Last week we reported on a school in East Brunswick, New Jersey putting on a play that revolved around the subject of videogame addiction.
The story of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom (N3RD for short) being put on by the School of Performing Arts at the Middlesex County Vocational and Technical School eventually made its way to a few other gaming sites, inspiring a Kotaku reader to go watch, and then review, the play.
Geist002, who called the play “fairly well done,” offered this description:
Most of the characters with the gaming addictions came from broken homes, really messed up backgrounds, or were victims of poor parenting. If you approach this play already condemning video games, you just see video games as the villain.
The fictional game used in the play was a “violent” MMO that utilized satellite imagery in order to make the player’s real-world location the location in the game as well, adding to its immersion factor. Geist002 wrote that performing in-game violence in a world that resembled a player’s own neighborhood appeared to encourage desensitization in the on-stage actors/gamers.
It was promised that a roundtable discussion on the subject of violent videogames would be offered once the play was over. Said discussion left Geist002 a bit nonplussed, as he wrote, “The panelists were kind of all over the place.”
“And the discussion was only about 15 minutes, so it didn't last long enough to get into really good discussions,” he added.
Summing up, Geist002 wrote that, “Overall, it was a fairly tasteful show that I will hold respect for. I enjoyed it and took some things out from it.”
