The Game Stash: Show Some Respect

[bobdevis]

Oh, man, wrong place to discuss semiotics, I fear.

Agreed. But you seem so sure of yourself that I simply have to take you on. All in good fun and all.... I hope nobody minds.

If words were subjectively defined we wouldn't be able to communicate unless we shared a brain!

If you take a word like 'patriotism' this miscommunication is exactly what you get. There are endless debates on who is a traitor and who is a patriot, simply because the word means different things to different people. With 'patriotism' the debate tend to stay so hot because in this case people generally refuse to adapt their nomenclature.
In the case of 'chair' and 'art' the misunderstanding is of the same nature. It's just nobody cares about the definition of 'chair' enough to flame for it.

The basis of human understanding of any concept is "I know one when I see one". This is subjectivity at it's best.

This is because:
a) Nature simply wired us up that way. You can't ague with nature.
b) We have nothing better. The definition of the word 'word' can only be given with other words. This means that any argument or definition is a circular one and has no basis in reality. We just use language anyway, regardless of this basic flaw, because it works. Not because there is a fundamental objective truth behind it.

 

[s0denone]

Summary of different viewpoints

I am Joe Gamer. I enjoy video games because they are fun. It angers me when people that get a lot of media attention speak about games in an ignorant manner, misleading the mainstream.

I am Jack Thompson. I have agendas that are served by media interest in myself. I need a cause that will generate that media attention; something new and edgy that parents already have a predisposition to dislike. I will shit all over video games.

No opportunity to understand? It's not a lifetime's work to pick up a controller and play some games. By being evangelical before you experience or at least understand something, you're being a douche.

Excellent post.
I wholeheartedly agree here.

To be honest, I'm finding this "It's all the other, less restrained, gamers' fault" discussion to be rather annoying. What is this? Stop acting like such cowards. You can say Jack Thompson is an asshole. He is. That's fine.

Don't make him into some sort of "having had no chance to understand" victim of nerd rage. It's silly and, quite frankly, incredibly stupid.

Some people in the media are asshole. They talk shit, and nobody except their target demographic likes them. You honestly think anyone takes Jack Thompson seriously except for gullible parents? No! But is that a problem, since some of these parents are no-doubt nurturing a son or daughter who likes to play games? Yes!

Look at Glenn Beck. He is another asshole. Basically everything that man says is a lie. Gullible parents aren't his demographic though, it's gullible people... Gullible right-wing people.

There are a lot of assholes in the media spotlight - are you telling me that I'm wrong for calling them assholes? Come on! I should be free to defend whatever I want, especially if I devote several hours a day to it, and especially if the only arguments against it are absolute lies.

I can the point with "Outsiders wanting the mainstream acknowledgement more" but it's just such a general statement. That applies to everything, not just gamers. It applies to every fetish, odd hobby or anything ever done by anyone.

Basically your article makes several points, but most of them are not directly related to the problem at hand. The ones that are, simply asks us to no be mad at misunderstood Jack Thompson, who hasn't had a chance to form a legitimate opinion.

We can talk all we want. Rub our own bellybuttons. This is just bullshit.

 

[wonkify]

One facet of concern about this is the problem of people who dismiss the ever growing gaming community influencing that same community.
For example, Mass Effect had personal relationships that could become sexual. The sexual encounters were presented in a very subdued but tasteful fashion, very PG rated for a Mature game.
Following blasting in the media by professional complainer groups Mass Effect 2 portrayed sexual encounters in a ridiculously self conscious and almost entirely absent fashion. Inappropriately done for a Mature rated game, but understandable. In fact if Bioware decided to respond to the meaningless griping at all, I would rather they went all the way and showed "sexual encounters" with both participants clothed in full space armor to make their point.
But the bottom line is that those who disregard and disrespect the millions of adults who game do influence what those millions get to experience.
This is a concrete issue that has an impact and isn't easily ignored.

 

[bobdevis]

[...]And whether or not you believe in absolute truth [...]

Hehe, allright. I'll stop here. Further then this language can not take us
I just have some quick comments on how we got here.

As a computer science student I came to realize exactly how ambiguous and illogical natural language is. When you need to write code that is specified by someone else in English, the amount of omissions and deceptive descriptions you end up dealing with is staggering. Even if the writer did his best to be clear.
Maybe this made me a bit to cynical, who knows.....

Hundreds of very brilliant social scientists have been deabting and studying it for centuries, and [...] the [...] debate that has been ongoing for a very long time [...] leaves very little for a blogger [...] to discover out of good ole common sense.

I invite you to read this [http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html]. I assumed you didn't drop this fallacy on purpose, so I let it go. It's just a good thing to be aware of in the future. Or disguise it better if you are consciously doing it

 

[RvLeshrac]

Its funny. Gamers always ask to be respected and treated well, but whenever anyone criticizes games, gamers respond by sending rage-fueled hate-mail and sometimes death threats.

If gamers want to be treated well, perhaps they should start acting better.

Seriously, who cares what they think? Just play your games and be happy. I know you want to convince the general public that gamers aren't rage-fueled killing machines, but sending threats to an opponent of gaming doesn't exactly help our cause.

EDIT: Also, happy birthday you magnificently mustachioed man.

Ask your local paper, whenever *anyone* criticizes *anything*, *lots* of people respond with rage-fueled hate-mail and sometimes death threats.

Last I checked, gamers weren't asking to be treated "better," but rather asking to be treated like everyone else. Gaming is the current generation's comic books (or arcades [or skate parks {or pool halls }])*.

Gaming is a hobby. Why in the hell don't the people who look down on games also look down on football, baseball, cheerleading, or any of the "real" activities that result in *real* injuries and death? Those seem *far* more "dangerous" than any videogames**.

Oh, and

All I'm suggesting is that we're blaming them for not understanding something that they have had no opportunity to understand.

I don't even understand this point. That's like saying we're blaming them for not breathing. There's a Gamestop on every corner, next to the Starbucks. That's hardly "no opportunity." I'm sure MajorNelson would love to have Ebert over to play some 360 games.

There are <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_about_video_games>books and <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_video_games>films about nearly every single aspect of gaming, so they can't claim to "not understand" them because they "can't play them," any more than someone can claim to "not understand" films because they "can't make them."

*A man could run out of brackets this way.
**OK, maybe not more dangerous than the Wii.
***I'm sneaking this in, but the word is 'authority,' people.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Actually gamers do ask for absolute respect by demanding it other than leading by example and trying to be nice to non gamers, look at casual gamers, according to the hardcore crowd they should be burned at the stake for even thinking of shaking a wii mote.

In this regard, they're like ever other "hardcore" audience of every other form of media.
For instance, film buffs rage like buggery at "summer-flick loving, pop-corn eating twits who get Michael Bay's mansion gold-plated yearly ".

I don't believe this unique to gaming, these vocal lovers of a medium, screaming that everyone should recognise the genius of their beloved medium of entertainment.

 

[Jenx]

You know, I love how there's this ongoing discussion about semantics and art and all that good stuff, yet nobody has actually decided to post what they think art is. If it's objective - let's hear what all those scientists and philosophers and other people with lots of time on their hands have decided on as a definition for art.