Gaming by GlossGreen

So there I was, driving down the autobahn at 130 KPH, and then it hit me. No, nothing actually hit me, I probably wouldn't be here typing this if anything had. What I meant was that I had a thought. I just so happened to be thinking about the Nintendo Wii and I had a revelation. Well, maybe not a revelation per se, more like a breakthrough.

In the beginning there were a whole bunch of consoles that not many people alive today have ever actually played, so let's jump forward a little bit. In 1985 Nintendo was ready to launch its brand new console to a game deprived public (make that good game deprived public, there were plenty of bad ones around), but there was a problem. After the videogame crash of '83 retailers didn't want to trust a new console, so Nintendo got sneaky. Enter R.O.B., that little gray guy that came boxed with the brand new Nintendo Entertainment System. Notice that videogames console is nowhere in its name, and that was the point. It wasn't a videogame console, it was a toy, hence the addition of the plastic paperweight. And therein lies the problem.

Since the console was marketed as a toy and sold mostly to children, Nintendo got a reputation of being just for kids. This is a reputation that Nintendo has tried to change, but with little success. And now my thoughts on this. Who cares? One thing that you can always count on with Nintendo is great first party games. Sure, they are generally really cartoony, colorful kid games, but guess what? There's nothing wrong with that. Besides, adults still play them too. Mario since the NES days has always been about exploring bright, blocky worlds with lots of not too terribly dangerous bad guys to step on. Super Mario Bros. is most definitely a kids game, but we still love it no matter our age.

See, the problem isn't that Nintendo makes games for kids (once you admit that Nintendo has ALWAYS made games for kids), it's that we grew up and changed but Nintendo didn't. They've always been about the pure fun of the experience, not about the blood or blown apart bodies (one reason why the SNES Mortal Kombat game had gray blood instead of red). I was 12 when I first played the NES and it was very influential to me at that age. When I got older, I looked less and less to Nintendo for my games. My tastes were changing, but Nintendo was still doing the same types of games they did during the NES and SNES generations. Was there anything wrong with that? No, but I didn't think that way at the time. I kept wondering why Nintendo didn't mature with me. Why didn't they make games for the 18 year olds, for the 21 year olds, for the 25 year olds? Why were they still making games for the 12 year olds, like I was in 1986? The answer? Because that is what they are good at and what gamers, true gamers, still want from them.

Nintendo consoles have never been about the same things that the PlayStation has. Or the Saturn has. Or the Xbox has. They are just about the enjoyment of the game, enjoyment for all ages, not just the gamer of average age. Whether we like it or not, Nintendo will always have children close to it's heart, kinda like a not so creepy Michael Jackson. And you know what? That's something I can live with.

As Today's Entertainment.

OK, so it's been in the news again. Violence and video games. I know, I shouldn't be surprised by what the typical news outlet thinks is newsworthy these days. With people like Jack Thompson trumpeting the evils of electronic entertainment, expect to see more of this in the future. The problem I have with this fixation on video game violence is the fact that video games are not, nor was it the first, form of violent media available to us. All we have to do is turn on the news itself to see violence and death. I'm not talking about some Hollywood concocted nonsense, I'm talking about murder, violence and war. It is kind of ironic that the outlet that video games are most often decried from is the same outlet that has had embedded reporters with the Army and Marines during the latest conflict in the Middle-East. Turn on the news today to see the latest death scene from a car bombing in Iraq.

Movies today have become more and more violent also. Just look at the releases that happen around the Halloween time frame. You'll see your movies like Saw 12, Touristas 7, and all the others in the "torture porn" genre. The old Friday the Thirteenth and Nightmare on Elm Street movies are tame by comparison. Are video games really more dangerous then these displays of graphic violence? I know people will point to the fact that you actively control a character in games, but really, how do you honestly compare the cartoony, unrealistic violence of a game versus real people on screen committing incredibly realistic acts? Even the worst of Hollywood special effects can make a mutilation scene look like it is really happening.

I posted this topic on a forum recently and got some interesting responses to it. It seems that most people accept the violence displayed on the news as just a sign of the times we live in. It was reasoned that the news airs stuff like this because, of course, it makes money for the station. Viewership drives the price of advertising up, and advertising as we all know, is how we are able to watch all these shows for free. The more sensational the story is, the more viewers it most likely will pull in. A story about a teen killing a small child may not be that interesting, but throw Mortal Kombat into the mix and you have sensationalism at its finest.

On the good side, as games become more and more of a mainstream form of entertainment, we will see less and less attacks on the violence in games. Will there ever be a day that games are as accepted as movies are? I think we are seeing that happen today. With the current generation of consoles, and not to a small part the Wii itself, we are seeing video games being played by a more diverse demographic then ever before in its history. With game developers and console designers getting more creative, we will most definitely see a change in acceptance, and I think, sooner rather then later. Eventually, Jack Thompson will have nothing to complain about. Watch out, professional sports may be next.