Government vs Video Games

When depictions of gratuitous violence in media come under attack after every mass killing, video games predictably take the majority of this misdirected blame, especially when the killer is twenty-something or younger. Good people who play video games, when they hear of this, are either indifferent or outraged, but no one is ever surprised. I bet no one was surprised the first time it ever happened, either. This kind of reaction might be reckless and inappropriate, but — let's be honest — it's understandable.

When a guy shoots a bunch of people, and they go into his house and find a video game in which the objective is to (virtually) shoot a bunch of (virtual) people, it certainly looks pretty incriminating. I can hardly blame the pundits and lawmakers for jumping to conclusions. More damning yet is that violent video games, unlike any of the violent movies this killer might have enjoyed, have an interactive element which puts the player in direct control of that violence. In the case of first-person shooters, it allows the player to pull the trigger.

Never mind the fact that ownership of these games is so common that their presence in the home of a killer is almost meaningless. When an innocent child plays Call of Duty and doesn't kill anyone for real, it's not nearly as newsworthy as the social outcast who (allegedly, according to some guy, maybe) became addicted to online first-person shooters before slaughtering children. People who get all of their information from the news are obviously going to have a skewed perspective. Those who think they see a correlation, and then blindly make the illogical leap to causation, don't fully realize that the video game has become such a socially acceptable pastime. They don't understand that recent spree killers who are known to have played video games did so only because they were, at least in this particular way, somewhat normal.

It's not entirely insane to draw bad conclusions about the effects of violent media when you simply haven't been told that an entire generation has been willingly exposed to everything from Mortal Kombat to Halo without a disproportionate number of individuals developing psychopathic or violent tendencies. The effortless and instant gratification that we get from video games and other computerized gadgets has only turned us into a bunch of lazy slobs. If it's true that violent crime has actually decreased in recent years, it's probably because we're too lazy to go outside and kill people even if we want to. We'd rather order pizza from our video game console and continue yelling obscenities into our headset while we 360 no-scope the kid on the other team and then brag about how tough we are.

Studies on the possible effects of exposure to violent video games continue to contradict each other, as do the self-proclaimed experts, but if video games do turn young people into murderers then it sure isn't obvious to those of us who actually play them. The gray-haired people who disagree with us have only an outsider's perspective.

Regardless of the facts, the usual scapegoat is used and abused every time a national tragedy prompts a discussion of what might be done to prevent violence. While cooler heads and logical thinking usually prevail, logic necessarily goes out the window for a period of time after every widely publicized act of senseless violence, because during such a time it's considered rude not to be ruled by your emotions. (If something terrible happens and you're not immediately calling for the public execution of the first possible suspect without waiting for a trial, you're a traitor; if children die and you're not calling for billions of dollars worth of unnecessarily legislation, you just don't care about children.) Proposals to restrict the content or sale of video games inevitably pop up here and there, and we all argue about them until our faces turn blue. However, by the time these proposals hit modern interpretations of the First Amendment like a brick wall, we've already forgotten about them, and things go back to normal until the next school shooting.

The cycle is currently in the process of repeating itself, thanks in part to last year's mass murder in Newtown, Connecticut. The push to depict the video game as a dangerous brainwashing tool has since gone into overdrive — not only because of the particularly horrific nature of this killing, and claims that the young perpetrator played too much Call of Duty, but also because violence in media had already been on the public's mind since the earlier shooting in Aurora, Colorado. After the more recent bombing attack in Boston, Massachusetts, I almost expected the anti-gaming sentiment to graduate from "video games cause violence" to "video games cause terrorism" (for it's almost a certainty that at least one of the Tsarnaev brothers had been exposed to at least one video game featuring some form of violence, and that's usually enough for a sensationalist news article). Fortunately, though, it seems that video games are only a plausible scapegoat until the T-word is used.

Regardless of which (if any) crimes can be linked to the consumption of video games, politicians are once again trying to fix the apparent epidemic of violent crime (i.e., a few high-profile cases) by campaigning for tighter restrictions on the medium. This is happening now in my home state of New Jersey, perhaps most notable today for hosting awful reality TV shows and having many of its tourist attractions ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. Am I worried? Maybe I would be if I were 12 years old, but as an adult, I'm outside the scope of any realistic attempt at regulation. Should anyone be worried? Not yet, since all of the proposed legislation I've seen is useless and inconsequential, as if government officials are just trying to look busy without rocking the boat too much. (And I guess that's normal.)

Earlier this month, for example, we heard of an assemblywoman who wants to ban playable M-rated and AO-rated games from public places. While such a proposal isn't by any means outrageous, someone clearly goofed up the details, because the idea as written is little more than a nuisance and a waste of tax money. Such a law, pertaining specifically to video games that are playable in public, could only affect arcade games and those console set-ups in video game stores. But the ESRB — creator of the M and AO ratings — doesn't even rate arcade games, and as for the playable console games in retail stores, I just couldn't care less if I tried. Last time I went to Best Buy, the games on display were kid-friendly platformers and Kinect nonsense.

To get arcade games back on the chopping block, they could just remove the references to ESRB ratings from the bill and apply the restrictions more broadly to any game featuring violence, but the popularity of arcade games is so low that passing the law would hardly be worth the effort. There are a few arcade machines at my local movie theater but nobody plays them. (And when the price of a single play has gone from $0.25 to $0.50 and sometimes $1.00, why should they? We all have video games in our homes now, and we can play them all day without losing a bunch of quarters.) There are still some standalone video arcades along the boardwalk (assuming they weren't all washed away when that hurricane blew through the Northeast), but they don't tend to have more than a few violent games. At worst, they'd have to toss the latest installment of Time Crisis or House of the Dead.

Meanwhile, New Jersey governor Chris Christie (whose high approval ratings have made him somewhat of a big deal) wants to prohibit the sale of M-rated and AO-rated games to minors without parental consent. This idea actually makes some sense, if you believe in the ESRB rating system. Of course, such a law would run afoul of a Supreme Court decision that overturned a similar law in California on the grounds that video games (like other creative works) are a protected form of free speech. For this reason, Christie's plan is likely to fail. But, hypothetically, what if a law restricting the sale of violent games were passed anyway? And what if it weren't immediately overturned by a higher court? I've composed a list of all the things that might change in my life as a direct result:

• There might be fewer underage brats in the online games that I play.
• I might need to bring my driver's license when I drive to the local video game store.

... That's all I've got.

Whenever we hear of possible restrictions on the sale of games to minors, there are those who act as if an outright ban on violent video games is in the works, and listening to all the unwarranted outrage is really tiring. Whether it's all a kneejerk reaction by people who jump to conclusions without carefully reading the news, or a genuine fear of a "slippery slope" that ends with blatant censorship, such an alarmist response is just as unnecessary and unhelpful as the actual legislation that's being proposed.

With a law in place, not much would change for most retailers and consumers, since the industry's self-imposed standards are almost identical to what our elected officials want to enforce. The ESRB recommends that M-rated games not be sold directly to anyone under 17 years old, and most retail stores already go along with this. In fact, on average, game retailers are doing pretty well at keeping these adult-oriented games out of children's hands. According to the FTC, it's easier for a minor to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie than to buy an M-rated game, so it's nothing short of ironic that my governor thinks we should be looking to R-rated films as an example of proper regulation and then "setting the same standard" for video games.

Compliance with this standard would surely be even higher if it became a legal issue, but parents would still be able to buy the games for their kids, which is exactly what they're doing now. Most young kids who play Call of Duty: Black Ops II didn't sneak out of the house and take a bus to the nearest GameStop to buy it. They got it from mommy for Christmas. The fact that so many minors are playing violent video games, while so few are actually buying them, means a lot of parents have no problem with providing the consent that the proposed law would require.

Meanwhile, parents who don't want their kids playing violent video games can easily enforce this decision at home, and this is already happening too. A kid who buys an M-rated game without an accompanying adult isn't necessarily doing it without parental permission; in fact, he or she probably does have that permission, implied or explicit, because otherwise the game might end up in the trash soon after entering the house. Some parents, of course, are just neglectful and stupid, but that's not the government's business. There's no need for state legislators to step in and raise everyone's children.

For all these reasons, passing a law to enforce age restrictions would be little more than another waste of time and money, regardless of whether video games have anything to do with violent behavior in children. On the other hand, for all the same reasons, I'm finding it hard to care whether this or any similar law is passed, now or in the future. Do violent video games cause violent behavior? Almost certainly not. Does this mean adult-oriented games are appropriate for kids? Not necessarily. Although the government might not have the right to enforce it, parents should decide what their kids play and I applaud game retailers for enforcing the age restrictions even when no law is in place. You won't hear me complaining if the government spoils the fun for a relatively small number of kids who actually manage to buy Grand Theft Auto behind their parents' backs without being stopped at the counter.

I'm on Twitter.

The frequency of new material here on my lonely blog has decreased considerably since I first began. My continued employment is partly to blame, as is my tendency to write long posts (which, in the absence of abundant free time, are too often started and never finished). Consequently, I've been juggling a backlog of unfinished posts on top of an even larger backlog of unfinished games.

To give myself some room for opining without committing to 3500-word blog posts, as well as to create a dumping ground for opinions that simply aren't worth that many words, I've finally decided to join the rest of the world and make a Twitter account. (Now, finally, my thoughts can be limited to 140 characters!) I can't guarantee that I'll actually use it more than once a year, but it might be cool.

Roger Ebert & Video Games as Art

It was many years ago that Roger Ebert first claimed, controversially, that video games are not, and never will be, a form of art. (He wrote about the subject on a number of occasions since then, at times giving a little more credit to video game development as a creative endeavor but ultimately maintaining his stance. I don't want to summarize the whole drama, which occurred over several years, but you can still find his articles if you go out and search for them.) The typical response from a subset of video game enthusiasts was, and still is, to treat him like Hitler for having such an opinion. Although Ebert hadn't said much about video games since 2010, people never did seem to shut up about it, and his recent death has prompted a revival of the tired debate.

And, to put it bluntly, I'm a bit disgusted by how that debate is going. I've always thought that the question of video games as an art form was an interesting thing to discuss, but I've never been on a crusade to prove one point or the other, because I have things to do and because I never really thought it was a crusade-worthy issue. Some people, however, were seriously upset by Ebert's opinion... so upset, in fact, that they never got over it, and went on Twitter after his death to get the last word. To be honest, the problem with this behavior isn't that it's tasteless or childish, which it is. The problem is that they really do care this much. The problem is that they're so insulted by the idea of a video game being less culturally relevant than a famous painting or a piece of music — or even a critically acclaimed film — that they spend more time arguing about it than actually playing the video games they supposedly enjoy. They think it's their duty to defend video games from these accusations of — I don't even know what — being toys, perhaps, which is what they are.

The people who have devoted so much time to debating with Ebert on this issue, both during the last few years of his life and in the few days following his death, have almost certainly lost their marbles. They've also, I think, lost sight of what matters. Remember when gameplay was more important to video games than artistic integrity and all this other stuff? Remember when we used to play video games for fun, despite the video game's generally bad reputation as a mind-rotting waste of time for losers, without spending so much time worrying about what other people thought of our hobby?

Remember when the success of a game was dependent on more than the advertising budget because developers actually released demos instead of relying entirely on trailers consisting only of pre-rendered scenes and dubstep? Remember when video games were actually hard because the developers knew that overcoming a difficult challenge is more satisfying than watching a movie with some intermittent gameplay sequences and frequent quick time events? Some people don't, because they were too busy making fun of people like me before video games were cool, and because they never actually played a video game before the release of Mass Effect 2 (or whatever super-mainstream, over-hyped, space-marine-themed title convinced them to give video games a try).

Times have changed, and it would seem that a lot of today's so-called "gamers" can't enjoy their video games unless everyone accepts their hobby as something deep and meaningful. They're not happy unless everyone on Earth is aware, and agrees, that video games are works of art that deserve to be treated as works of art. Anyone with a dissenting opinion is dismissed as ignorant.

I've always supported the notion of video games as art, in theory. However, after seeing the absurdly desperate manner in which this position has been defended against the inevitable skepticism, by those who dare to call themselves "gamers" even though they obviously don't like games enough to enjoy them without external validation of their hobby's importance, I'm beginning to wonder if I should distance myself from these people entirely. At the very least, for the sake of clarification, I feel the need to write this addendum to my earlier post about video games as art.

Although I did write, in that earlier post, that I don't see a reason to explicitly exclude the medium from the definition of art, I do recognize that most video games just don't fit the bill. Perhaps only a few of them do. Perhaps none, if your definition of art requires that the art in question be up to the standards set by great writers, painters, composers, and performers in the past. While I've technically taken a position opposite that of Ebert, in arguing that games can be works of art in principle, I don't get offended when someone tells me that my favorite video game isn't a work of art. Even if I disagree, it's hard to care, since I don't play video games for their artistic value; I play them because they're fun. I argued that video games can be art for the sake of argument only, and I'm fully aware that we rarely see a video game that can be artistically valuable (in the same way that a movie is artistically valuable) while simultaneously being a good game.

Many will tell you that video games, as a rule, absolutely are an art form, but that this art form is at such an early stage of development that it has yet to be appreciated. To be honest, I think this is ridiculous; the video game itself is not a form of art, but rather a set of rules. In its most basic form, a video game is similar to a traditional game, like checkers, except that its rules are enforced by a computer instead of the players themselves. If and when a video game is appreciated as a work of art, it's almost always because some form of artistically creative work has been blended with that set of computer-enforced rules that defines what a video game is.

MoMA curators might disagree, as they chose some rather simplistic games like Tetris and Pac-Man for their video game collection, but the reason for their inclusion (as "outstanding examples of interaction design") is not exactly consistent with the typical justifications for treating video games as works of art. It seems to me that most video game enthusiasts would point instead to games with complex stories, visual aesthetics, well composed music, and skilled vocal performance. In the absence of these things, a video game might be an example of great design — and I can certainly appreciate that — but it's not the type of game that anyone cares to discuss when the "video games as art" debate is had. To fit the definition of "art" that people normally use in this context, a game needs to be beautiful, moving, and worthy of critical analysis beyond a simple commentary on its gameplay.

In other words, the idea of the "video game as art" most often refers to a hybrid medium, and the video games most often placed in this category are those which imitate or incorporate other existing art forms. What makes the video game different from those existing art forms is its ability to immerse the player, and to allow the player to become a part of the experience instead of an observer. So while gameplay is important, you do need something other than gameplay if you want to convey any kind of meaning. More importantly, the final result needs to be cohesive. The inclusion of a story alone does not make the game itself a work of art unless the story is truly interactive; when the gameplay is merely broken up by occasional cutscenes, you might as well have made a movie instead. And most story-driven games fail in exactly this way.

For these reasons, I would say that video games can be art, and that such games do exist, but I don't think they're the majority. Most games are just games, to me, and even those who think I'm wrong — even those who would argue that all video games are art by definition — would surely concede that only a few of them are good art. (You can say that film is an art form, but no one says with a straight face that the average action movie is a work of art, so there's no reason to do the same for a medium whose status as an art form is already disputed at a fundamental level.)

I disagree with Ebert in principle, but as I see it, everything he wrote was entirely reasonable. He wasn't telling us that video games are garbage or that they shouldn't be enjoyed; his argument was based mostly on his understanding of how "art" is defined (which, I should mention, is rather subjective). He didn't seem to think highly of video games overall, but he was respectful. Perhaps he was more respectful to his opponents than they were to him; some of them reacted with such anger that one might think video games were their religion and Ebert had insulted their prophet.

Perhaps we should have simply disregarded his opinion, on the grounds that he admitted to having neither any exposure to video games nor any desire to change this, just as one would disregard a video game critic who says "movies are not art" without ever having watched one. But it was still an opinion he was allowed to have. Furthermore, no one should have demanded that he give video games a try, in order to validate his opinion, when he'd already decided that he wasn't interested in doing any such thing. You don't have to spend dozens or hundreds of hours on a hobby to know whether it's worth your time. I've never tried collecting stamps but I'm pretty sure I'd never enjoy it.

Humble Not Bundle

When I wrote about the most recent Humble Bundle sale two weeks ago, I made a rather pessimistic prediction about future bundles and the amount of content that would be available for below-the-average contributors. While I wasn't being completely serious, I was waiting patiently to see whether the next bundle would return to the old standard of just a single locked beat-the-average game, or whether it would remain at two, or even increase to three. Of course, I was expecting the next Humble Bundle sale to be an actual bundle.

Suddenly, as of yesterday, Humble Bundle is doing a weekly thing, and this week's iteration includes only a single game. I very much doubt this is the end of the bundles we all know and love, unless they're planning on changing their name and web address, so try not to panic. Just think of it this way: Those awkward pauses in between bundles — during which the Humble Bundle site became a little more than a shrine to a sale no longer being offered — are no more. They're claiming a different game will be offered every week, starting now with Bastion, so as long as they can keep finding new games without resorting to repeats too often, the fun will never end.

Honestly, though, skepticism is in my nature and I'm not sure what I think of this. It's a neat idea, and I've already made it known that I regretted missing Bastion in Humble Indie Bundle V, but I'm not exactly pooping my pants with excitement over the whole concept. If I give in to temptation and buy Bastion tomorrow, it doesn't mean I'll be picking up indie games from Humble Bundle on a weekly basis (and with a full time job, I doubt I can even play through them at such a pace.)

As always, you can still name your own price. A penny gets you the game, a dollar gets you a Steam copy, and paying above the average gets you the soundtrack, as well as some other goodies we haven't seen before: some art, some sheet music, and some ringtones. And here's where things get interesting: A purchase of $25 or more gets you some actual (physical) merchandise: a bandana, the soundtrack on a CD, and a couple of postcards.

The highest-tier purchase, obviously, is for those who truly want to support the developers, so the monetary value of that merchandise is pretty much irrelevant. Customers who aim to buy goods, not to donate money, will at best exceed the average contribution by one cent in order to get the soundtrack and the artwork. People who just want the game are unlikely to pay more than the bare minimum unless their guilty consciences push them to open their wallets a little wider. In the best case scenario, these frugal contributors value Steam keys enough that their definition of "bare minimum" is raised from one cent to one dollar.

That is, by the way, a big improvement. And while I don't advocate paying the absolute bare minimum of a penny, I do think that paying a dollar is fine. The people running the Humble Bundle seem to think so too, since they've decided to dangle that first carrot — those Steam keys and (in some cases) soundtracks — at the one-dollar mark.

For these one-dollar contributors, the new weekly sales have no added perks, and are likely to seem underwhelming in comparison to the less frequent, full-fledged Humble Bundle events. A video game for a dollar is a great deal, but it's considerably less than what people were getting for a dollar two weeks ago. In the good old bundles like the one that ended earlier this month, a dollar can get you several games, plus their soundtracks, plus Steam keys, plus any extra games added to the bundle after your purchase. (All you miss by paying below the average, in a typical bundle, is an additional game or two, as well as any late additions if you're a slowpoke who didn't pay early enough to get them automatically.)

On the other hand, I could be completely wrong about all of this, and these weekly sales could end up being even more successful than the bundles because there's always something on sale. Some might even prefer buying their games one-at-a-time instead of grabbing entire bundles of games and only playing one of them. It's really too early to say how this will turn out in the long run, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.

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Update (April 16, 2013):

Humble Bundle is already taking a break from its weekly sales, so I guess it was an incorrect to say that those awkward pauses in between events are no more. Still, I trust the weekly sales will come more often than the full-sized bundles. (Otherwise, what's the point?)