Thu 21 Aug 2003
Nice to see a critical look at those who slam games, game violence and gamers as social cavepeople. As Gerard Jones similarly states, most politicians and researchers simply have not paid enough attention to the gamers themselves or they take what’s on screen too literally (Jones get’s into this in his recent debate with anti-game crusader Daphne White (be sure to listen to the full RealAudio broadcast)).
Also keying off of the recent QuakeCon event, CNN has an article on the shifting culture of video games. Culture and audience being what Seamus Blackley - always the provocateur - passionately tells us we should not be ignoring…
And, from the taking things too literally department, these guys have “reenacted” scenes from The Getaway in London. Cool! (Nice umbrella shotgun stand-in ;)
August 22nd, 2003 at 6:32 pm
The justice talking program was really interesting. However, I was very, very, incredibly saddened when both jones and white admitted that NEITHER of them had played GTA3 but both felt qualified to discuss it because they had seen people play it and had seen videos of it being played.
Now imagine if we had a panel discussion on violent films and both panelist admitted to having never seen “Natural Born Killers” (for example) but because they had read the script and watched people who were watching the film they felt that they were qualified to discuss it. We would laugh them off the stage.
The fact that neither jones nor white seem able or willing to acknowledge that playing a game and watching a game are drastically different experiences signifies that videogames are still entirely and completly misunderstood by the vast, vast majority of people, even some who would attempt to defend them.