This was my final paper in my Media, Violence, and American Culture class. It's an analytical view on violence in video games in a way I'm sure most of us haven't looked it. It goes into a few things we read, but the direct quotes will help if you haven't read the books. I got a near A plus on this. A few grammatical things took off points, but whatever I got an A and that's all I wanted.
Video game violence has taking a lot of grief over the last few years; taking blame for a few instances of hardcore violence in recent history, namely the Columbine shooting that took place in 1999. Even with all the negatively that was gear towards video games after the shooting, video game developers carried on and continued to produce more violent video games. Why would developers continue to do this even though the Columbine incident could very likely happen again? Because the video game market is a very lucrative market and violent video games comprise a piece of this very successful market. Grand Theft Auto IV sold over 6 million copies in the first week alone (Sales)! Why do people continue to purchase and play violent video games though? Despite all the negativity geared towards these video games, they provide a graphic representation for our want for structure in our lives.
To examine this want for structure in video games, it would be best to start by analyzing two video games on the basis of their content. Super Mario Brothers and Grand Theft Auto (GTA) are both violent video games in their own right; just one, Super Mario Brothers, is a lot less violent than the other, GTA. Grand Theft Auto is game that “thrive[s] on murder, theft, and destruction on every imaginable level …and gamers boost their chances of winning the game by a virtual visit to a prostitute with subsequent violent mugging and recovery of monies exchanged†(Violent). But the game isn’t unacceptable for the actions themselves, even though they are inherently bad, but how violent and gruesome they are portrayed in the course of the game. It isn’t acceptable to kill the innocent person walking down the street, nor is it acceptable to kill the old woman on the sidewalk. Not only can someone get murdered in Grand Theft Auto, but they can get murdered in progressively violent ways. No longer is the gun enough; but now swords, flamethrowers, and chainsaws can be used to maim people and that’s a step beyond the realm of acceptability.
On the face of it, Super Mario Brothers doesn’t fit into the present schema of what people consider to be a violent video game: shooting, killing, blood, etc. However, Super Mario Brothers is a violent video game. It does contain shooting and killing, via fireballs and turtles respectively, but it’s just a more acceptable form of violence than what is present in GTA because there is no killing or shooting of actual human beings. They way the ‘deaths’ are portrayed makes it more acceptable as well. When you jump onto a turtle to kill it, there is no blood, no gore, just a thud-like noise and the image of a shell that the turtle used to inhabit. That’s it. After taking out the turtle though, its shell can be used as a weapon to kill others. In a sense it is using the death of another to help advance you further along, which is violent in itself.
Mamet says in Three Uses of the Knife “[t]he weather is impersonal, and we both understand it and exploit it as dramatic, i.e., having a plot, in order to understand its meaning…†(Mamet 1). The game itself is impersonal in that it has no bearing on the person playing in and of itself, but the person can identify and interpret the game as having some alternative dramatic meaning. The Super Mario Brothers has a specified plot the player has to follow, a stringent path the player must follow otherwise the game itself cannot be completed. Mario’s princess, Peach, was kidnapped by the evil turtle Bowser, and it is Mario’s job to rescue her. To accomplish this task, Mario has to traverse many periling passages and stages until the ultimate goal is achieve. It’s the quintessential drama of the epic hero. “It’s a drama, with meaning for our lives, why else would we watch it†(Mamet 11), or in this case, play it? We want to save the princess; we want to beat the bad guy, because we want that satisfaction of being the hero. That’s why the game is played. It also follows Mamet’s three-act structure. It has a beginning, middle, and a definitive ending. And the player can feel some sort of achievement or accomplishment knowing that the game has been completed.
Grand Theft Auto doesn’t have this same structure. Sure the game has an ending,’ as in a final conflict that is resolved, but once it’s over there is always something extra to do in the game, extra ‘plots’ to be explored, so the game is essentially never over. In Grand Theft Auto, the player is free to roam wherever they please and do whatever they want. They aren’t restricted to a set path to follow. Missions or tasks can be completed at the player’s own discretion and leisure. This is a far cry from games like Super Mario Brothers where missions had to be completed then and there otherwise progression was impossible. This leaves room for the player to devise their own plot. Why would they want to do this? Because the player seeks structure, some kind of uniformity to guide what they do in the context of the game. Grand Theft Auto doesn’t have that nice neat linear structure people expect to find in most games: complete a task, advance to the next, and repeat until the game is done. The game has many branches it can take in the course of completing the main objective: taking over the city. This ranges from doing work with various gang bosses against rival gangs to finding cars for filling up a garage. So to fill that void of lack of structure, a self-imposed structure is devised to take its place.
It can be speculated that people have a certain ‘comfort zone’ they tend to stick to in playing video games, and people have a hard time leaving that comfort zone. That comfort zone is the game that gives the person the most structural satisfaction, or creating a situation in the game that gives them the most structural satisfaction. That comfort zone is fallen back onto when the player reverts back to that one game or tendencies present in that one game that give the most satisfaction. When another game seems too hard, or if the current game they are playing doesn’t satisfy their needs, the player will devise a way to make it fit into their comfort zone. Super Mario Brothers is a game that gives the player a coherent plot and a defined structure to be followed. It does a fine job of presenting the player a game that doesn’t deviate from their comfort zone, assuming their comfort zone lies in straightforward games like Mario. It’s a very cut and dry game from start to finish: complete this stage and move on, repeat until the game is over. Games like Grand Theft Auto give the player an expansive world to explore all at one time and the player may not know what to do with all that space, so they tend to revert back into their comfort zone present in other games: streamline their way to the finish, bypassing all the outer elements present in the game, or creating their own plots to be conquered outside the original plot, etc. Their goal is to make the game smaller and less overwhelming then it really is. This gives them the most structural satisfaction; it makes the game more enjoyable.
Structure is achieved from advertising by giving people justification for their purchasing decisions. It gives people the feeling of ‘if I buy this-blank,†whether that ‘blank’ is for health, beauty, or the new trendy game out, their reason for buying it will be satisfied and they will receive some sense of completion.
Taking a look at Raymond Williams’ text in “Advertising: The Magic System†should prove beneficial in helping to understand why people continue to purchase violent video games. Advertising is a major component to the success of video games, but Williams calls it a ‘magic system’ as in: “a highly organized and professional system of magical inducements and satisfaction, functionally very similar to magical systems in simpler society…†(Williams 82), but what is the magic? It could be that advertising plays into people’s inhibitions of being ignored. Another way of saying it is that advertising plays into peoples’ inherent yearning to be recognized. Most advertising seen today is geared towards showing some kind of extrinsic benefit that can be gained from using the product which can later be used as a tool to boost societal perception of one’s self. Williams’ says in the text:
(long quote)“If we were sensibly materialist, in that part of our living in which we use things, we should find most advertising to be of an insane irrelevance. Beer would be enough for us, without the additional promise that in drinking it we show ourselves to be manly, young in heart, or neighbourly†(Williams 82).
The George Foreman grill advertising shows how much fat is reduced from using his grill to lead to the user being healthier. In essence, according to Williams, people are buying a healthier life, a new body image; a tool for recognition, and not the grill for its own sake.
In relation to video games, it shows we have an ulterior motive when it comes to purchasing them. People do not buy it for the fact it is a video game, people buy it because it may make them look cooler in the eyes of their friends for having the cool brand new game that just came out. It helps to elevate their social status among their friends. “Many people will indeed look twice at you, upgrade you, upmarket you, respond to your displayed signals, if you have made the right purchases within a system of meanings to which you all are trained†(Williams 85). Everyone would like to be recognized in some way, shape, or fashion; and video games provides that avenue people need to head down the path.
Some of the points McCloud made in “The Vocabulary of Comic†relate pretty well to violent video games. McCloud states that an icon is “any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea†(McCloud 27). In a sense, video games are the iconic representations of our want for structure. Abstraction and different levels of abstraction is a big part of the McCloud text, especially in the scope of realism and the face. The more ‘real’ the face is when represented, the less number of people it applies to, and the less ‘real’ the face is represented the more it applies to; the more universal it is. Video games tend to fall in the middle between the two extremes because video game character’s faces are distinguished, but not so much that they are truly realistic. There is room there for people to see themselves in video game characters and relate. McCloud makes the point that the cartoons are universal and when someone “enters the world of the cartoon, they see themselves†(McCloud 36). This same philosophy can be applied to video games, and criticism has come about for this very manner. The Columbine shooting by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold was said to have come about by their association to violent video games. “They relied on the virtual world of computer games to express their rage and to spend time, and cutting them off in 1998 sent them into crisis,†(Nizza) Jerald Block stated in an article to the Denver Post. The virtual world gave them structure, and they relied on that structure as a crutch for their aggression. It can be speculated that losing that crutch, that structure we strive for, made them lose balance of reality and turn the gun on their classmates because the boys were already stated to have mental problems. This loss of structure made them, similar to what can happen in Grand Theft Auto; devise their own plot in hopes of filling up the present void.
They could probably envision themselves in the game themselves, killing people, and even though real people weren’t killed they were the ones pulling the “trigger.†“[T]he player is actually pulling the joystick trigger and inflicting simulated harm him/herself†(McCormick 2), this made it easier for them to turn the gun on another person in real life and pull the trigger. They were desensitized to the act.
Violence and Video Games
Video game violence has taking a lot of grief over the last few years; taking blame for a few instances of hardcore violence in recent history, namely the Columbine shooting that took place in 1999. Even with all the negatively that was gear towards video games after the shooting, video game developers carried on and continued to produce more violent video games. Why would developers continue to do this even though the Columbine incident could very likely happen again? Because the video game market is a very lucrative market and violent video games comprise a piece of this very successful market. Grand Theft Auto IV sold over 6 million copies in the first week alone (Sales)! Why do people continue to purchase and play violent video games though? Despite all the negativity geared towards these video games, they provide a graphic representation for our want for structure in our lives.
To examine this want for structure in video games, it would be best to start by analyzing two video games on the basis of their content. Super Mario Brothers and Grand Theft Auto (GTA) are both violent video games in their own right; just one, Super Mario Brothers, is a lot less violent than the other, GTA. Grand Theft Auto is game that “thrive[s] on murder, theft, and destruction on every imaginable level …and gamers boost their chances of winning the game by a virtual visit to a prostitute with subsequent violent mugging and recovery of monies exchanged†(Violent). But the game isn’t unacceptable for the actions themselves, even though they are inherently bad, but how violent and gruesome they are portrayed in the course of the game. It isn’t acceptable to kill the innocent person walking down the street, nor is it acceptable to kill the old woman on the sidewalk. Not only can someone get murdered in Grand Theft Auto, but they can get murdered in progressively violent ways. No longer is the gun enough; but now swords, flamethrowers, and chainsaws can be used to maim people and that’s a step beyond the realm of acceptability.
On the face of it, Super Mario Brothers doesn’t fit into the present schema of what people consider to be a violent video game: shooting, killing, blood, etc. However, Super Mario Brothers is a violent video game. It does contain shooting and killing, via fireballs and turtles respectively, but it’s just a more acceptable form of violence than what is present in GTA because there is no killing or shooting of actual human beings. They way the ‘deaths’ are portrayed makes it more acceptable as well. When you jump onto a turtle to kill it, there is no blood, no gore, just a thud-like noise and the image of a shell that the turtle used to inhabit. That’s it. After taking out the turtle though, its shell can be used as a weapon to kill others. In a sense it is using the death of another to help advance you further along, which is violent in itself.
Mamet says in Three Uses of the Knife “[t]he weather is impersonal, and we both understand it and exploit it as dramatic, i.e., having a plot, in order to understand its meaning…†(Mamet 1). The game itself is impersonal in that it has no bearing on the person playing in and of itself, but the person can identify and interpret the game as having some alternative dramatic meaning. The Super Mario Brothers has a specified plot the player has to follow, a stringent path the player must follow otherwise the game itself cannot be completed. Mario’s princess, Peach, was kidnapped by the evil turtle Bowser, and it is Mario’s job to rescue her. To accomplish this task, Mario has to traverse many periling passages and stages until the ultimate goal is achieve. It’s the quintessential drama of the epic hero. “It’s a drama, with meaning for our lives, why else would we watch it†(Mamet 11), or in this case, play it? We want to save the princess; we want to beat the bad guy, because we want that satisfaction of being the hero. That’s why the game is played. It also follows Mamet’s three-act structure. It has a beginning, middle, and a definitive ending. And the player can feel some sort of achievement or accomplishment knowing that the game has been completed.
Grand Theft Auto doesn’t have this same structure. Sure the game has an ending,’ as in a final conflict that is resolved, but once it’s over there is always something extra to do in the game, extra ‘plots’ to be explored, so the game is essentially never over. In Grand Theft Auto, the player is free to roam wherever they please and do whatever they want. They aren’t restricted to a set path to follow. Missions or tasks can be completed at the player’s own discretion and leisure. This is a far cry from games like Super Mario Brothers where missions had to be completed then and there otherwise progression was impossible. This leaves room for the player to devise their own plot. Why would they want to do this? Because the player seeks structure, some kind of uniformity to guide what they do in the context of the game. Grand Theft Auto doesn’t have that nice neat linear structure people expect to find in most games: complete a task, advance to the next, and repeat until the game is done. The game has many branches it can take in the course of completing the main objective: taking over the city. This ranges from doing work with various gang bosses against rival gangs to finding cars for filling up a garage. So to fill that void of lack of structure, a self-imposed structure is devised to take its place.
It can be speculated that people have a certain ‘comfort zone’ they tend to stick to in playing video games, and people have a hard time leaving that comfort zone. That comfort zone is the game that gives the person the most structural satisfaction, or creating a situation in the game that gives them the most structural satisfaction. That comfort zone is fallen back onto when the player reverts back to that one game or tendencies present in that one game that give the most satisfaction. When another game seems too hard, or if the current game they are playing doesn’t satisfy their needs, the player will devise a way to make it fit into their comfort zone. Super Mario Brothers is a game that gives the player a coherent plot and a defined structure to be followed. It does a fine job of presenting the player a game that doesn’t deviate from their comfort zone, assuming their comfort zone lies in straightforward games like Mario. It’s a very cut and dry game from start to finish: complete this stage and move on, repeat until the game is over. Games like Grand Theft Auto give the player an expansive world to explore all at one time and the player may not know what to do with all that space, so they tend to revert back into their comfort zone present in other games: streamline their way to the finish, bypassing all the outer elements present in the game, or creating their own plots to be conquered outside the original plot, etc. Their goal is to make the game smaller and less overwhelming then it really is. This gives them the most structural satisfaction; it makes the game more enjoyable.
Structure is achieved from advertising by giving people justification for their purchasing decisions. It gives people the feeling of ‘if I buy this-blank,†whether that ‘blank’ is for health, beauty, or the new trendy game out, their reason for buying it will be satisfied and they will receive some sense of completion.
Taking a look at Raymond Williams’ text in “Advertising: The Magic System†should prove beneficial in helping to understand why people continue to purchase violent video games. Advertising is a major component to the success of video games, but Williams calls it a ‘magic system’ as in: “a highly organized and professional system of magical inducements and satisfaction, functionally very similar to magical systems in simpler society…†(Williams 82), but what is the magic? It could be that advertising plays into people’s inhibitions of being ignored. Another way of saying it is that advertising plays into peoples’ inherent yearning to be recognized. Most advertising seen today is geared towards showing some kind of extrinsic benefit that can be gained from using the product which can later be used as a tool to boost societal perception of one’s self. Williams’ says in the text:
(long quote)“If we were sensibly materialist, in that part of our living in which we use things, we should find most advertising to be of an insane irrelevance. Beer would be enough for us, without the additional promise that in drinking it we show ourselves to be manly, young in heart, or neighbourly†(Williams 82).
The George Foreman grill advertising shows how much fat is reduced from using his grill to lead to the user being healthier. In essence, according to Williams, people are buying a healthier life, a new body image; a tool for recognition, and not the grill for its own sake.
In relation to video games, it shows we have an ulterior motive when it comes to purchasing them. People do not buy it for the fact it is a video game, people buy it because it may make them look cooler in the eyes of their friends for having the cool brand new game that just came out. It helps to elevate their social status among their friends. “Many people will indeed look twice at you, upgrade you, upmarket you, respond to your displayed signals, if you have made the right purchases within a system of meanings to which you all are trained†(Williams 85). Everyone would like to be recognized in some way, shape, or fashion; and video games provides that avenue people need to head down the path.
Some of the points McCloud made in “The Vocabulary of Comic†relate pretty well to violent video games. McCloud states that an icon is “any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea†(McCloud 27). In a sense, video games are the iconic representations of our want for structure. Abstraction and different levels of abstraction is a big part of the McCloud text, especially in the scope of realism and the face. The more ‘real’ the face is when represented, the less number of people it applies to, and the less ‘real’ the face is represented the more it applies to; the more universal it is. Video games tend to fall in the middle between the two extremes because video game character’s faces are distinguished, but not so much that they are truly realistic. There is room there for people to see themselves in video game characters and relate. McCloud makes the point that the cartoons are universal and when someone “enters the world of the cartoon, they see themselves†(McCloud 36). This same philosophy can be applied to video games, and criticism has come about for this very manner. The Columbine shooting by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold was said to have come about by their association to violent video games. “They relied on the virtual world of computer games to express their rage and to spend time, and cutting them off in 1998 sent them into crisis,†(Nizza) Jerald Block stated in an article to the Denver Post. The virtual world gave them structure, and they relied on that structure as a crutch for their aggression. It can be speculated that losing that crutch, that structure we strive for, made them lose balance of reality and turn the gun on their classmates because the boys were already stated to have mental problems. This loss of structure made them, similar to what can happen in Grand Theft Auto; devise their own plot in hopes of filling up the present void.
They could probably envision themselves in the game themselves, killing people, and even though real people weren’t killed they were the ones pulling the “trigger.†“[T]he player is actually pulling the joystick trigger and inflicting simulated harm him/herself†(McCormick 2), this made it easier for them to turn the gun on another person in real life and pull the trigger. They were desensitized to the act.
![[Image: Tempestas007_Signature.jpg]](https://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u66/Crimson_07_2007/Tempestas007_Signature.jpg)
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![[Image: promotion.jpg]](https://a.random-image.net/strikeraxis/promotion.jpg)
Its a fact not a opinion.
![[Image: 9gdOw.png]](https://i.imgur.com/9gdOw.png)
Just because violence is an inevitably does not mean it's something that should be promoted! People like you who can't separate fantasy from reality are the reason childhood violence is so prevalent.
