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Mind Control
I saw a terrific little article today that got me thinking. It is an article about affective gaming and it raises a lot of questions for me. For example, the article mentions a game that hooks a player up and tests to see how calm they are. The player's level of relaxation determines the speed of their on screen character, which happens to be a dragon. Now, don't get me wrong, I truly believe that being relaxed is a good thing, but somehow this game strikes me as fundamentally wrong, game wise. Think about it, first of all, Dragons aren't supposed to be relaxing, except for Puff the Magic Dragon, who is not only relaxing, but also gives you the munchies. And secondly, victory is supposed to get you revved up! The meek might not inherit the earth, but if they were to ever release that game to the public they would certainly rule the arcades. Come to think of it, the meek have pretty much always ruled the arcades.
In all honesty, though, I find the whole idea of monitoring a player's emotional state and adjusting the game to fit to be a truly fantastic idea. Imagine a horror survival game that detected just how scared you were, and worked to get you more and more scared, and then realized when you were getting too scared and threw in a comic relief scare now and then at just the right moment. (Sort of like the tried and true cat jumping out of something trick...) Here's hoping that the first game to make me wet myself comes out before I am old enough to already be wearing depends undergarments.
As a side note I would like to apologize for Wednesday's post. The holidays always shred my mental stability to some degree, and this year was no exception. Now that I have had a chance to rest a bit I'm back on track. I have been helping out a collective of indie game creators for the last while. I'll be directing my efforts there a lot more over the coming weeks. I have already created a new web site for them, which can be found at www.metagameplay.com. Working with them so far has been a lot of fun, and I think it is just the thing to help me shake off some of the lingering holiday blues.
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A Jumbled Mess
Everything really seems to be messed up right now. When I was younger I had really big plans. One of those plans involved never living to see the age of 30, and I'm starting to wonder if that was the one goal I should have really strived for.
I have been down and out for weeks, spending time analyzing things and trying to make sense of my life. There is clearly something wrong with me, because somehow my perception of my life is considerably less than the sum of its parts. I have a fiancee who I love very much, a job that pays well and I enjoy, a place to call my own... All very good things. But my head is pounding, my neck is stiff and sore, and I am generally stressed or depressed a good portion of the time lately.
How is it that everything can seem so right, and feel so wrong? I remember when I was younger I used to moan constantly and write terrible poetry and just generally wander about in an angst filled fugue state. I thought I was beyond all that, and yet here I am, moaning and complaining to random strangers.
One thing that is a definite drawback to being a gamer is the fact that it certainly isn't a remarkably social hobby. At least in the traditional sense of the word, anyway. It also lacks any sort of long term fulfillment. I feel great about finishing a game for a grand total of a few minutes, after that there is only the anticipation of the next game and the excitement of playing it. Perhaps the simple fact is that I have done a terrible job of balancing things in my life.
Well, I've killed half my lunch break writing and I still haven't said anything. Maybe it is time to go grab some food... And some painkillers for my head and neck.
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Grand Theft Acculturation
I have extremely mixed feelings on the entire topic of whether or not Grand Theft Auto should be banned. Is GTA morally irresponsible? Yes, in many ways. It is a game that is designed to be offensive from the very get-go. Is it an incredibly fun game? Without question. Do I think that it should be banned? Not a chance.
I firmly believe that art should be allowed to push at moral boundaries to some degree. And I believe that video games are an art form. All of the worst traits of humanity have been displayed in some form or another in fiction. Rape, murder, incest, racism, beastiality, theft, the list goes on and on. I believe that people exposed to these things in writing are generally forced to contemplate them, and this leads to them being free to develop their moral guidelines.
But video games are such a new form of media, with different rules than traditional art forms. They lend themselves more to action than contemplation. At no point during my gaming experience with GTA did I find myself questioning whether or not it was right to pull the trigger. That is what makes video games potentially dangerous.
Many people ask why we continue discussing this issue. The reason is that online discussions and media coverage are where video games have their greatest social impact. I would be scared to death if nobody questioned this game, just like I would be scared to death if nobody questioned the leader of a country. It is my hope that as video games mature as an art form we will be able to find deeper levels of moral interaction with our games.
What our culture needs to realize is that video games aren't going away, they are a viable art form that needs to be discussed. Society treats games as something trivial, but the truth is that the human race has played games of some sort for longer than recorded history. I can't count the number of times I have heard the phrase, "It's only a game". I rarely hear the words, "It's only a book". But games have as big an impact on some people's lives as books do on others. So why not incorporate the study of games of some form or another into the curriculum of schools? Make them a part of social studies course outlines, even. We have the potential to turn games, even violent ones, into a healthy outlet. But at the moment all the media is concerned with is demonizing them, which only makes them more appealing while at the same time discouraging healthy discussion of them.
Perhaps Columbine could have been avoided if the students had simply had a chance to sit around and discuss how the Matrix made them feel, and to question the morality of the film. The same goes for first person shooters. Sure, many of them don't have much of a story, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing to discuss. Discuss why it is that the key enemies in games have gone from being the Russians in the 80's to terrorists now. This reflects directly on social issues. It's amazing what the ability to talk about things can do to a psyche. Banning games is a social cop-out, it's easier to ban something than it is to discuss it. The same problem has been faced by every art form at some point or another. Books, music, paintings. The attempt has been made to ban every one of them. In the end, the best solution was education.
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Boom!
Well, happy new year to everyone. I haven't been posting over the holidays and now that I am back in the swing of things I think that it is time for me to get back at it. I have to confess, the whole toning down the video games thing hit a bit of a bump when I received five new games for Christmas. Mario Kart: Double Dash, Viewtiful Joe, Max Payne 2, Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, and Pac Man Vs..... Needless to say I haven't really been outside a whole lot in the last week. Which is a good thing, I suppose, seeing as it is cold enough to kill outside right now. It seems that the weather finally realized that this is a Canadian winter.
I didn't get my entry in to the DarkBasic contest and that is a little depressing. For some reason I just can't seem to get my act together to create anything lately. My own website is a shambles, and the three or four hundred projects I have started at home are all a wreck. I guess that is this year's resolution, to frikken finish something. I have had the Infiltrators intro site up for quite a while, and have yet to even get the basic groundwork of the game laid yet. I think that is going to be priority 1.
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