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15.
GAMES MAKE ME MURDER PEOPLE
When required of a particular
lobbyist group or media pundit, video games can quickly become
a scapegoat for any current hot topic: primarily those of a violent
nature. Blame has to be laid for justice to be found at all
times, and that which people can't understand makes for an easy
target. Angry parents who want their faces on television are quick
to point the finger at video games for teaching their children
how to swear or fire a gun. It is a given to them that video games
are a teaching tool. This is a notion reiterated in the implementation
of video game style simulators for the training of police, the
military, and NASA.
There is a simultaneous cultural rejection and acceptance of the
medium as a learning tool. It is a problem when little boys are
taught to kill, but it is expected when grown men are. Anti-video
game activists seem set on abolishing the medium rather than appreciating
the possibilities it presents. They are equally keen on admonishing
mass media as a whole rather than acknowledging any amount of
rational thought in their children, the would-be assassins. McMahan
sets out to describe the notion of presence as
"the
result of perceptual and psychological immersion. The first
accomplished by blocking out as many of the senses as possible
to the outside world and making it possible for the user to
perceive only the artificial world… The second results
from the user's mental absorption in the world"14.
She
goes on to qualify presence as "users responding to the computer
itself as an intelligent, social agent. Humans tend to do this,
even though the consciously understand that such responses are
illogical"15.
These qualities of presence and immersion are illusory and dependent
on a person functioning at an average intelligence level; one
with an ability to differentiate reality from the virtual. The
enhanced realism of certain games has become the new trump card
in the fight to ban something from popular culture. While realisticness
may add to one's ability to believe the diegetic goings-on, they
still exist in a mediated world. Lobby groups should move to harness
the educational power of a video game rather than write it off
as a tool of mass mutilation training for the young.
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