Why should we study digital games?
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/Digit_Games1.html
"The massive popularity of digital gaming does not, however, mean that the medium has become ‘respectable’. Despite (or perhaps because of) its popularity, gaming has something of a bad reputation, while games are branded a ‘bad influence’. Politicians and talk-show hosts have claimed that games make children anti-social, that digital games reduce the scope of players’ imaginations, or that they promote real life violence. These claims are often sensational, rather than accurate. Meanwhile, the creative, innovative or progressive aspects of digital games are overlooked."
"There are also those who are more concerned by the notion that games negatively affect their users. Games have been vilified in the popular press for their supposed violence. Much of the apparent evidence for the link is founded on poorly conceived or simplistic research methods, generally combined with a very narrow understanding of what constitutes play, or a game, or violence. Digital games are accountable for their content, just as any other form of media must be. But, as yet, there is no compelling reason to single games out as having a greater ‘influence’ than television, for example."
Why study digital games? Part 2
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/Digit_Games2.html
"Games and conflict
Any game has always been an enactment and representation of conflict. Even playing noughts and crosses is a competition between two people. Chess is one of the most ancient games, known to many civilisations, and it is a highly stylised representation of two armies at war. Here are some key ideas to follow up and research further.
• Make a list of games which involve conflict or competition (and work out what the difference is between these two closely-related ideas).
• Try to describe what kinds of conflict happen in different computer game genres, such as First-Person Shooters, Action/Adventure Games, and Role-Playing Games.
• How is human conflict represented in the game? What kinds of conflict in the real world are being referred to? Who are the protagonists and antagonists? (Dramatic terms for goodies and baddies!) How is the cause, purpose and resolution of conflict shown?
• How far can the representations of conflict be taken at face value? Might they be metaphors for different kinds of danger in real life? If your avatar kills a group of zombies, what does this mean? What do zombies, monsters and creatures represent?
• Think about the question of realism – how realistic is the conflict and the violence it involves, in a visual sense? But also think how this ‘realism’ is modified by other aspects of the game – the scoring system, the structure of the combat sequences, the point-of-view offered to the player, the world in which the game is set; and finally, the status of the text as a game. Also, think about humour – many games use humorous or ironic devices which, again, affect how the violence is experienced by the player.
• Think about the kind of emotional experience players get from combat sequences in games. Basically, there are two arguments here: violence in games promotes more violent behaviour in real life; or violence in games allows you to get it out of your system so that you’re less likely to be violent in real life. A third argument says it’s nothing to do with violence really – it’s fantasy, and we know it’s fantasy. What arguments can be developed along these lines? Who makes the arguments? What reasons might they have? Are they similar to arguments about violence which have been made before in relation to other media?"
Categories of violence
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/Cat%20of%20violence.html
"Here are the four key assumptions that underpin the tradition of concern about the effects of media violence:
1. ‘Violence’ is a unit of meaning that can be abstracted from occasions and modes of occurrence, and measured – with the correspondent assumption that the more violence there is, the greater its potential for influence.
2. There is a mechanism, usually called ‘identification’, which makes viewers of ‘violence’ vulnerable to it – such that it thereby becomes a ‘message’ by which they are invaded and persuaded.
3. The task of media researchers is to identify those who are especially ‘vulnerable’ to the influence of these ‘messages’.
4. All these can be done on the presumption that such messages are ‘harmful’, because ‘violence’ is intrinsically anti-social."
Pleasure and pain: Why we need violence in the movies
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/Violenceonfilm.html
" It’s true that the rapid development of the cinema and other media technologies in the last hundred years has given rise to a previously unimaginable array of ways to view violence; but let’s not forget that any violence witnessed before our cinematic age was, excluding the theatre, very real and undoubtedly very violent. However, despite how horrific these gladiator tournaments, public executions and bare-knuckle boxing matches may have been, it may still be harmful in today’s climate to be surrounded by cinematic death and destruction. In fact, some may argue that the flippancy and quantity with which this ‘fake’ violence is manufactured may be creating a dangerously casual and deluded attitude towards suffering."
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