Slashdot Mirror
Neuroscience May Cure Videogames Industry's Obsession With Guns
An anonymous reader writes "Leading developer Chris Stevens tells Edge magazine that neuroscience researchers will soon find 'non-violent triggers to mimic the rush of pleasure gamers feel when firing guns.' Researchers can now use functional MRI scanners to monitor what is going on in a player's brain and search for more optimistic and non-violent pleasure triggers. 'For decades it's as if developers have been driving a car with no speedometer,' Stevens claims, referring to the reliance on reported emotions rather than empirical measurements in game development. The functional MRI now gives a much more accurate indication of when peaceful triggers light up the brain's pleasure regions, opening up alternative game designs, without crude weaponry. 'I would like to see many more beautiful games like Fez and Limbo,' Stevens says. 'When I was a kid, games were more beautiful and magical and immersed you in fantastical, peaceful and enjoyable landscape.' The functional MRI could make these peaceful titles provably superior — no mean feat in a mass-market games industry currently obsessed with the crude dopamine-triggering effects of simulated weaponry."
I'm reasonably sure they can safely and successfully replace "shooting guns" with "swinging swords" and other bladed weapons. Remote-control explosives, lassos and whips, Force-lightning and gravity-guns would probably also work. I'm unsure about their untold, implicit objective though, but then, science is about testing hypotheses, and not fulfilling fantasies about human nature - now that's what simulation video games are for !
Well of course the game designers wouldn't need external measuring tools, not when their own brain can tell them what they, themselves, enjoy playing. Apparently they found out on their own that the most efficient way for getting "crude dopamine-triggering effects" was "simulated weaponry".
I'll even go out on a limb and say that the researchers will find "triggering peaceful-triggers" is best done by solving puzzles that are challenging but not out of reach, repeating a timed sequence of memorized or interpreted actions to a sufficiently close match of a model (like, say, jumping through perilously placed platforms) and the sort of things that have spawned entire casual videogame genres.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I find it quite amusing that their "solution" to violent video games is Limbo.
They obviously never stepped one foot into that world. If anyone got through that game without being impaled or decapitated at least a dozen times, I would be very impressed.
My fear would be if it works and could be applied in advertising, political rhetoric, and incorporated into television news and shows.
Too late.
It's called "propaganda".
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
You can't take the gun out of games, but you can make the gun non-violent. Take Portals for example. It's an extremely fulfilling game with a gun, that doesn't kill anyone.
The reason why players enjoy game have gun that kill other characters so much might stem from the fact that we as a society know that in real life they kill. Therefor we turn to shooter games to play the hero, and save the people from the evil terrorist, and not harm a soul in real life doing it.
Try all you want but the fact of the matter is, guns are part of the gaming culture and an even bigger part in story telling. That is untill something more harmful and destructive comes along.
Guns are inextricably linked with First Person Shooter games, for am extremely obvious reason.
Your error lies in assuming that the only game genre is FPS.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"When I was a kid, games were more beautiful and magical and immersed you in fantastical, peaceful and enjoyable landscape."
When exactly did Chris Stevens grow up?
Obviously, it wasn't in the Atari era, where half of all games were space shooters.
Obviously, he didn't grow up in the 8-bit or 16-bit era, where every game involved you killing everything within sight - either with guns, or swords that have the ability to shoot.
Obviously, he didn't grow up in the 64-bit era, where first person shooters became the biggest selling games.
Obviously, he didn't grow up in the modern era, where a good shooter sells a console.
So, obviously, Mr. Stevens either never grew up, or he didn't grow up with video games.
I think this whole effort is incredibly misguided. Video games used to be peaceful, like Custard's Last Stand or T.E. or that Super Favio Brothers thing where you stomped the shit out of some turtles and walking mushrooms, or alternately set fire to them.
Violence is a fact of life. There is no power to protect; this is a thing I discovered long ago but have been agonizing over to the point of crying trying to understand... somebody spelled it out for me (it was in a book), I finally swallowed it but it was a big pill to swallow. Part of enlightenment is sitting around holding onto truths you've discovered years ago and trying to find the flaw in them, I guess. Unfortunately there is no flaw: there is no power to protect.
Power allows you to destroy, in its simplest and easiest form; more subtle, difficult applications of power allow you to create, and creation is just the careful application of destruction and preservation. People will seek to protect their own interests by force, by taking things that don't belong to them; they will seek to maintain dominance and strength by force of will--by instilling fear, with destruction. The only thing that protects you is the power to destroy: your entire police force functions on the principle that would-be criminals understand they will find you and they will beat and kill you if you resist.
Folks think it's so god damn 'virtuous' to refuse violence. It's insane. You want virtue? Stop being a coward. When you see someone being dragged off to be raped or murdered, go over there and stop their attacker--whether it comes to threats or beating someone's head in with a steel pipe. If you knew the whole damn world would suddenly come to kill you if you rape a bitch, you're probably not going to do it unless you're suicidal; yet sane, rational people will complain about all the violence in the world and then willfully strip themselves of their defenses, and espouse the virtue of having everyone who could possibly stand in to protect them do the same. Lunacy. A lot of good people are gonna get hurt. This is a side-effect of that: violence bad, we should hide it, pull it out of entertainment, teach people to all play nice.
Support my political activism on Patreon.