Dear Reader,
After seeing the title of this entry, you are probably a
little confused. That is, unless you have read Chapter 11 of Eugenia Siapera’s
book Understanding New Media, as I
just have. This chapter has made me aware of the debate currently going on in
the gaming world, known as the ludology vs. narratology debate. The ludology
side of this debate addresses the fact that, unlike other forms of media such
as novels and films, video games cannot be analyzed simply for their narrative;
they must be studied in terms of their ‘ergodicity’ as well. ‘Ergodicity’ refers
to the work put in by the players of the game, such as following the rules of
the game, collaborating with other players, etc. As a young adult who was
raised without many videogames, these debates are something I have never
thought about before. I always assumed that violent games consisted of a bunch
of mindless violence. But now, I am starting to see why the violent videogames
debate is not so black and white.
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| Screenshot of original Wolfenstein-3D game I played, courtesy of : examiner.com |
When I was little, my
brother got a PC for his bar mitzvah, along with some extra money for games.
One of the games he purchased was called Wolfenstein-3D.
This game was a first-person shooter (FPS) game, in which the main character
was a soldier, trying to kill enemies (Nazi soldiers and their bosses) in the
World War II castle-lair of Wolfenstein.
I don’t remember very much of this
game, but I do remember just how much fun I had playing it when my brother left
his old PC and went to college. That is, until my parents saw me and
consequently forbade me from playing this game. I assumed that most violent
games were like this FPS game: shoot people before they shoot you, and getting rewarded
for it. However, now there are games such as World of Warcraft (WoW), which are must more complex in narrative,
and strategy. It is online, meaning that the setting can be
player-versus-player (PvP), and also players can team up to reach more
difficult goals together (Wikipedia, 2013). I think the game is about
conquering lands and defeating mystical creatures such as dragons. To be honest
though, I have no interest in the content, and only went as far as Wikipedia
for a summary. However, after comparing the evolution of videogames (from Wolfenstein-3D, to WoW), I can see how the ludology vs. narratology debate could
arise. While WoW has violence in the
game, it still has the potential to promote teamwork and strategizing, while
also creating an entertaining challenge for gamers (the ludology perspective).
While Wolfenstein-3D is a horror game based upon killing, it is a game of good
vs. evil; the main character is only shooting Nazi war-lords (the narrative
perspective, and perhaps the ludologic as well, because you can only shoot bad
people by the rules).
Remember the Virginia Tech shooting a few years ago? A
troubled student of the technology university came to school armed and killed
32 people on campus. Within weeks, an anti-video game activist, Jack Thompson,
blamed Bill Gates and the promotion of his game Counterstrike, for the occurrence and promotion of violence in
general. I remembered reading about this case in an opinion article on Yahoo! and
agreeing that it was a little far-fetched. (Here is the link to the article in
case you are curious: http://voices.yahoo.com/anti-gaming-activist-jack-thompson-blames-bill-gates-308979.html?cat=3).
Now, looking at it from the scholastic perspective,
I see just how narrow-minded Thompson’s argument really is. A university-aged
student who murders that many innocent people, and then commits suicide,
obviously has his own personal problems, and one incident such as this is not
enough to pin the blame on a videogame, nonetheless, a videogame producer! Although Thompson’s argument may look good on
paper to some, there are many other aspects to take into account, such as the
rules of the game, the setting, and the game-playing culture in general. These
are all things I failed to take into account, before having read Siapera’s
chapter on gaming. Now that I have, I see that violent videogames are punished
too harshly; to simply dismiss them as games of mindless killing would be a
narrow-minded stance.
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