Wednesday 11 November 2009

Post-apocalypse prep work

I just had to post this news report. It's a pressing issue what with the current economic and global climate, not to mention the Swine Flu situation that will almost definitely mutate into some form of zombie-ism. But the pressing question is, how do we prepare?

Are video games correctly preparing children for life
after the imminent apocalypse?



What do you think?

1 comment:

Ace said...

I think video games are just doing what they've always done, and that is to entertain. However, video games are now advanced enough to have incredible graphics, fluid and predictive controls, and amazing plots with story line arcs and character development.

Sex and violence always sell and young males, which have been traditionally been the bulk of gamers in the past, are very much interested in both but due to media and censor restrictions, little to no sex makes it into video games, besides our darling Lara Croft with her orgasmic grunts and moans cleverly attributed to her physical exertion from running and jumping.

'Violence' is apparently fine compared to 'sex', and the gaming community has feasted on it since the dawn of electronic gaming. One of the first video games ever made was 'Spacewar!'* by a group of students at MIT in 1961 which pitted two players and their missile laden spacecraft against each other in mortal kombat** (sic).

The fascination with the apocalyptic is in vogue on the pop culture front and the violence in video games has been dressed up accordingly. Occasionally a gamer will learn a life skill, or even life saving from a video game***, but generally, the violence is simply for entertainment.

Coincidently, the one skill I have learnt, or rather, gotten better at, was thanks to the post-apocalyptic video game Fallout 3 (2008), but I didn’t find that the game blessed me with a better weapons accuracy or melee skill base, but the rather mundanely helped fine tune my task management courtesy of the method in which the gameplay will break down tasks into smaller more easily achievable goals that form a percentage of the whole tasks total.

If we are to judge video games by my experience, post-apocalyptic video games will make more efficient and productive accountants and managerial staff of the next generation, not battle hardened warriors of desolate wastelands.

-ace wagstaff

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* Spacewar! (1961) arguably the first violent videogame, especially considering that it was a game in which two players versed eachother, as opposed to versing a computer, to the death. The few games that had come before it were ‘Mouse in a Maze’ and ‘Tic-Tac-Toe’ which’re both self explanatory, and a game called ‘HAX’ in which players created graphic displays and sounds by adjusting two switches on a consol.

** Mortal Kombat (1992), like Spacewar! (1961), is a two person hand-to-hand fighting game in which both players beat each other until one of them dies. In has gained infamy and notoriety for its excessive violence which includes disembowelments, dismemberments, and decapitations.

*** Boy Survives Moose Attack Thanks To World Of Warcraft, (http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/12/boy-survives-mo/)