The Onion: Wii Blamed for Rise in Effeminate Violence
This article from The Onion really tickled my funny bone.
"Three years ago, our children were not prancing after their peers and brutally flicking each other on the playground," Roberts said. "They were well-behaved wimps who spent their recess periods hiding from bullies. What are these terrible games doing to our country's sallies?"
I don't really have much to say about this. Just sharing. Enjoy.
Update: After reading the article a second time, the satire of it really hit home. The kinds of stories they think up, like the classroom brawl ending in stretched sweaters and stubbed fingers, sounds like such a typical news report about some instance of juvenile delinquency that's "connected" to video games. The writer did a great job of spoofing the things certain people say by way of argument as well. Well done, sir/madam.
I ran across this cool video today. It's a song composed "entirely" of gun shots from Call of Duty 4, or so the description claims. I'm skeptical about the bass line, but either way, this is pretty creative. It's also a fun example of remediation that the game developers probably didn't expect. I don't know if there's any lucrative future for this genre, but it's interesting to see people creating things like this nonetheless.
A while ago in class we talked about all the problems that arise when a news station starts putting out misinformation. I would have always just thought of this as bad reporting, a sign of a poor news source, and that's about it. Now I'm of the much less naive view that publicizing falsehoods is an attack on democracy itself.
I just about jumped out of my seat when Ian talked about the story of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, the 1975 German film about a woman slandered by the media. In the story, an average, respectable woman finds herself in a romantic relationship with a man she has just met. It comes to light that the man is a terrorist, but the woman still admits to having feelings for him, since she didn't know his affiliations when they met. For this, a species of treason in the eyes of the public, she is mercilessly attacked in the press and other media. When she tries to clear her name and set things straight, her story is twisted into heinous lies that say the opposite of what she meant. Desperate for a way out, and also probably for revenge, the woman ends up shooting and killing the journalist who was behind most of the scathing publicity.
So why was I so excited about this? Because, in the week proceeding the class when we heard about this, I was closely following a news debacle that took place on Rupert Murdoch's notorious Fox News, or "Faux News" as the clever web community likes to call them. I was following the story as reported by one of my most-read blogs: GamePolitics, a site owned by the ECA that reports on how the gaming industry is currently affecting political issues, and vice versa. This particular story happens to mirror that of Katharina Bluth perfectly. "What's the story," you ask?
Faux news picked up on some mostly web-based controversy around BioWare's Mass Effect, a roleplaying adventure game for the Xbox 360. The concerns were all coming from the fact that, for one of the first times in the history of video games, there is an undisguised, somewhat customizable sex scene featured at one point in the story. Whoahbigdeal. I should mention that Mass Effect is rated M for Mature, meaning that stores agree not to sell it and similarly rated titles to people under 17. Meanwhile, this "sex scene" is so tame compared to what you can find in any given episode of HBO's Rome, that it's even featured on YouTube if you go looking for it. Still, I say, even if Mass Effect's sex scene were explicit enough to give you flashbacks from The Dreamers - so what? Why is there a double standard on what's ok to put in a video game and what's ok to put in a movie?
Mostly, it's because of the not-yet-obsolete idea that video games are for kids. This is the angle Fox News took when they decided to slander Mass Effect. Here are some of the lies, (not exaggerations - outright fallacies) they publicized: -the sex scene contains full nudity for an extended period of time, and the player is in full control -the game is marketed to young adolescents -the incident, and the game in general, is boorish and objective of women -Etc.
Fox's guest expert for the debate, a pop psychologist named Cooper Lawrence who had never actually played Mass Effect or viewed the sex scene they were talking about, earned the wrath of gamers when she went on the air and made every mistake she could have. Not only did she support Fox's outrageous statements without knowing anything about it, but was also condescending to the gamer representative she was there to debate against. Since there is little a sub-culture of irate gamers can do to retaliate against a media giant like Fox, they went after Lawrence. Her book, featured on Amazon.com, suddenly received an overflow of the lowest ratings possible, making it the least-reputable book on the site. "The Internet hath no fury like a gamer scorned."
Eventually, Amazon undid the damage to Lawrence's book, and Cooper herself issued a statement recanting what she'd said on TV. Of course, many gamers are still angry since the damage has been done - likely the only people who read Cooper Lawrence's amending statement were the gamers who knew better in the first place.
Anyway, I thought this was a really interesting parallel - in this real-life incident, we have Mass Effect, (and in a larger sense, the gaming industry/community,) as Katharina Blum: a party unfairly targeted for slander by the insuppressible media. And then comes Katharina's retaliation - in the movie, she shoots a prominent journalist. In this case, we observe this book-attack on Cooper Lawrence, and recognize that it is the most devastating retaliation gamers could think of and carry out.
----------------------------------------------- All of this got me thinking: what could gamers have done, or indeed, any sub-culture do to retaliate against MSM forces when they catch them doing wrong? The reason I ask is this: just like Katharina Blum's shooting of the journalist is tragic, and ironic since it will condemn her to the image she was trying to avoid, the sacking of Lawrence's book does little good for gamers either. However, it's very difficult to come up with constructive alternatives. I asked Ian why we don't see more cases of news outlets blowing the whistle on one another, and he pointed out that doing so is usually not in the MSM's best interest. Still, I think this idea merits more thought. How could a bunch of random people discredit - to the masses, not just savvy media students - a powerhouse like Fox News?
Personally, I like the ideas put forward by some GamePolitics readers. Being of the opinion that the amazon attack was in poor taste, a poster called Sparky112 writes:
The best recourse is organization. Hell, the vast majority of people reading this blog are probably angry about the incident. Someone (the ECA?) needs to organize a letter-writing campaign to major newspapers decrying the incident in question, so that all those angry people can do something productive that’s going to last beyond the twenty seconds it takes some Amazon employee to delete all the negative postings unrelated to the book (which, as many people noted, was already failing quite well on its own without the help of angry gamers … so, wasted effort).
Plenty of people read the editorial sections of newspapers, and while it’s not Fox News, who really wants to be on Fox News anyway? Seriously, though, if we spend all our time saying, “boo hoo, we don’t have any power,” then that’s going to continue to be true. And it just makes us look worse if we resort to extra-legal tactics to get our point across. If instead we respond through letter-writing and pestering video game companies (who DO have power) to make public responses to video game slights, then we’ll slowly but surely gain momentum.
Look at the success of MoveOn.org. They are an advocacy group which grew out of a single incident (the Clinton dalliances) into a vibrant organization. Now, they’re not exactly making any politicians tremble in their shoes for fear of offending them, but they receive media attention and organize meaningful campaigns for issues which are important to a certain segment of Americans. It’s not impossible for people to organize and move forward under a banner of common interest. There just needs to be an effort of this kind for gamers.
In response, NecroSen writes:
@ sparky112
I stand by what I said earlier about this situation. I believe the Amazon trashing was an equal and righteous action, simply because it gave a voice to the people that so many assume will just sit on their asses and do nothing.
You say we should all band together and find a more morally sound medium to carry our voice, and I agree: every one of us should show the responsibility to take this mentality to a political scale, to get the word out that we will not be marginalized and blamed for the ills of society.
All I’m saying is that you may not agree with the method of trashing someone’s book on Amazon, but see where it took us in the past few days. It gives outsiders such as Cooper Lawrence and the Fox News people that misled her a real perspective of our situation (though I doubt Fox News will get the point). It gives many of us jaded gamers a shining example of what we are really capable of if we band together. And, hopefully, it gives people a better understanding of the idiocy and utter uselessness of Fox News as a network.
Now, let me just state that I would also prefer we took action that had more moral justification, but I am willing to accept this as a victory to be learned from. Let’s all take this as a lesson not of what kinds of guerrilla attacks we can use in the future, but what we can effectively do as a collective group. Write to your Congressman, voice your opinion openly to friends and family, engage in intelligent debate with people who don’t agree with you, actively seek information about related issues in the media, and generally be an active citizen and a real human being, not a slave to the whims of talking heads.
Is it Time for Gamers to Forgive Cooper Lawrence? a particularly good discussion of the whole issue transpired in the comments to this post...note it is from here that the above excerpts are taken.
This is an interesting talk given by Will Wright (creator of the Sims games) on his upcoming project called Spore. This is one of the most innovative ideas for a game I've seen and I think he has some fascinating ideas about the potential for games and other entertainment media to change the way we think.
The TED Talks invite some of the world's most renowned thinkers and doers to give little presentations about things that are important to them. I recommend visiting the site and checking out more of the lectures; a lot of them are super-interesting.
In my seminar on Monday the 21st, I focused on how the ideas in Remediation apply to contemporary texts such as video games and other software, as well as various hardware. I'm especially interested in the way these contemporary texts seem to be moving toward a state of Virtual Reality, (VR) such as the experiences created by "The Wire" in Strange Days and the concept in The Matrix. Imagine being able to enter an unreal experience of your choosing, where you are fully submerged in the environment and a medium is nowhere to be seen. In my mind, a Matrix-like situation would be the ultimate video game, assuming a certain amount of control is present. This is my major interest, and what I'll be focusing on. I'll also discuss how other video game media, and also some things outside the realm of gaming are all evolving toward this concept of total immersion, albeit in various ways.
Part I - Mass Immersion: the MMO
In the last decade a new genre has been making some major waves in the video game industry. Massively Multiplayer Online Games, (MMOGs, or just MMOs) are unique in that they offer a more social experience in a world that keeps on turning indefinitely, whether you're playing or not. Events in an MMO take place in real time, and servers, (copies of an expansive virtual world) support hundreds of players at a time.
The example I'm going to use is World of Warcraft, (WoW herein) because I have played it myself, and it is currently the leading MMO in North America with its subscriber-base having recently breached the 10 million mark. Players in WoW inhabit a huge fantasy world called Azeroth. At the start they create a customized character where they make important decisions such as what faction they will play for, and what class they will play as. These decisions effect who they will play with and what playing the game is like for them. As characters progress through the game, they become stronger and acquire better treasure. Progress is indicated in terms of levels, so higher level characters are stronger than low level characters, and can attempt more difficult challenges. As they progress, players will interact with many other players constantly. They will have to work cooperatively and strategically to face difficult enemies, and negotiate the distribution of rewards. They will also compete against one another in player versus player combat and, through their actions, develop a reputation with the community.
Bearing these things in mind, perhaps it is beginning to become understandable how games like WoW are an important stepping stone on the road to VR, because they are exceedingly easy to accept as legitimate environments. In The Matrix, Cypher famously remarks that "Ignorance is bliss." In addition to stimulating countless discussions in Grade 12 Philosophy, this broad statement applies to immersive media like WoW. Just like it was easier for Cypher to live in a comfortable but fake "Matrix", it is very inviting to team up with your friends assuming powerful and heroic alter-egos, to do something adventurous like slaying a dragon - instead of attending to the growing pile of paperwork on your desk.
In addition to this explanation, I'd like to present some additional examples that act as immersive qualities in more ways than one. First, I should note that Bolter and Grusin cite the concept of Hypermediacy as a tool that helps achieve immersion. Modern video games, especially MMOs, are wrought with different kinds of media. WoW is recognized for its superbly well-fitted musical soundtrack, for example. On the Macintosh version, WoW even allows the user remote access to iTunes, and thus the opportunity to remediate (and hypermediate) their environment, from right inside the game.
To demonstrate some of the things I'm talking about, I recorded this 2 minute clip of a character I made just for this demonstration, simply running down a road. (Just for fun, I named the character Trombone. I think I saw a picture of one while coming up with a name.) At the beginning of the video, a view of the map shows the starting position of the character; then at the end, the map is shown again, and you can see how far the character has traveled. I also tried to give a sense of the detailed 3D environments and the atmospheric music that makes this game so playable.
If you can wait a few minutes for it to buffer, a higher resolution, much-easier-on-the-eyes version is here! (I highly recommend this, the low-res version embedded below makes the details difficult to make out.)
If you pause the video at around 2:00, you can see the entire zone - the "browned out" areas represent so-far undiscovered territory. Hopefully this gives a sense of how large this particular zone is. Currently, there are 49 other zones like it in the game, as well as other explorable areas that vary in size.
No wonder they call it massive. All one has to do is hearken back to the old days of the first Zelda game on Nintendo 64 to realize how far third person 3D adventure games alone have come.
This interests me so much because of the amount of people who find games like this so consuming that it begins taking priority over their real lives. (And I admit to overindulging myself once in awhile.) One notion touched upon in Remediation is that we may one day choose to spend a lot of time, (or maybe live permanently) inside such manufactured worlds. Gasp in horror though you may, if you can agree with the Cypher's "ignorance is bliss" principle for some situations, I think that opens up the floor to a lot more discussion and blurred lines on this topic than you might expect.
Part II - Hardware and You
The Nintendo Wii is, by a landslide, the most successful of the current-generation consoles. While it progresses toward the same end as heavy-software titles, it does so in a totally different way. It's no secret that the Wii's graphical capability is vastly inferior to that of its Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (PS3) contemporaries. Instead, Nintendo made a bold move in focusing on fun and revolutionary controls. The naysayers called it gimmicky and predicted failure, but quite the opposite happened. It's become the gateway console for non-gamers to get their start. Even the Queen of England thinks it's jolly good. ("Wii are amused!")
The concept of the Wii-mote is fairly well-known and understood, so I don't think I need to explain as much. The slick white controller's versatility makes an incredibly simplistic game like Warioware: Smooth Moves a lot of fun to play, especially as a replacement for Pictionary and the like at social gatherings. This versatility also lends itself to a very different game like Red Steel or the ultra-controversial Manhunt 2. The latter title received an AO (Adults Only) rating from the ESRB - the kiss of death in the gaming industry, since no consoles will support a game so-rated. There was an especially big uproar of concern around Manhunt 2's placement on the Wii, considering that its over-the-top violence combined with players' physical interaction with the game would have been a huge step in violence simulation for video games.
The dispute around Manhunt 2 is more than enough evidence of a general connection we make: the Wii makes games more real than we're used to.
The other honorable mention goes to the Guitar Hero series, whose immense popularity proves how effective an illusion can be. Like the Wii, Guitar Hero appeals to the mainstream using what's familiar: popular songs and a guitar-playing experience that, for non-guitar players, is often authentic enough. Also like the Wii, the beloved rhythm game has its innovative hardware to thank for its success. For those of you have played Guitar Hero, ask yourself if it would be fun to play using a typical controller, or even the wii-mote. The likely answer is No, which speaks volumes about the power and appeal of immersion.
Part III - Other Examples and The Big Picture While my main focus for this project was video games, I'd like to take a moment to bring up some examples that fall outside the realm of gaming:
In my post about Apple's new MacBook Air, I explained and provided a video describing its multi-touch features. My theory is that if this trend continues we will likely see the phasing out of the interface in favor of methods of control that are more integrated with the user.
Even the general trends on the web, (the elusive "Web 2.0") favor interaction and a huge amount of personalization. The popularization of RSS and sites like Netvibes and Google IG make web browsing like a catering service. Also the social tools like Facebook and Twitter, which are very good at meandering into a critical role in our lives, carry a lot of responsibility for getting us more and more involved in the ridiculous amount of information that's out there.
Those of you who made it this far: thanks for taking the time to plough through my obscenely long-winded post! I hope these ideas are tying together for the rest of you as clearly as they are in my own head. If you have questions or want to discuss/challenge anything I've said, that's what the comments are for!
This blog is owned and maintained by David Beatty as a part of Approaches to Media Studies (THST 2450) at the University of Guelph. It is an outlet for reflections on class discussions, as well as responses to various research and readings pertaining to Media.
Seriously, though, if we spend all our time saying, “boo hoo, we don’t have any power,” then that’s going to continue to be true. And it just makes us look worse if we resort to extra-legal tactics to get our point across. If instead we respond through letter-writing and pestering video game companies (who DO have power) to make public responses to video game slights, then we’ll slowly but surely gain momentum.
