Week #2 Video Games

The topic of this week's discussion centered around video games, and the power structure, or discourse that is reflected from them. I would consider myself an average video gamer, not super obsessed, but at times, (I will admit) I defiantly get a little carried away. I found it interesting listening to the different opinions that were presented in class, especially the opinions that were anti-violent FPS games. It made me think of a story that my mom told me about when I was younger. "When I was a little kid my mom believed that having toy guns would be bad, maybe somehow make me believe that violence was okay. The interesting part about this was that even though she never allowed me to have toy guns, I managed to turn anything else that looked simular in shape into a toy gun."


While I thought about this, and listened to people in class talking, it intriguing to consider that maybe kids, especially boys might just have a natural tendency to explore the 'warrior'/violent/ war-driven nature. Drawing this back to the discussion on video games I found it interesting that the people that spoke the 'loudest' against video games were also the people that seemed to know the least about them. For me video games are more then just a way to waste an afternoon, or get some mild excitement. In fact, one of the things I am considering after I leave/graduate from WSU is attending DigiPen and going into video game design. I guess what it equates to is that while video games do have some downsides/fallbacks/inaccuracies that might be construed as harming a portion of the population, I see video games as a result of a large about of consumers, like myself, pushing for newer/better/more intense games. 


Before I finish this blog I would like to also share something that I observed this week. Sitting with my roommate and a buddy, this commercial appeared on the TV. If you don't want to watch it the basic premise of the commercial has to do with the PS3 and the video game SOCOM4 (tangent: if you go to the website it makes you put in your age). Anyway, the video game is a FPS, BUT now you have the ability to actually hold a gun that is a remote that tracks your movements and where you are aiming. Why am I sharing this story? Because the way my friends reacted was really interesting. They both started talking about how it would be even cooler if the game sensed what was in your room at that time and would allow you to hide behind objects (aka a chair or couch) and the character in the game would do the same. This was humorous because it brought me back to class, especially when Shawn talked about how in these games you never have to deal with stuff like waiting on a tarmac for hours, or losing a girlfriend. I don't know if it was my weird sense of humor but I imagined (right then) my two buddies camped out behind the couch waiting for hours until on bad guy appeared on the screen, and while one was busy trying to shoot this pixelated character, the other was checking a text from a girlfriend and getting dumped.