Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=946https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650So though the hell part of the game has left me questioning the games true purpose, overall the game has given me some things to think about. The big question I have right now is what makes some violence okay and other violence bad. Violence and video games, at least big time hits, go hand in hand so why did I find it a little harder to stomach the violence going on in Super Columbine Massacre RPG? The easy answer is to say that it is because the game represents a real tragedy and even real deaths and killings that occurred. But a movie documentary on the subject, though it might have an emotional impact, would not seem so taboo. The answer to this then is probably that no one would want to make themselves responsible for the tragedy at Columbine, but playing this game sort of makes you feel like you are since you control the characters that cause it. But then I have to wonder about games like the Call of Duty series that are World War II shooters. When I play these games I don't really feel guiltily or morally troubled when I have to shoot Nazis or Japanese forces. But shouldn't I since these are representations of actual events and actual people who were killed. The killings and violence in a war context seem justified as long as we are playing as the side that is considered good. But surely at the time the Nazis and the Japanese thought they were justified in the war that they raged and surely Eric and Dylan felt justified in what they did as well? So by whose opinion are we to base what is justifiable and what is not? What if we made an Iraq war video game? How would we feel about the violence depicted in that game where half the country feels that the war is wrong. Pressing the trigger button on the x-box might be a little harder when your not so sure that the person your about to kill needs to or deserves to die.Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:46:37 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650&iddiary=6881https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650So up to this point I would have considered the game close to being a “documentary” video game. Obviously a lot of the holes are filled in with the game maker’s views and opinions, but it is still an account of an actual real life event that is based off of facts. Suddenly though I find myself completely questioning the point of the game as I move Dylan through what I can only assume to be the depths of hell. So this portion of the game is obviously a complete fabrication and it seems really anti-climatic. I had just played through a horrific event as these two troubled teens and felt a type of connection to them and their victims, and now I have completely lost it. It’s just a silly game now, especially since all the demons that I have to fight are straight out of Doom. The worst part is that I essentially spent a half hour watching Dylan get killed by the same three or four demons because I didn’t take the time to level him up previously since I didn’t want to kill anyone. Suddenly the game has begun to reward the player for being a killer and that does not seem like the message that was initially intended. So now I have no idea what the game maker is trying to get across to the player. Also, I can’t attempt to figure out what the point of this sequence is because I cannot survive long enough to get the end, and I do not want to go back a kill a bunch of people so I can.Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:25:52 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650&iddiary=6878https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650So I begin today with actually stepping into the school with guns locked and loaded. Honestly I had no desire to start firing at any of the people running through out the school. I wanted to find my way to the end of the game as quickly as possible. As I walked through the parking lot and the hallway I avoided running into anyone and got to the cafeteria when someone finally bumped into me and the game took me to the fight screen. My first reaction was to find the leave combat or runaway command and found that there was none. I suppose the game was trying to make the point that once the two started, there was no turning back, but I had not actually fought anyone yet and felt that the game at that point was completely taking the decision of whether to go through with it or not out of the hands of the player. I was not trying to run into this math teacher, but it happened and now I was stuck. I was at least a little relieved to find that I could just hit auto play and didn’t have to consciously choose to attack the teacher. After the fight I noticed that the body of the math teacher remained on the floor of the cafeteria and did not disappear like standard video game protocol. Even when I left the room and came back it was still there. Some might say that this element of the game is in bad taste and is just trying to add an unnecessary gore to the game, but I think that the bodies remain to remind the player that someone is actually dead now. Often in video games a defeated enemy is forgotten as soon as the final blow is dealt, but that does not accurately represent real life. When someone dies for real, that has a huge effect and they are not so easily forgotten. So after this occurred I continued to explore the school to find a way out of all of this. Eventually I found my way to the library and chose to end the lives of Eric and Dylan. At this point the most shocking event of the game occurred and that was that an actual picture of the dead boys was displayed on the screen. Such real graphic material is usually not shown in any type of American media. Culturally we are quite use to and okay with seeing acts of physical violence as long as they are not real, but any footage of actual violence is labeled as offensive and inappropriate. So when I saw this picture I had to question the game maker’s motives. What was the point of this material? Was there meaning behind it or was it simply for shock value? After some careful consideration I decided that there was indeed some value to it and it is similar to the reason as to why the dead bodies of the faculty and students remained in the game world. These two boys were actually people and even their deaths mattered. More importantly their lives mattered, or at least that is what the game maker is trying to portray. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:24:27.)Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:59:22 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650&iddiary=6838https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650So today I started playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The first thing that I noticed about it was the use of or reference of other popular media, like Doom for the PC and a Marilyn Manson CD, lying around Eric’s house. In the game it is implied that these items had an effect or were part of the inspiration that led the two boys to plan the shooting. In fact, the two boys can pick up and equip these items as accessories in order to increase their stats. I found it kind of hard to tell whether the game was being satirical or sarcastic by doing this, or whether it was agreeing with much of the news media of the time that music and videogames are to blame for violent youth. I find it to be slightly satirical because of the way Eric blatantly states that everyone is going to blame Marilyn Manson for what happened. I definitely feel that the influence of these materials on the two boys was way over stated. That’s not to say that Doom didn’t influence them at all but it is not because of Doom that the tragedy occurred. By the time I got to the school and got the two kids prepped for their planned event, I felt that the game was trying to portray the two kids in a sympathetic light. I did not suddenly feel okay about what they were intending to do, but I started to feel sorry for the two. The dialogue that they have between themselves definitely shows them as being outcasts. They do not have any friends outside of themselves and feel abandoned by the world. I must say that this is not the portrayal of the incident that I had expected from the title of the game, which makes it sound like an extremely insensitive and exploitive game. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:23:38.)Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:54:44 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3650&iddiary=6824https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531This last entry is simply to point out that the last time I played San Andreas, I noticed that the characters and people in the game follow the judicial code of retribution. When I started the game, I could walk down the streets with out anyone really paying attention to me, but then as I went on to play a lot of the missions where I had to kill rival gang members, I noticed that more and more people took notice of me as I walked or drove down the streets. First it was the Ballas who started shooting at my car every time I drove through their neighborhood and soon after I beat up a Mexican gang member in a backyard, all of the members of gang started shooting at me just for coming down the street too. Also, not everyone enjoys being pulled out of their car as I steal their vehicle and if I am not fast enough in driving away they will come back to the vehicle and take it back from me. The police enforcement follows a similar approach as the more pedestrians I run down, the more ammunition they unload in my general direction. Pretty soon I probably will not be able to go anywhere in the game with out being shot at. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:40:43.)Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:28:53 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531&iddiary=6691https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531So on my last round of playing this morning, the game's missions asked me to break into some guys house and steal weapons without the owner of the house waking up and then break into a national guard base, pistols blazing and steal some high tech military weaponry. Both missions required that I drive a huge truck to store the stolen goods in. The trucks' control was slow and clunky so will I was trying to run away from some military vehicles, I found myself running over several pedestrians. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, during missions I have tried to refrain from just running over random pedestrians. Something about it just seems wrong about. I have to ask then, does behaving immorally in San Andreas make me a worse person? I guess the question I should ask next is do I have some obligation to act morally within the world of the game? According to Kant I definitely don't. Kant believed that humans were special because they could reason and feel and that is why we owe it to other human beings to act morally. He said that animals on the other hand were not rational beings and had no feelings, ergo we have no moral imperative to treat them well. Obviously then we should not feel bad about any of the things that we do in the confines of this video game because the things that we are acting immorally against are not actually people. Its just pixels and code that is made to mimic people, but has no actual rationality or feelings. This point may seem pretty clear and obvious, but it seems to me that opponents of the GTA series do not think like this. When the first GTA III game came out, I received it as a gift for Christmas from my parents. Later on we had family over and one of my aunts was appalled when she had found out that I had received and played that game. In her mind and many other people's, the actions that a player does in the game make that player a worse person. Therefore to not seem like a immoral person to my aunt I would have to not play the game at all, or at least not commit any crimes in the game while playing it. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:26:51.)Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:27:27 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531&iddiary=6673https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531So today in the city of Los Santos I picked up a prostitute and then when she got out of the car I ran her over and took my money back. These actions certainly stray far from what would commonly be held as morally or ethically acceptable actions, but its only a game so who cars? Well most likely concerned parents and politicians who want the votes of those concerned parents. A game that allows kids to do things like pick up prostitutes, run people over, and steal sounds like a reasonable thing for parents be concerned about as well, but does that mean that game makers have some sort of moral obligation to take heed of these concerns and restrict their games because of them? This has been a question of much debate for decades now and will not be answered definitively here in this entry, but lets see what a couple of moral philosophies have to say about it. First lets take a look at Utilitarianism. I will begin by measuring out the happiness as opposed to the unhappiness that a game like GTA: San Andreas would produce. Lets say that the game brings happiness to the thousands of people who make the game and profit monetarily from its release. Lets say it also brings happiness to the millions of people who have purchased the game. San Andreas most likely brings unhappiness to the parents of some of the kids who have purchased the game and to the many politicians who have brought up complaints about the game nationally. Of those groups the two largest are the purchasers of those games and parents of some of those purchasers. Of the two, the purchasers far out number the parents as no all parents are concerned about the game and many of the buyers are not even children. Therefore, in this circumstance the games release brings a net game of happiness and is morally acceptable. Now lets see what Kant would have to say about it. Kant believed in absolute moral rules and thought the best way to find them was to ask whether a certain action someone takes would be accepted by that person if all peoples everywhere always acted in that same way. In this case the action would be weather it is right for someone to restrict the creative freedom of someone else. I think most would agree that such an act would not be accepted at all times. In, fact such an act would go against the very first amendment of the constitution. Therefore, it is most likely that Kant would say that video game makers are not morally obligated to conform to the requests of concerend parents. As I said, this far from concludes that video game makers are free to put whatever they want into a video game. For example, in the beginning of the class this semester, we went through a list of actions that everyone instinctively believed to be wrong. That list included murder, stealing, lying, maiming, and rape. Four of those five things are allowed in San Andreas, but one of them, rape, is not. Something tells me that even some of the most liberal video game players out there would find it hard to accept, let alone play a game that allowed the player to do that. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:55:34.)Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:24:44 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531&iddiary=6672https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas starts off with a man coming back to the neighborhood he grew up in after learning of his mother's death. From this plot point, he meets up with all of his old "homies" and decides that he owes it to them and his neighborhood to join back up with the gang and take back the streets. Right away it is apearent that CJ, the main character, bases his decisions about what is right and wrong on the loyalty he has for his friends and family. Based on our in class poll of people who would lie too get their friend out of serious trouble for causing a car accident, CJ's view on morality and loyalty is not very contreversial at first glance. Yet within the first few missions of the game, CJ takes this moral code to the point where he can justify homicide. Most people would not find too easy to kill someone simply based off of their loyalty to some person or group put the moral code of ethics folled by gangs in this game do. Most games, however, have the player killing some person or group in order to advance throughout the game. For example, World War II games have the player killing Nazi's or Japanese soldiers. And their seems to be little objection to what the morals in a war game are as compared to the controversy and uproar associated with most releases of Grand Theft Auto Games. Yet most of that controversies tends to lie with the games allowance of players to kill anyone on the street and pick up prostitues. In short, I believe that in our society it is okay to participate in forms of entertainment where the people getting killed are not innocent. As a product of that society, when I was playing the missions where I had to kill off rival gang members, I did not hesitate to kill them, but I was very conscious about not running over other passers-by while I drove a car from neighborhood to neighborhood. Of course if I did accidentally clip some innocent bystandered, I really wasn't all that shaken up about it. They are after all, only polygons and pixels.Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:43:41 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3531&iddiary=6608