Games in the Military: Week 8

I still remember the first time I picked up a first person shooter game was back when I was only 11 years old. It was the original Counter Strike (CS) game that reeled me in along with my brother's constant support to play. The thrill of being the hunter and the hunted was so exciting and was something no other type of genres could pull from me. However within 6 months my grades began to drop from pulling all nighters playing Counter Strike and thus I had to quit playing.To this day my brother on the other-hand continues to play first person shooters, and now plays it on a professional level for tournaments around the United States.

Just last weekend for the first time I went paintballing with 20 other students from Highline Community College. More than 3/4 of the people that went were going for the first time. The fields we played at were filled with foliage, small forts, wrecked cars, and debris to hide behind. Though paintballing was in my opinion more realistic than CS, I had the same adrenaline rush playing CS as I did paintballing, it was just more physically painful being hit.

From this very reason I have never been all that suprised that the military decided to go with video games as a method to promote interest as well as simulate training and being in the army. The same thing can be applied towards arcade racing games, Go-Karts and actual driving. Now driving schools use virtual driving for students to simulate driving before hopping into a real car. If anything it seemed like common sense for them to reach this generation of young adults, and teens. In 2008 NPD, a New York based market research firm revealed that 72% of the U.S. played video games, up 8% from 2006. Keeping the game America's Army free for download on the PC was an even more clever decision in order to reach as many people as possible.

As said in "Military Training is Just a Game" and "Wii All You Can Be? Why the Military Needs the Gaming Industry" it just makes sense for the Military to go ahead and use what the newest generation of recruits will probably already know before being recuited, a game controller. Doing so would build upon the foundation of what they are already are familiar with, expediating the learning while easily distributing the game to the online community through the internet if they release it to the public. If they do release it to the public, they would have the oppotunity to play and talk to real soldiers who play as well. The military is continuing to find ways to make the simulation games more immersive and realistic of war such as putting in the training aspects of the army and dealing with real situation scenarios soldiers has experienced previously in war.

"Atomic Games' Tamte Defends Six Days' Relevance" spoke of using games as a medium to make their game "Six Days in Fallujah". Where the point of the game is to re-tell the true stories of the marines who returned from Fallujah. Though it treads a thin line as propaganda to side on one opinion of the war. It's conflict like this that feed the ongoing controversy of using war or military in video games. Even though as discussed in "History of Military Gaming" war and military has been a concept used in games and for simulation long before the creation of video games. "US Military Recruits Children: "America's Army" Video Game Violates International Law" argued that the military is using video games knowingly as propaganda to recruit children by visualizing being in the army as only a "game". However the military has been using advertising for recruiting by means of television, billboards, magazines, radio, t.v. shows, and toys. All of which don't really make the negatives of being in the military prominient. But their purpose is to recruit and or promote interest in the military. So why would they advertise the negatives? Companies selling flouride toothpaste aren't going to say "Beware Buyers May Experience Stomach Discomfort If Swallowed" on a gigantic billboard.

If anything having played some of the games, the military are trying their best to simulate everything about war, including the pain and loss. They have generals die in the middle of scenarios as well as betrayers. There are civilians which can turn out to be not civilians at all and attack you. But nothing could ever adequately simulate the true war experience unless you see it first hand anyway. Though a person may watch movies likes "Black Hawk Down" and "Saving Private Ryan" through out their lives, it's certainly isn't the same as seeing real people die everyday. There is only so much we can simulate. Children everyday are being bombarded by the media to live up to certain expectations and setting scenarios as what is right and what is wrong when in real life there is alot of grey. Not to say that it's entirely okay for the military to just reinfoce that either. But there is only so much you simulate before it just simply that, a simulation. Simulations can only prepare you so far.

Gaming, Ethics and Democracy: Week 7

Previously to reading this week’s article, I had watched an interesting documentary specifically about gold farming ethics as well as the real world money exchange in online games. The program followed a couple who together played City of Heroes and their usage of a Gold Farming Company to power level the wife up to the same level as her husband because she herself didn’t have as much time as her husband to play. She wanted to have fun playing with him and her lower level prevented that.

“Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on “Gold Farming”: Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games” discussed the growing business of Gold Farming in games. How Gold Farming was outsourced to developing countries with lower dollar value such as China and providing jobs for those countries, in turn profiting the economy in those countries that then profits the countries hiring them to gold farm, also the ethical “cheating” conflict behind the usage of gold farming to advance players ahead of others. And lastly what actions the game companies are taking to stop the underground business of gold farming.

As for my experience of gold farming, in the recent years most Asia based games such as Fly For Fun and Gunbound are effectively putting a stop to gold farming by converting to become part of it in order to profit from it, since they cannot stop it anyway. They rather regulate it than have it be “underground” so to speak. Those familiar with Gaia Online are sure to recognize how they have taken measures to do this as well with their system of Gaia Cash and special highly valuable Monthly Collectables sent to only paying players. This to me seems like the most effective way to deal with the gold farming. It gets rid of the all the time to determine and ban gold farming players, it profits the game company, prevents the players paying for the gold farming getting scammed, while allowing the other players to still continue enjoying the other features of the game if they choose not to. It seems as though in Asia that the mentality is that it is alright for paying players to advance since they are paying real money to pay so they have the right to advance. At the same time non-paying players can choose to pay at anytime if they want to receive the same advantages. The paying players are happy playing the way they are and do not inhibit the other players from enjoying their games any differently either, everyone is happy.

I’d have to propose though that I can see this way of thinking is more common in Asia for their collectivistic culture unlike more western cultures which are more individualistic in thinking. Which I can see, would lead them to see it as more acceptable with this method taken by game developers as long as “everyone can have fun playing the game” no matter how they play it. In contrast individualistic culture would probably be more from the perspective of individual advancement, which could be a reason to cause the difference in the acceptance of allowing other players to advance because they pay more. It is more desirable for individualistic cultures to achieve renown by becoming better than the other game players through means of legitimate playing. This can tie in with “The Social Network Game Boom”, where it discussed the lightened ramification of cheating between friends. Where in collectivistic cultures others besides ones-self are always acknowledged, we can connect this to how they don’t take the cheating in the games as seriously as long as they are playing the games for just fun. Much like is said in “Cheaters: A Special Report” by Bowling, “game designers design the games to have the players feel awarded by self achievement felt reaching the top level. Those who choose to cheat are more so cheating themselves out of the reward of the game rather than ruining the experience of others”.

When the purpose of a game is to compete with one another, “cheating” with bots and patches are just not accepted anywhere for the whole point of competing would then be to match the player against each other to see who is the better player. However another question is raised, through reading “Computer Game Modding, Intermediality and Participatory Culture”. What are acceptable forms of modification of a game until it is considered cheating and not modifications meant for enjoyment? I myself have used cheat codes placed inside the The Sims franchise as well as patches made by the online community for enhance my own enjoyment of playing the game. With or without the cheats I can still have fun; it all depends on how I wish to play since the cheats do change the game play in order to make it fun to play as it is said in the article.

All in all games I think that games’ main purpose is to be used to have fun, and that no matter how you play are playing as long as you are having fun and are not preventing others from the same right, the game serves its purpose. In competition though where the point of the game changes to instead compete, it isn’t really fair for any kind of outside advantage such as faster internet, a supped up computer, not just bots and usage of glitches for self advantage, or anything else beyond the achieved skill of the player.

Gaming as/in Life: Week 6

In this week’s topic of Gaming as/in life, our articles discussed how the internet and gaming has influenced real life issues. Beginning with “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy” by Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn, the article mainly discussed and argued the internet’s affect or rather future affect on politics, a real life issue.

Race In Games: Week 5

As we continue on to week 5 we began to discuss race and its place in video games. The first article "In Video Games the Bad Guys come in All Shades of Stereotypes" by Lynda Lin was about college student Robert Parungao and his study on race representation in games. His thesis was based on four games; Kung Fu, Shadow Warrior, Warcraft 3, and Grand Theft Auto 3. I found Parungaos section of the article to be a case of simply put “Only seeing what you want to see”. His examples from each of the four games displaying stereotypes of Asians to me seem flawed. Like in Kung Fu how it is so stereotypical that “the main character chops and kicks his way through a temple to save his lover”, well the game is based on a movie following that storyline…And in response to the aesthetics chosen for Kung Fu, it may seem stereotypical that it is set so you play in Chinese temples, but I think this can be easily reasoned for a way the Japanese game designers wanted the game to be associated with the movie (a Hong Kong action film). The makers of Shadow Warrior even called their game “an attempt to parody all of those low budget kung fu movies we loved as kids.” Do we take the Scary Movie Parodies as truth to how all African American men are like, or how all Caucasian women are like? No, I really don’t think so. The characters were made to exaggerate the stereotypes for comedic affect not something to actually take seriously as a way to judge a specific race. The same intention went into the making of Shadow Warrior. In Warcraft 3 there is a race called the Pandaren Empire, as the name suggests a race of panda humanoids. The creation of this race was originally meant as an April Fool’s joke by Blizzard artist Samwise Didier, but then they received massive positive response from Warcraft fans so then were included in the Warcraft 3 expansion The Frozen Throne. In fact the Pandaren originally wore Japanese Samurai Armor in the Warcraft 3 beta but then was fixed to more Chinese styled garb since there were political correctness complaints that the Panda is native to specifically China. Had there been any people offended by the stereotype of the Asian pandas (Japanese or Chinese), I think that they would’ve changed the Pandaren design from the Japanese Style to something more ambiguous to not offend any of the Asian cultures. Lastly, Parungao mentions how Grand Theft Auto 3 depicts the Chinese Triad and the Japanese Yakuza, but doesn’t seem to acknowledge all the other races GTA 3 stereotypes. What about the Italian Mafia that appears throughout the GTA series? Though I found the rest of the article with Parungao arguable, I really connected with the final quote from Lee, the student from UC San Diego, “As an Asian American who grew up playing lots of video games, I have to say that none of it ever felt racist to me and I don’t think I’ve met anyone who thought less of me because of something he saw in a video game.”

“Why I Didn’t Buy GTA: Chinatown Wars” by Jaime Kuroiwa was an article that explained (you guessed it) the reason why Kuroiwa didn’t buy GTA Chinatown Wars. In this short article his main defense for not buying the game is because of its overdone cliché plotline summary. Well, honestly when the last time any type of entertainment had something completely new and different, especially video games? If I wanted to make a three sentence plot summary to fit on the back of a DS box, I could break down any game out there and have it seem like a clichéd game too (even though that might not be the case at all). It’s not too difficult because all games are based on one familiar clichéd storyline or another if you analyze it enough. Anyway, plot summaries are suppose to be quick and straight to the point about what games are about, just compare to all other game summaries. The purpose is because the normal average consumer takes less than 30 seconds to scan the back of a game to decide if he wants to seriously consider buying it. You can’t have some overly complicated plot summary advertising your game. He also explains other reasons such as not being impressed by GTAs depiction of mature content (illicit drugs, violence) that has been always controversial in the GTA franchise (and one of the big reasons what makes the game stand out). Which makes me wonder has he himself ever bought a single GTA game, if he is so unimpressed by its tactics to “shock” its players? His third reason was the game makers’ non-creativeness in using the DS systems capabilities to full advantage in making the game. However I think that the majority of DS games don’t use the systems capabilities to full advantage either (if not at all), so I really don’t see his point...(a DS game can still be good even though it doesn't use DS capabilities). Overall I think that Kuroiwa is simply giving any reason he can think of not to buy GTA: Chinatown Wars, because he unconsciously doesn’t want to sell out to Asian stereotypes (how stereotypical is it for an Asian person to buy a game with the word “Chinatown” in it is probably what he is thinking). That or he doesn't buy the GTA series anyways and continues to not buy them.

In “Opinion: Resident Evil 5 – How Does This Make You Feel, ‘Partner’?” by Tom Cross, Cross basically went on and criticized RE5 for using xenophobia as a new “horror”. To him RE5 stereotyped the African tribe of Kijuju in a way to invoke fear, using tactics such as poverty, uncleanliness, and foreign practices of African people. Though I have yet to play RE5, I would think that a rotting head of a pig in the game environment was intended to just show how the now virus infected people of Kijuju are no longer human and leave things to deteriorate. Similar to how in the previous Resident Evil games the same type of atmosphere was created by showing how things (buildings, cars) were on fire, as well as decrepit after the spread of the virus within just a few years (buildings falling apart, windows boarded up, wallpaper destroyed and torn/falling off, gigantic spider webs the size of humans everywhere, not a working light bulb to be found except in save spots, the works). Except since in truth the depicted African Tribe (we assume) was impoverished to begin with before the spread of the virus, so in order to show how Africans have changed due to the virus, they now leave things to decay (like the butchered pig head as well as the buildings and places they now inhabit) and are now more violent (cause they weren’t like that before the virus) as well as wear odd clothes and exhibit even odder animalistic behavior than before. Having played all the RE games before RE5, I can tell you that thought out the games the scattered journals depicting the degeneration of being a human and then infected with the T-Virus into a zombie all follow a similar pattern, except they weren’t African they were mainly Caucasian Americans and African Americans. Cross also comments on how RE4 & RE5 could have achieved the same horror affect by placing the setting in any impoverished place, specifically America. But doesn’t mention how the previous RE games to RE4 & RE5 were however set in America (well fictional cities in America that is). And in those previous games you as the player “cleanse” the area of zombies as well. I think that if the makers of RE set the game in some remote village in China we would still be having the same discussion of negative race representation, even though they went through the exact same process of zombification as the ones previously shown in America.

The Game Developer Demongraphics Report just reinforced my belief that Game Designers make games in connection to themselves; they make games they themselves want to play (cause of course who wants to design a game they hate?). And with the statistic that 88.5% are male, 83.3% are White, and 92% heterosexual (umm...I'm guessing this report is just for the USA cause I know there are lots of Asian game designers in Korea and Japan...), no wonder most protagonists in games originating from America are white and male and heterosexual. I'm sure that if the report was done in Japan or Korea they would find that most are Asian males (but a higher percentage of females than America in the field) around the same age. And it's no suprise games originating from Asia have more main characters with Asian descent/features or the game as made in an recognisable Asian style of art (I'm also counting all the hundreds of games that don't even get translated to America since the target audience is different) (Random factoid but there alot more games I know of originating from Asia depicting homosexual main characters as well, since there is more of a market for them in Asia towards girls, its a video game genre called BL). I'm sure that if more African or Hispanic/Latino or other ethnicities were to make games they would make more games featuring main characters sharing their own ethnicity and characteristics. It's almost to be expected for game developers to ace their own ethnicity in the games they make because there is a need to feel connected to the characters they develop and play. Admittedly it is sometimes a factor in what even makes a game more enjoyable. Even though I think it would be awesome to see more ethnicities being represented in a positive way in games the bottom line is it really helps that if they want to see more of their own ethnicity shown in games they are going to have to themselves become a larger part of the industry.

Reading the articles written by Cross and about Parungaos study just makes me think that there really is no pleasing all people whenever you have a Caucasian protagonist up against any non-Caucasian type of enemy. Which I think honestly cuts down on the creativity leeway of designing games. Automatically these few read into every little thing as being racist or showing the race in a negative way or being stereotyped. Game developers have to be on their toes to make sure to not upset anyone when depicting any other ethnicity besides Caucasian. At least MMORPGs have it easy; they can just depict ambiguous non human people (except pandas, that's a no no), or allow for customization to any type of human you want and call it a day. But at the same time if they don’t show any other ethnicities in games some people still won’t be happy because “the real world is made up of more than just a single skin color”. The makers of RE even put Sheva in RE5, a woman of obvious African descent, but of course this isn’t enough for Cross because she’s too “light”. No matter what game developers do these people are still going to be unhappy, because it seems they are looking for any reason to pull the race card and say the game can be better in representing race. As said before in my previous post about gender, even though there are stereotypes in games, most people don’t use the games as reason to actually be racist or hold serious prejudiced beliefs against that depicted gender or race. We as a society are getting better to racially diversify ourselves in all enterainment persuits (think of for example all the films like "Slum Dog Millionare", "Pan's Labyrinth", "Curse of the Golden Flower" that are big right now) including video games beyond stereotypes (PeaceMaker, MMORPGs, Resident Evil franchise [yes, I believe the makers of RE are trying the best they can to diversify race in their games], Mirrors Edge). Just like gender its up to society to really put a foot down and change how race is being represented in order to see a change in games as well.