Games to me are always a medium of entertainment that we can use to distract ourselves from the reality. Its just like watching TV, playing sports, or taking a nap. With just about anything, games should and must have limits and boundaries. When a game developer push the boundary but does not overcome it, the game has the potential to be successful but with controversy. However, when the boundary is crossed to a critical level, the game becomes more of a art form. Crossing the limit depicts the game to be more of a cultural message or political message than a simple game. The game played in class “September 11th and September 12th” are purely wrong games in different ways. Events such as September 11th should be left alone by game developers since it can offend so many people around the world. September 12th on the other hand is also wrong, since it depicts that a loss of a loved one causes someone to become a terrorist in the middle east. This kind of game would cause people to get the wrong idea about what exactly is going on around the world. Contrary to many beliefs, no one is brought up to be a terrorist anywhere. Instead, its the culture influences, economical background, misunderstanding of religious messages and years of political abuse cause people to behave the way they do toward the west. Most of the time we are limited to modern thoughts that limit us from understanding people of other cultures, ethnicity, and religion. And gamers and other artists takes advantages of this limited mindset to produce games and art to depict their own beliefs and ideas. For example, here is a game about specifically targeting a religion. This game targets not only the followers of the religion, but the prophets and the God as well. To me, thats going too far. If a non-western Muslim were to hear about this game they would be severely offended. If kids were to get their hands on this, what ideas and theories would get gain from this? I doubt that they will gain anything positive out of it. There is another game called Ethnic Cleansing, where the player must kill Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister of Israel, in order to prevent him from the dominating the world. During the game, the player must kill blacks, Latinos, and Jews to progress through the game. To me the idea of targeting specific race is a horrendous idea. This kind of development in a game crosses any emotional barrier people have and offend anyone playing it. Again, what would a preteen, teen or any young adult would obtain out of a game like this? The situation would be worse if the player had limited view on the world. Therefore, game developers should stop putting out ideas and views that are only shared by a minute fraction of this world. Instead, they should develop games that could entertain as well as put positive ideas into our communities.
Wow, you’re right, those are two contemptible games. I’d like to think that the only people who would choose to play them are people whose viewpoints are already mirrored in the games. That is, these games don’t make any persuasive rhetorical argument intended to change someone’s mind.
September 12th is at least trying to make us question the tactics we use to combat terrorism, but I agree that the mechanism by which terrorists are produced in the game (solely due to collateral damage) is horribly simplified and reductive.
I tend to think of videogames as similar to any other media: designers can make extremely thoughtful, eye-opening games or they can cater to the lowest common denominator and capitalize upon hate and bloodshed. You’ll find movies on either extreme, though most are somewhere in the middle. I think it’ll eventually be the same with games.