The Potential of People…

After writing the ‘Games and War’ blog, I started to think about how easily people are actually influenced. I think there may be some sort of persuasive element to Games. But, in general my belief is that in order for someone to act in a certain way, they must have had the potential for that action before hand.

Young children are heavily influenced by what is around them, they learn from their surroundings, so exposing them to violence (in the form of a game), is most definitely a bad idea. But there are age limits on the games we play, and the type of content is generally known before playing. So only people who have already established their own sense of right and wrong should have access to the game (in theory).

Anyway, what I am getting at is, that violence and certain behaviour should never be blamed heavily on a game (or film or song), because the innate potential of a person is the sole cause. Including their potential to be influenced!

I feel like im talking garbage… … im gonna stop now…

Games and War…

I found a fantastic TV show last night comprising of five episodes (though I have only caught two) called ‘I, Videogame’. The show plots out the history of videogaming, and its defining moments as a new form of entertainment.

A game called ‘America’s Army’ was brought up. It is a simulation game created by the U.S Army. The game is easily accessible, you can download it and play it for free. What the army has to gain from this, is new recruits.

I find it quite scary that the U.S Government can use games to benefit them in this way, though I suppose it is just a form of advertisement. But how many of the games that are being released at the moment are military based? Or about War? It is telling us something serious about the nature of our society.

The gap between War and entertainment should be a huge one. Playing games for fun is one thing, but distributing a training simulation to entice the youth into the army seems extremely morally unstable. It also seems that War games sold for entertainment purposes seem to express much more reality than this simulation. The reason for this being if there were too much gore and bloodshed in ‘America’s Army’ it would need an age restriction, and it may deter people from joining the army, which is not the aim of the simulation.

So, something to think about when we are creating games is what impact are we having on society?