Ethics and Video Games Part Two.

Video Game Teaching.

I got myself Bioschock Infinite. For those of you who haven't played it, Infinite is set is a pseudo American Anglo centric caricature of life in the US, around the turn of the century. For those of you well versed in history  that can mean a lot of things. But the developers emphasized theocratic and racist themes as definitive characteristics of "Columbia". 

When we look at video games, what we see is hugely important to the power we ascribe it. Are they just toys, in a sense no more effective then an action figure? Are they interactive learning tools that have implications for how we interact with the world? Are they art? Are they industry  Are they a movie with a bit more interaction? Are they something else completely?

Not a great movie to watch while high.

When we think of video games as something more then just entertainment, required justification of content becomes imperative. If we think back to the greatest films of this past century, Requiem for a Dream, Shindler's List, Shawshank redemption, 12 Angry Men, we sort of see a pattern: each of those movies has an important point being made. There are themes about morality, ethics, and social virtue, lessons being taught, and ideologies being promoted or critiqued in the movie. There is a justification, for the content. 

Bioshock Infinite is a perfect example of this. Class struggle, racial discrimination  totalitarian politics, theocracy, all these issues are being explored and explained through the game's environment. You get a sense that on a larger scale, other then your immediate objectives, there isn't justice in the world of Columbia. Those thoughts, those feelings are provocative and they can make your head spin. These are the same thought provoking feelings and thoughts that I get when I watch Good Will Hunting. 

The fact is, video games have a great way to expose us to new ideas and new thoughts. Hell, this is why I am paying to go to college: to get exposed to new ideas and change the way I think through situations. Video games have a great potential to do the same thing. There is a lot of positive aspects to this. But we can see some negatives. 

What happens when video games teach us bad things? Manhunt has us going around killing people in brutal and disgusting ways. This sort of mindless violence has to seep in somewhere right? We can't be effected positively by our experiences in Infinite's social justice message but be indifferent to extreme violence.

This is true for the most part. What we put into our heads, doesn't come out again. Once we've seen the violent images and gory business we can't unsee it. But does that mean that we need to be overly cautious with how we regulate and stigmatize video games?

In my opinion, no. 

Video games, like any other sort of media or art, has it's high points and it's low points. Movies like Saw (also Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, and Saw VI) have no real philosophical point to them. Their entire purpose is to gross you out and make you cringe. And yet, there are seven of them. Seven. That's quite a few movies to be generated off the principle of a couple of thirteen year olds saying "Dude, know what'd be totally a sick torture method..."

Why didn't we see a sequel to this ground

breaking piece of work?

Even so, the movie industry is just that, an industry. It's there to make money and it responds to consumer demand. People want Saw movies, people get Saw movies. It's how the economy works. Same thing with video games. You want Manhunt? You can get Manhunt. You want Detective Barbie the game? You'll get Detective Barbie the game.

I don't blame the industry. And I'm going to go against gamer culture and say it isn't the fault of the parents. Parents have a lot on their plate right now. A bad economy, finding enough money for their kids to go to school, taking care of a thousand other things, it's not as simple as it ought to be. So how do we come to a compromise on effecting kids less, but still maintaining liberty in the gaming market?

Well we need to understand that it's a culture issue. It isn't as if kids these days are more drawn into video games because they are better then the outdoors. Kids are drawn into video games by social fragmentation. Social fragmentation comes when we have larger more geographically spread out communities. Things aren't as close knit as they were. Your school friends aren't your church friends, and those friends are different from your summer camp buddies, who are in turn removed from your sports teammates. It's a big strain to navigate the social landscape of all those groups. And with the invention of Facebook and twitter, we're bombarded with constant information about all these different groups, at once. When my dad was growing up, he had like five good friends who lived in his neighbor hood, went to his church, went to his school, and that was his community growing up. 

This is like cultural multitasking. And it isn't doing good for our youth. We can't expect to add in media and things, and be surprised when things get crazy. There is a reason why anxiety disorders are on the rise in America, and I doubt it has anything to do with video games.

And if video games isn't the problem, then they shouldn't be targeted as needing a solution.