Charlie Booker to Jon Snow on videos games as a medium

SilentFlames26

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I just watched this awesome video that I thought I'd share with you all. In it we see Charlie Booker, an english satire columnist, coming up against Channel Four news presenter Jon Snow. The awesome thing with this clip is it gives a really good look into the idea of old media vs. new media. Personally I think Booker did a good job of presenting video games as an artistic form of media, at least as well as he could when snow would just shoot him down almost every time, especially at the end with his description of Papers Please, but what do you guys think of his case? Could he have presented it differently? What could he have done to get games more recognised as a new artistic form of media?
 

Silvanus

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It's a bit of a pity that Jon seemed to have decided before he started that his mind was made up, and that nothing would change it. He gave up after walking a short distance in one (children's) game. He also seems to hold vidyagaems to a very different standard from film and television.

You know nothing, Jon Snow.
 

TrevHead

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I would have mentioned the connection between physical games, poker, chess, board and table top games and wargaming only that computers allow them to be more complex and varied. Then mention narratives can be told in much better way than other media due to their interaction and immersion.

I can't blame Charlie Brooker for not getting his point across due to the situation he was in though.
 

InsanityRequiem

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Best part that made me shake my head? "There's no women playing these games" by Jon, with Charlie essentially telling him to stuff it. Seriously, Jon's constantly purporting all the senseless old media prejudices with Charlie telling him how he's wrong. It's rather saddening really.
 

War Penguin

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Silvanus said:
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
AAAHHH!!! SON OF A *****! You stole everyone's reply! xD

But yeah, I agree with this guy. Snow seemed like he was actively trying to be ignorant, shooting down Booker before he could actually finish any of his points. Now, that said, while I don't blame Booker and pity him so very much for being in such a situation, he could have done a much much better job than that.

I think the first problem was that he was showing games from this new generation. While he was trying to be topical, let's face it, the games of this generation so far are just straight up meh. I would have shown something a little more simple, and yet still famous. Journey would have been excellent to show Snow. Much better than the Lego Avengers game *shudders*. I think what bogged down Snow was the tutorial levels, in which Journey had a very minimalistic tutorial and had one simple goal in mind: get to the mountain. Lego Avengers just threw shit at him, like cutscenes and tutorials and lots of buttons, and told him to just accept it, which is what Booker was trying to say is a problem. But this is something that bothered me about Booker's argument. If you're trying to show someone closed minded about the possibilities of a new medium but confess the problems, what the hell makes you think that the closed minded person is going to ignore all of those problems? It did not look to me that Booker properly prepared his argument against Snow. If you're trying to present a good argument, you need good examples to support it. Again, that might have been because of the new generation and the games that came with it just to stay topical, but that was his first problem.

Though I did notice something off topic that I would like to note, though I'd probably be crucified with my own cock and balls if I even dared to bring it up in a thread not even related to this, so I'm just gonna put it in spoiler tags. Can you guess what it is?
That's right! SEXISM! Snow kept insisting that this is a very male dominant medium. At least, that's how he viewed it. I think that's where a lot of problems in the industry lie: many publishers want to bring gaming to the general public. But the general public, as shown by Snow, still sees gaming as a male centric thing. So publishers are kind of forced to focus on the "male" demographic. Kinda sad, really. I consider that just a theory though. Just gonna put that under my belt if I ever dare to venture to any of those threads...
Mods, feel free to remove that if you feel it necessary. Just thought it would be important to note. :p


But with all that said, I don't blame Snow for not liking gaming. He can dislike it all he wants for all I care. It makes no difference to me whatsoever. This whole argument is really just a generational thing. Gaming will eventually be A OK in the eyes of the public sooner or later. Maybe not now, but later. And besides, all the people who actively hate gaming will go away with time. All we gotta do is just wait it out. Does that make me a bad person for saying that? Yeah, probably. :p
 

WoW Killer

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For goodness sake it's Brooker.

Anyway, found this mightily funny, I'll have to forward it on. It reminded me a bit of something my dad told me once. He wanted to be in a band when he was younger, but his own father told him rock and roll was the music of the devil and it'd only lead to drugs and an early grave. Of course, when my grandpa was young the same thing was said to him only instead of rock and roll it was jazz. No matter the era, the latest art form is always viewed with suspicion by those who don't understand it.

I don't know what I'd do to make someone like Jon Snow understand gaming. Brooker hinted at Minecraft, which is precisely the sort of game that could make someone change their minds, but Snow couldn't even operate a controller. Hard to teach somebody about computer games if they can't work a computer. Maybe if the people giving us news were people who lived on the same planet as us, that'd be a start.
 

endtherapture

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WoW Killer said:
For goodness sake it's Brooker.

Anyway, found this mightily funny, I'll have to forward it on. It reminded me a bit of something my dad told me once. He wanted to be in a band when he was younger, but his own father told him rock and roll was the music of the devil and it'd only lead to drugs and an early grave. Of course, when my grandpa was young the same thing was said to him only instead of rock and roll it was jazz. No matter the era, the latest art form is always viewed with suspicion by those who don't understand it.

I don't know what I'd do to make someone like Jon Snow understand gaming. Brooker hinted at Minecraft, which is precisely the sort of game that could make someone change their minds, but Snow couldn't even operate a controller. Hard to teach somebody about computer games if they can't work a computer. Maybe if the people giving us news were people who lived on the same planet as us, that'd be a start.
I felt like Snow finally got it in "Papers Please" which he sounded very interested in and is kind of like a Breaking Bad scenario except you are playing as Walter White.

However it's just a shame we got bugged down him watching them play cutscenes and scenarios.
 

Casual Shinji

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I don't know Charlie Brooker, but I think the fact that we have a man who's in his 40's and not affiliated with the games industry, who is still standing up for the medium and seems to genuinely understand it is a very encouraging sign.
 

RedDeadFred

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Am I the only one who read "Jon Snow" and immediately assumed: Game of Thrones thread? I leave rather disappointed.
 

Idocreating

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Casual Shinji said:
I don't know Charlie Brooker, but I think the fact that we have a man who's in his 40's and not affiliated with the games industry, who is still standing up for the medium and seems to genuinely understand it is a very encouraging sign.
Not at all surprising really, Charlie is of the age where he would have grown up with the earliest consoles and even back then players could see the appeal and longevity of the medium.
 

LittleBlondeGoth

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Actually, Charlie Brooker is associated with the games industry - he wrote for PC Zone many years ago, and is well known here in the UK for his views. In fact, only Saturday night, he had a 2 hour documentary on channel 4 titled "How Video Games Changed The World". He's a big fan. :)
 
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"They're not killing people in a videogame" says Charlie.
"Well they're going through the psychological process of doing it" says Jon.

If someone can tell me why footage-of and articles detailing real life violence and pain can and often have made me lose sleep and mental well-being while videogames don't have that affect on me, whilst also dancing around the idea that my brain knows the difference between fiction and reality (which really blows a whole in Snow's theories) I'll be mightily impressed.
 

Charli

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Snow's old and terrified of new shit. He'll eventually roll over and die so those of us with a slightly clearer understanding of todays world and media can talk about all the new shit that WE'RE scared and terrified of.

And the cycle will be complete.
 

J Tyran

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Poor guy, didn't he ever build space ships and tanks with his Lego? I used to have armadas of bright red, green and yellow battle ships blowing the crap out of each other with imaginary lasers. How is that all that different to a Lego Iron Man kicking Lego arse?
 

blackrave

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Am I only one who is convinced that if you want someone to get into gaming someone a bit older you give them something with clear enough controls and preferably turn-based
Hell, lets take latest X-Com as an example
99% of controls can be done with mouse only (well, you can use hotkeys, but you don't have to)
Battles are turn-based so it doesn't force you into taking reflex decisions
Everything gets precise description, so if you pay attention you know what does what
And at higher difficulty it is quite intellectually demanding
And you don't need ununpentium powered/nitrogen cooled rig to run the game

You know what? Someone should send copy of X-Com to Jon Snow


Charli said:
Snow's old and terrified of new shit. He'll eventually roll over and die so those of us with a slightly clearer understanding of todays world and media can talk about all the new shit that WE'RE scared and terrified of.

And the cycle will be complete.
Oh those damn kids with their brain implanted VR snuff porn.
In our days when you wanted to kill someone you got the FPS, and when you wanted to fuck something you got the porn. But combining those two? Atrocious!
 

snappydog

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It's a real shame that Snow kept all but shouting Brooker down - Brooker says at the end of the video that he feels he hasn't been given adequate opportunity to defend games and I totally agree. All his points were met with 'that's not true' or something equally insubstantial but determined. It's a shame but there are some people who won't ever change their minds.
 

TrulyBritish

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War Penguin said:
It doesn't look like Brooker got to choose the games seeing as he was annoyed that they'd only brought COD and Lego Marvel, it probably was what they were given with the console.

OT: I think Brooker did fairly well if he didn't get to choose the games and especially seeing as Snow basically didn't seem at all interested in listening to his points. I mean seriously, is Snow just that stupid or is he just trying to recycle other ignorant arguments just to annoy Brooker? I fail to see how a rational man can look at a Lego character being blown up and say it's putting through the psychological training to be a killer. It's not like you take apart lego characters apart anyway, is it?
 

Tom_green_day

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He actually started off his career as a game journalist before getting popular.
Does anyone know when/where his documentary is on about games? It's Saturday but I'm not sure which and I can't remember which channel. I saw an advert- think it's 4?