Tuesday, February 07, 2006
An organization called Focus on the Family sends out a daily news update by email. I subscribe to it and today there was an..... interesting article mentioned. The article is about violent video games, it's written by a guy named Jeff Hooten, and it mentions several games by name; Doom, Resident Evil, Half-Life, Quake, GTA (of course), and the Halo games. It's a compelling article, but I'm afraid I disagree on several points. I would say that Doom, Quake, and even Half Life are too gross for me to play anyway. I don't have fun with those games because frankly, there's just too much blood and gore. Halo is a totally seperate story. I'm a huge Halo fan, as most who read this blog know; and I think that Halo is totally different from the former games. Halo and Halo 2 center around the Master Chief, a super soldier who has one purpose, save humanity as a race. He is about the only thing preventing total extermination of humans by aliens known as the Covenant. He use lots of guns, vehicles, and brute strength to accomplish his missions, but he is always focused on saving Earth. This is very important; throughout history, characters that ride out of nowhere and save others have struck a key with us who enjoy stories. People who are willing to risk it all to save others, people who kill to save others. Characters like John Wayne, Aragorn in the LOTR, Sean Connery in the James Bond movies and The Hunt for Red October. This is why the Halo games are some of the top five games of all time in sales and popularity. The Master Chief kills a lot of aliens, those aliens bleed, so there is purple and blue blood around in-game; but he fights for a purpose, and the gore is not overdone. Read it here.
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10 comments:
Good job defending us. But I must disagree with one of your points. It's about Half-Life, in your post you mentioned that the Half-Life series was "too gory", and the gist seemed to be that you believe Half-Life to be another mindless violence game like GTA.
Granted, Half-Life 2 went a little overboard with the "Ravenholm" level, but for the most part, it isn't too bad. As for being mindless, Half-Life and it's sequel are part of an extremely compelling and substantial storyline, one that I dare say is even better than that of Halo. Check out this site:
http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/timeline.htm.
for a good outline of the entire
Half-Life storyline (So far), however, I recommend against reading
past the "Combine invades Xen" area
if you plan on playing the game at
any point in the future.
I don't mean to flame you, I just
wanted to make the point that
Half-Life is much more than a mindless bloody romp.
I actually agree. Half-Life has one of the best stories of any videogame. It's also a lot better than Doom or Quake. I just wrote it wrong, thanks.
I'd like to jump in here and make two quick points:
1. I hate to see the GTA games summed up as "mindless violence". Yes, the developers have given gamers the ability to pursue violence for no obvious reason, but the actual storylines themselves, (the reason I play those games), are highly entertaining and usually very well acted, by some top Hollywood talent no less. The plotlines can often evoke some of the better aspects from movies like Goodfellas or Do the Right Thing. Admittedly, adult fare, but that's why the games are rated M for MATURE.
2. I think an underuse of gore can be considered to be just as "bad" as excessive gore. Shooting at living creatures results in injury and death, and a game player should be reminded of the real-world consequences of violent aggression. Do some games take it too far? Sure, but to me that's purely subjective. I can watch the goriest of horror movies and not blink an eye, but real-world violent images make me physically ill. Everyone's different.
I disagree with your second point. While everyone is different, people can quickly become insensitized to violence and gore through visual images and actions. Watch a lot of violent material, and you won't be as revolted as you were when you began. This applies to both real world, and fictional images. Sometimes at the same time, sometimes not.
Ju Blaine
Agreed Ju, I am definitely desensitized, and sometimes it bothers me. If I'm in a movie theatre or something and there's a violent scene, a lot of other people will grunt or cringe, while I won't even blink. (I'm not totally desensitized, you won't catch me going to see "Hostel" any time soon.). But just because actual images of violence don't tend to bother me, it doesn't mean I've lost my morals. This is what I think to be a misconception among the non-gamer community. Sure, most of us are desensitized, but we aren't demoralized. I know almost all of us can differentiate between the virtual and the real. We still believe in human rights and freedoms, when we hear about something like the shootings at Columbine we don't say "Cool!" we say what everyone else says "That's terrible". We know that what's acceptable in games is not acceptable in the real world, and we respect that. Someone like the shooters at Columbine and other incidents, most likely had problems beforehand, in the home or something of the like. As for the comment above about GTA, I respect your opinion, but I for one am firmly against the GTA series. Not to the extent of certain attorneys (*cough* JACK THOMPSON *cough*), but I just think that those games are too close to reality. Things like that happen, and they're a serious problem, where Halo and Half-Life are set in clear fantasy settings, GTA just hits too close to reality for my liking. It makes light of a serious problem in today's society. Remember though, I'm not going to boycott Rockstar or anything, that just happens to be my opinion and I won't force it upon anyone or comdemn them for their opinions on the issue.
I agree jeverage. Because events like Columbine are seen as being caused by violent videogames, we gamers are also seen as being fairly passive as a group, when dealing with unmitigated violence. That stuff is as horrible to us as it is to you. Bumblefoot go home.
Ju Blaine
yah dude...i agree one hundred percent...even with the whole quke and doom being too gory...first of all i gotta say something tho...like most people who play halo i am noy 17 or above...but i am actually 14...and me or my parents for that matter see whats wrong with halo. I mean unlike the others in halo there isnt that much blood, if you shoot someone there is a little bit of blood that spills but yeah thats what really happens...unlike in other games where if u shoot someone with a pistol there is a huge gore explosion. Also halo is no worse than movies or tv. I mean take the terminator movies, their probably worse. Almost every scary movie has more blood and its more realistic since its actually people. As long as people realize that what their doing is playing a game i see nothin wrong with halo.
wow i got bad spelling.....its supposed to be me and my parents CANT see whats wrong...one letter messes up the whole argument...
I remember when I saw GoodFellas because it was supposed to be a good movie. I was disgusted. I couldn't understand why people like movies like this. In the same way, GTA disgusts me. Granted I've never played it, but I have no desire to watch a movie like GoodFellas or the Godfather, much less play a role in one.
About desensitizing, there are some areas where my senses still work. I remember when I saw blade 1 in the theater. Although I thought it was a well done movie, I almost threw up because of the disgusting gore. That kind of over the top gore is just gross. While it is still rampant throughout hollywood and the game landscape, this is one thing that they thankfully don't have in the Halo series. Bungie actually understands that it's not necessary. And the story behind it all is altruistic as opposed to performing a drive-by in san andreas.
I don't see anything morally wrong with Halo 2 online game play either. Yeah, your characters are killing eachother, but then you come back to life in 5 seconds with a gun in hand. For that reason alone it's not realistic. It's a cyber sport.
The problem is more with the talk you hear from other players in game. Adults can handle it without stooping to their level, but young kids with pliable minds shouldn't be listening to this crap in my opinion. Sometimes I can't stand the endless disgusting comments about peoples' moms or worst of all: racism. I hate racism.
Very true, I hope the new trueskill Matchmaking wil fix some of that. With the gamerzones and stuff.
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