Computer games are a creation that should never be created. They cause aggression, are responsible for juvenile delinquency, praise brutality in a childish way, addictive and make players not distinguish between fiction and reality, despising their own and others’ lives – so they should be strictly prohibited! How many times have you heard at least one of these arguments? Defenders of generally understood morality love to blame electronic entertainment for the evil of this world, throwing finger-tricked accusations thoughtlessly. Of course, we’ve been throwing this type of cliche for years into one bag with all kinds of conspiracy theories about the harmfulness of 5G and Wi-Fi networks, flatness of the Earth or chemitrails, however, where did this perception of games come from and why is it so common? There are many factors that contribute to this state of affairs, and in this article we will try as a seasoned trainerPokémon , catch them all.
Medium is tamed
Violence, whether we like it or not, accompanies us almost constantly. Books are full of beatings, murders and wars shown in various ways, the first radio drama presented the ruthless attack of an alien civilization on our planet, and the action movies of the 80s and 90s did not tell about anything else but a thoughtless massacre. So what is so special about computer games’ portrayal of terror that it is their brutality that offends ordinary Kaiser eaters so much? If we watch the struggles of our favorite streamers, it’s completely nothing. It is different in the case of active gaming, because here we participate in what is happening on the monitor screen. Is this the element that makes the games the work of Beelzebub himself? Well, no, it is more of an activity that allows you to discharge after the hardships of the whole day, so the effect is just the opposite. So why is digital entertainment an incarnation of evil, and why action movies from the end of the 20th century and crime stories accurately describing crimes are not accused of causing aggression? It’s just that people got used to them all these years and they don’t pay that much attention to them. We have become accustomed to this form of presenting violence and it does not impress us much anymore.
Okay, but we can listen to cheerful music on the radio, watch something more ambitious on TV, such as Shindler’s List , or lighter comedy productions, and by reaching for books, we can choose a biography or a romance. And the games? This War of Mine , No Man’s Sky , Overcooked , Farming Simulator , The Stanley Parable , Journey … Keep going?
She has become new media
Spacewar is considered to be the first fully computer game ! , which was founded in 1961, the pioneering television broadcast took place at the end of January 1928, the radio is well over a hundred years old, and adventure novels began to win the hearts of readers in the 18th century. As you can see, digital entertainment is a very young creation, which was shaped relatively recently. The fact that games are still breaking through to general consciousness is not particularly surprising. Since they raise so many doubts at the outset, is there really something wrong with them?
Of course not, because basically every medium has followed a similar path. Reading adventure novels was considered a stupid waste of time and degeneration of young people, who at that time could explore the mysteries of the Bible, help in the field or go to earn a living in the mine, radio stupefied listeners by distracting them from mind-developing reading, and television burned their brains out people staring at flashing picture tubes (although CRT technology could actually be harmful, but only with excessive use). Games simply go through a common pattern that hasn’t changed over the centuries, and with the ever-increasing number of conscious gamers among adult society, this road is nearing a happy end.
It is also worth noting a significant dependency in this repetition of history – the new medium always becomes a dangerous competition for the dominant one, and it is best to counter the threat in business with the use of disgusting competitor.
Hardware perception of seriousness
Technology is constantly evolving. Some, such as my grandparents, have witnessed the transition of households from the days of room lighting with a kerosene lamp to a digital revolution that would bring Earth’s inhabitants together in ways that were once unimaginable. The media described so far are of course not unique in this case, although in fact they do not change so much. Sending content in writing, although it has come from clay and wooden tablets, through paper of different quality, to e-books, is still exactly the same, i.e. reading. It is similar with radio and television – although the methods of transmission are more and more perfect, the quality of products is still increasing and becoming more attractive, the reception method is still the same, the voice transmission remains a voice transmission, and a film transmission. However, it is a bit different with games, for these in their short history have undergone a powerful metamorphosis. Few pixels have gone from a very conventional graphic representation using multicolored clusters of pixels to visually stunning masterpieces using ray-tracing, and from a simple bouncing of an angular ball – to complex mechanics full of dependencies. The simple appearance, limited by the technology of the time, pinned the game as a trivial entertainment for children and teenagers. It doesn’t matter that some productions tried to convey a message that was much more mature than what was offered by goofy videos with indestructible heroes who do not know the concept of “magazine overload” – people love to judge by the cover. The development of graphics and a clearer presentation of more serious content quite strongly contradicts this persistent image of naivety,
Action not understood
There is one element that distinguishes games from the rest of the media featured in this article. While in front of the monitor we use a variety of controllers to actively interfere with the digital world presented, both books, radio and television offer us entertainment in which we remain a passive viewer. The protagonist of the novel will not change his behavior, no matter how much we want to, the radio plays only require us to focus on (as the name suggests) listening, while during the entire screening, we may not change the position chosen on the chair by even a millimeter (do not do it, this is unhealthy). So, since in all these three cases we are a barely inactive viewer of the presented violence, then running with a rifle in the next Call of Duty, we will certainly train ourselves in murdering, and by engaging in the game we will inevitably confuse fiction with reality and lead to a real tragedy, right?
Well not true.
When sitting down in front of a game of ruthless destruction, such as in Bulletstorm , the players do not do it with the intention of transferring the atrocities committed there to the real world, just as the viewers do not treat the seance of the next parts of Ramboas an instructional video. Anyway, does using a bread knife while making sandwiches prepare us to cut bodies, a sports javelin is tantamount to wanting to throw the blade at people who run away, and a visit to a shooting range is clearly getting ready to organize a shooting? It is true that in many games we attack human avatars, but their fictional character is obvious and does not raise any doubts. Ba! The ruthless dismemberment of a mass of enemies can be a discharge of emotions accumulated after a less successful day, and it is always better to kill fictional people, how to suppress your stress and finally take it out on someone real.
Yes, in the case of people with mental problems, a violent game can be a trigger for dangerous behavior, but the bloody movie or the colorful description of murder in a detective novel will work just as well.
Parent unaware
Who is to blame most for too young children being exposed to violent games? Creators of such works? Distributors? Or maybe stores offering their boxed versions? I cannot answer this question unequivocally and I am not going to do it, but I can certainly count my parents as complicit. Many adults who are not involved in games do not pay attention to the PEGI labels, which clearly indicate what the target group of a given product is, because “games are for children”. Explaining this to the fact that non-gamers do so is quite a poor assertion. After all, regardless of the extent to which a responsible parent knows about pornographic films, he will certainly not propose such a production to his little one when selecting material for an evening screening. Fortunately, the next generation of conscious gamers is starting families and is well aware of what the colorful numbers on the boxes are for. What if a brutal game finds its way into a young mind at the hands of a peer? Well, a lot of kids specialize in conspiratorially doing things forbidden by their parents, that’s how it has been, is, and probably will be.
So are games the work of Satan to corrupt the minds of young people and incline people to be brutal? Of course not! Electronic entertainment is a medium no worse than any other, and negative patches on it are not uncommon. Not for the first time in history, something has a bad reception only because it is something new, incomprehensible to the elderly and competitive to the dominant solutions. In addition, games are dependent on technology to a much greater extent than other media, which has resulted in a distorted perception. So, if someone is slandering the games and not responding to rational explanations, don’t get mad at him. She’s just a person who can’t handle progress like many before her.
