I'm pretty much going to be looking at each of the arguments that's being presented at time of writing (25/8/2014). If that's not something you want to read and your not associated with these kinds of groups, leave now.
1. Before I get into the overarching points: YouTube commentators. These people are attacking Youtube content producers such as JonTron and PewDiPie because "there's nothing sadder then watching someone play a video game". Do you people stop and think about what your typing? Seriously? Because I can ask the exact same question about professional sports players. What's the difference in watching people play a video game and people playing any sport? Its the same thing, the only difference is that one of them is becoming a common medium of entertainment and the other is currently a common medium of entertainment. Your attacking people who enjoy making people laugh, who make money off of their own content. These people are entrepreneurs and comedians. Lets plays are also a way of advertising for video games: If people enjoy watching someone play a game, they are more inclined to play that game as its a more reliable form of marketing then a normal review (hypocritical considering the content of this site but the point still stands). Are these people for everyone? No, everyone has different tastes, the same as TV shows.
2. Minecraft is a violent video game. I'm still recovering from the bruising on my forehead because of how hard I slammed my head on the nearest wall. With the amount of people playing Minecraft, you people should feel ashamed of this misconception. For the .01% of people who have never heard of the game, Minecraft is a open world sandbox game, where your free to build whatever you want to build. This is why I slammed my head against a wall several times because Minecraft has been given the nickname "THE VIRTUAL LEGO GAME". If your going after Minecraft, then your also going after other creative medium. Yes there are monsters in the game that you do need to kill (for the most part), but this is because of the game's survival mode, WHERE YOU NEED TO DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE. Are their guns in the game? If you mod the game, but its not in the vanilla game. Are their builds out their that are inappropriate? Yes because someone decided to build it. That's not the game's fault. I also want to bring attention to this post chain ( https://twitter.com/dankmtl/status/503750987837095936/photo/1 ) because this pretty much summaries the misconceptions about the game. Fans of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic will also notice the error in the image. I looked up Tara Strong's career as a voice actor, and the funny thing is about this (almost certainly fake screen capture because it's easy to edit your name on a iPhone) photo, Tara Strong never voiced the character "Rainbow Dash" in the show. She is a voice actor, but of the character "Twilight Sparkle", something that took me all of 20 seconds to find. Want to know what also took me no time to look up? Minecraft being used in education, helping children learn skills that will help them in society, or how about Computercraft and qCraft? Mods that are raising the next generation of computer programers and Quantum physicists. How about all the marvelous, gorgeous builds that people have built in the game, from small shacks, to gigantic cities. From a simple target practice mini game to roller coasters and adventure maps. Or how about all the fan made mini games you can find on Minecraft Relms? Survival games, capture the wool, spleef.
3. The assault on "White male gamers" and gamers in general. While I will openly admit that the behavior of most of the people who reply to post and the account in general is disgusting, the people that their using to highlight their point is a small minority (that are unfortunately the loudest). Yes, the gaming community has people that I'd be ashamed of knowing personally. But that's not the community. Gamers are also (for the most part) nerds in general so these kinds of attacks are going after everyone who classifies themselves as geeks or nerds. I am personally insulted by these people because its people like this Twitter group that makes me not want to be apart of the real world. Its these kinds of people that have bullied me since I've gone to kindergarten. They say that they are "afraid of white male gamers", the last time I checked, the dictionary definition of fear wasn't "to provoke a particular audience to prove a point". I ask you, to the people who are afraid of gamers, to the ones who say that "Parents who spawn white male gamers are little different from producers of biological weapons.", go to a nerdy event. Go to a gaming convention, a tournament, even a small club and see what these "terrifying" white male gamers are really like. Anyone can be someone their not when their hiding behind a keyboard and monitor. Most gamers actually hate the kind of people your promoting, we're ashamed of those people because they give fuel to people like you. You want to know what "Gamers" are actually doing? They are the ones making games memorable, the Smooth McGrooves and the Glitch City's who make our favorite game songs even better, the Extra Credits and Game Theories who analyze games, to find out where they falter and where they thrive. They are the ones who help charities like Child's Play and TLC for kids who help make children's lives better when they are in hospitals thanks to video games. The Sonic-a-thon, a marathon of Sonic games, played by sonic fans, earned over $20,000 dollars for Child's play, none of the commentators got a cent of that money. they are the aspiring developers who, like the developers of today and in the past, will expand the medium. Gamers are not the people your promoting, what your promoting are nothing more the trolls and griefers.
4. Violent video games. From what I've read, you people define EVERY GAME AS VIOLENT (something that I know no one actually thinks because I'm willing to bet that you've played at least a game in your lives). You people think that "People who play Mario games are violent and are encouraged to take drugs", "That Pokemon and Sonic encourage animal cruelty", "That every person who plays racing games are reckless drivers", "That every gamer plays Call of Duty and GTA". Hell, why not go further: Kirby encourages cannibalism, Phoenix Wright is nothing but violence, Mass Effect promotes same sex relationships, Samus is oversexualised. Let me just rip all these arguments apart, shall I?
a. Mario games are violent and are promoting drug use: I DON'T KNOW ANYONE WHO THINKS THAT JUMPING ON PEOPLE, RUNING INTO THEM WITH THE POWER OF A STAR, THROWING BOUNCING FIREBALLS AND SHELLS ARE ACTUAL WAYS OF KILLING PEOPLE. No one can jump high enough to seriously hurt anyone and if they fall, they themselves are going to be just as hurt as the intended victim. The Starman power is impossible including the ability to throw bouncing fire. Shells might, at the most, break a bone but they can't die from one. As for the "drug use", the intended market for the games wouldn't know that a Mushroom could be a drug and the game actually promotes eating healthy mushrooms (trust me, it works).
b. Pokemon and Sonic encourage animal cruelty. I'll answer Sonic first as that's the shorter of the two. If your familiar with the early games in the series, then you'll know that YOU'RE FREEING ANIMALS FROM THE ROBOT, NOT SHOVING THEM IN, in fact, this promotes anything but animal cruelty. As for Pokemon, the intention of the games is to encourage a bond between you and your Pokemon. If people do think that it promotes animal cruelty, then their forgetting the core reason of the game. The game was based on bug catching, a hobby of the game's director Satoshi Tajiri, and with the latter features of the games (including Pokemon Amie which is literally putting Pokemon into Nintendogs, a game that if you say has any negative repercussions then you really need to rethink your life) helps encourage a bond between you and your Pokemon. I still have several Pokemon I caught in my original play through of the first Pokemon game I ever owned, Pokemon Emerald because I'm attached to them.
c. Every person who plays any form of racing/ driving game is a reckless driver. You're pathetic if you actually think this. I shouldn't have to rip this argument apart because if this was true, then the population wouldn't be anywhere near as big as it is. This is just stupidity talking rather then actual fact. People are more willing to take risks in a video game because their isn't any real danger when comparing video games to reality.
d. Every gamer loves GTA and Call of Duty. Two words. I don't. I've barely played GTA because I couldn't get Vice City to work on my previous laptop and I couldn't be bothered trying again. I might play 5 someday but it isn't on my priority list. As for Call of Duty, I hate it, I think its overrated and that there are better First Person Shooters out their because they don't try to hide the fact that they are retextures (this is based on my experiences with COD 4, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops).
e. Kirby promotes Cannibalism. KIRBY HAS INFINITE FLIGHT, YOU CAN FLY OVER ALMOST EVERY "ENEMY" IN THE GAMES. And the same as Mario, unless people have developed the ability to inhale creatures like a vacuum cleaner and replace their stomach's with a Black Hole, no one should think this is a valid way of killing someone or something.
f. Phoenix Wright promotes murder. Yes, because its a murder mystery story. Your trying to figure out why they died and make sure that the person who actually did do it is sent to jail.
g. Mass Effect promotes same sex relationships. What I want to know is why people think this is a problem. Same sex couples shouldn't have to deal with what they have to deal with now. The only problem with this is that people think that same sex couples are the devil incarnate and the entire problem is because of what should realistically be nothing at all.
h. Samus is oversexualised. The actual statement is that Samus, without her power armor is oversexualised. Aside from spin off games, Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid Other M, when you see and play as Samus, she's in her armor, the armor that made every person who played the original Metroid game think she was a guy. The oversexualising of female characters is a actual issue with games, I will admit this, and the only reason why this is the case is because of the old ways of development and design. In my personal opinion, if your complaining about the main character, weather its because they are oversexualised or because they are a specific gender, then your not getting the point of the character. The point of the playable character is to be the link between the player and the game, the playable character should be designed based on what the rest of the game is and if it means that they are a specific gender, WHO CARES. I don't care what gender the character is, all that I care about is "does the design match the world" and if it does, great.
5. Violent video games. VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT TOYS, VIDEO GAME DEVELOPERS ARE NOT TOY MAKERS. Everything I would say in this I've already covered in my last rant so I'm not going to bring it up again. What I am going to do is show you this:
Finally, Video games addiction. How insensitive can you people be. Aside from the fact that the actual term is Video Games Compulsion, you people are making it out to be the equivalent of drugs and alcohol and while that might be the case for some, for most people its, once again, thanks to people like you, along with gamers in several cases, that are the reason why it exists and for you to be stating that "You know the answer" is atrocious. These videos are probably the best summary of the actual situation.
I'm not going to do a final summary of this, I don't think I have to. All that I will say is this. If you read this, please spread this. I'm not saying that just for more views, in fact that's not even my priority for this. The reason why I say this is so that people who think the thoughts I've attacked can see these, so that people can actually learn. Its thoughts like this that have brought out the absolute worst in humanity before. To the people who think that the destruction of violent video games is the best way of stopping these problems. read these:
- “The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author . . .” ― Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril
- “Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No
man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are
weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons
for man's freedom.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt - “If people wrote their reviews on paper and put them into a real,
physical library, I am sure that the Goodreads administrators would be
very reluctant to pull them down from shelves and burn them. When you
can get rid of a piece of writing just by clicking on a few links,
there’s a temptation to believe that it’s less serious. But it isn’t.
It’s just less clear what you’ve done.”
― G.R. Reader, Off-Topic: The Story of an Internet Revolt - "Once, long ago, A great man said this to his colleagues, to remind them that killing an idea was as much a sin as killing a man. 'for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a
potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny
they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and
extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as
lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth:
and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet,
on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as
kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s
image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the
image of God, as it were, in the eye.' If that's true of books, can it not be said ten fold regarding games?"
-- Daniel Floyd, Extra Credits: Free Speach - Man has always been afraid of the unknown, of change. What man might see as negative, they will want to eradicate, to keep things the same, even if what they might think is change isn't change at all. I once saw a swastika in one of their posts, trying to connect it, the once symbol of peace that is now used to remind people of the horrors of war, of the men and woman killed because they were Jewish. How ironic that the symbol that they are trying to shove on a entire interactive medium actually better represents the people themselves and not their target.
-- Myself, Liam "Blaster" Sanders, in this post
Uh
ReplyDeleteYou realize it's a troll account, right?
I do, but i doubt the people who run and post on the account do. A fool is born every second and there are people on their and other similar places do actually believe these things. I'm not going after the account, but the people behind the account.
DeleteIt's all a troll. It's literally entirely a troll. The people running it know it's a troll and the people commenting on it know it's a troll.
DeleteJesus H.
Do you recall all the anti game laws that have attempted to come into existence? Or the controversy that surrounded Six Days in Fallujah, which eventually lead to the project being scrapped? Those wern't trolls, those were people actually trying to cripple the industry, those people see this and many other sites and pages as fact. Its those people that anger me, its those people who need to read this, I used that account to prove a point.
DeleteLook, the fact is that there will never be peace in the middle east until the last game is crushed, so it's not that bad if a few details are exaggerated in the fight against games.
DeleteIt is when your the one being personally attacked and insulted because of a stereotype that has never existed.
Delete