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Oct 26th, 2010 at 09:50:48 - Columbine Massacre (Other) |
This is the third time playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG; up to this point I have been rewarded a couple of cheeseburgers for killing people. The point is the game rewards unethical behaviors and does not reward ethical behaviors at all. According to the context of this game killing and stereotyping is acceptable and every person involved in this kind of immoral act should be rewarded.
After killing a good number of people in the game, a player is rewarded a cheeseburger. I thought that this was just suppose to be a part of a narration, that I only deserved a cheeseburger for killing innocent people, but when I checked my inventory, I found out that I had cheeseburgers. This whole thing bothered me a lot – you take a good number of human lives and you devalue it until it is equivalent to the value of a cheeseburger. Also, the Idea that some lives are worth more than the other shouldn’t be tolerated. In the game, some people are worth more points than the other. I don’t know if Eric and Dylan were following any kind of point system when they performed this kind violent act, since this game is based on a real tragic event. I think the designers added this to be a part of gameplay, but what they did not put into consideration is that this can cause harm to our society. As players are been forced to perform these type of acts in the game against their will, there are not too many choices the game presented to the players and they are only left with one choice to do what they are been told to do in the game. If players were presented with many choices, and the game rewarded only moral behavior, and penalized wrongdoing, this will be a different game.
Games are not just a form of entertainment, they can be used as a good tool to educate people and make the players reflect on who they are in terms of their ethics. Designers should take a forefront and full responsibility to make games to be used as an education tool and entertaining in an appropriate way. What they should not forget is that if their creation causes harm to our society they are causing harm to themselves too, unless they are from another planet where this is actually accepted. It is like having one source of drinking water and for some reason you poison the whole source. What do you think will happen? You will die of dehydration.
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Oct 25th, 2010 at 22:18:42 - Columbine Massacre (Other) |
This is the second time playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG. I noticed that there are a lot of stereotypes against religious people or those who believe in god in this game. It is as if the game is making fun of those who believe in god. I don’t know if that was the way it was on that tragic day or it was just added as part of gameplay. Whichever one it is, our society does not condone this kind behavior, and to some extent these stereotypes is a part of gameplay is absurd.
In the game, whenever I was about to kill a person who believes in God (or a church person as they are called in the game), they will kneel down and some sort of spirit like effect will rise up, but regardless, they get killed anyway. It is like saying, look, this is person believes in God, let’s see if he/she will not be killed after praying to his/her God. Who are we to make fun of what others believe in? If somebody believes in God or whatever they believe in as their God so what? As long as it does not cause any harm to our society and it maximizes their happiness, it is beneficial to our society. But somehow if we as a society start thinking in those lines that faith is somewhat pathetic, that society will be divided, and when a society gets divided there will be chaos all over the place. When I reached the library in the game, I came across a girl and she shouted “oh my god.” Then Eric, the character I was controlling, asked her “do you believe in god?” and the girl said, “yes that’s what my family believes in.” Eric told her that it was pathetic that she believed in god, and when the girl then kneeled down to pray, she got shot and died. Sending this kind of message is morally wrong, because it is encouraging others not to respect what others believe in. We have seen things like this happen in the real world, where somebody somewhere thinks that those who believe in god are stupid and they don’t deserve to live. Then, that person goes to church, opens fire, and kills everyone. Those people in the church did not cause any harm to our society - they are just trying to express their religious belief.
The idea that whatever others believe in is pathetic, and thinking that what you believe in is the way to go should be discouraged rather embraced, like the way it is being depicted in the game. Moral rules are there to make society function the right way, and every rule is important regardless of how unimportant it might look to some people. It is immoral to use what others believe in as a wedge to doing something bad to them. So game designers should put in many thoughts when designing the games, and every little context and details matter. They should ask themselves these questions - what messages are they sending out to the players if certain acts were included in the game? Does it fall within our society’s moral rules? What benefits does it have to our society? Who is going to be affected if they included certain kind of behavior as part of their game play? How are we going to present this to the players?
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Oct 24th, 2010 at 22:28:22 - Columbine Massacre (Other) |
Today was the first time playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG. However, I knew from before the game was based on a real-life tragic event. At first, the game was very frustrating, but as soon as I got to the school cafeteria, everything changed. Setting up bombs knowing someone innocent was going to die was not fun but I did it anyway. The game depicts a lot of violence – from the conversation between Dylan and Eric (the character you control as a player), it is all violence-related.
In the game, human life is regarded as nothing. The main goal in the game is to kill all the people at the school. The more you kill, the stronger and skillful you become as a player. I know the designers of this game based this on a real-life event, but at the same time they should have realized that these kinds of games that inflict this kind of immoral behavior are not beneficial to our society. There are some people, like myself, who did not know about this event until I played this game. Imagine if this game ends up in the wrong hands. If somebody somewhere has been thinking about doing this kind of violent act, had second thoughts about it, but then came across this game with every plan laid out in details, what do you think will happen? This will be more like an inspiration to that person and there will be another tragic event like the one depicted in the game, or even worse than that. When I first killed one person in the parking lot, I was hooked – I could not stop. If one of the non-playing characters ran away from me I would get so mad that I would chase after that person until I made sure I killed them, regardless of whether there are other people to kill around. There is one non-playing character named Tim in the game that was told to go home and play some type of game or something. He was the only one I could not kill in the game. But I was trying to find a way to kill him anyway. The violence is way over the top. I remember the conversation between Eric and Dylan: “if it moves, kill it, and if it does not, burn it.”
We can’t accept these kinds of games that send the wrong message and inflict unacceptable behavior in our society. If the designers were trying to show what happened on that tragic day, they should have done it in way that a player will have many options in deciding what to do by themselves when they are in a certain situation. This way, players can reflect on their ethics. But instead, what the designers did was to just say, go ahead, play the game, kill as many people as you can without any consequences. But what they did not realize was that not all players will interpret the game in the same way they thought they would. It does not matter if this game was based on some real event – Inciting violence to that extent is unacceptable. Kill, kill, kill – that’s the plot for this game. Games can be fun without violence in it. We have to think of better ways our society can benefit from our creations in a positive way, as we develop these games.
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Sep 20th, 2010 at 15:42:06 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2) |
It was my first time playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game has an Open-World game play style; it gives more freedom to the player to do whatever they want. But the thing that jumped out the most when I played the game was violence. As I continued to play the game I discovered that there was no other way for me to earn any money apart from doing violence-related activities. I know for those hardcore and GTA: San Andreas fans and players can make an argument by saying there is nothing wrong with the game, that it is just trying to simulate the real world. Or maybe in the game, you just don’t know any other way of earning money except for doing the violent related activities, if there is any other way. Well, as far as I am concerned, the game instigates too much violence. This is just what I think, and others may have different opinions.
As I continued playing the game, I stopped doing anything apart from going round beating, robbing, and killing people. I did not care who I killed, robbed and beat, and all I wanted was money and earning my name in the gangster world. Now can you I imagine what type of message the game is sending to the players? Other people who have played this game can make an argument saying that there is no message this game is sending out, that it is just a game, and others may think otherwise. For me, this is a breeding ground for violence in some way. Imagine those who play this game every day. What will their mind set be like? Some will try to live the virtual world life, thinking it is a real world life. Guess what will happen to our society? This is not the matter of when; we have already seen those things happening in our society, not once or twice, but many times, where someone played a violent game like GTA: San Andreas and then goes in the really world trying to do the violent acts they did in a video game.
Surely we can make video games teaching people how to live their lives by doing what’s right, not by instigating violence as the only way of life they can live. I know it is entertainment, but we have to realize what type of behavior we are inflicting in our society when we make these games.
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