Warfare is a inevitable part of human life that will always occur due to the same reasons. Disputes usually based around disagreements within culture, religion, finances and political issues between different nations/governments etc. As we know, War is a subject that will never be taken lightly and will always be looked at in a negative way for the devastation it causes across the globe. It brings greed, deceit and worse...death to loved ones, family members and friends. The effects of war are shown frequently on the news today and bring with it deep emotions of sadness, trauma and fear.
However, within the 'shooter' genre of our video games, this reality is replicated as a form of entertainment or 'fun'. Although I enjoy playing shooters myself, it has only crossed my mind from my research, the immoral substances that are used to build narratives within these games. Warfare based games replicate the disputes in the physical world as building blocks for a plot, then work into them to add realism, such as good graphics, audio and game play. What is the morality of these games? is it okay to portray warfare as an 'entertaining' thing? Although these warfare based games include those realistic narratives, I believe it is not the subject that is focused on when playing one of these games, as a shooter player myself. These elements may appear realistic to the player, but in fact we register no opposing threat as it is and always will be a virtual experience to us. These events would never happen to us whilst playing this game, so it doesn't really matter how graphic the war narrative can be, as nothing is really going to harm you. Within shooter games, life has a no 'real' value, if you die you can come back to life or 're-spawn' as many times as you want so you can continue playing. As we know in reality, if you were to die, you would not come back to life, ever. So does this experience desensitize the player's feelings towards the horror of death? to the point that they don't mind killing one another or dying?.
Game play, graphics and audio take over the narrative plot and consume a player into a virtual world that seems realistic enough to keep them immersed to the point that they look beyond the warfare plot concept. As with all games, there are goals and rewards that are reached by playing according to the rules of the system. It is okay for a player to enjoy warfare based games as they have no real fear of the affects of warfare in reality. Killing gives you points, which add up to a good statistics which are compared across other opponents in the game, Players want to have the best stats and want to beat other opponents records to be more 'skilled' or the BEST at the game. It's at this point that warfare in games takes away the devastation of war, even though it represents the elements of true warfare. Life has no value, it is a point system. Even ways you kill other players and the ratio you kill and die is taken into account on the player's stats board, the better stats, the better rewards and the more you are recognized as a skillful player. This hides the conceptual plot behind the game, what real war is like.
I found an example of what I mean in an article from a website. A young player said:
'I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to be in a tank watching all these
poor, innocent people being blown up. You actually fail the mission if you kill
innocent people. If I did go to war, I’d blow my brains out, but the games seem
fine to me.' (learningwithtoby 2011)*
This shows how the player finds it okay to play war games because it isn't real, it isn't really explosions, real
deaths or even real events. However, these all are representations from real
warfare. So if you understand the terror that is real war, why do you enjoy
playing it so much virtually? is it because there is no real sense of fear,
just to be the best? is it okay to use warfare culture to get the attention of
players, using violence to make players feel achieved?
Also with the inclusion of good graphics, audio and game play, players are
more interested in those elements than the narrative plot. If a game looks
realistic it appeals more to them, even if it isn't. It is then that players
start to develop interests that they can handle real war, they buy replica
guns and military outfits to mimick themselves in the game. Even the
military train their soldiers with warfare based games to improve hand and eye
co-ordination, but is this also a good thing? making a solider who could potentially go to war, to experience a media that represents their life as
meaningless? that dying is a good thing? etc.
It seems to me that these games are used entirely for the game play experience. As with these shooters, the main focus is set on the multi player aspects and less of what the story entails. In all honesty it feels that warfare games these days use the multi player as the most important part of the game, and focus less on the single player experiences with the story. This also shows that they use the warfare genre just to attract the audience who enjoy that type of genre. They forget what devastation they portray and the trauma that is the reality of war, they abuse it to take advantage of players. They overload the story campaign with ridiculous yet brutal assets that they believe would attract a player into wanting to buy the game, because it seems 'cooler'. More explosions = better game play? no! it's just making it look better so the player is attracted to it, even though it portrays such unnecessary violence and destruction!
| *learningtwithtoby [reply] (2011) Why war games are okay[internet blog]. Available from:<http://learningwithtoby.com/2011/01/26/why-war-games-are-okay/> [Accessed 10 May 2011]. |
No comments:
Post a Comment