09. Virtually Real

Virtual Reality is defined as an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment. You may have heard people talk about VR just in the gaming industry, but games are not what VR is exclusively attached to. The last couple of years, VR has recently been a big talking point, with major companies announcing and releasing headsets; the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or PlayStation VR for example. In my opinion, VR will start in the game industry and move to other mediums like interactive movies, or just environmental scenery that you can look around in the virtual world, and at some point, in the future I believe VR will merge with AR (Augmented Reality). 

Augmented Reality is the blending of virtual reality and real life, as developers can create images within applications that blend in with contents in the real world, for example; the Microsoft HoloLens. Both AR and VR are similar that the goal is to immerse the user, but uses different ways to achieve said goal. What should virtual reality be? Should it just be focusing on video games or should it grow to be a different medium. Not grow out of games but expand into other avenues. We’ve seen VR headsets release and they don’t generate a lot of buzz, yeah we hear people praising how good it is when they try it on, but how many gamers actually have a VR headset or a device that can run VR? Or how many gamers even want VR in their gaming? There’s a community of people who are in that VR 'talking space’ world but outside of that isn’t millions of people wanting to buy headsets. The PlayStation VR came and went in my opinion. It released, some people bought it, but it isn’t for everyone and PlayStation should be or should’ve been selling it as it was and is for everyone. They need a big developer with a big game to save their headset, or when the next PlayStation console arrives they need to have a new model PlayStation VR and try to resell the idea of the PlayStation VR with a different strategy. On the other hand I feel that it’s easier to sell the idea of VR to PC owners, especially with the power and back of Facebook with Oculus Rift.

Went on a bit of a tangent there, but nonetheless, what is Virtual Reality? In the year 2017, I don’t think we fully know and fully understand what VR is going to be in the future. My guess? VR and AR with somehow merge together into some sort of new medium of entertainment. Yes, VR now is used mostly for games and even just short 360 degree movies, but it may expand to other aspects in our life somehow. I don’t own a VR headset, and I don’t really want or need one at this very moment. Maybe I’m just waiting for VR to grow into something else, remember VR is in its infant stages and it’s only a matter of time before we see something really special with the medium known as VR. Or maybe it’s just a phase in the game industry and will go away in the next couple of years, who knows? We now wait for the future to decide……

References

Rouse M, 2015, virtual reality, WhatIs TechTarget, viewed 2 May 2017, <http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/virtual-reality>.

McKalin V, 2014, Augmented Reality vs. Virtual Reality: What are the differences and similarities?, Tech Times, viewed 2 May 2017, <http://www.techtimes.com/articles/5078/20140406/augmented-reality-vs-virtual-reality-what-are-the-differences-and-similarities.htm>.

08. Is Australia’s ‘Refused Classification (RC)’ category for Video Games treating Adults like kids?

Refused Classification (RC) material is a wide-ranging category of content which includes material deemed to offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults. Thanks, because all I needed was for someone to tell me what I can and can’t play, what I can and can’t watch. Thanks Australia. With the introduction of the adult rating R18+ in video games in 2013, we thought all would be good. We thought to ourselves “We finally won”, no more banning games. And we were dead wrong. Games continue to be judged by a stricter standard and a number of games have been refused classification since then.

Games that would’ve been MA15+ were given R18+ ratings. For example; the Grand Theft Auto series. All have a MA15+ rating, until GTA V came out with an R18+ rating, which more or less has the same violence and gameplay has GTA IV. Before Watch_Dogs released it had an MA15+ rating, as its release date neared it was changed to R18+. Yet games like Hotline Miami 2 get outright banned. Australian citizens you loved the first game, you don’t know if the second game is good because we banned it, and we don’t want you to play it ever. In other news, video games now can have a R18+ rating, enjoy your day. Thanks Australia. Simon Frew, Deputy President of the Pirate Party stated, “The Australian Classifications Board has a long history of banning films, video games and generally treating Australian adults as children”. I'm sure many people agree, including me - that adults are treated like children when it comes to this topic.

What is a reasonable adult? Who is a reasonable adult? This act of banning games is total bull. Developers should be allowed to put their vision in their games, not make games then wait for approval or a statement to say what needs to change for it to be played in certain countries. The rating guidelines have to change, they need to be updated. The ratings are there for a reason, and tells us who can and can’t play that said game - age wise, not for The Australian Classifications Board to ban games. Here’s an idea, have a rating called RC18+ (Refused Classification), even though it might not make sense that it’s called Refused Classification and it is classified as RC18+. But it is a category, so why not make it a rating. Besides the rest of the ratings and banning’s don’t make sense so why not keep the tradition going 😉. Have the description as 18+ and “Play at own risk”. Then it’s not the games fault if you have a complaint that it’s too violent or too sexual, it yours, and yours alone, that you picked it up and played it. But until then, we as Australians just have to hope and pray that upcoming releases of our most anticipated games don’t get banned in Australia and we can get our hands on them. Thanks Australia.

References

2010, What is Refused Classification (“RC”) material?, libertus.net, viewed 21 April 2017, <http://libertus.net/censor/isp-blocking/au-govplan-refusedclassif.html>.

Kotzer Z, 2015, How to Get Your Video Game Banned in Australia, Motherboard, viewed 21 April 2017, <https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-to-get-your-video-game-banned-in-australia>.

2015, Classifications Board continues to treat adults like children, Pirate Party, viewed 21 April 2017, <.https://pirateparty.org.au/2015/01/16/classifications-board-continues-to-treat-adults-like-children/>.

07. The Addiction

Video Game Addiction is described as an impulse control disorder, which does not involve use of an intoxicating drug. Video game addiction has also been referred to as video game overuse or compulsive/excessive use of video games. So, that’s it then, it's settled, either get addicted to video games or get addicted to drugs. Your choice. Only joking (not really). Too much of anything is bad for you or at least too much of any said thing could make you get bored of it. And in some instances, people don’t have that line drawn. They play games all day, every day. 

Gaming addictions can result in personal, family and academic problems. But here’s the thing, we can’t blame video games for this, we should blame the person who has become addicted. So, all those news stories blaming video games can go straight in the bin. In my experience, if I’m enjoying a game, I’ll play it for a long time, maybe a couple of hours. And at some point, I get tired or can’t be bothered playing anymore, or if I see that its late at night and I have something planned the next day, I have the power to say it’s enough for today and Save & Exit the game. I don’t think I’ve ever started playing a game when its 2-3 am, because there’s no reason to. I’ve been playing games all my life, and maybe I don’t have any addiction problems at all in my life and don’t have that trait, but for me it’s easy to exit a game and know I’ll play it at a later date. So long story short, I have no credibility on the matter of video game addiction, though I did play Call of Duty: Black Ops basically every day for a month and didn’t pick it up again until years later. But even in that month, it was November or December (can’t really remember), so I had school holidays, and didn’t have much going on. But even then, I didn’t play it at the times of 2 or 3 am, I knew when to exit and hop on the next day. You probably think that was an addiction and maybe it was, but it only lasted one month (maybe even less than a month), and I stopped without anyone’s help, because I knew I had to stop, not because it was ruining my life, but it got boring and repetitive at a point and it was time to stop. That was probably the first and only time I had played a game with those set of circumstances. I’m sure there are people who don’t or can’t say “STOP” to themselves.

But once again, I got no idea how that feels, and all this reading is a waste of time, from someone you can play games for a month straight and then stop playing games altogether for months. It’s about balancing your priorities, and once again, too much of anything is bad for you or at least too much of anything gets you bored of it. And once again, I know there are people who have problems with video game ‘addiction’. So to them, I basically have no advice :( . I guess call a video game addiction hotline? maybe? I don’t know, I got no idea. Maybe swap that addiction with something else like eating. Oh wait.... nooooooo.

References

What is Video-game addiction, AddictionRecov, viewed 15 April 2017, <http://www.addictionrecov.org/Addictions/?AID=45>.

06. She Blinded Me With Violence

“Violence in Video Games Creates Killers.” Wait, what? If you don’t agree and you’re wondering why someone would say that statement, then you’re in the same boat as me. If you agree with the above statement, simply go f*** yourself. There have been many people trying to take down video games and video game developers/publishers over the years. From countries not giving games classification ratings and developers changing or removing content from their game to get into countries, like Australia for example, or just a figure in main stream media who can’t tell the difference between Connect Four and Monopoly trying to tell everyone that we must stop violence in video games because its making our kids abusive and terrorists. The original Grand Theft Auto (1997) was condemned in Britain, Germany and France due to its “extreme violence”, which included pixelated cars running over pixelated people and a few pixelated blood sprites. Here’s something I’m going to say that probably isn’t going to be the last time i say it, there’s a rating on the box of the game for a reason, if you’re a parent who has a child or children whom are younger than 15 and play games that are rated MA15+ or R18+ and you think your kids can’t ‘handle’ it, then don’t blame games that are rated with said ratings and clearly say what that game entails, blame yourself as a parent. 

Remember when Target pulled Grand Theft Auto V off the shelves. Three women started a change.org petition to take down Grand Theft Auto V. Those three women said they were survivors of violence, and I’m not going to say anything about that, because it’s a shame that people go through violent times or live in situations that they can’t get away from that are violent. But they put the blame on video games, a specific video game to be exact. Because we all know that violence wasn’t around until video games ruined our lives (sarcasm). God and Jesus Christ actually lived a quiet, normal life until the hit video game Grand Theft Atheist came out, after that all hell broke loose (well, not hell to the Atheists but something similar), right? Wrong. They stated in the petition that “It’s a game that encourages players to murder women for entertainment.” Clearly, they haven’t played a Grand Theft Auto game or at least done research that are based on facts.

Let me just say that the Grand Theft Auto Series is a parody of modern life, with over the top stories and comments of our real lives, and makes fun of ourselves and beliefs as human beings. Yes, you can drive by women - oh wait I don’t really have to be PC - so, you can drive up to some prostitutes and you can partake in some sexual acts in the car which cost in game money that you could be spending on something else, and after all is said and done and she’s walking away you can (optional, just like most things in life, optional, a choice) shoot and kill her and take your money back , but if anyone sees you do that, you gain a wanted level or two and the police try to take you down. Now after all that is said, I still didn’t give you one piece of information of what Grand Theft Auto V is about. Someone could go the whole game by not doing that act I just spoke of. And if you go and look up the synopsis or plot summary of Grand Theft Auto V nothing is said about that act because that’s not the story, why don’t the people who made the petition make a petition to all people who go to prostitutes in real life. Remember the saying the oldest profession in the world, this might not be true, but its older than video games were around. And if the reason for the petition was the content of the game, maybe we should have sent them a chart of the classification ratings and had a whole seminar with them and try to explain the difficult task that R18+ means no one can watch/play/use this content if they are not over the age of 18 and only can if parental supervision/agreement is active.

I went on a bit of a tangent, I was going to talk about specific people like Jack Thompson who sought out to destroy Rockstar games and the Grand Theft Auto series in the early days, but didn’t really get to it because there are many people I could’ve talk about who blame video games for violence in the real world, even Hilary Clinton did for a period of time. People like to destroy what they don’t understand, first it was Rock n’ Roll then the blame shifted to video games. We should be looking in the mirror - all of us - especially the ones blaming video games, and thinking that it’s not video games’ fault, or Rock n’ Roll, or Atheists or Enter - whichever religion, it’s us as human beings on a primal level that’s way harder to understand and blame on one thing. Violence was all around us way before video games were ever created and we should let people make the art they want to make. Because once again Video Games are a form of art (that’s not the first time I’ve said that, and won’t be the last).

References

Grubb B, 2014, Target Australia pulls Grand Theft Auto V from shelves after customer feedback on violence, The Sydney Morning Herald, viewed 9 April 2017, <http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/target-australia-pulls-grand-theft-auto-v-from-shelves-after-customer-feedback-on-violence-20141203-11znsz.html>.

Biggs T, 2014, Grand Theft Auto and the problem with banning 'violent' video games and media, The Sydney Morning Herald, viewed 9 April 2017, <http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/grand-theft-auto-and-the-problem-with-banning-violent-video-games-and-media-20141203-11zq3h>.

Stuart K, 2013, GTA 5 review: a dazzling but monstrous parody of modern life, The Guardian, viewed 9 April 2017, <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/16/gta-5-review-grand-theft-auto-v>.

05. Ludonarrative Resonance/Dissonance

Ludonarrative resonance (or cohesion) is where the story told by the game is conveyed not just through the cutscenes or cinematics, but is also inherent in the game’s mechanics. Which is present in most real-time strategy (RTS) games. Take the Command & Conquer series for example, you have a mission to destroy the enemy’s base or enemy units and that is conveyed through not just the gameplay but also the cinematics before the mission starts. This formula works well in this example, but some games that consist of Ludonarrative resonance, just end up having empty worlds, the story just sucks, or maybe the game is just boring (just look at one of the hundreds of simulator games that are available).

Ludonarrative dissonance on the other hand, refers to conflicts between a video game’s narrative and its gameplay. An example would be in the game Watch_Dogs. The player takes control of Aiden Pearce, a hacker and vigilante. Spoilers ahead! – After a hacking job gone wrong, a hit is sent out on Pearce. While intending to kill him, hitmen accidently kill his niece, and Aiden seeks to bring his own kind of justice to the people responsible, all while protecting his sister Nicole and nephew Jackson. Cool story, but after reading all that you come to the conclusion that Aiden is a fairly good guy in that world (like a John Wick type of good guy), trying to do right avenging his niece’s death and protecting his family. But as soon as the gameplay starts, you can instantly kill innocent civilians, hack their phones and steal all their money, get the police after you, kill a ton of them while destroying the city, and then walk into the mission marker and all that is gone. You return to becoming the guy who just wants to protect his sister and her family.

There’s more discussion on ludonarrative dissonance in the world because it’s a more interesting topic to discuss. You might be thinking that Ludonarrative dissonance is a bad thing - but take this into consideration – while the story doesn’t match the overall gameplay mechanics, without the mechanics that are present say in Watch_Dogs, there wouldn’t be much to do in the open world of Chicago in the game. Ubisoft wanted to tell a story and wanted you to do whatever you wanted to do in the game – they wanted it to be up to the player. Without that freedom, it wouldn’t be a good game – some say Watch_Dogs wasn’t a good game anyway (I enjoyed it), but it also isn’t the point in this discussion. You can spend all the time you want on story, but if you don’t have a game that’s fun to play or have a hook to keep playing it, or the world feels empty - why make a game - just write a book. 

References
Ubisoft, 2014, Watch Dogs Open World Game – Features & Plot, Watch_Dogs, viewed 17 March 2017, <https://watchdogs.ubisoft.com/watchdogs/en-us/game-info/index.aspx>.

Cowen N, 2014, Watch Dogs – freedom and morality in open-world games, theguardian, viewed 17 March 2017, <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/watch-dogs-freedom-and-morality-in-open-world-games>.

04. Realistic vs Stylised

Should video games focus on realism or should they be more artsy – more stylised? Realism in games can produce fantastic environments and worlds that look photorealistic, but also may contain humans that just don’t look right. ahh yes, the uncanny valley situation. The uncanny valley is a common unsettling feeling people experience when androids – or in games – characters closely resemble humans in many respects but are not quite convincingly realistic. You get taken out of the experience when you see a character that’s been modelled to look realistic but just doesn’t come together or seem right. Then there are games that focus on a stylised look and feel – like Borderlands for example – yes, there are humans and human like beings, but its stylised in a way that makes it look cartoony, for lack of a better term, and the world has its own set of rules that may not apply in real life. It knows what it’s trying to go for and we as the player know what the developers were trying to go for style wise.

Generally, we see indie developers create stylised games and big companies focusing on realism. Of course, this isn’t always the case, as with the previous example of Borderlands. A factor that contributes to that is money. Its more expensive to create big action blockbusters or even any realistic looking game, with things like motion capture, voice recording, marketing, etc. Indie developers can have more artistic ideas come to fruition, they are not held back by AAA publishers telling them what to do and what sells. Indie developers have all artistic freedom of their game. There are many people/gamers, that only play AAA games, and never touch what is foreign to them – they never pick up an indie game and start playing nor do they want to, some just wait for big titles like Call of Duty and/or FIFA every year and only play them and there’s nothing wrong with that. Others play all kinds of games from Big AAA games to small indie or even one man team games.

Should we just choose one – Realistic or Stylised – for the video game industry? My opinion, why choose when we can have both. This art we call video games is just that – art. We need developers to strive for realism and realistic environments, to move forward with technology, to see what we can achieve, to see every piece of grass move on a windy day or to see the ocean move in realistic fashion, to have high resolution textures so you can’t tell the difference between in game or real life. And we also need games that focus on style from developers’ imaginations and dreams. We need push the boundaries of the human brain, we need to be imaginers, we need to look up to the sky and dream of other worlds, other possibilities, and if we don’t the video game industry will become old, stale, with the same games releasing year after year as the industry loses money and the interest from consumers. Realistic and Stylised games can co-exist forever and we shouldn’t want it any other way.

References

Borderlands, 2009, Gearbox Software, viewed 10 March 2017, <http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/games/>.

Rouse M, 2016, uncanny valley, WhatIs.com, viewed 10 March 2017,

<http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/uncanny-valley>.

03. First or Third Person? Who Cares? I Don’t.

A response to an article written by Mark Serrels at Kotaku. https://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/04/first-or-third-person-whats-your-perspective/

 Mark Serrels – the author of the article – goes into the differences in first person and third person games in the sense of how you feel towards the character’s story. Serrels posted on Facebook with the thought of a discussion, posting; “Putting this out there that I think my 'immersion' and/or level of empathy with my character is higher in a third-person game than a first-person game because I can recognise the motion of the body when I can see it than when I appear to be a floating camera-without-body skimming smoothly over the surface of the gameworld. This is opposite to the common wisdom that gets peddled in game theory.” Serrels then goes into what it feels like to play a game in first person taking Gordon Freeman from Half-Life as an example, and states that “we don’t really put ourselves in that character”, and that “first-person games want you to be that character.” Serrels feels that seeing the whole character in view brings you more into the story and the game.

Is Serrels right? Do we get immersed when we see the whole view of the character? Let me ask you this; does a camera view use magic and tell you what to be? No. We know we are playing as a character, and that character isn’t yourself, no matter how much time you put into a character creation to change its physical looks. Who really cares, just play the game that was meant to be played. When I play a game, whether its first-person or third I always know that I’m playing as that character and going through his/her story, it doesn’t matter if I’m looking through his/her eyes or above the shoulder. Serrels point is irrelevant in my eyes (in my first person, looking eyes). Games are an art form where anything can happen, the creators choose what’s in the game and what you do in the game.

Do I have to choose a side? Is Serrels point of view right? Is it wrong? It's his opinion and he is entitled to that. To be honest, I think I’ve already written too much about this article. Whether you play first or third person games, my feelings towards the characters are completely equal, what changes it is, and not limited to - the whole story and what that character goes through. Whether it’s a story driven game or not. Yeah, maybe the perspective is part of that feeling, or maybe its not. There are good games and bad games, but I don’t think that the perspective that you’re looking at or through is changing my feelings solely towards the character, or even for example having more sympathy for a third person games character than a first-person view character. Just play the games you want to play, enjoy them, and move on. (I’ve written too much on this, Dammit! I lose…)