Ever since I owned my first video game console, gaming has been pretty much a part of who I am. When I was little that is all I would do. I would get home from school do homework and play my video games for a bit. It has allowed me to immerse into strange new worlds and allow my imagination go wild, and to this day they still do. But they also allowed me to develop skills that I would need need in the future. As much as I would love to sit down and play all day, things needed to get done. I learned to prioritize (to some extent) other factors of my life. I did this in order to play my games, but isn't that what we all do. We prioritize things mostly because we want to make sure the things we want to do get done, but we all know that sometimes life doesn't let us do as we please. During High School I got really good at getting this done. I would get back from soccer practice, eat , do homework, then i'd play for a bit. In college things started to change. I kinda fell into a casual mode for a period of time. I didn't play as much, nothing really enticed me. Now with the coming of the "new" generation, I really excited again. For variety a reasons, but there is one I would like to share and discuss, and its the satire found in some games and how it really helps shape an opinion of someone.
I think one of the greatest examples of this is the Grand Theft Auto franchise. This game has been at the forefront for advocates of "games cause violence" or other humanitarian movements. This game has everything and I mean everything, sex, violence, drugs, basically everything that makes this world ""bad". Just take a look at the latest installment GTA V. It had some serious content, like forcing the players see actual torture going on. Noe I'm a firm believer that you control what you do. If you pay to watch a movie and you think it sucks, it's not the movies fault, you didn't have to watch it. Same thing goes for games, radio, TV etc. You are not forced to do anything. Now there is restrictions obviously, that's why there is a rating system (its M for Mature for a reason). But because of this choice developers have the freedom to spoon feed us whatever they want whether it be true or not, but more importantly it allows them to put out broken aspects of society and put it jam front in our faces. GTA is not a bad game, its quite enjoyable actually but for "Mature" players, you see the game for what it is, a sad joke that is an honest represent of our society (to some degree).
The Infamous game franchise also tackles some broken aspects of society. I'd like to focus on Infamous Second Son, a new game coming in 2014. The essential plot line is that there are beings with super powers that exist among us and the government wants to "protect" us from these threats. Now obviously there could be some validity to their actions but it brings to light a key principle. For them (the government) to protect us we literally have to give up our basic rights. The protagonist of the game is the main antagonist to this government regime and sees their actions for what it is, a violation of our rights. Now lets try to bring this back to the real world. We obviously don't have super humans walking amongst us but we ALL have seen this issue. Our government will use this excuse to justify their wars, their military advances and their blatant violation of our rights. In that game world, they justified it because of super human, whats our excuse? Any way I see it, I see there could always be another way. We need to protect ourselves because we have "threats", yet half those threats are because we caused them. But I'll save that for another blog.
Point is, games are great way to experience new worlds, but it is also a great way to make you realize how bad ours is. Some games make you realize come things are bad (like torture), others make you question the validity of "higher authority" and truly make you analyze our world works. Either way, we are allowed to see the world for what is is, in a fun way.
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