Reality Panic

I’ve been catching up on some of my post-E3 web reading (ie, bookmarked links) pertaining to the Washington state “police violence ban” bill. And, I must say that it is listening to these people talk that incites me to be violent… Argh!

In this CNN transcript, Daphne White from Lion&Lamb described the goal of GTA as “…shooting them even when they are begging you not to, and that’s how you get points and that’s how you win.” Clearly, she knows what’s she’s talking about. It amazes me to no end, that NONE of these people ever play the games or really have any clue. In another CNN transcript, David Kushner (author of “Masters of Doom”), makes a really good point that such tactics are counter productive.

While the following EGB article plays up the progress of the games industry, fact is that anti-game legislation in on the rise (~15 bills in 2001, ~30 bills 2003). A local WA paper takes a rare balanced approach to the topic, despite including Dickerson’s line “like a porn film, violent video games do not have a plot� when asked if games were capable of expressing ideas.

Perhaps they should read some the academic papers from the recent Digital Arts and Culture conference in Australia. I’d say the reading of Resident Evil-Code Veronica X by Susana Pajares Tosca would be particularly telling.

Oh, and I’m not even going to touch this one…

No doubt many have read the recent news on how games boost visual skills. It is interesting research, and nice to put some quantitative results over what we all pretty much “knew” was a result of game playing…

One criticism is why could they have not used a non-violent, visually stimulating game (eg, Amplitude)) along with the others? I say this, in part, because it likely could have helped stave off all the negative spinning of the research…

I suppose it is not surprising that the majority of press covering the news framed it negatively, despite reporting what was mainly good news. Most of the headlines read something like “All that killing and murder actually helps a bit” or “Games not a complete waste of time”… This is quite sad.

I did an ABC news interview regarding the study. The interviewer was quick to move to the negatives, and asked what possible side effects could come by playing games too much. I knew what he was fishing for, but coyly responded that you might get blisters on your thumbs :) But, seriously, I did comment on how games should be a part of a “well balanced media and lifestyle diet”.

Anyway, it seems that the press are so primed on all the perceived negatives that they simply cannot view games in any other context than bad, wasteful, useless, harmful.

Perhaps they should all pick up a copy of James Paul Gee’s book on games and learning..

Not sure what will overcome these negative perceptions?

“You need an outlet”, said master blogger and journo gadfly Justin Hall to me at this past E3. And so, here is my attempt at a web log. Seems like Moveable Type is for brave folks, so please bear with me as I settle in and fiddle with the bits…

While in some ways the igda.org web site is an outlet for me, being the IGDA’s program director (and resident web guru), I felt it was somewhat inappropriate to post overly editorialized game industry news. Also, as the IGDA continues to grow I’ll be needing to use the homepage real estate more so for actual IGDA news and announcements (ie, chapter meetings, committee announcements, org news, etc). Hence moving the more “opinionated news” type stuff would be best served via blog. We’ll see how it works out :)

That said, I’ll mostly be covering industry issues type news and more artsy/academic style content. And maybe a pic or two of my cute son in the process (always feel the urge to prove us game folks are real people).