays RapeLay, one group doesn't. Choose some associations (e.g. submissive and strong words, male and female faces), test the groups before playing... then right after playing, or 1 week after playing, or one year after playing every day for a month, etc.
Anyone know of studies like this? Data, even with it's caveats and conditionals, beats the pants off gut reactions.
The above poster has it dead right: nobody plays games to reflect on the nature of the human condition.
If a game was made with the intent of doing such a thing, it would get played for that very reason. No one read "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "The Scarlet Letter" because they were looking to "reflect on the nature of the human condition" either. They read them because they were either forced to, we're looking for intellectually stimulating entertainment, or had the book recommended by a source they trust.
Books read with the intent of "reflecting on the nature of the human condition" are philosophy, sociology, anthropology, medical, and psychology texts. You have to purposefully go for those items too.
The big mistake is that there is an assumption that the intent of the reader/player is directly linked to the affect on the player/reader. I know that "The Dragonlance Chronicles" had a greater emotional impact on me than "The Scarlet Letter", yet guess which one I read under the auspice of "consuming great literature" (that I was forced to).
If we want to criticize games for not delivering an emotional and spiritual impact in the same volume and manner as books, you have to compare them on an equal scale. Books have been being written for Thousands of years, video games have been being made for 50 years. In a metaphorical timeline, that's about equivalent to "we just got an alphabet together yesterday".
I really don't care whether it's offensive to your religion. You have a right to practice your religion, you have a right not to be subject to discrimination, but you do not have a right to be protected from offense.
Quite to the contrary, offending people is a necessary and intrinsic part of political and religious change. Or do you think that the Reformation and Enlightenment happened without offending anybody? Without offending Catholics, we'd still be stuck in the Dark Ages.
That always bugs me. As someone who works with people who have brain damage, I get a bit tired of seeing people suffer all sorts of head trauma but then have not neurological signs. I know movies aren't often meant to be realistic but we could have things a little more realistic more often.
Movies are unrealistic in every way imaginable. Head trauma is your area of expertise, therefore it's the thing you notice more in movies. Trust me, no matter what your area of expertise, you will find that it's presented unrealistically in movies.
Until the word 'rape' brings up images for men as being helpless tied down victims while they are brutally sodomized and mouth-raped with a stick holding open the teeth (assuming the rapist hasn't punched out or removed all the teeth before the mouth-rape), Rape will always be an easier game for men to discuss.
Once the image of men being reduced to quivering broken-boned receptacles for the machismo-raper's fluids, is firmly ensconced in the minds of all human men, then the topic of what "feels" worse or "is" worse can be rationally and logically discussed on a level playing field. Presuming enough of the males don't immediately seek the solace of suicide to hide their shame.
Maybe then you'll know why. But without a level-victim playing field it's difficult for men, who make most of the laws, enforce most of the laws, and violate the most laws to really judge which is worse (and I'm not claiming one is worse than the other). It's just that for some people, living with the shame of victim-hood can be worse than being killed-in-action. Even though, logically, it wasn't the victim's fault -- that doesn't prevent what can be life-long suffering from, often, untreated PTSD. How much worse is it for those who are told that it was (or is) their fault due to the way they dressed, the fact that they 'flirted', or the fact that they were in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time.
Victims of trauma often suffer for years beyond the actual event as triggers cause them to relive aspects of the event. Ask war veterans when they hear a car backfire or or when they awaken from some nightmare with night-sweats. Ask those who lived but were damaged for life, who may now be trying to care for a family, about how "lucky" they felt next to their fellow soldiers who were cut down, but died honorably, and who got posthumous decorations and benefits for their families.
I don't think you will find universal agreement about who got the better deal -- it very much comes down to the individual, as well as the supportiveness (or lack thereof) after the incident.
Ideally, everyone would 'get over it'...but tell that to the new crop of soldiers, with exceptionally high numbers coming back with what the army has been deliberately trying to downplay, but is being increasingly recognized as PSTD. Victims of any crime -- but especially ones involving interpersonal violence and violation are very likely to set the stage for PSTD-caused mental damage long after the actual event.
About 30 years back, it used to be the other way around. Personally, I think physical castration should be used more often for violent 1st cases, or repeat offenders. But used to be that rape you got off with a few years or probation -- far less punishment than murder, usually. Regardless of the current trends in criminal "justice"[sic] and "rehabilitation"[sic] the sentences and punishments for most crimes under our criminal justice system are out of whack and do little to increase overall safety in the community or the country.
I might agree with you if the victims (and perps) were equally represented between the sexes -- but it's one crime where overwhelmingly, the the majority of perps are mal