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| Yes | 56% | 314 votes | Total: 564 votes | |
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Add to FavoritesBooks are much the same. Video games, too, can spirit one away to the very peaks and pinnacles of his or her imagination, imbuing experiences simply not conveyable through less creative means. And, as with books, video games simply are not inherently evil by their nature. Indeed, an occasional video game will even imitate its more pulpy predecessors, focusing more heavily on text and the magic of words to impart lessons and experiences.
The underlying issue lies not with the INABILITY of video games to impart the valuable and socially or even eternally relevant, but instead rather in the MOTIVATION of the video game creators to develop a game worthwhile, and which will prove more than mere entertainment, selling to the masses and enriching the leather-bound pocketbooks of its visionaries.
To fully comprehend this, one must first look at the early history of video games, thus realizing their true potential, and potential impact. Early Sega Genesis games, or even PC games, were often of an educational nature, with vast, mind-bending plots, of which a scant few even tested the limits of strategic tacticianry to levels hitherto thought impossible. Gaming's designers stretched the bounds of their imaginations and those of their audiences.
First and foremost among these was the KOEI Corporation, now best known for their Dynasty Warriors series, which series replicates the battles, wars, and stealthy intrigues of ancient China. The pioneering enterprise, founded in 1978, has created such virtual, interactive gems as accurately historical (and thoroughly interactive) gaming reproductions of World War II, the Revolutionary War, Napoleonic Wars, the legendary battles of ancient China and Japan, and even Genghis Khan's conquests!
Distinct among their other simulations are a realistic airline management game called Aerobiz Supersonic, and a heavily strategic empire management game set in a medieval/fantasy setting known as Gemfire. Long video gaming's best-kept, educationally applicable secret, KOEI alone has an invaluable wealth of historically accurate simulations capable of turning the very world of educational teaching upside down!
While many of today's popularized games are indeed little more than hack-and-slash fan service; graphically-pleasura ble adventures, selling by gratuitous inclusions of sex, violence, and role-play, they have little in common with those seen just ten years earlier. Historically correct games like Pirates! Gold, a re-enactment of the days when pirates and buccaneers ruled the high seas, complete with accurate ship models and maps of the Caribbean at that time, flourished.
Heart-ren ding games, with plots as extensive as any novel, taught morals of honor, courage, and chivalry, for example, Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, and both the Shining Force and Phantasy Star game series. Some games, like Lord of the Rings: Volume I, faithfully portrayed the events of their respective books, even enlarging upon the experiences written therein. Pioneering games like Shadowrun, Star Control 2, and Rings of Power alternately allowed exploration of futuristic worlds governed by corporations and cyberspace, a universe teeming with alien life, and a fantasy world where light and dark battle on a universal scale.
Video games since have been used to create public awareness of the atrocities happening in Darfur, simulate the providing of food and aid to third-world countries, and by the U.N. to show how worldwide disasters can be confronted and resolved. More and more, social activists are recognizing the incredible potential for good, and for good education, held by what long has been considered primarily a tool for entertainment (Oregon Trail notwithstanding).
You see, video games are like a weapon; they depend upon their wielders. Not evil of themselves, they simply magnify and bring forth that which is already within their creators. While regulation is undeniably necessary, their potential is vast, and they should be viewed as an asset, not just a threat. Since the 80's and 90's, the quality and character of video games, as with much else, has declined, making video games a convenient scapegoat for critics seeking something to blame for the downfall of society's morals.
Learn more about this author, Joshua Zambrano.
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No
So, question, somebody takes a social issue and decides they really need to bang it out in a format they feel will reach the most people in the quickest way possible (and it wouldn't help if said effort returned money for the work put into it). Movies and TV Series cost too much, documentaries are not universially known (at least to me) for being gilded cash cows, and there are a ton of books out there on just about everything under the Alpha Quadrant. So what is there left?
Video games? Sure, you could go there, no problem. Even a third party developer worth their tech can whip up a fairly decent social commentary video game... if they actually put the effort to make a game worthy of the topic, and not just slapped together to be historically accurate (aka boring) or a retarded dumbed down shock and awe game to get people to buy into it because it's controversial or pretty to look at... or both.
So are video games based on social issues a good method to educate audiences on complicated issues? Probably not
Even at present gen tech you'll never make a game that can cover really big issues just right without the game losing something in the translation, or just missing the translation all together in some cases or getting people on their soapboxes in full on rant and rave mode... more on that in a second.
The best games that educate are not as much about social issues as they are hands on historical sims. One of the best examples of this, of course, is the Total War series on the PC (which culminated in it's greatest achievement, Rome : Total War, some years back). This was an all consuming glorious product that put the legions of Rome (and later the nomadic barbarian hordes of latter day Germany) in your hands to go all out and really get your Ceasar on with. And yes, it wasn't all about the violence, you had the daily grind of managing an ancient empire as well including politics to really grind your teeth into, bringing forth a tasty gaming meal that really fed your mind and nourished your gaming spirit all at the same time. You don't get that very often out of a historical sim. Opposite side of that, of course, being the latest Civil War first person shooter game that came out also sometime ago. Yeah... wow... I only seen footage of this but this is so slow and clunky and really lame I couldn't imagine why somebody actually made the effort to put this out, let alone expect other people to put time into it.
From there the best educational games that make you feel smarter for playing all fall into the strategy side of gaming. Sid Meyer's Civilizations (including one version powered by the soothing tones of Leonard Nimoy!), Age of Empires, Sid Meyer's Pirates (you'll probably learn something... at least you'll learn more than wasting your time playing Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), a few more that don't come to mind name-wise... (one set in Egypt in a sort of SimCity mood as you build it up one city and pyramid at a time)... all of these teaching you more about ancient cultures than social issues.
Social issues, on the other hand, make for great shock and awe controversial games or just good action fodder more than an educational experience. Lots of examples of that to go around the corner several times with but let's start with the game never meant to teach you nothing... except games with drugs as power-ups can be both insulting to you the gamer AND retarded all at the same time.
NARC, the most recent reboot of the war on drugs game, was supposed to be some sort of great leap in innovation in the franchise... what you got was a bad marriage between a game that wanted to be Grand Theft Auto, yet kept straying into the not so freeform gameplay world of Predator : Concrete Jungle (with limited cityspace to explore, limited gaming options and the sameness of gameplay throughout... only I'd rather you play Predator : Concrete Jungle than this mismash). Of course the gameplay wasn't the biggest thing that hung on this game's neck, and made it the punching bag of the media, oh no. That would be the retarded idea of making the drugs you confiscated from the dealers in said game act as power ups (making you run super fast or maybe invincible or slow time or something or another, I forgot what). Yeah, of course the media would jump all over that like crazy, it's a game promoting drug use (and to think the original had you out destroying drugs, not getting huffed and high on the drugs you were taking from the so called bad guys). Probably didn't help, come to think of it, that there was an unlockable element that you could only unlock by... yes... finding MORE DRUGS! Oh, and for the record? The gameplay was so whack you really didn't need the drugs as a good supply of meds from the pharmacy... the pharmacy?!?... and good weapons carried you through the game just fine without the need to sauce up. Me? I turned in all my drugs at the police station, and marveled how all the town's "prostitutes" were only into kissing and being groped for money, and nothing else. (And yes, I know The Warriors later did the same thing but not to the high degree of ridiculousness as NARC).
Speaking of historical sims (or just first slash third person shooters slash strategy games set in a historical setting) if your talking that then you have to mention the single greatest time in history that every game publisher and their third party counterparts can't stay away from (and need therapy to wean themselves off of)... World War II. Yeah. That war. Any give time, at any given year, there's X amount of WWII games on the marketplace. the most famous being, of course, Call of Duty. Right after that we got Brothers in Arms, Medal of Honor... and of course you have your strategies and your button mashers and once you even had a "You got your Champions of Norrath slash Untold Legends game in my WWII top down strategy RPG" experience known as Combat Elite : WWII Paratroopers (from a little third party company that somehow equated a top down game mechanic better known from series like Norrath and X-Men Legends as a good source of "innovation" in a WWII game... which would have been so if the game wasn't so freakin lame). Yeah. I've seen and played a good deal of it at one point or another, WWII, and all I know of WWII in games is one thing... I've stormed the beaches of Normandy, fought through the French Countryside, relived Pearl Harbor and gone on a trip through the Phillipines, not to mention went extreme in cold Mother Russia... several times over... and I'm pretty sure I learned nothing from the experience. No. Not a thing. (No need to go into Vietnam games since that will never reach the height of WWII gaming releases for, well, obvious reasons).
But what about social issues? Well games with drugs in it don't work (as shock and awe or otherwise). Racial violence in games never seem to really have any real emotional power (Spike Lee I demand that thee set thyself down to a gaming publisher and make a game about the topic that will be that powerful, it just needs a good writer and a respectful balance between gameplay and the message the gameplay is conveying... you the man for the job, I know it). And as for games based on powerful events in recent history? Forget it. Does the words "witch hunt" mean much?
OK. Show of hands. Who remembers that guy out of Scottland or the UK who whipped up that PC "game" reinacting the assassination of JFK? Anyone? Any takers? Yeah. That was received not so well. Base a game on the war on terror and you end up with either more shooters or, in one case, a bad beat em up (who remembers the third party developer who made the game where the final boss was Osama Bin Laden, and you had to kickbox him in a fight to the finish). And of course short of games like Law & Order or it's spinoffs Criminal Intent slash Special Victims Unit, any CSI game, or an NCIS game there's just no way to put the topic of rape, murder, gang violence, and just about ANY topic about the present state of crime and justice in our country into game format without feeling that you're losing abit of that which makes the topic real (and painful to witness first hand in a great many cases). And even those games I mention above? I heard they don't teach you nothing worth learning.
Games that teach you about the inner workings of Ancient Rome, or Greece, or the Middle Ages, pre contact Japan or China of 2000 years ago? Sure. There's a grand edumahshun (and yeah I so misspelled that on purpose) to be had if you get the right strategy game or RPG or (sometimes even) the right action game.
Something more pertinent? More up front and set in the here and now modern day with problems facing you and me? No. No way, and if you see something on it it's either shock and awe sensationalism or it's going to be strung out on a tree for being too graphics or too honest with it's gamers (lord knows there's kids playing them darn videhah gaming devices yar', don't want to be crumppin their little minds with such heavy topics and all)... I don't know, but if you want a game that really tackles a serious social issue and doesn't retard it down or make it flashy and shiny (to the point of pointlessness) thjen, well, game makers have to grow up some and start really sitting down and making content that can educate me on sex slavery, or genocide on the opposite side of the planet, religious hatred of those different from them, racial inequality or something, without feeling they have to gussy it up or dumb it down so people will buy it (or other people won't boycott it).
Learn more about this author, David Rasmussen.
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