Difference between revisions of "Video game"

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(a more to-the-point intro & definition, + link to genres which is now a subpage)
(horrible EC, sorry)
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{{mission|there might a paragraph here that relates to the mission, but the rest is badly-written cruft}}
'''Video games''' are computerised games played on a home [[computer]], games console, or video arcade machine.
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'''Video games''' are games whose rules are defined by the operation of a personal computer or a dedicated device called a video game console and with the graphics (or text in the case of old-school games) displayed on a screen. They range in complexity from simple watch-like devices with inexpensive LCD screens all the way up to full-immersion devices such as flight simulators and virtual reality pods, and cover every possible genre of gaming, including puzzles, action games, and major league sport fantasies. Video game consoles come in models intended to be used at home ([[Microsoft]]'s Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, and Nintendo's Wii are the current major home consoles) or handheld systems that can be played elsewhere as well (the current major handheld systems are the Nintendo DS and Sony's PlayStation Portable).
  
The earliest video games appeared in the mid 20th century, though the growth in popularity and availability has been most significant from the 1980s onwards.
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Although "video" implies the use of graphics, the term can also include text-based games, or even games based on simple light patterns.<ref>Admittedly, the latter is a stretch, but certain games like Simon or [http://www.thumbstadium.com Thumb Stadium] could qualify based on the computer-control definition.</ref>  The first video game, a tennis game created in 1947, used a dedicated analog computer as a control system and an oscilloscope for output.
 
 
There are many genres and sub-genres of video games.  See [[video game/Genres]] for an overview.
 
 
 
==Pedantic definition==
 
Video games are games whose rules are defined by the operation of a personal computer or a dedicated device called a video game console and with the graphics (or text in the case of old-school games) displayed on a screen (typically, the screen used is a computer monitor on a PC, a television for a home video game console, and a built-in screen on a handheld video game console<ref>The screen is built-in because they could hardly pass for handheld if the entire set of hardware didn't fit in the player's hands.</ref>). They range in complexity from simple watch-like devices with inexpensive LCD screens all the way up to fully-immersive devices such as flight simulators and virtual reality pods, and cover every possible genre of gaming, including puzzles, action, strategy, sports, and simulation. Video game consoles come in models intended to be used at home ([[Microsoft]]'s Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, and Nintendo's Wii are the current major home consoles) or handheld systems that can be played elsewhere as well (the current major handheld systems are the Nintendo DS and Sony's PlayStation Portable).
 
 
 
Although "video" implies the use of graphics (usually on a pixel or raster-addressed display, but sometimes on a dedicated vector display as well), the term can also include text-based games, or even games based on simple light patterns.<ref>Admittedly, the latter is a stretch, but certain games like [[wp:Simon (game)|Simon]] or [http://www.thumbstadium.com Thumb Stadium] could qualify based on the computer-control definition.</ref>  The first video game, a tennis game created in 1947, used a dedicated [[wp:Analog computer|analog computer]] as a control system and an oscilloscope for output.
 
  
 
==New media are evil==
 
==New media are evil==

Revision as of 12:13, 31 October 2010

  1. Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement;
  2. Documenting the full range of crank ideas;
  3. Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism;
  4. Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

Video games are games whose rules are defined by the operation of a personal computer or a dedicated device called a video game console and with the graphics (or text in the case of old-school games) displayed on a screen. They range in complexity from simple watch-like devices with inexpensive LCD screens all the way up to full-immersion devices such as flight simulators and virtual reality pods, and cover every possible genre of gaming, including puzzles, action games, and major league sport fantasies. Video game consoles come in models intended to be used at home (Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, and Nintendo's Wii are the current major home consoles) or handheld systems that can be played elsewhere as well (the current major handheld systems are the Nintendo DS and Sony's PlayStation Portable).

Although "video" implies the use of graphics, the term can also include text-based games, or even games based on simple light patterns.[1] The first video game, a tennis game created in 1947, used a dedicated analog computer as a control system and an oscilloscope for output.

New media are evil

Like any new technology that traditionally appeals primarily to youth, video games have spent the last thirty years and change being accused of corrupting the youth, joining comic books, pinball, television, radio, recorded music, comprehensive sex education, role playing games, atheism, liberalism, beer, The Gay Agenda(TM), and soy products[2] on a dubious list of moral panics created by people who forgot what it was like to be a kid.[3] Muddling the issue something fierce is the fact that video games are largely perceived as kid stuff, or at least non-artistic,[4] and therefore superficial and unworthy of serious attention. Making the issue worse, moral guardians (such as the infamous ex-attorney Jack Thompson) take the "kid stuff" concept to ridiculous extremes, failing to distinguish between games marketed to children and games marketed to adults, and making hysterical judgements on the effects of video games on players.

Needless to say, moral guardians (especially of the religious persuasion) have a lot of power in many countries, and outright bans are more common than many people are comfortable with. In English-speaking countries, Australia is particularly notorious for hair-trigger game bans, and at one point Greece tried to outlaw all public video gaming in a massive overreaction to a political gambling scandal.

Liberty University prohibits students playing "A" or games with ratings pending. They also prohibit games with sexual content, alcohol/drug use[5], or strong language listed on the back are also prohibited. Games containing violence are the discretion of Resident Directors. Needless to say, moral guardians (especially of the religious persuasion) have a lot of power in many countries, and outright bans are more common than many people are comfortable with. In English-speaking countries, Australia is particularly notorious for hair-trigger game bans, and at one point Greece tried to outlaw all public video gaming in a massive overreaction to a political gambling scandal.

Violence in gaming

There's no getting around one point -- many video games are violent. Fighting games such as Tekken and Mortal Kombat are a very large and successful genre, and the latter was particularly notorious in the 1990s for its graphic violence (among other things, copious blood, dismemberment, graphic cannibalism[6], soul-sucking, and general apocalypse). Games such as Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne transpose graphic violence into gangster and police procedural settings, and first-person shooters (a genre dating to the 1980 arcade game Battlezone) gained a reputation from their 90s flagbearer Doom for immense amounts of gratuitous and often supernatural violence[7].

Needless to say, like any other new media panic, the old media loves to feast on these things -- one of the Columbine shooters, for example, was a modestly talented Doom level designer, so many people blamed their gaming rather than their social isolation or fascist political leanings for the slaughter. Pop psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw has been known to do shows on the alleged danger of video games, as have police procedurals such as Criminal Minds and the Law and Order franchise. The Entertainment Software Rating Board was organized to provide MPAA-like content ratings for video games; however, the perception (by and large a post hoc ergo propter hoc confusing of causality and correlation) continues that excessive video game violence can cause bad behavior in youth, presumably on the assumption that video gamers have a somewhat tenuous grasp of reality. The fact that this has been said about role playing games, comics, and (in a recent case) horror novels without being borne out by studies on the subject really doesn't faze anyone involved in the moral outrage industry.

Whatsocking?![8]

There are also concerns over video game addiction, based on the assumption that video games cause people to become socially introverted, rather than being a release for people who already are. There is some legitimate concern over this -- MMORPGs and other subscription-based games sometimes take advantage of Skinnerian operant conditioning [9] to ensure a steady cashflow -- but by and large the question of gaming addiction comes down to whether a game is interfering with normal life functions, and the related question of whether it's being used as a substitute for other interaction. The second is not an inherently bad thing; social gaming such as Second Life or MMORPGs often serves as a highly effective social outlet for people for whom real world interaction is difficult or uncomfortable. The first, however, is potentially very destructive; unfortunately, people do confuse the two issues regularly.

To combat the negative aspect of video game addition, some countries have enacted laws to force a time-limitation on Massive Multiplayer Online games, where players that have been playing for three continuous hours begin to receive reduced in-game abilities. This is only effective in preventing monomania within a monomania, since players are free to switch to another game that does not assign active penalties.

Damn that coffee is hot

There's a good number of games that don't lack for sexual content, from the relatively mild partial nudity in The Sims to the explicit sexuality of the Hot Coffee scene in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas[10]. This doesn't stop game developers and modders from doing things such as creating nude skins for female characters, or creating explicitly sexual third-party content, or even creating games like the highly controversial RapeLay, a literal rape simulator written and subsequently banned in Japan. Sex in video games has therefore long been a subject of both controversy and amusement.

Brain development

If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.
—Marcus Brigstocke

A frequent claim in the media is that video games impacts the development of the brain, such as not stimulating the frontal lobe. More often than not, most studies make significant mistakes in methodology, such as comparing a controlled system (performing math or number crunching for 30 minutes) to an uncontrolled system (not monitoring the quantity of time played on video games), or by having a preconceived notion about video games.

Miscellaneous moral mishegaas

During the first surge of video game popularity in the late 70s and early 80s, there was a somewhat widespread belief that the use of multiple lives in a video game could lead players to not value their own lives (very much in the same spirit as the idea that video game players were allegedly detatched enough that they wouldn't understand violence was wrong); in fact, one RW editor as a child remembered reading a letter to the editor in TV Guide from some Nervous Ninny claiming that video games should just give you only one life for the entire time you own the game.

The ESRB has a very, very long list of advisories -- while most deal with sexual and violent content, there are applications such as electronic cookbooks that include advisories for "Alcohol References", and there are a few other similar silly advisories. However, the main rating is usually more than sufficient to determine the suitability of the product.

stfu n00b

Gamer talk: the unspeakable in pursuit of the incomprehensible.
—Oscar Wilde[11]

Gamer talk makes the comments on YouTube seem witty and perspicacious. This concern about video games - that they let the extremely stupid feel entirely okay about behaving extremely stupidly - is in fact an entirely valid concern and good reason to burn all video games in great bonfires immediately.

Health issues

Another common concern about video games is health - most children consuming games are usually sitting in front of the computer and not being active.

Other known health issues include:

  • Dizzyness and motion sickness (the most common) [12]
  • Back injuries and chair posture[13]
  • Blistering, brusing, or cuts [14]
  • Heart attacks [15]

Avoiding video games to avoid health hazards won't help, since the only other options are to do nothing (which hazards of its own), or to do something else (which also has hazards depending on the task). Regardless, health issues for non-excessive video gaming isn't any worse than other activities.

External links

Footnotes

  1. Admittedly, the latter is a stretch, but certain games like Simon or Thumb Stadium could qualify based on the computer-control definition.
  2. No, really. There are people who think soy makes you gay.
  3. New Media Are Evil. However, so is TVTropes; please limit your exposure lest you never escape.
  4. Roger Ebert and PZ Myers, the producers of BioShock, Myst, and Rez would like to have a word with you.
  5. Including the aforementioned electronic cookbooks, one must assume.
  6. Creating, no doubt, a generation of vore fetishists. Ew.
  7. BFG-9000: When you absolutely have to frag incinerate every mofo in the room, accept no substitutes.
  8. Let's just say footwear is not intended for waste removal and leave it at that.
  9. The same thing that can cause both rats and people to become compulsive gamblers; see the Cracked article referenced elsewhere in this article.
  10. Which, technically, was game content that had been removed from the game's plotline but which had been left in the shipping game's data files; the controversy was over the fact that modders had been able to relink the scene into the storyline.
  11. Possibly.
  12. Video Games And Motion Sickness -- About.com
  13. http://www.spine-health.com/wellness/ergonomics/office-chair-posture-and-driving-ergonomics
  14. http://www.asylum.com/2010/05/14/video-game-injuries-get-real-after-call-of-duty-emergency-room/
  15. http://www.ketv.com/family/3472497/detail.html