World of Warcraft was used as an example, where a guild attacked a peaceful funeral for a real person. The discussion made me think about my own experiences with online worlds and how we gain satisfaction, and also sometimes pleasure from the pain and misfortune of others.
Call of Duty: Black Ops, is my drug of choice, and it's not until i look at my own gameplay habits that I can really get a grasp on this concept. The multiplayer game mode allows you to compete against others all around the world, level up for weapons and skills, pretty standard for a online multiplayer. But if you look at the content of the game, blood sprays everywhere, cries of pain, medals for stabbing someone (literally) in the back, it seems pretty barbaric. Someone made the comment in the tutorial of "You wouldn't do that in real life."
No, you wouldn't, but this isn't real life, it's just a game. Games are intended to be fun, and people who take the moral implications too seriously, need to find another game to play. Perhaps Diner Dash.
Stalder, F. (2005) 'Information Ecology'. In Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks pp. 62-66 [URL: http://felix.openflows.com/pdf/Notebook_eng.pdf]
I found this very interesting to read, and agree with you that if people are not accepting of the content of the game, then maybe they should just choose another game. Catharsis is referred to as an emotional release from the body, I believe that some people choosing to play these games are seeking catharsis, and there is nothing wrong with that, it's not as if they are actually going to take what they do in a game and reenact it in real life. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you! People should really have a distinction between reality and the gaming world. But does online gaming affects the gamers in reality? Like for example certain types of games are pretty violent aren't they? Don't they provoke violence/ anger?
ReplyDeletehmmmm
ReplyDeleteI could go into a long-winded argument about whether games negatively affect people in the real world, but I won't.
The people involved were monetarily implicated. They were robbed!
Although I don't think people sould take these things so seriosy, and maybe get over it, i feel there should be some sort of repsect...like the pirate's code...or something
omg ^ i look illiterate! *note to self: spell-check before posting!!
ReplyDeleteHey Nathan
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comments that at the end of the day "its just a game", though there has to be a line drawn where its is acceptable and ethical to act one way and when its just not. For example even though Black Op's is just a game, is it acceptable for players to post threatening messages at users when playing online? Further, as the PS3 gaming servers were recently hacked and credit card information was stolen would you say thats ok?
As the virtual and physical worlds are closely linked there will always need to be a line drawn when issues and situations like this happen.