Homework for Feb 8.
Fair Play Article-
I take issue with this article on several fronts. First of all this article is from a supposedly unbiased media watchdog group, which should discredit it from the get go. Anytime you have an organization putting out a piece like this, it is going to bend the facts to support the position it has adopted. Now before I dig into the article I would like to state that I do agree with the general points the article makes. Yes games are violent, more often then not more then they need to be, and women are portrayed as either helpless airheads or as scantily clad eye candy, but this article doesn’t take several factors into account.
First of all, I think they handle their argument on violence extremely poorly. The authors of this piece are living in a time warp. At the start of the article they mention games such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Frogger. Now the whole point the article tries to make is that games today are violent, but right off the bat they ruin any chance of making a decent point with these examples. In all three games violence plays a major role. In Space Invaders your only goal is to shoot anything that moves. In Pac-Man you can only defeat your foes by eating them, and while Frogger is the least violent of the games, when your frog is run over by a car to end your turn, there is a puddle of blood that appears on the screen. They also at the start of the article it says that 145 million people play videogames on a regular basis, but they make no distinction as to the average age of this group. While a majority of game players are younger, this has changed significantly over the last decade or so. This article makes no mention of the fact that a growing number of adults make up that 145 million people that play games. It’s been thirty years since Pong was released and in that time an entire generation has grown up playing games and that has adults they want something closer to movies in theme and complexity. Videogames were originally marketed as a toy and has such acquired the label as child’s toy. This is why people such as this organization get so bent out of shape at the idea of violence in games. Adults now play games but a majority of the public still feels that games a strictly for kids. This paper also makes no claims as how to solve these problems, just puts out these so-called “facts” and condemns videogames as a socially acceptable hobby. The article also fails to note games are a Business first and a baby-sitter for your children second. If games seem more violent today then unfortunately that means there is a market out there that wants violence in their games. Game makers know who their core audience is and panders to them like few other industries do. They know their main consumer is no longer a kid age 8-12, but are now closer to a male age 16-25. This leads me to my next point on gender in games.
This article misses one major point on gender that ruins its case. The article fails to note that a majority of games come from Japan, who have very different ideas on gender roles then we do in the west. While this is not an excuse it is a point that needs to be made since, as usual, the authors of this piece are not giving us all the facts. The article also says that videogames present a negative body image of females with a large number of female characters being modeled with “unhealthy or unrealistic proportions.” Unfortunately for the reader it doesn’t say what games these poorly modeled females are from. If the art style of the game has all main characters and environments out of proportion then it would be only fitting that the females were also out of proportion compared to real life.
Overall this article makes some fairly obvious points and not only backs them up poorly but also fails to solve any of the problems it outlines. Games have changed, both in the way they are presented and how they are marketed. The only thing that hasn’t changed is how the general public views games. They are no longer strictly for little children. The only way parents are going to be able to monitor what their children play is by getting involved, which is obviously a hassle for some people. Unless parents take an active interest in what their children are doing then they have no one to blame then themselves for what their kids play.
The Sims-
The main point that Mia Consalvo is trying to make in this article is that in an open ended game such as The Sims the player is able to act however they want, gay or straight, since there is no forced sexuality attached to a traditional story. For example a game on the opposite end of the spectrum would be a game like Metal Gear Solid. In Metal Gear Solid the main character, Snake, is cast in the mold of the traditional Hollywood action hero. He is simply oozing with testosterone and creates an idea that “real” men go around sneaking through army bases, shooting everyone that they can, and generally blowing up everything he can. Now one has to wonder if the issue of sexuality is brought to the game by the player or by the story of the game. Take a game like Super Mario, which has a “rescue the princess” storyline to it. Just because Mario is saving the princess does that mean they have to be anything other then friends or does the player automatically assume that since Mario is a man and the Princess is a girl that they have to be involved on some level (possibly level 8-4, since that is the only time you see the princess anytime in the game.) Overall I don’t think games “promote” heterosexuality in conscious way, but that they are the products of the designer’s imagination. This article is saying that by removing the bias of the designer and leaving creation to the player they are free to express themselves however they want, and that games like The Sims allow players to explore sides of themselves they might not have known existed.
Fair Play Article-
I take issue with this article on several fronts. First of all this article is from a supposedly unbiased media watchdog group, which should discredit it from the get go. Anytime you have an organization putting out a piece like this, it is going to bend the facts to support the position it has adopted. Now before I dig into the article I would like to state that I do agree with the general points the article makes. Yes games are violent, more often then not more then they need to be, and women are portrayed as either helpless airheads or as scantily clad eye candy, but this article doesn’t take several factors into account.
First of all, I think they handle their argument on violence extremely poorly. The authors of this piece are living in a time warp. At the start of the article they mention games such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Frogger. Now the whole point the article tries to make is that games today are violent, but right off the bat they ruin any chance of making a decent point with these examples. In all three games violence plays a major role. In Space Invaders your only goal is to shoot anything that moves. In Pac-Man you can only defeat your foes by eating them, and while Frogger is the least violent of the games, when your frog is run over by a car to end your turn, there is a puddle of blood that appears on the screen. They also at the start of the article it says that 145 million people play videogames on a regular basis, but they make no distinction as to the average age of this group. While a majority of game players are younger, this has changed significantly over the last decade or so. This article makes no mention of the fact that a growing number of adults make up that 145 million people that play games. It’s been thirty years since Pong was released and in that time an entire generation has grown up playing games and that has adults they want something closer to movies in theme and complexity. Videogames were originally marketed as a toy and has such acquired the label as child’s toy. This is why people such as this organization get so bent out of shape at the idea of violence in games. Adults now play games but a majority of the public still feels that games a strictly for kids. This paper also makes no claims as how to solve these problems, just puts out these so-called “facts” and condemns videogames as a socially acceptable hobby. The article also fails to note games are a Business first and a baby-sitter for your children second. If games seem more violent today then unfortunately that means there is a market out there that wants violence in their games. Game makers know who their core audience is and panders to them like few other industries do. They know their main consumer is no longer a kid age 8-12, but are now closer to a male age 16-25. This leads me to my next point on gender in games.
This article misses one major point on gender that ruins its case. The article fails to note that a majority of games come from Japan, who have very different ideas on gender roles then we do in the west. While this is not an excuse it is a point that needs to be made since, as usual, the authors of this piece are not giving us all the facts. The article also says that videogames present a negative body image of females with a large number of female characters being modeled with “unhealthy or unrealistic proportions.” Unfortunately for the reader it doesn’t say what games these poorly modeled females are from. If the art style of the game has all main characters and environments out of proportion then it would be only fitting that the females were also out of proportion compared to real life.
Overall this article makes some fairly obvious points and not only backs them up poorly but also fails to solve any of the problems it outlines. Games have changed, both in the way they are presented and how they are marketed. The only thing that hasn’t changed is how the general public views games. They are no longer strictly for little children. The only way parents are going to be able to monitor what their children play is by getting involved, which is obviously a hassle for some people. Unless parents take an active interest in what their children are doing then they have no one to blame then themselves for what their kids play.
The Sims-
The main point that Mia Consalvo is trying to make in this article is that in an open ended game such as The Sims the player is able to act however they want, gay or straight, since there is no forced sexuality attached to a traditional story. For example a game on the opposite end of the spectrum would be a game like Metal Gear Solid. In Metal Gear Solid the main character, Snake, is cast in the mold of the traditional Hollywood action hero. He is simply oozing with testosterone and creates an idea that “real” men go around sneaking through army bases, shooting everyone that they can, and generally blowing up everything he can. Now one has to wonder if the issue of sexuality is brought to the game by the player or by the story of the game. Take a game like Super Mario, which has a “rescue the princess” storyline to it. Just because Mario is saving the princess does that mean they have to be anything other then friends or does the player automatically assume that since Mario is a man and the Princess is a girl that they have to be involved on some level (possibly level 8-4, since that is the only time you see the princess anytime in the game.) Overall I don’t think games “promote” heterosexuality in conscious way, but that they are the products of the designer’s imagination. This article is saying that by removing the bias of the designer and leaving creation to the player they are free to express themselves however they want, and that games like The Sims allow players to explore sides of themselves they might not have known existed.
posted by The Poison Ninja at 6:48 PM
2 Comments:
The article fails to note that a majority of games come from Japan...
YES!!! Thank you!! I really wanted to scream this at the author. Japanese games are chock-full of things that are more culturally acceptable or that carry different connotations there than they do here.
But it's also important to note that many of the games that started in Japan are played by people in the U.S. with no sense of what Japanese culture is like. As we learned from semiotics, the context we're in determines what signs mean to us. That said, the article should certainly acknowledge the shift from one culture to the next.
Post a Comment
<< Home