Now see what you’ve done.
by John Walker on Mar.22, 2006, under The Rest
Brian will be a day late, due to something YOU did. I hope you’re sorry.
All content on this blog, including Rum Doings, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Design: Chris Ksoll - playblack.net
March 22nd, 2006 on 02:36
I was until you said that.
March 22nd, 2006 on 18:57
Nay, lad, for I am proud of my rabbit-delaying propensities.
March 22nd, 2006 on 19:43
John I recommend you do ” listen again” of the Front Row of today., when it appears on the website. For your interest and as a gaming journalist.
An…. interesting… report on the release of America’s Army on consoles. First item, you’d think they would do it properly, finally recognising gaming as culture. Not to be.
March 22nd, 2006 on 21:46
TV games are a part of culture. Who ever said they were not. Just as conkers, skipping, hopscotch and tiddlywinks are part of culture. It would be an odd commentator who tried to claim otherwise.
March 22nd, 2006 on 22:36
Meh, it could have been worse. The commentators seemed a lot more interested in the concept of games as recutiment and the political message inherent than anything else, like the quality of the game.
I didn’t care for the rancid sterotyping (gee, can’t you play computer games and be the outdoorsy, football palying type at the same time?), but the bit about desensitizing to violence was pretty mild by the usual “Videogames make you an axe-murderer” standards.
In a way it’s a good thing that it got onto Front Row at all.
One thing that did stick out for me is that Mark Lawson obviously had no idea what he was fdoing, and I wonder if this is one of the problems that games uniquely have when it comes to mainstream acceptance. In order to experience many games, indeed most, requires a certain degree of skill, or at least to know your way around the controller. Unlike many other controversial modes of expression that have been demonised (rock and roll, violent films, rap music etcetera), there’s this wall wherin people simply CAN’T experience games because they lack the ability. Therefore they are kept ignorant of them, and ignorance leads into fear, &c.
That’s why I think the things that will do most for the widespread acceptance of videogames are the recent moves (SingStar, Guitar Hero, Buzz! and Nintendo’s Revolution console) to demystify the means of controlling the game, into something vastly more intuitive.
March 23rd, 2006 on 08:40
Oh, don’t be so melodramatic.
March 23rd, 2006 on 10:33
Well yes I see what you mean about that hurdle.. I watched The Money Programme on Fiddy Cen’ and it showed him played his PS2 game. He strafed left and right looking at the floor, shooting. The camera filmed that. No-one asked questions like “what are you doing?”.
March 23rd, 2006 on 10:38
“In order to experience many games, indeed most, requires a certain degree of skill,”
I call this phenonemon “Gaming Literacy”.
KG
March 23rd, 2006 on 11:55
Everything’s gotta have a label, eh Kieron?
March 23rd, 2006 on 12:57
” I call this phenonemon “Gaming Literacy”. ”
Well, quite. The problem being that while the vasyt majority of the people in the western world are reading-literate (and therefore COULD experience great literature), only a minority are gaming-literate (and therefore simply CAN’T experience great gaming).
For example, Half-Life 2 is a fantastic game, evoking many emotions and providing experiences that anyone could appreciate – were they only able to operate the controls with sufficient competency.
Many people simply don’t enjoy frustration with their entertainment, or at least are only willing to tolerate it to a certain extent.
I think game shave a lot less in common with book,s TV and movies, and far more in common with something like playing the piano. As in, a lot fo people try it and get frustrated because they can’t achieve anything easily, still more never try it at all, and only sa minority go on to practice sufficiently to develop the skills to be able to producesomething enjoyable (and still others go on to develop even better skill).
Again, where games are having the most mainstream success is where they are tearing down these learning curves.