September 15, 2007
Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright once called television chewing gum for the eyes, while former FTC Chairman Newton Minnow rather famously referred to the medium as a vast wasteland.And yet, ITV boss Michael Grade (left) finds TV's blue glow somehow morally superior to video games.
As reported by BroadcastNow, Grade said that video games exist in a "moral vacuum" compared to what television has to offer. From BroadcastNow:
Grade said TV had a stronger moral standpoint because it could contextualise video content within the framework of a dramatic narrative.
Grade was responding to remarks made by EA CEO John Riccitiello, who earlier told the Royal Television Society's Cambridge Convention that games were unfairly demonized for violent content. Riccitiello compared violent clips from 24 and CSI as well as the films Kill Bill and 300 with content from Grand Theft Auto. Said the EA boss:
With video games, I can be on the edge of my seat immersed in them, but TV is storytelling - I'm lying back and it comes to me.
Via: Next Generation
Comments
I certainly was.
That's only half right about TV, some shows do seem kinda dull, but with others you can really get immersed into the story.
btw does anyone know wth a "Moral Vacuum" means?
So a moral vacuum would be like the Terminator 2 movie (Yeah Arnold the anti-game activist). In that movie there were many “faceless cops” and others who were gunned down by the truck full. Didn’t that movie have a ridiculous body count?
You're thinking of the first Terminator movie, where Arnold, searching for Sarah Connor, shot up a police station, killing cops left and right(17 total, IIRC).
In Terminator 2, John Connor made Arnold swear not to kill anyone. And he didn't. There was a scene where he shot up a bunch of police cars, and the point of view switches to Arnold, and the screen says "Human Casualities: 0.0"
I'm not saying that to demonise films, I'm saying it because sometimes to tell a story, something bad has to happen.
For me, a subtext for the whole game when I played Bioshock was "Oh my god, these people are humans. Is there a way to save them?" even though they were obviously insane, obviously trying to kill me. That's part of what made Bioshock interesting to me, and it really ended up giving meaning to the one choice you got, the one decision you were allowed to make that could save someone from the horrors of that underwater city. I couldn't save the insane splicers, but I could save the little sisters, even if it meant I'd end up suffering for it. That journey, an internal journey, it's a meta-story in a sense, an internal journey within the protagonist which only can occur because you ARE the protagonist.
In one case, I ended up saving a Little Sister, only to have an a splicer shoot a grenade at her. As I watched the small form fall to the ground, I thought about what I was seeing, and suddenly felt quite justified in taking out my grenade launcher, firing up my freeze power, and cutting a swath of revenge through the splicer hordes.
Really powerful stuff. Tell me that video games exist within a moral vacuum, and I'll tell you that's only the case if you yourself live within a moral vacuum.
... Oops, rant.
September 15th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
yes, lie back and think of England… "
mmmmm.....
Billie Piper
Elisabeth Sladen (from the 1980s of course)
Sarah Sutton (from the 1980s of course)
...
:)
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
His argument is that games don't have a reason for violence because they're not written as well as Movies or Television. He bases that opinion on nothing at all, so end of argument.
Yeah the guy really has no context or reference to hold TV over games, all the things he mentions as benefits for TV can be had in games. you can contextualise violence in the framework of a dramatic narrative.
And games cant? What? Has this guy ever played any games at all? Or has he just heard about "murder simulators"? For crying out loud, even Manhunt (one, anyway) "contextualized" its violent content "within the framework of a dramatic narrative".
Piss off you wanker!
I think god of war 2 fits that bill quite nicely.
ignore/ delete my other comment, please.
Here's a question: does any of that even really mean anything, or was it more like just slapping fancy words together to sound smart.. I'm rather smart myself, yet I can't figure out just what he's trying to say. Framework of a dramatic narrative? What? I don't understand, there's a plot? Is that all he's saying? There's a "story"?
Although his comments are so vague, I'm beginning to suspect he was misquoted (or that he misspoke).
Good to know it's not just me, then, haha
Needless to say, considering he knows nothing about running television, which is supposedly his job, he knows even less about video games and thus nothing he has saying is worthy of note and thus shouldn't even grace this blog as news.
And he concluded that video games were worse? ...Uh, am I the only one that's confused here?
That statement, roughly paraphrased, has been said of the following throughout history:
Novels
Theater
Dancing
Musicals
Jazz
Movies
Rock 'n Roll
Comic Books
Television
Video Games
... among others, I'm sure.
There will always be people who, when confronted with something they do not understand, will call it morally bankrupt and oppose it rather than try to understand it.
Here's the cute part: As whatever they are protesting becomes more and more widely accepted and main stream, the people opposing it become more and more extreme in their opposition.
Pity not everyone knows their history... there'd be less fools like Grade around.
No, Riccitiello said that games were being unfairly demonized... and showed clips from popular movies and TV shows compared to one of the most demonized games, GTA, as a comparison.
Although... as much bad press the GTA games get for "killing cops and hookers", the violence in them is actually pretty tame.
Actually that was someone defending video games, not the one who said they are in a 'moral vacuum' (although those aren't even his words)
Actually that was someone defending video games, not the one who said they are in a 'moral vacuum' (although those aren't even his words)
A household cleaning appliance that only sucks up evil dirt?
We must break the cycle, when we're old and bigotted we have to vow not to demonise holo-vision, neural-internets or whatever future medium comes our way.
A place where morals don't apply or exist. Typically the term "moral vacuum" is used when discussing things like the decline in religious following, or the "anything goes" culture.
In the big wide world of gaming, it's generally OK to shoot people in the face. These people are usually bad guys, of course, and are trying to shoot you in the face too. Kill or be killed. In movies however, the good guys usually hold their fire or don't shoot to kill, and moments of death are often off-camera rather than gaming's tendency to bathe in the claret.
Ironically one of the recent (and only) gore-fests of a game was God of War, which if anything was less violent and more justified than the myths it borrowed from. Compare that to the massive rise in gore movies recently.
So a moral vacuum would be like the Terminator 2 movie (Yeah Arnold the anti-game activist). In that movie there were many "faceless cops" and others who were gunned down by the truck full. Didn't that movie have a ridiculous body count?
In opposition to that moral vacuum would be for example Final Fantasy 10, in which there is a moral dilemma in attacking the creature which is destroying the world, as its your father.
@Kommisar
” is a plague upon the populace, poisoning the minds of our children and corrupting the morals of otherwise good people.”
That statement, roughly paraphrased, has been said of the following throughout history:
Novels
Theater
Dancing
Musicals
Jazz
Movies
Rock ‘n Roll
Comic Books
Television
Video Games"
off the top of my head i can add
Writing (feared by none other than Socrates himself, which is why he never
wrote anything)
Pencils
Erasers
And I'm sure an in-depth historical analysis could come up with dozens more.
This problem always tends to resolve itself. The old who were never properly exposed to games die out and we grow up and realize the "will cause society to degenerate into a moral vacuum" theory never came to pass. Meanwhile the industry will have continued to refine it's product and eventually video games will come to be regarded as a legitimate form of artistic expression.
Unfortunately we won't be to able celebrate this triumph. We'll be too busy leading the crusade against holograms as "the reason our kids constantly act out for attention", while fervently denying it has anything to do with us playing Halo 7 for fourteen hours a day.
Cheers.
Games generally don't. The good guy has a gun but it's OK because everyone's a zombie! It's set in hell so of course there are mutilated corpses lying around. You might fail a mission if you shoot a civilian, but probably not if you're playing on easy and you'll just have to restart it anyway. It's only relatively few games that create a world with rules and choices. Remember that one of the big fusses made over Bioshock is that you get to decide whether or not to kill little girls. Outside of the individual worlds too, gaming is still morally dodgy. One very very common feature of a game is "kill anything you want as long as it's not X." A while ago people were excited about being able to sever limbs and how headshots are now one hit kills. "How many weapons are there?" is a question that rises in your mind during so many titles. We cackle slightly when we discover emergent ways of killing using physics and AI. In Bioshock, you can place proxy mines in a pool and then set someone on fire. This is part of gaming. It's a slightly darker place than we like to admit.
Unfortunately, despite all the positive press (DDR, Wii Sports, etc.) Videogames have been known to get, none of it has helped in the long run. We always seem to fall back on GTA... which incidentally, isn't that the fault of the 11:00 news? OSHI-