War Games
I was sitting in the theatre, waiting for Meet the Fockers to start and along with a litany of reviews and newspaper advertisements, I saw an advertisement for Medal of Honor Pacific Assult. It's the latest first person shooter game that promises even more in-depth and realistic action. I will grant that the video shown of the game was spectacular and seeing it on a huge movie screen only added to it's impressiveness, but it brought up another thought. Why do people, 15-30 year old males most likely, want to be immersed in war so much?
Typically war games focus on World War II, I guess it has some of the most memorable stories and is long enough ago that people remember it, but the negative aspects aren't as fresh in their memory. I wonder if people who actually lived through the storming of Normandy have any interest in playing war games? My gut instinct says, “No.” Thankfully, I've never been in a war situation, I'm not sure how I would react, but I can't believe it would be an enjoyable experience and most likely not one that I would feel the need to relive through video games.
Just a few years ago video games had a blocky, cartoonish look to them and it was very clear that you were playing a game. The processing power, particularly in video cards, has allowed for an entirely new generation of games to be created. The new games often look like a quality CGI generated movie and the quality has been improving at an amazing rate. When you put a person into a uniform, like in football games, they are already becoming photo realistic. I've done a double take a few times on live, real football games when I thought I might be viewing a video game.
There are aspects of human beings, such as facial features and little details of hair, skin and weight are very hard for video games to replicate, but given time they'll reach full realism. What happens then? Can we continue to train entire generations of kids how to kill scores of human beings and not expect Columbines and maybe worse? In my view, if we are going to allow video games to become real versus cartoons, then we should at least consider the lessons that they teach.
posted by Chris L @ 3:12 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I would argue that millions of people play these types of video games every single day, all around the world, and none of them ever even remotely considers taking real guns into real lives and re-enacting those events. It takes a special mentality, one typically already prone to violence (through nature or nurture), to make the leap from the screen to reality.
What I worry about more is the desensitizing nature of these products. Okay, so people won't go commit these acts themselves. But when they see these acts committed by others, how will they react? Will they turn a blind eye to the violence of real war, real crime, and real hate? Or will they try to help because they think they can "beat" the other guy, as in a video game? Either way, people get hurt.
As long as children have caring adults around them to teach them right from wrong, good from bad, reality from make believe, I think we will raise a society of adults who can play these games without fear of confusion.
But if the children don't learn these valuable lessons....
I think WW2 games are particularly popular because of their clarity. There is no moral quibbling as to who the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' are.
Every war since then has been murky, to some extent or another.
Good points regarding the moral ambiguity. Everyone either loves or hates the Nazis. If the PS3 game KillZone releases at anything close to it’s trailer then my timeline for photo-realistic war games might have to be compressed.
Now that I have a measure of responsibility for helping a young mind develop (my girlfriend's daughter), I will need to do a lot of explanation as to the difference between a game and real-life.
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