For this week, I decided to pick a bit of news that isn't so much an article as much as it is a video. See, I went on an archive binge of Extra Credits, and then it had a lot of crappy updates that lacked real content, and I lost interest, so I've started yet another archive binge. If you have no idea what Extra Credits is, I fully recommend checking it out. It's almost always just interesting things about developing video games as a form of media and exploring the potential that they have for telling a fantastic story.
This episode, however, focuses more on discussing an issue that society is going to face pretty soon much more universally: spectrum crunch. The video explains it much more thoroughly than I can, but to sum up, we are running out of bandwidth in the air for transmitting data across large distances. At the rate we're going, we'll likely run out of space by 2014. This will be disastrous, and it's already leading to increases in costs for cell phone and internet access.
The most apparent way to fix this issue, at least temporarily, is for television networks to stop broadcasting over-the-air. For some incredibly rural areas though, this is the only real way that they can get live news and such, and some people might argue that eliminating their access to television is not the solution.
That being said, this is not an issue that's going to go away anytime soon, and it'll only get worse until more people are aware of it and trying to actually fix it. If I had more time, I would do a little more research to post about all of the potential solutions that have been proposed. Unfortunately though, I have classes and such to get to, so hopefully this video is enough of a starting point to encourage getting educated on this impending doom.
So for this week, I'd like to talk about this CNN article titled "Indie video games get help from a 'big brother'". The general premise of the article is that Sony (makers of the PS3, one of the three major current generation video game consoles), is getting behind a tiny indie group called Giant Sparrow. Giant Sparrow plans on making a game called The Unfinished Swan where you start in a perfectly blank world and use the various buttons to paint the world behind you to reveal the background, which definitely sounds cool, but I'd like to focus more on that first part: Sony is backing them.
Now, reading this article is interesting for a lot of reasons. First off, I never knew that Sony also backed thatgamecompany, who made Flower and Journey. Both of those are widely lauded as some of the best indie games on the system, and that's not just because Sony backed them. They're good. Seriously. Check them out. (Flower is one of my favorites because it's one of very few experiences I've ever had where not a single word was ever spoken yet it still made me cry).
Second, I find it really interesting to believe that Sony is giving money to indie projects. I mean, here's a company who puts out titles like Uncharted, which has sold millions of copies, saying things like it will be a success "if they can get just one person to say "Unfinished Swan" has affected them". That's a huge difference in outlook. AAA titles with huge, huge budgets are becoming more and more common and more and more homogenized. Call of Duty releases a new $60 game a year that absurd amounts of people buy, and there are thousands of other clones that keep the shooting mechanics, cover mechanics, setting, etc. The worst part is that even other first person shooters that were different are starting to become more and more like Call of Duty because publishers think that "like Call of Duty" is what is going to sell.
This is why Sony putting money into indie projects makes me happy. Not only is it not homogenized, but it's not even all that profitable. I mean, college students certainly do know how to stretch a dollar, so as far as return on investment goes, it might not be too unprofitable, but indie games usually only sell for around $10. Any money Sony puts into The Unfinished Swan may be going into something most people will have never heard of. They'll probably make back their investment, but they certainly won't make billions of dollars in profit, so what does this say to me?
It says that even though Sony is obviously interested in profit, maybe they're interested in the art too. Maybe this is like the charitable arm of the company, taking promising developers who really have the inspiration and the drive to make something great and granting them the tools they need. Maybe there really is room in the high-profile video game world for something as unusual and innovative as The Unfinished Swan, and maybe there really is hope for AAA titles to share the spotlight a bit.
I've always believed that art was something that made you feel emotions. Music is art. Books are art. Video games are art. Oddly, the only thing I was never sure was "art" under my definition is actual fine art like paintings and such.
So I guess the other thing about art is that it takes creativity to produce. Arithmetic is not art. Anyone could get that 2+2=4 (and anyone who doesn't is wrong), but developing a mathematical proof? That's art. That involves delicately weaving ideas through facts and melding assumptions and hypotheses into a unified concept, one that's solid and can stand the test of time. "Mathematics is the poetry of logical ideas."
Along this similar line, it's always baffled me how video games being art is even a debate. Even more so with the idea of "Can a video game make you cry?" Well duh it can. I can list 5 examples off the top of my head (Professor Layton, Crisis Core, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VIII, Mother 3). Existentials are always really easy to prove. You just need one example and bam, the question of "Does a video game exist that can make you cry?" is proven true. Yes, there are some games that are very straight-forward (Move left, jump on baddies), and there are many, many games that involve characters with in-depth motivations and personalities going through an involved plot in a carefully constructed setting. I fail to see any difference between that and a novel, except for the beauty of interactivity allowing the player to contribute to shaping the story.
The fact is that fine art such as drawings and paintings and sculptures does require creativity. You have to take something from within yourself and shape it into something real and that makes it art. To be honest, though, it's never really called to me. My only reaction to museums has been an overwhelming desire to find where they're selling food and then to be offended by the exorbitant prices they're selling it for. I've been to a notable amount of art museums and I cannot tell you a single thing that has interested me. The only thing that even comes close is that one giant Lego city in that one dive bar in the Florida Keys. That was fascinating and engaging and told a story. Several stories, really, and one of which involved Harry Potter fighting Godzilla. To me, art needs to make me feel something, and even though a sculpture has never made me feel anything (aside from technically impressed), there are obviously people who feel that way. That is enough to make it art even if it isn't in my own personal little world.
In sum, I think pretty much anything can be art if it requires creativity and if it means things to people (preferably people other than the creator, but I guess not necessarily). I feel like programming is art. Not just design but taking characters and grouping them together into commands that, when compiled, produce an actual working application...that couldn't be more beautiful to me. Someone else might disagree, but I feel like the fact that anyone really believes that something is art means it is.
When I think of violence in media, first off, I think of video games, because I work in a video game store and I'm required, legally, to have an adult's consent when selling rated M games to minors, and that happens a lot.
As I've mentioned before, I have a bit of a video-game-related bent on things so I might as well start there. Now, I've occasionally wondered why almost every game has combat as a core mechanic. I mean, there are exceptions that rely on escape or maybe running wind into flowers to grab petals, but for the most part, combat is a core mechanic, and something most games are judged on as much as (or more than) they're judged on aesthetic or writing.
I would watch that for a minute or so and then leave it playing while you read the rest of this entry. It's really a beautiful game.
So then are people really being desensitized to violence because of video games? Well, maybe. It's certainly expected of us in video games, and there's definitely a satisfaction to absolutely slaughtering someone. A lot of games display this moderately realistically (though usually with a bit more spectacle) with people emitting blood when they die as most people would if you slashed them with a sword. But what does that really mean? Does it mean I'm going to go out, buy a sword, and kill someone with it because I saw it on Skyrim? Obviously not. Killing people is wrong. Being desensitized to violence doesn't suddenly make you into a sociopath. I would never hurt another living being. That said, these Falmer on the other hand totally deserve it.
There are at least a couple professions I can think of that require desensitization to violence and those are military and medicine. You have to be able to stay calm under situations that would reduce some people to hysterical messes. You don't want your doctor saying "Oh god, so much blood." when you enter the ER. You want your doctor to calmly explain to you what's wrong and what can be done to fix it. I think the military actually uses video games and other simulations (that are probably not so different from Call of Duty) to purposefully desensitize people to violence. So what exactly are we worrying about?
Are we worrying that people not being emotionally traumatized by violence might make them aggressive? Well, personally, I think if it would, then you're too young to be playing these types of games. I strongly believe in the ESRB and it's rating system, and I have talked to parents and convinced them not to buy games for their young children. Of course I've had parents to say "Well, if I didn't buy it, they'd just play it at Jimmy's house" or "Yeah, that's fine, I don't care," and both of them are sad, but I've also had parents say "Let's go look for a game rated T" or "My daughter is a mature young woman and I trust her to make the right decisions regarding the games she plays," both of which are wonderful reactions. Like I said, even if I am desensitized to violence, that doesn't erase my concepts of right and wrong. At worst, it'll cause me to react less emotionally if I'm ever in a violent situation.
That said, I'm not 100% sure that the games I play are really enough to desensitize me to much. I don't really play shooters or games that use gore as a spectacle (I'm looking at you, Mortal Kombat), so the over-the-top intense violence rarely enters my PC and/or console. That said, Skyrim is a pretty bloody game. Not only did you kill a lot of things, but there were multiple instances of seeing bloody skeletons and corpses and sometimes their flesh was implied to be eaten. It was a really gross game at times, and the first several times I saw human bones covered in blood (or was it leftover muscle tissue?) my stomach turned. That said, as the game went on, they showed up a bunch and eventually I stopped caring.
A few days later I was driving to a friend's house and I saw a deer on the side of the road. I was driving on a gravel road at the time, the kind that doesn't often get cleared of roadkill and this was particular deer was dead and highly decomposed. I've tried to block out the details, but this was every bit as bad as those skeletons in Skyrim, except this was in real life. I remember being really shaken and disturbed and honestly a little distracted on the rest of the drive.
There is a huge difference between being desensitized to textures on a wireframe model than being desensitized to real life that's happening in front of you, and I honestly think if the deer hadn't disturbed me as much as it did, I probably would've been driving more safely. It's hard to find good research about this issue for several reasons. First, the media loves any conclusion that could cause an upset. That's why you have to tune in at 11 to find out if wearing high heels will cause you to get cancer. Second, people are terribly biased. When I was doing research for this post, I came across this article and there was a point where one of the scientists behind the study said "Surprisingly, the amygdalas in the subjects as well as in the control group were similarly stimulated." Were they expecting the people who played video games to not react at all? Did they expect sociopaths with no reaction to other humans in pain? Video games are such a maligned form of media that people like to blame them for society's woes. Because of that, I really think that unbiased science is going to be hard to come by. People are going to be looking to either valiantly defend the world from video games or valiantly defend video games from the world and there is no valor in science (there is, however, science in science, and that's much more cool to focus on).
In short, I don't think desensitization is an innately bad thing; I don't think video games desensitize (at least not me personally), and if you play video games and now want to shoot people, you need to tell your mother and get some professional help.
So for this week, I'd like to talk about