05-18-2004, 03:41 PM
Grumples vs The World
Right Coin, Wrong Side
Certain groups have always claimed that video games promote violence and a general downward slide in behavior. They primarily point to games like Quake. They are partially correct. Video games do promote a cultural degredation, but games like Quake are actually the solution.
Believe it or not, games like SuperMario are the problem. Bear with me.
Back In My Day
I was born in 1973. When I was little, the games I played were primarily things like Cowboys and Indians. Preferably using waterguns (although a toy gun plus yelling "bang!" was considered to be a substitute), this is where someone pretends to be the cowboy and someone pretends to be the indian and you tried to shoot each other. Whoever was shot was generally expected to pretend to die in some overly dramatic chest-clutching fashion. Saying "argh!" and crumpling to the ground was held in high regard.
In terms of social development, that was a great game. You played it with other kids and it was competitive. You thought the porch was a great lookout point until someone shot you in the back because there's no cover up there. You then learned that the porch was NOT a great place to lay in wait and tried to find a better spot next round. You learned that victory was happiness and defeat was something you could learn from.
Enter Nintendo
To be fair, Nintendo did not invent the single player game. Pac Man, Space Invaders, Intellivision, Atari, these all predated Nintendo by a good bit. For the most part, though, the old games had a different edge to them. You didn't win Space Invaders, you just kept playing until you lost and tried to survive longer than anyone else had. Even if you were better than everyone else in the arcade, you still eventually got stomped by some aliens.
Nintendo really ushered in the era of, shall we call them, fluff games. Like pretty much everything with the word "Mario" in it. These games are designed to be won. You can't NOT win them. There are obstacles to overcome, but in the end, you win.
Nintendo is also foremost in my mind as the major promoter of "cheat codes". Cheat codes are things you can do to give yourself extra health, extra lives, invulnerability or a number of things to make the game easier to play and thus easier to win. Nintendo didn't invent them, they just made such a habit of using them that there was even a small magazine dedicated primarily to listing and explaining all the cheat codes available for all the new Nintendo games.
Mario must seem harmless to a parent. Little guy on the screen, does a lot of inoffensive things, it's as innocent and harmless as a game can be.
And Therein Lies the Problem
Competitve games teach you a few very important lessons. If you want to have fun, you do not rub your opponet's nose in his defeat. If you do, you will find that he goes home and now it's just Cowboy vs Tree, which is not nearly as much fun. You learn not to get too angry when you get defeated for much of the same reason. You learn a temperment that is conducive to continued play.
Non-competitive games like Mario don't do this. The computer does not care how you act when you win or lose and doesn't care if you cheat. It's these innocent, happy, politically correct games that are the real danger to our culture. They do not teach people how to interact. They do not teach sportsmanship.
They aren't BAD, they just aren't GOOD and if they are all you're exposed to then you'll eventually enter society ill-prepared to face even the typical day-to-day conflicts and competitions. The lessons of sportsmanship are critical to learn. It can come from organized sports, like baseball. It can come from simple boardgames played with parents and siblings. It can come from old fashioned outdoors playing. It can even come from videogames, provided they are played with and against other people, same as a boardgame. An online game of Quake is just Cowboys and Indians with lower resolution graphics. The Quake kid will learn to understand the lessons of sportsmanship and teamwork, the Mario kid will only understand that he always wins, and when faced with a true defeat in the real world or future video game, he will not know how to behave.
The more parents try to shelter their kids from the unsavory elements of competition and the bitter taste of defeat, the more damage they ultimately do. Especially here on this site, we play massively multiplayer games all the time. We run into a lot of people. We run into a lot of people who have no concept of sportsmanship. We run into people who have grown up to be human garbage. Was it violence on TV and plastic guns and too much Quake that did it? Were they raised to be assholes? I doubt it. I bet most of them grew up sheltered with their cheat codes and their Mario and the singleplayer games, never having played sports or understood the education of defeat or the humble victory. It wasn't violent competitive video games that did them in, it was sweet and innocent Mario.
People need to learn sportsmanship at an early age and Mario games with cheat codes do not accomplish this.
If you think video games are behind a growing problem in society, you're partially right. They do, but it's not the competitive violent of multiplayer Quake causing it, it's the seemingly harmless, singleplayer Mario type games that leave children ill prepared for the real world.
Right Coin, Wrong Side
Certain groups have always claimed that video games promote violence and a general downward slide in behavior. They primarily point to games like Quake. They are partially correct. Video games do promote a cultural degredation, but games like Quake are actually the solution.
Believe it or not, games like SuperMario are the problem. Bear with me.
Back In My Day
I was born in 1973. When I was little, the games I played were primarily things like Cowboys and Indians. Preferably using waterguns (although a toy gun plus yelling "bang!" was considered to be a substitute), this is where someone pretends to be the cowboy and someone pretends to be the indian and you tried to shoot each other. Whoever was shot was generally expected to pretend to die in some overly dramatic chest-clutching fashion. Saying "argh!" and crumpling to the ground was held in high regard.
In terms of social development, that was a great game. You played it with other kids and it was competitive. You thought the porch was a great lookout point until someone shot you in the back because there's no cover up there. You then learned that the porch was NOT a great place to lay in wait and tried to find a better spot next round. You learned that victory was happiness and defeat was something you could learn from.
Enter Nintendo
To be fair, Nintendo did not invent the single player game. Pac Man, Space Invaders, Intellivision, Atari, these all predated Nintendo by a good bit. For the most part, though, the old games had a different edge to them. You didn't win Space Invaders, you just kept playing until you lost and tried to survive longer than anyone else had. Even if you were better than everyone else in the arcade, you still eventually got stomped by some aliens.
Nintendo really ushered in the era of, shall we call them, fluff games. Like pretty much everything with the word "Mario" in it. These games are designed to be won. You can't NOT win them. There are obstacles to overcome, but in the end, you win.
Nintendo is also foremost in my mind as the major promoter of "cheat codes". Cheat codes are things you can do to give yourself extra health, extra lives, invulnerability or a number of things to make the game easier to play and thus easier to win. Nintendo didn't invent them, they just made such a habit of using them that there was even a small magazine dedicated primarily to listing and explaining all the cheat codes available for all the new Nintendo games.
Mario must seem harmless to a parent. Little guy on the screen, does a lot of inoffensive things, it's as innocent and harmless as a game can be.
And Therein Lies the Problem
Competitve games teach you a few very important lessons. If you want to have fun, you do not rub your opponet's nose in his defeat. If you do, you will find that he goes home and now it's just Cowboy vs Tree, which is not nearly as much fun. You learn not to get too angry when you get defeated for much of the same reason. You learn a temperment that is conducive to continued play.
Non-competitive games like Mario don't do this. The computer does not care how you act when you win or lose and doesn't care if you cheat. It's these innocent, happy, politically correct games that are the real danger to our culture. They do not teach people how to interact. They do not teach sportsmanship.
They aren't BAD, they just aren't GOOD and if they are all you're exposed to then you'll eventually enter society ill-prepared to face even the typical day-to-day conflicts and competitions. The lessons of sportsmanship are critical to learn. It can come from organized sports, like baseball. It can come from simple boardgames played with parents and siblings. It can come from old fashioned outdoors playing. It can even come from videogames, provided they are played with and against other people, same as a boardgame. An online game of Quake is just Cowboys and Indians with lower resolution graphics. The Quake kid will learn to understand the lessons of sportsmanship and teamwork, the Mario kid will only understand that he always wins, and when faced with a true defeat in the real world or future video game, he will not know how to behave.
The more parents try to shelter their kids from the unsavory elements of competition and the bitter taste of defeat, the more damage they ultimately do. Especially here on this site, we play massively multiplayer games all the time. We run into a lot of people. We run into a lot of people who have no concept of sportsmanship. We run into people who have grown up to be human garbage. Was it violence on TV and plastic guns and too much Quake that did it? Were they raised to be assholes? I doubt it. I bet most of them grew up sheltered with their cheat codes and their Mario and the singleplayer games, never having played sports or understood the education of defeat or the humble victory. It wasn't violent competitive video games that did them in, it was sweet and innocent Mario.
People need to learn sportsmanship at an early age and Mario games with cheat codes do not accomplish this.
If you think video games are behind a growing problem in society, you're partially right. They do, but it's not the competitive violent of multiplayer Quake causing it, it's the seemingly harmless, singleplayer Mario type games that leave children ill prepared for the real world.
hock: *blinks*
![[Image: glarebear_av.gif]](http://thepurge.net/turnip/glarebear_av.gif)
![[Image: sterb037.gif]](http://www.getsmileyface.com/sm/violent/sterb037.gif)
