Better Game Heroes Can Actually Save Real Lives

[KisaiTenshi]

I think he/she is referring to the public school system; boys are overwhelmingly the ones diagnosed with ADHD, the majority of the ones to receive suspensions, and the schools are cutting down on recess and PE classes to teach the shit that's going to be on a test. Contact sports and games like football and tag are increasingly being neutered and the boyish desire for play fights and games like cops and robbers occasionally end with someone being arrested for real.

The greater problem is that schools are treating students like prisoners, not children. This in turn is caused by school districts or the higher powers (city/government) cutting budgets to the bone and not providing adequate support for ... well anything. So when a student is suffering physically or emotionally, they're just sent home to let the parents deal with it... even when the parents are the cause of their suffering. Ever scan over 4chan and read the threats about people planning to kill themselves... or people enabling/offering advice on how to do it instead of trying to help them emotionally?

Webcomics/fanfiction, Games (particuarly MMO or multiplayer), and internet forums/chat are forms of escapism. When the attitude of the people you interact with online is also terrible (see 4chan, reddit, something awful, ED, etc) kids are given the idea that -everyone is terrible- and that that is how life is. Like one persons world view is framed by their experiences. Bullying, software piracy, drug culture and rape culture are all things that come about of having a very one-sided view that what you are doing harms nobody. If nobody challenges your world view, then you will continue to do bad things to the detriment of others and yourself.

Which goes back to the cycle in school. Teachers haven't had the ability for decades to actually punish children beyond "send them home." What do bad parents do? Nothing. They don't see a problem, or don't care that their children are showing rotten behavior. So how do you get the parents to notice? Send the kids to jail... or hold the parents responsible for all criminal behavior their child engages in. So if your kid bullies another kid into hanging themselves, who goes to jail?

See there's this disconnect between "kids will be kids (and will make mistakes)" versus "kids are acting out because there is no emotional support in their lives."

Anyway I can't really speak beyond my own experiences, suffice it to say that parents that don't take an interest in their childrens activities daily, don't know jack about what their children are into. I'm not asking that all parents be helicopter parents, but I do wish that parents would be involved with their children, be it playing games, watching movies, playing sports, theatre, drawing or whatever.

 

[ToastyMozart]

It's tricky... asking for help and showing emotions often can seem like a hero character... can't handle things. Therefore making him (or her) less of a hero, incapable of overcoming a challenge or accomplishing a task, and more of a... I don't know, a coordinator? Which is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in a military fantasy, where rigid structures and hierarchies should be maintained, but tend to go out the window in a more classical hero story/ myth. Oh, heroes in those tales get help, show uncertainty, and occasionally get a chance to be normal people, sure they do, but often they don't have to ask for help - it's offered, or earned in an exchange.

*cough*OtherM*coughcough* a game that took a character from "stoic" super being who fought without aid to just one person whose relationships were more determining than her "attitude" which was insufficient to deal with the piling emotional stresses, especially from a situation that confused her (she didn't win the last fight someone saved her, who she was supposed to kill... out of blind love and changed her too...how why what) Moreover she's forced to follow orders that aren't instructions on how to be the winniest winner but just to obey for some older boring dude who doesn't like her being awesome and is excluding her from the ingroup.
Gamers didn't react well.

It's not so much that they showed more emotions from her, as it is that she somehow became incompetent. It's not that people hated having to not use powers because Adam said so, but because the orders made no sense, hence the infamy of that part where you had to go through an extremely hot room without using heat-resistive armor. If he just put restrictions on the Plasma Beam and Power Bombs, it would be understandable (one poses the risk of accidental friendly fire by phasing through walls, and the other is basically a tiny nuke), but there was no justifiable reason for disabling protective systems[Footnote] Imagine David Sarif calling up Adam in the middle of Hengsha and saying "hey, no using invisibility in this section, kthnxbye." [/Footnote]. It wasn't anger that Samus got upset at Ridley's return, but that her suddenly freezing up hadn't been given any story justification or foreshadowing prior to it, and she had never shown signs of reacting like that before in the several other run-ins with it (nor indeed, in the game set after this one), so it came out of nowhere.

The outrage wasn't because they showed the more emotional side of her character, it was because they completely changed it, with no explanation or character development leading up to those changes.

If they decided to explore the consequences of Master Chief having all his fears, concerns, and emotional "weaknesses" forcefully stripped out of him as a child (which they apparently did somewhat in 4 with his interactions with Cortana), I don't think people would mind. If they suddenly had him freak out and go comatose at the sight of a Brute, and refuse to use his armor's energy shields on a $20 bet with the Arbiter, people would lose their shit.