Gross Out Games

Plastic's thread "Those Who Forget History Are Doomed To Repeat That Level" looks at games based on the 9/11 attacks and Columbine shootings:

While computer games based on real-life events aren't new ? think of WWII games, for instance ? games based on recent offline events are increasingly common," chlim01 writes. "And this gives rise to the question: are such games simply tasteless, or should they be viewed as tasteless art on the avant garde?

Reason's Jesse Walker commented on the shakey status of video games as art in "Birth of a Medium: Video games, art, and moral panic."

Comments

[Clement Vallandigham]

Jesse: The phenomenon of parents concerned with 1) the well-being of and 2) the cognitive influences on their developing offspring is called responsible parenting, not "moral panic."
So the games are rated M...fine. The why is it that every 5th & 6th grader I meet is quoting "Vice City" chapter and verse?

[None of your business]

Do you know a lot of 5th and 6th graders?

Hmmm. Perhaps the Department of State Security would like to met with you, yes?
>adjusts monocle

[Jack]

Clement, there's a line between "responsible parenting" and "moral panic", the former implies a rational assessment of the threat posed by something. Unfortunately, a great many parents assume anything they don't like is a deadly threat to their children and become prohibitionists (whether of music, computer games or whatever).

[Mr Miller to You]

"And this gives rise to the question: are such games simply tasteless, or should they be viewed as tasteless art on the avant garde?"

I might be off base here, but Budweiser is certainly tasteless in all aspects imaginable, yet its the number 1 selling beer in the world. I think this needs more questioning than video games.

[Kevin Carson]

My favorite is "blow away your boss"--you upload a digital photo of him and chase him through a maze of cubicles until you get him in your sights...

[Mr. Nice Guy]

When I bought Vice City the kid at the register asked for my driver's license (I am a balding 33 year old). The fact that these prohibitionists are still harping about it makes me think that they want to eliminate the games totally.. I miss the good ol' days in the 80s when our games were dots and squares. No one was bitching then.

[Eric Pobirs]

There is definitely a difference between parental responsibility and moral panics. The latter are usually driven by grandstanding pshrinks and politicians. Lieberman was notorious for going after the video game industry using laughably mild titles as his evidence. The censorious Nintendo acted in a dispicable manner by trying get Sega crucified for providing material of interest to older audiences. Nintendo has long since paid with the bulk of their market share despite such hilarious gross-out satires like 'Conker's Bad Fur Day.'

The big evil back then was a game called 'Night Trap.' This was originally developed for a videotape-based game console created by Hasbro and called Isyx. (My then employer, Cinemaware, was approached to also develop for Isyx so we had a prototype and demo software including Night Trap.) The console was canceled before launch but Night Trap turned up a few years later on the Sega CD system and other CD-ROM venues.

While the game borrowed its theme from sorority girl slasher movies the actual scenes depicted were rather lacking in scenes to corrupt youth. THe vampire villains seemed to lack any fangs and had to result to an elaborate blood-draining collar to do in any soririty girls the player failed to defend. No visible wound, just a receptacle filling with blood as the girl makes a fuss and eventually passes out.

Lieberman's use of Night Trap as an example of an evil video game was so nonsensical it has forever tarnished him in my eyes. His occasional wacky statements only confirm my suspicions. (He once remarked about the NASDAQ being at its lowest point since the depression. A few decades before NASDAQ existed, so I guess you can't get any lower than that.)

[dhex]

actually "death race 2000" was the first violent video game controversy and wasn't much more than some cga-era dots and blobs.

[dhex]

kids are quoting vice city because their friends are? because some people don't bother reading boxes before buying stuff for their kids - unless these 5th graders are selling dope to buy 50 dollar video games and 150 dollar consoles?

actually, i don't know. i have a 13 year old cousin who plays vice city, which i just found out recently. his mother doesn't seem to think it's a problem.

i don't think the game is appropriate for anyone under 16, personally, but i'm not unfortunate enough to have children and have to make such decisions day in and day out.

[SachdevOst Ulka Sachdev]

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DATE: 01/21/2004 12:14:00
It's not all lies - not all of it. That's the age-old dilemma.