Messages[]
It is quite possible to depict something without advocating it. Did the roadrunner cartoons advocate people buying zany contraptions from Acme to try to kill roadrunners? Did Star Trek advocate using engaging warp drive whenever you want to travel long distances?
No, yes, and yes. Since Marshall McLuhan we know that the medium is the message. If you depict something, you spread its idea; even if you say "I don't want that". The zany contraptions are way cool! And, yeah, long distance travel taken for granted means a lot more air travel than is good for us today.
Guild Wars is a game where, to complete objectives, you have to kill a lot. It's the way to get things done. Exterminating a species in a habitat is nothing to Guild Wars player. He doesn't have to think up actual solutions to problems that work as a compromise for both parties. The worls is black and white, and the mission briefing is to be believed, usually. There is no way to form your own opinion; if there was, you could change sides. You are not really expected to use your brain except to better kill. It is this expectation that limits your thinking process while playing that shapes the message of the game; it is extended by the community you are part of (i.e. once you are in a guild, you need to think about social aspects of your game).
What do children do after they've watched you play Guild Wars? What message do you think they take with them? They'll take the fighting and make a game of it; it is where the visual effects of this game are most sparkling, the great artwork elsewhere notwithstanding.
Please don't say there no messages just because you can't see them consciously. --◄mendel► 21:28, September 19, 2009 (UTC)
- So is any book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a game of D&D or any film with violance - Nobody has tried to accuse that reading Lord of the Rings makes people want to kill, and D&D players aren't axe-weilding mainiacs, these things don't make people do crazy things, people make people do crazy things. RandomTime 22:31, September 19, 2009 (UTC)
- I know people who find the LotR films too violent -- and the book isn't about the fighting so much. "People make people do crazy things" -- how do people do that? By communicating! And games are a powerful medium, because the player immerses herself in the role that the game designer has laid out for her. There is no direct relation in that "this game makes you do that", at least it's not been proven, because people are ultimately influenced by many things, more by an environment than individual things; it is the sum total of what they are exposed to that makes up the framework for the options they see. And in that total there are strong or weak influences in any direction; and we can assess games and try to guess what kind of influence they exert. I made a case that the type of game shapes the type of thought that comes easily to you; and I've seen you handle conflicts on irc, so I wouldn't easily dismiss that there may be a relation. --◄mendel► 09:30, September 20, 2009 (UTC)
Offense[]
Offense is triggered by real-life experiences; a game needs to be near one's life to be offensive; you have seen winos in real life, but whne have you last seen a slave? "Grand Theft Auto" is very offensive because many people move in traffic every day, and accidents happen. To get points for making happen what you fear, that is offensive. If you have been offended by people who swore at you, chances are you will be offended by a game that swears at you. --◄mendel► 21:28, September 19, 2009 (UTC)
- So do you think that a game that depicted slavery as normal and good, its defenders as studiously looking out for what's best for society, and any anti-slavery figures as morons wouldn't offend anyone? After all, we haven't seen any of that in real life in living memory.
- If it's merely depicting traffic accidents that is bad, then why wasn't there any uproar over how evil Frogger was? Does not the context matter? Quizzical 00:50, September 20, 2009 (UTC)
- In Frogger the player is the frog. We don't cross busy 4-lane highways on foot and jump on crocodiles; at least, I don't.
- With the slavery game, I guess it would depend how much the game has aspects of oppression in it that are repulsive even today; and how much the ideas of the anti-alvery figures are ideas that matter to us today. If there was a war game that let you play the Southern States in the civil war, I don't think that would offend many. It might be interesting what the mission briefings for such a game would look like. Video games have always raised the question for me how such mission briefings differ from the prpaganda told to soldiers (and the population) in real wars. The WMD lie is just one particularly egregious example.
- I think the online ego shooters are most honest in that respect: you know that you're fighting against an enemy that is no different from yourself, for no real reason; and that, in the end, most fighters die at least once. You can't kid yourself about the issues like you can in an actual war. All the player has to do is to realize that while it's fun to die in the game, that's not so IRL. --◄mendel► 09:30, September 20, 2009 (UTC)