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Videogames and Violence

Violent video games have been a source of controversy since the very first game was released. Parents and government officials linked school shootings to violent video games, which brought about good and bad results alike. Video games were required to have ratings that generally showed what content they contained so that parents could approve games for their kids, which was necessary as the industry grew. However, this also resulted in parents and government officials cracking down on the media their children consumed, and blaming video games for something that was not entirely their fault. Because of laws like this, many children were not allowed to play video games at all, or were heavily monitored while playing.

There is a link between video games and violence that is palpable and real, which is why there have been many studies done on the topic. However, a majority of them have shown that the “violence” that results from video games is not different from the violence that results when your favorite football team loses a game, or when you lose at family board night. This is simply the frustration that comes from being invested in something, and while it does increase aggression for a time, it does not lead to great acts of violence like shootings.

Unfortunately, a lot of older studies done on this topic were biased against video games, and were cherry-picked to show only what the readers wanted to see. This led to the connections I mentioned earlier, and a taboo against video games. Video games in general are good for children. They improve social skills, problem solving, and learning skills. Even violent video games can have this effect on children, as they do not always require a straight forward solution. This tool is not for everyone, of course, but children will often self-regulate when they have seen too much.

Personally, I don’t play too many overtly violent video games, but in playing any fps, you are taking the position of someone shooting a gun. I have played several different fps games, and the frustration at a loss is definitely real, however, it has never sparked any further violence in me or any of my friends. Video games in general tend to be an escape, and while some games are fairly realistic, there is always a filter in my mind that makes them feel not quite real enough. This filter does not exist in everyone, however, which is why violent video games are not generally good for those who are mentally unstable or have difficulties separating fiction from reality.

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Starbound on Steam

Starbound is a game that can be purchased on Steam for $14.99, and is a side-scrolling pixel-style space exploration game. I picked this game as it is one of my favorites, and it is an interesting take on a classic art style for the game and it incorporates a lot of elements that make a game interesting and replayable. 

This game is fantastic for its simplicity. The style is minimal enough that it is easy to see what is important on screen, while still looking very nice. The graphics are not too taxing for most machines, which makes it a good game to introduce nearly anyone to. The game is procedurally generated which means each time you play you will experience something new. In addition, there is a nearly infinite number of planets to explore that will all have something unique to find. There is a story mode to the game, but it can be completely ignored if you wish, and you can simply improve and explore for the fun of it. 

The controls to this game are optimized for keyboard and mouse, which is mapped in a fairly standard manner and can be changed to the liking of the player in settings. The game itself is very playable, its very fun and can be somewhat relaxing when you get upgraded weapons and gear. The difficulty can be chosen when starting the game, so if you’re interested in just exploring or playing in one life,  you can choose to do so. This game can be somewhat tricky starting out as the monsters are tough to kill with starting gear. Additionally, the game requires you to mine down into the world, which guarantees harder monsters. However, once you learn the special abilities to your weapons, and loot for better gear, you will be prepared for more difficult encounters.

Playing starbound as a class could be an interesting experience, as it is multiplayer or singleplayer. It is a very interesting game and I enjoy it greatly, and if we were to play it, it could be an interesting example of procedural generation and survival outside of the typical game of Minecraft.

Steam itself is a great platform for gaming, the UI is not too difficult to understand, and it does a very good job of being a social platform and a gaming library. There are regular sales, so it is not too difficult to pick up games you’ve been wanting for a much cheaper price. I have had steam for several years now, and I have become rather loyal to the service, and use it nearly daily. There isn’t really another platform I would prefer to use, as all my friends and games have been added to this account only.

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Video Game Emulators

RetroArch seems to be a fairly popular emulator for older games. It has a hub where you can store all your files. It is very customizeable and easy to install. This makes it rather popular for users. This emulator can be used mainly to emulate Nintendo games and consoles, which is often what people are looking to emulate anyway. The main draw to this emulator is the fact that it can emulate many different consoles, NES, SNES, Nintendo64, Nintendo DS, and Sega. This is extremely convenient so that users don’t have to download an individual piece of software for each one of those consoles.

It seems that emulating a console itself is legal, it is simply a piece of software meant to imitate the environment of a gaming console. The tricky legality comes with the games themselves. Technically, downloading a ROM of a game is illegal, you haven’t bought the game so can’t legally play it. However, if you have a cartridge of the game, and then download a ROM, you might be all right. There is also a piece of software you can buy for $60 that allows you to copy the game software off your cartridge onto a USB so that you can play the game closer to a legal state, seeing as you’re simply using your own copy. However, if you were to share any of these games with anyone else,  you’ve crossed into illegal territory.

I am of the opinion that these emulators are great for the gaming community. It is often very difficult to find old hardware that works well, and until recently, companies offered very little support for their older/outdated hardware. For a bit, they didn’t even want to do support for older games on newer versions of the same console. I believe that because older games are so popular, people turned to emulators for a while to relive those experiences from their youth. I used to see people on emulators quite a lot in High School and Middle School, and I know of people who still use them to this day.

The reason emulators are a little less widespread and don’t emulate games like Xbox games is because of the complexity of installation and the requirement to remap the controls. It becomes rather difficult to map the controls of an Xbox controller comfortably to a PC without an actual PC port of the game. Not to mention Xbox games are so large it would be rather difficult to install them on an emulator without taking up huge amounts of space. And finally, a lot of games for console have already been ported to PC! So there’s a bit less of a need to emulate them in that respect.

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Video Game Addiction

“My child is addicted to video games, they simply won’t leave their room!” Parents across the globe are used to sighing these words while their child groans to hear them. Each child in that case will tell you they are not addicted to video games, while the adults will swear their child must be withering away connected to a screen. Surprisingly, or not, it turns out video game addiction is not as common as parents seem to think it is. While there are souls out there hopelessly addicted to their screens, it is more likely linked to another pre-existing mental condition, rather than being the pull of that specific game.

Video games are used for many people to relax and to have fun with friends. In essence, it is no different from sitting in front of the television after dinner, but in the case for video games, it is more interactive and stimulating for the player. People who spend time playing video games rather than studying or working towards a career are not exactly wasting their time. They’re developing skills in a different way than the traditional methods. Additionally, they’re not letting themselves be worked to death! Just because someone has 500 hours logged on a video game does not mean they have wasted that 500 hours. They certainly enjoyed themselves, and have a large knowledge base about that game and its mechanics. Likely, someone who has spent that same 500 hours in study or practice needs it for their career.

Just because someone plays video games to relax does not make them addicted to video games either. An addiction is something that controls a person, not something that a person is able to control. People who play video games for fun are able to stop themselves when they need, and are able to go about their daily lives as normal. If someone were to give up on life entirely to solely play video games, then they could be considered addicted, and would probably need external help to step in and help them return to daily life.

Currently, it is even possible to have a career as a professional video game player! This means that perhaps the person spending hours upon hours perfecting their technique may go on to make millions playing that very game. In conclusion, video games are no more harmless than watching movies or playing board games in free time, and the addictions that come up are rare and treatable like any other.

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GBAfun

GBA fun is an interesting website that hosts a vast collection of GameBoy games. This is a great way for people to experience old games through new or better hardware, and to experience something that they may not have gotten a chance to when they were young. I played a few games that I haven’t thought about in ages, and really enjoyed seeing a few of the games I grew up on once again.

I’ve noticed that there are few “big label” games up on the website. When looking for a pokemon game, I did not find any, nor were there any Mario games available. What I did find were the smaller, less popular but still great fun games that were produced by less monstrous studios. The legality is certainly questionable, but it seems like the copyright on these games is not as strict as it would be for a nintendo game. The “most played” and “highest rated” games are Sonic games and Dragon Ball games, which leads me to believe this site is mostly for nostalgia on smaller games played in one’s childhood.

The games are still playable as they have been emulated onto a new platform and different hardware. The controls are mapped to the keyboard, A, S, Q, and W replace the buttons from the GameBoy. Flash is used to run the graphics of the game, and the rest is using the hardware from a computer, which is more than enough to host a GameBoy game.

I think it is possible there will be more of a market for this type of site in the future, there is already one in motion on the Nintendo Switch platform. If you sign up for the Nintendo monthly subscription on the Switch, you get access to a plethora of classic Nintendo games, often from other Nintendo platforms. It is already marketable, and many people are signed up to take advantage of this service. Nostalgia runs the world of entertainment on many different fronts, so this type of platform is certainly a very marketable business model for many different companies.

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Video Games and Film

Turning a film into a video game or vice versa is an extremely risky move. Our book cited the great E.T. incident as an example of why this can be a danger, the game can disappoint the experience of a film, and nearly ruin the industry in the process. It is important that when this is attempted, it is done with care. The LucasFilm example of taking an environment from a game and using it to improve a movie shot is fascinating. Using these technologies to interact with one another is the best way to approach this difficult conversion.

When an adaptation of something nearly universally loved is made, it is a delicate process as not all fans will receive it very well. The industries are so different that combining them is rarely pulled off. Using a game to expand on a movie’s universe is perfect, but using a game to repeat a story the movie has told is generally redundant and uninteresting. This is why it is so important to not directly compare the two industries, they serve completely different entertainment purposes. It is true that playing a game allows the player to potentially choose to let evil win, when in a film, that would be considered a rather unsatisfying ending.

Setting up characters from video games into movies is also tricky. As it is difficult to change a plot to an established movie, it is difficult to break a beloved character into a movie. Many video game protagonists are silent, and are simply there to give the player someone to project onto. When this is adapted into a movie it is challenging to not make this character fall flat. In these cases it is strange to see the protagonist make choices that you as a player did not choose for them. In the end, video games and film are such different media that is better for them to collaborate on a universe rather than trying to adapt something that one or the other has already done.

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Video Games as Art

Art has been around for centuries, as long as humanity. We can trace our artistic roots all the way back to cave paintings from before civilizations existed. Naturally, art has evolved through these centuries and become something entirely different, that would have amazed and dumbfounded the original cave artists. Video games are somewhat of another step into the progression of art, however, they are a tricky step to define.

Video games are meant to be entertainment, that much is certain. Because of this, many critics like to dismiss them as something that cannot be looked at seriously in an artistic sense. I would argue, however, that movies and television is also meant to be entertainment but is still regarded as a form of art. As mentioned earlier, video games are still quite new to society as a whole, which does mean that there isn’t one heralded master of the form. This also causes certain critics to say that video games cannot be art.

I am of the belief that video games are just as much art as any other form of entertainment. The main difference, of course, is that video games involve a player where other art is simply performed and consumed. The addition of a player, however, elevates video games to a new artistic level. Players make each instance of a game completely unique. This is something that would be fascinating to critique as an artist and would additionally make the perfect platform for artists to send across a message, as most art does.

Even if gameplay is completely thrown out of the critique for video games as an art form, one simply cannot ignore all the true artistic talent that goes into creating a video game. Artists go to school to learn how to render the polygons necessary to make a video game possible. Animators learn how to move these shapes in a realistic way, and designers make levels that are unique and challenging to players. In each step of video game design, there is an artist involved to bring that game to life. It is absolutely impossible to say that video games do not reflect and involve art in all aspects.

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Video Games and Storytelling

Video games are an incredibly diverse and unique method of entertainment. A person can spend 500 hours playing Candy Crush, but they will not get the same narrative experience as someone who has played Skyrim for that same length of time. In my opinion, storytelling is an essential addition to all video games in order to keep the player interested. While it is true that video games do not have a master creator of their own (though some may argue that a few developers are close), there are still plenty of games out there with masterful stories and meaningful events.

One of the first RPGs I played was Mass Effect. This game series allows you to create your own avatar, but has an established plot and world for them to run around in. Additionally, Mass Effect has the added bonus of giving you a crew to get to know and fall in love with the longer you play the game. These simple elements, established world and established crew, give the player a sense of belonging once they start the game. Finishing the game becomes immensely satisfying once you have spent all that time getting to know your world and your crew. Even if its not a “Shakespearean” plot, it was enough to elicit emotions in me as the player, and that is really what matters in a good story.

While chapter 1 of “Videogames and Education” seems to focus mostly on how the storytelling form for video games is not the same as literature, I argue that that is not what is important when analyzing games. Video games cannot be analyzed like a book nor should they be treated like a game of catch. They merit their own form of study and are important without being overly academic. For example, Shakespeare is extremely important to English courses and students, but he is not necessarily many people’s favorite author. Video games, on the other hand, are a source of entertainment and enjoyment in the modern era, and that means they are difficult to analyze academically.

Because video games are so diverse I think it is difficult to definitively say they have or don’t have a proper form of storytelling. However, I think storytelling is present in most if not all games, and is what draws the players in and immerses them in those worlds.

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Voxel Bot Review

Voxel Bot is a puzzle platformer on armorgames.com.

I often enjoy playing puzzle games in my free time, they’re mentally stimulating and pass the time rather quickly when you get stuck on one particular issue or level. Voxel Bot does a good job of filling that role. The goal for this game is to step on each block and turn it from white to purple. When each block has been stepped on, the game gives you a 100% and you have won that level. 

The game starts without instruction, so you have to figure out the controls and solutions on your own. However, the interface is simple enough that it takes only a moment to figure out the mechanics of most levels. In each of the images embedded above there are two separate platforms with two green boxes. It does not take long to realize that stepping on one green box will take you to the other platform.

Each level is very pleasant to look at and plays very smoothly in the browser.  Levels do a good job of providing unique puzzles to solve and difficulties to face. In a few cases, there are frustrations as some of the movements of the spike blocks feel randomized which makes it difficult to progress. However, the challenges are not so difficult that one is tempted to quit in a fury. Another great benefit to the game is how adorable the graphics are! The colors work well together and the idle bounce animation is smooth and fun to watch. 

While I very much enjoyed this game, I am not sure if it would be something we could all play in class. This feels a bit more like a solo game to be played for fun every now and then. Very cute, very fun, just challenging enough to warrant replay-ability, but probably not something that an entire class could spend time studying or reviewing.