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Aug 9th, 2010 at 12:07:01 - Columbine RPG (PC) |
There are obvious stereotypes once the shooters begin shooting people at the school. The students are labeled only as things ‘preppy girl’ or ‘jock’. There have been many reviews saying that the game trivialized the murders. While I do not believe the game does this as a whole, the stereotyping of the characters does. It takes a very in depth look at the shooters. It goes into their past and uses quotes from them. It shows their point of view and builds their personalities while ignoring the victims of the shooting. It makes so that the victims were not real people. They just become anonymous and repetitive. I think this takes away from the message of this game about while only adding a simplistic message about stereotypes.
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Aug 1st, 2010 at 22:42:27 - Columbine RPG (PC) |
Something I was thinking about while playing the game for the second time was the representation of the shooters. I believe the pictures used for the characters are actual pictures of the shooters. As the artist statement said, the game uses an introspective perspective. There’s a lot of dialogue in the game that expresses views and opinions of the characters. The game creator has made a likeness to the real shooters, emphasized by using their pictures. I believe most of the dialogue is the words of the shooters, collected by the game creator. It is an ethical issue to represent the viewpoints of real people without their consent. Is it ethical to do this in order for the artistically express one’s own views? The dialogue is in the words of the shooters, but they had to be taken out of context for the game’s purposes. When taken out of context, they can lose the original meaning the shooters instilled in them. Instead, they are chosen and reinterpreted by the creator to make his own point. I believe it is unethical to do this because it changes the meaning of the words, yet still represents them as the true viewpoints of the shooters. The creator may unintentionally misrepresent them.
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Jul 31st, 2010 at 20:08:02 - Columbine RPG (PC) |
Something I noticed while playing is the media references made in the game. The characters listened to Marilyn Manson and KMFDM. Both of these artists are known for their disturbing lyrics. After the shooting, some people believed that these disturbing lyrics influenced the shooting. This brings up the role of media and if media affects our behavior. Media was also brought up when the characters talked about the news coverage the shooting would receive. I thought it was an interesting choice to make a videogame to talk about this incident because of the role that the media had in it. After reading the artist’s statement about the creator of the game, the role of the media was essential to his game. I think this game was made in this form of media for the impact it has. The creator recognizes how much media can impact our lives and influence our decisions. He made a game to simultaneously use and counter the impact of media. I think it speaks to the interpretation of media. Media is represented as neither good nor bad. Its impact is determined by the consumer of it. In this way, the media does not really influence our decisions, rather our individual interpretation of the media determines how we experience it and what we do with it.
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Jul 26th, 2010 at 10:14:46 - Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (Arcade) |
One my third time playing Grand Theft Auto, I decided to look at health in the game. I was trying to get myself killed to see what would happen with the hospital bill once I ran out of money. A quick way to do this was to attack someone with a gun and have them shoot me. As I was walking down the street, I was looking at the characters and deciding whether or not they had a gun. Essentially, I was using stereotypes to determine whether or not someone had a gun.
The issue here is that the San Andreas game is based off of real cities. Los Santos is based on Los Angeles; San Fierro is based on San Francisco, and Las Venturas is based on Las Vegas. By basing the games on real cities, and presumably their inhabitants, the game perpetuates stereotypes grounded in real racial and political issues.
One of these stereotypes is gang members. As far as I’ve seen in the game, every gang member is an African American male. At one point in the game, I ran into a man whose accent sounded Middle Easter who said, “I’m allowed to be here”. At another point, some sort of news announcement was made saying that all immigrant green cards are banned in the state. In the game, there are stereotypes that African American men are gang members and that immigrants are foreigners. If a game is based on a real case, is it ethical to represent that case, and its negative components, in its entirety? Is fictional entertainment exempt from being politically conscious? I don’t think it is exempt because societal ideas go into the making of the game and get released back out into society. It is a reflection of our societal ideas in a simplistic form. More importantly, it strips the political aspects of these ideas. It is then seen as entertainment rather than as an ethical issue.
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Kat has been with GameLog for 14 years, 3 months, and 27 days |
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