joebthegreat said:
Policies for dealing with people that don't agree with you?
... anyway
I don't think video games have a direct link to crime. HOWEVER there is a culture of violence in video games very similar to the culture of violence in action movies. When somebody gets brutally killed we cheer. When something explodes we cheer. When something causes massive damage it's awesome.
This isn't gaming's problem, it's a more broad social problem. Why do we continue to assert that video games don't at least help promote a culture of war happy violence consumers? It's not just games, it's most media.
On that note, maybe it isn't a bad thing that we go to media for our violent fix instead of actual violent crime. Still, to simply say that it never has anything to do with violence is ignorant. Studies go both ways and studies are inconclusive. The only thing you can prove is that video games don't have a direct link to crime.
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Next up is the "games are art". I will argue this definition for as long as I can. A rule system designed for people to play is a game, which has vastly different definitions from art.
Do you describe Monopoly as art? It too is a rule system with some pictures and figures in order to show you what's happening.
A closer example is, do you consider Dungeons and Dragons to be art? Dungeons and Dragons is nothing more than a rule system, and using that rule system people create stories and art. There can be published D&D stories using the setting. There can be artistic drawings depicting all the fantasy creatures from D&D. D&D itself is not art, it is simply a game that has artistic mediums surrounding it.
To put it simply: The story your DM made up explaining how a band of thieves made it into the castle is art. The rolling of your D20 to see who goes first in initiative is not.
By my definition I would argue that a the game within a video game is not nor can never be art. I would argue that any story you attach to that game, and any picture or 3D model you put in that game is art. Any game mechanic is not. Don't link me to Extra Credits over this I vehemently disagree with them when they get on that high horse.
And yes I know it's a mostly pedantic argument. If all video games contain art then why shouldn't I just say the games themselves are art? Because none of the art contained within video games can now or ever will have an artistic merit that doesn't require the use of another medium. The interactivity itself isn't artistic.
When it comes to violence I think it's part of what makes humans, human. I don't really see a problem with violence in the media, because it's part of who we are. I feel trying to overcome these impulses entirely is a mistake, rather it's something we need to come to grips with (part of our nature). I think media violence has been around as long as the first forms of media because it's a way of catering to these impulses while still being able to maintain a social order. I mean if you think about it ancient cave paintings showed people hunting, heiroglyphics recorded wars, poetry, plays, paintings, and other things have been showing war, warriors, hunting, and acts of violence as long as they have existed, to say nothing of books. Today's current technology with video, audio, and interactive media is just a new way of doing what we've always done.
I don't want to rant about it too much, but I think "violence is bad" is something people need to get out of their system. Especially seeing as it leads people to see violent instincts, especially when it comes to children and such, as something aberrant as opposed to part of our condition. Truthfully, if it wasn't for violence and aggressively dominating our enviroment humanity never would have progressed to the position it occupies now where we moralize about such things.
I'll also be honest in saying that while operating purely on a system of "might makes right" doesn't work, I think that a purely bureaucratic and administrative system doesn't work either. Today we see a tyranny of the pen, rather than the sword, and it's just as bad. I think a lot of the concerns over violence, especially in countries like the US, come from bureaucrats who realize that the only thing standing between them and a well deserved, horrible, screaming death at the hands of people they exploit, are a few pieces of paper and a general societal consensus to follow the laws. As I've explained before, I feel the USA's "right to keep and bear arms" was intended to try and create a middle ground here, though increasingly naive, anti-violence sentiment is eroding it, and actually causing a lot of the problems we see today. A lot of those unfair laws, corperate policies, and other things generally come from a sense of invulnerability, with people believing that there will never be any direct, physical repercussions, no matter how people are treated at their hands.
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When it comes to PnP RPGs, I think the key element is that they are games. Artistic elements are tertiary to them. I think the issue started to become confused when "White Wolf" started getting pretentious about their games being "art", largely in relation to the violence and deviant sex that started to surround them. While most people are familiar with the incidents of violence surrounding "Dungeons and Dragons", but very few are familiar with White Wolf's even more extreme history (D&D's infamy came from that whole Egbert incident and how Gygax didn't handle it well as I remember).
At any rate:
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/vampireklan.htm
http://www.gothicsubculture.com/vamp-clan.php
Search for White Wolf, Murders, Sex Scandals, Vampire Clan(s), and other things and you'll turn up tons of stuff. This includes things like teachers using gaming groups to solicit sex from students and the like if you dig.
At any rate, White Wolf decided to do things like put preachy full spread "Is this Art" pages in the back of books like "Montreal By Night" which included pictures of lesbian S&M vampires torturing girls chained to a bathroom urinal with an abortion hook. This is about the time things really started to take off there from what I saw.
Now, I have no objection to over the top adult material, and graphic violence (as many might know) but at the same time, I don't think defending "shock horror" on serious artistic grounds is a good idea. Free speech grounds, yes. Perhaps argueing that the media itself is barely artistic enough as a whole to get by, but there is a point at which you get pretentious by claiming "this is serious art" when your "artistic" point is "this is really going to shock you". I don't think people should ban DeSade's "101 Days In Sodom" (which I have read a long time ago), but at the same time nobody is going to convince me that should be considered serious art. It's basically a guy writing down the most offensive things he could think of in prison to get a rise out of people.
As far as the die-rolling interfering with RPGs being art, I think that's more of an issue today with the whole "Storytelling" movement where the PCs go from encounter to encounter to see how things play out, as opposed to proper "scenario based" gaming. It could be argued that RPGs largely take any artistic chops they have from Drama/Acting, even if it's very low-end in most cases. It's improv. Part of the point of the dice is that they are supposed to make the game unpredictable, since nobody (even the GM) knows for sure what is going to happen next, and yet everyone has to react to what happens in character, within the scope of the scenario.
The point being that in the course of that clever master plan, that should work, someone could roll really badly, and then everyone has to react to the results. By the same token, in a desperate situation, characters will oftentimes do desperate things, playing based off the game percentages when they know the odds are against them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and again that desperation, combined with reacting to the results as the character would, is part of the point.
To put things into perspective, let's look at the ciassic D&D example of someone trying to swim in plate mail which is stupid. In general the odds of success here are fairly minimal, but if someone is going to try and do this, even adjusting the stats to give them a decent chance of success, there is typically a reason for it (such as obtaining some treasure, saving another party member, or trying to finish off an aquatic monster). Simply by attempting something this rash it says quite a bit, and again comes down to improv. Can the guy improvise a way (statistically) to pull it off? Will he drown as is the most likely (and realistic) outcome? How does everyone else react to him doing something like this?
