Conference 501clb::games

3125.0. "Violence and Devil images in games" by METALX::SWANSON () Fri May 30 1997 13:16

    I just found a very well written article on the growing amount of
    voilence and devil imagery in video games.  Funny, the first game
    mentioned is Diablo.  :')
    
    I found it really interesting, so I figured I'd post it here. 
    
    Found it at:  http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9705/29/cyber.lat/index.html
    
    ------------
    May 30, 1997
    Web posted at: 7:31 a.m. EDT (1131 GMT) 
    
    By Steven L. Kent 
    
    Why do so many computer games have violence and devil imagery? 
    
    Walking through the game aisle of your local software store is a lot
    like touring the hall of horrors in a wax museum. The box art for
    Diablo, a product from Blizzard Entertainment that (at the time of this
    writing) is the hottest game on the market, shows a glowing, snarling
    red devil with ram's horns on his head and tiny yellow eyes. A few
    shelves away, on the box for Shivers Two, from Sierra On-Line, is a
    gray devil with deer-like antlers. 
    
    Looking around the store, it appears half of the games have devils or
    violence in some form depicted on their boxes. The box art for Outlaws,
    from LucasArts, displays a gunfight; Command and Conquer, from Westwood
    Studios, shows a soldier watching an explosion; MechWarrior 2, from
    Activision, features a menacing robot. 
    
    OK, IndyCar II, by Sierra, has race cars, and Myst, from Broderbund,
    shows an island. Still, judging the computer game industry by its
    covers, it looks as if computer games are mostly about violence,
    killing and devils. Are computer games more violent than television and
    movies? 
    
    Let there be no doubt about it: games such as Doom, WarCraft II and
    Quake do contain a larger quantity of violence than found in motion
    pictures or television. In fact, if such ultra-violent movies as
    "Natural Born Killers" and "Reservoir Dogs" had half as many
    killings-per-second as Duke Nukem 3D, audiences would become bored,
    numb or nauseated. 
    
    What these games have in quantity, however, they lack in quality. For
    the most part, computer game violence has a repetitious cartoon quality
    to it. Most of Doom's demons die the same way whether you punch them,
    shoot them with a pistol, fry them with a plasma gun or slice them with
    a chain saw. They growl, splash blood and fall backward. 
    
    When characters die in movies they often seem to suffer and die slowly.
    Sometimes they lose limbs or roll around in agony. Movie deaths, in
    other words, take time. Computer game deaths are generally fast, one
    moment a character is fine and the next moment it pops like a balloon
    and dies. It's been that way for several years. 
    
    "In 1993, a little company called id released a game called Doom, which
    happened to use as its theme violence, blood and Satanic imagery," says
    Chris Charla, editor and chief of Next Generation, one of the most
    respected computer and video gaming magazines. 
    
    "Doom did really great. I think it would have done great without that
    imagery and violence, but it did great with that imagery. 
    
    "What you have in the computer industry," Charla continues, "is that
    every innovation is followed by years and years of slavish copying. As
    soon as Doom came out, everyone decided that the way to be successful
    was to make their games Satanic and violent too. People were trying to
    `out-Satan' Doom. It's not just the Satan-imagery, it's the violence
    too." 
    
    Actually, before it created Doom, it released the enormously successful
    Castle Wolfenstein 3D. Castle Wolfenstein 3D was just as violent as
    Doom, but it was about killing Nazis instead of demons. According to
    Doom and Wolfenstein 3D creator John Romero, the people playing the
    games really enjoyed their violence: "No one had done a game like that
    before. Of course there was the original Wolfenstein, but it wasn't as
    graphic as the one that we did. Everyone could identify the music and
    the characters on the screen as real Nazi stuff." 
    
    To Romero, violence, puzzle-solving and other gaming activities are all
    equal, they're just things you do in games. "Mario 64 is a pure
    exploration game," he says, "You run around and you collect things and
    you explore. Shooters basically adds shooting on top of that... I'm
    sure that we can probably come up with something else to do, but
    shooting things is pretty fun." 
    
    Henry Jenkins, director of media studies at MIT, says computer game
    violence "occurs because video games are taking the place of
    traditional backyard boy cultures, which were rooted in violence. They
    were cultures of daring, stunts, physical challenges and fisticuffs,
    which were part of the way that boys in American society grew to
    manhood." 
    
    According to Jenkins, whose field of study includes science fiction and
    popular culture, violent games are not new for boys, but computer and
    video game technology are exposing many mothers to their children's
    violent forms of play for the first time. "Video games are more
    controversial because they are in the house. Mothers who were never
    exposed to that outdoor culture are suddenly confronting it, and
    they're frightened by that violent imagery." 
    
    In Jenkins' mind, video games may even offer a safer release than
    older, more traditional forms of play. "Video games take the place of
    that violence and daring and offer up some of the same images, often in
    a safer way. They take place inside the house and people can play them
    without coming in contact with each other physically." 
    
    As Romero phrases it, "Going around shooting things is something that
    you can't do in real life unless you want to go to jail for a long
    time." 
    
    OK, so why the devil? 
    
    If Jenkins is correct, backyard culture may have involved violent game
    play for the last century, but it certainly hasn't involved worshiping
    Satan. Games such as Doom and WarCraft II are littered with pentagrams,
    and Diablo, Phantasmagoria and Shivers 2 have pictures of devils on
    their boxes. 
    
    "Those images are probably there for the same reason that Black Sabbath
    put that stuff in their albums back in the '70s ... for shock value,"
    Romero says. 
    
    "I don't think it makes games more immersive when you add Satanic
    images, but some people may be affected by it. Lots of games are
    immersive, but games like Doom also have this fear factor. People are
    fearful of the game. That's different from point-and-click adventure
    games in which there isn't anything going on emotionally." 
    
    "When you can invoke fear in people, whether it's through Satanic
    imagery or dark passageways with monsters growling, that's better
    feedback for the player." 
    
    Romero should know. Doom is arguably the most popular computer game of
    all time. 
    
    "I don't think anybody at id worships demons," Charla said. "It was
    just the look that they chose for the game." 
    
    Charla sees the appearance of occult imagery in computer games as an
    extension of today's popular culture rather than an indication of
    religious beliefs. "I think that a lot of games and computer gamers are
    interested in fantasy stuff, and that lends itself to spells and magic
    users and the occult and arcania. 
    
    "That's one origin. You end up with a lot of images that are not
    Satanic in the minds of the people playing the game. They don't
    consider them Satanic; they're just occult. Whether or not that means
    they are automatically Satanic is a whole other argument. They're just
    window dressing. They're just neat." 
    

    Do they have a decent chat tool there?  When I see things like this, I
    wonder why ever single web page in existence doesn't have a conference
    associated with it (well, actually I *do* know why, but I prefer not to
    think about it).
    
    I'm not quite motivated enough to write to the author, but I'd love to
    "write a reply" to this "note".
    
    jeb
    

No, no chat tool for *that* particular article.  They have it for some, but
that one wasn't really a "news" story.

Ken