Influence

Where are the limits in videogames and other types of media?

A couple of days ago, I watched the second half of a documentary called "Miss Representation" which touched on the subject of men judging themselves more powerful than women ever since the dawn of time.

At a certain point, it demonstrated a series of situations where the media supports this exact idea of men being supperior. They showed images of posters, commercials, internet adds, and, not surprisingly, a clip of GTA San Andreas where Jonhson (the player) was beating up a woman.

This dispolted a discussion between me and my girlfriend, Amanda.

You see, Amanda thinks that a game like GTA never should have been made.

"A game that puts you on the perspective of the moraly wrong side for the purpose of fun, is automatically teaching you that what they are doing is okay.", she said.

To this, I answered that I, along with millions of people, have played GTA San Andreas and I do not think that beating a human being is right in any way, shape or form.
However, she thinks that if a game has even 0.01% of triggering or teaching something wrong to the player, then it shouldn't be made.

Now, I'm sure that a lot of you are thinking right now:

"She's just attacking games, what about all of the other media influences?".

Well, you see, other types of media methods feed you something, but you are the one that decides if you want to swallow it or spit it out (even though it will still influence you in some way). In a game, a lot of times you are forced to do the wrong thing to progress. So you are not just being fed, you are being forced to swallow what the game gives you. And this is the fundamental problem to A.H..

Do you remember the whole "Super Columbine Massacre RPG" situation that happened a few years ago? Basically the same discussion, and always the same question:

"Where is the limit?"

Where is it?
Columbine RPG made you play as the two school shooters that were responsible for the mass school shooting in Columbine, CO. It was made with the intent of telling the story of the Columbine Massacre, portraying the facts while making you think "What in the hell am I doing?" while you played the game, why were you killing those people? Who in their right state of mind would do that? Those horrible, atrocious, vicious actions? It was meant to make you feel bad and disgusted while you learned about the massacre.

But, obviously, that's not how the world received it.

I don't want to go into a lot of detail about it, but the creator got a lot of hate. It triggered a lot of people, "a game like that shouldn't be made in respect for the dead and their families". The poor guy even got death threats because of it. If you're interested to know about it, there's a great documentary called "Playing Columbine" and I absolutely recommend it.

My point being (TL;DR):

I think we are all sick of hearing people saying "Videogames make people violent", but should we be? Should we ignore that statement? GTA didn't make you, or me, violent, but that doesn't mean that no one got violent after playing it. Is it the game's fault, or is it the player's guardian's fault for not telling them "It might be fun in the game, but this is wrong"? If , in World War II games, you played as the Axis instead of the Allies, would it not be okay anymore? Should games like GTA or Columbine RPG be banned?

I'll try to stay neutral to the topic but I would like to know what you think, so I ask you again: Where is the limit?