http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9852&Itemid=59
By Colin Campbell
Note - this feature contains strong language, from the beginning
Later today I will spend about 45 minutes killing people. I’ll probably kill a hundred or so. I’ll enjoy all the kills. I’ll take particular satisfaction from executing the really good ones; sneaking up behind some fellow and blowing his fucking head off, before he knows I’m even there.
Does this make me a bad person?
According to some commentators, it does. I am immoral because I play games. It just happens that I really like shooting games, but it’s not especially relevant here because, according to these critics, all video games are immoral. The activity of playing games is wrong.
There are people holding positions of influence who see games players as just another subset of human deviancy that includes binge drinkers, noise polluters, work-shy layabouts, teenage moms, drug abusers and Internet pornographers. This is not about children playing games. It's about grown ups.
The snoozier sort of game industry pundits have done the usual thing and cried “ignorance” or rolled out those ultra-tedious arguments about how new things always frighten the establishment.
More interesting approach: Do the anti-games people have a point? Shouldn’t we be doing something better with our time and with our energy? Isn’t mowing down in-game people a really lame way to have fun? And finally, do we behave immorally when we kill people in videogames?
Even asking the question about killing people for fun causes some inner turmoil to roil around in my guts. Is it really fun to step out from a broken stairwell and pop a grenade in some fool’s face?
Then I snap out of my bowel-based conflict. Of course it’s fun.
How can it not be fun to engage in an alternative universe where I am a cold-hearted warrior, or a dandy explorer or a grizzled submariner or a little girl princess who catches cotton candy bubbles, floating in purple skies?
I think this is what confuses the leader-writers of broadsheets – generally well-educated people, older than 45 years, very much upper-middle class, concerned about society, nice enough – who can’t fathom why we play games.
For them, the notion of adults at play at all is limited to a tiny number of activities – the thespian urge, sexual adventures, nerdish dressing up associations, scrabble or sports.
But when faced with the awesome evidence that an entire technological revolution has allowed us to play in an unimaginable variety of ways, what really frightens them is that the way we in fact play, is to indulge in violent fantasies.
The number of games that are violent (definition: you kill avatars of actual people in order to win), is fairly small, but they hold a huge grip over this industry. If you count the number of games you admire – for design or commercial reasons - chances are at least half of them will involve the killing of people or of characters that might just as well be people (zombies, bi-ped aliens, ghosts, Nazis).
What these people want to know is ‘why are you doing this?’ They can’t just accept the ‘because it’s fun’ answer because that just invites the next question. ‘Why is it fun to kill people?’
It’s a hard thing to answer, but here’s a few of the reasons why I like to kill people. This isn’t a definitive list of why everyone plays games, particularly violent games. I hope you’ll have some more suggestions. I can't answer the question outright about my own immorality (not in this case, anyway). Maybe these answers will help...
Answer 1. Death is Everywhere Man
I like games in general and lots of them seem to have killing as a theme. Just like murder and death feature in a significant number of books and films and TV shows that I consume. And since my tastes are entirely conventional, I’m thinking this doesn’t make me a nut. My grandma likes murder-mysteries. She isn’t crazy.
Answer 2: The Violence is Not Really Relevant
For me it’s just another fantasy that I want to soak up at the end of a working day. It’s a diversion, like a crossword puzzle or a soap opera. The violence is not that much of a draw, so much as the challenge or the promise of relief from the ho-hummery of life. But yeah, violence is noisy and colorful and exciting and so game-makers use it a lot. It adds spice.
Answer 3: Look; I am Not Killing Anyone
The number of people killed in games is counted in the billions, every single day. Yet they don’t add up to the death of a single wretched maggot; not in the real world. It doesn’t exist. Mere images on a screen. Just like Hector perishing at the gates of Troy is something that happens in your head, and in the heads of the millions of people who have enjoyed that story. There is no connect between what happens there and what happens here. Hector isn’t dying every day. So is the question even relevant?
Answer 4. It’s Just a Puzzle
The fact is that I am no more killing anyone in Call of Duty than I am solving the crime on CSI. The authors of the show or the game just make me feel like I am. Critics want to compare gaming with drug-use, possibly because they feel like you are doing something in a game, but really gaming is more like a TV show. The choice we have as gamers to kill that person or this person is an illusion of choice. There’s no such thing as an ‘open-world’ game. I can’t play GTA IV and decide I want to become Liberace. My options are limited to the designer’s wishes and I’m okay with that. It’s just a crossword that I fill in. Go left two steps, kill that dude; go right one step, drop a few grenades down that hole; I’m done. Satisfaction.
Answer 5. Violence is Good
The anti-games comments were published in posh British newspapers read by a middle-class culture that adores the game of rugby. Rugby players are jolly good chaps.
I have spent some time with rugby players, usually in the bar after a game (I’d never play, way too scary). They don’t talk about making lovely passes or slinky runs or sublime tries. They talk about the violence they delivered to other fellows, or the violence they endured. They like hurting people almost as much as they like getting hurt by others. It’s fun. They are alive.
These people are lawyers and cops and teachers and businessmen. They are ultra-normal guys with stressful jobs and responsibilities. They’re getting something out of their system on a Saturday afternoon. Good for them. They like violence and are lauded. I like it and am lambasted.
Answer 6. I Need Power
Every day I am at the mercy of slime. The Government is stealing my money. The kids who live around here drive like lunatics. In business, people behave without honor. Corporations lie to me, constantly. I have no power against these forces.
In a game I have power and power is exercised most vividly and effectively through violence. Games give me some illusion of power. I like that.
Answer 7. I Don’t Like Other People
I can’t hurt the guys who drop litter on my street. It’s not allowed. I’d love to shoot them dead. Then they’d stop. But I’d go to jail. And even if I didn’t get caught, I’d start to feel terrible remorse about killing some guy for a trivial reason. I’d feel real bad about that guy’s family. No, I wouldn’t love to shoot him dead. I’ll just shoot these Nazi zombies instead.
Because games are like movies in which the bad guys get their comeuppance. I know it doesn’t often happen in the real world. I know that Hitler isn’t really sizzling in hell. I realize that the litterbugs aren't going to be punished. I just need to feel like the world is on my side. Am I insane or am I sort of normal?
Answer 8: I am Competitive
I hardly played Call of Duty 4 in single-player mode. (I know, I know, I will get around to it).
Couldn’t get online quick enough to test myself against the others.
I got killed real bad.
Then I got better and started to have more fun. I killed other guys and liked it. I liked beating them.
You are asking; there are plenty of ways to be competitive without indulging in violent fantasies. Why not grow azalias and take them to a flower show? Because I’m not good at growing flowers. But I have gotten pretty good at wielding the M203 grenade launcher. And lots of people seem to get off on one-to-one combat as a way of testing oneself against others, even if it’s just simulated.
Answer 9 – My Own Mortality Freaks Me Out
It doesn’t really, at least I don’t think so. But it seems like a reasonable explanation, doesn’t it? Young people love horror movies because simulated sudden death is how they deal with their own non-existence, at a distance so to speak. Aren’t killing games sort of like that? Just another entertainment in which we displace our own fear of death with the carnage of others? Dunno.
Answer 10: I am Inherently Violent.
My ancestors were really violent and almost always used violence to get what they wanted (when I say ancestors I'm talking pre-historic apes right the way up to about 1978). I guess I need more time to shake that off.
