150: The Myth of the Media Myth

[Noobzorz]

This article was very interesting and thought provoking, and that is rare. I mean genuinely rare. Not in the sense you would typically see used in the comments section.

I have one little nitpick, since I need to think about this before I can safely say that I have something worthwhile to say, and that is that the bolding on pages four and five is really unnecessary. The points made are more than strong enough to stand out on their own without throwing a Ctrl B in there. It just doesn't feel right in this article.

And now to put on my thinking cap.

 

[special k]

I have yet to find one politician in Europe, or a major media organ, starting up a crusade to prove videogames transform teenagers into violent sex crazed antisocial zombies, the way FOX or others is hammering at it. That just wouldn't sell very well. They tried that a bit with role playing games in the 80s', didn't catch on. You need a serious conservative/religious leaning base in you population for that crap to catch on. Even the Sun didn't try it.

Obviously, you aren't living in germany

Try Wolfgang Schäuble, who is currently Minister of the Interior here..
He holds the opinion that videogames are evil and that people who make them
should be treated the same way as those who make kiddyporn.

Fortunately, most of the laws he wanted to get passed were thrown out, but it still scares the shit out of me what kinds of people we have in our gouvermet..


EDIT: I guess the actual "(violent) video game manufacturers = kiddyporn makers" comparison was from Günther Beckstein, but Schäuble is not far behind..

 

[Radelaide]

Is it just me or are people starting to blame ALL of the worlds problems on videogames?

"Omg, my kid just killed someone for no particular reason! Let's blame videogames!"
Okay, vaild point that there ARE many violent video games but there are other things in the world that could make someone kill someone else.

If you're silly enough to act out murdering people with a car like you would on GTA then maybe you need a little help? Anyone agree?

 

[Niniux]

The only way to hasten this mind shift among our adult peers, of course, is to be out of the gaming closet. To not evangelize for the industry or the pastime, but for adult gamers to at least be open about who we are. There's still a sense of shame about gaming that, let's face it, the gaming media indulges in with constant jokes about gamers living in basements or being sexless trolls.

This. It seems that a lot of the adult gamers who have wives or husbands and 9-5 jobs, kids, the whole works, will often avoid bringing up their pasttime. I know I'm guilty of this myself. I often feel awkward and embarrassed bringing up the fact that I am a gamer, fearing the perceptions of others. In fact, it's partially because a lot of my friends, who are the same age as me, live with their parents and don't have jobs and are the ones who most obnoxiously and loudly pronounce to all the world that they are gamers. And I don't really want to be lumped in that category. Unfortunately, by not admitting that I'm a gamer, I'm really helping to reinforce that stereotype.

 

[Sammgus]

Dave Taylor's quote is spot on. Successful modern games are extremely addictive, and confer very few skills that are useful to society as a whole. They are effectively very cheap drugs, and game makers like Blizzard and Rock Star need to be more responsible. Kids end up playing GTA IV in their formative years and it's all downhill from there.

Or maybe I'm just jealous because gaming when I was a kid was a lot more work for a lot less game..

 

[Bongo Bill]

So we've established that this is an iteration of an ancient cycle. A more pertinent question might be: Can the cycle be broken at all? Can games become an exception to it? Is there anything to do besides wait?

I doubt it.

Uh... I swear I read this several months ago. This exact story... Came in an Escapist Newsletter. Anyone else remember this?

This week's issue is a reprinting of several prior articles.

 

[Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow]

"Successful modern games are extremely addictive, and confer very few skills that are useful to society as a whole"

the same can be said of dancing rock' roll, reading pulp comics, watching TV, and any other leisure activity outside of sports... it didn't make the baby boomers more useless to society that the generations before...

And by the way, as a 20 years old student in a top university in the 90s', I was more challenged intellectually by a game of Civ or Railroad Tycoon than by macro-economics lectures... let us not fall in the arch typical gripe of the older generations that "the younger generation has it too easy, they're lazy, etc.". Our parents thought the same of us.

This is so true and Parental Paranoia and the medias' fixtation in creating controversy over video games needs to be shown up as straw man arguments that they ultimately are. VG's have been with us for nigh on 30 years now and I don't believe that they're dangerous. Yes they can be addictive [24 hour stints online gaming on NWN attests to this] but it all comes down to the individual and their responses to the game and its allure.
It was a great article as well.

 

[Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow]

"Successful modern games are extremely addictive, and confer very few skills that are useful to society as a whole"

the same can be said of dancing rock' roll, reading pulp comics, watching TV, and any other leisure activity outside of sports... it didn't make the baby boomers more useless to society that the generations before...

And by the way, as a 20 years old student in a top university in the 90s', I was more challenged intellectually by a game of Civ or Railroad Tycoon than by macro-economics lectures... let us not fall in the arch typical gripe of the older generations that "the younger generation has it too easy, they're lazy, etc.". Our parents thought the same of us.

This is so true and Parental Paranoia and the medias' fixtation in creating controversy over video games needs to be shown up as straw man arguments that they ultimately are. VG's have been with us for nigh on 30 years now and I don't believe that they're dangerous. Yes they can be addictive [24 hour stints online gaming on NWN attests to this] but it all comes down to the individual and their responses to the game and its allure.
It was a great article as well.

 

[kingcom]

very interesting read, two remarks:

1/ this is very US centric. A lot of the criticism look positively bizarre to a jaded european, and is certainly a small theater of orperations for a much bigger cultural war (as the whole debate on Darwin, the "war on christmas" trumpeted by FOX, etc.). I have not seen anaything remotedly as negative where I live (France)

2/ others have rightly pointed at that; there is a generation distortion, all new medium are created evil (rock and roll, novels, etc.). Once the generations that support these medium come to power, they gain acceptance.

Yeas aswell over in Australia there is very little public hostility to it. Sure you have Atkinson and the like but the general population sees little wrong with it.