Violence in Video Games

This week we learned all about the gaming industry and learned about different aspects of it as well as how persuasive of an industry it is. With the average gamer being 30 years of age, and the gaming industry being one of the fastest growing industries in the world (expected net worth of $70 billion by 2017), gaming is definitely a prominent part of the world of entertainment.

Video games come in all shapes and sizes, with tons of consoles to choose from as well as an even larger variety of game genres to choose from. One of the biggest and most popular genres of video games are shooting games - be it first person, third person, or any other form of gaming where the player is required to shoot others to achieve a goal or reach an objective. This is obviously quite a violent genre of video games, with a good majority (if not all) of them being rated "M" for mature, meaning you cannot purchase the game unless you are at least 18 years of age. These violent shooting video games spark a serious controversy within society, with many people putting the blame for real-life acts of violence on these video games.

I am strongly opposed to the idea that violent video games are the reasoning behind the tragedies such as mass shootings or any other violent gun crimes. I have many reasonings behind this, and I'll be sure to cover as many as I can think of at this moment, because it is a controversy that I feel strongly about.

http://kotaku.com/grand-theft-auto-blamed-after-eight-year-old-shoots-gra-1201375715

Above is an article about an eight year old boy who shot his primary caretaker, his grandmother, dead in their trailer park home in Louisiana. After finding out that the boy had been playing the video game Grand Theft Auto IV just moments before finding and shooting the gun, the media went crazy over it and instantly blamed the game for the violent behavior. There are so many things wrong with this picture. First of all, why does the kid have access to a loaded firearm in the first place? That's the first major problem. Secondly, although this woman is his grandmother and is quite old, I still don't see why the eight year old was left unsupervised to the point where he can play these violent video games and play with a gun. Also, if the media is so upset over the violent actions these games are causing, why are we letting these retailers sell the games to such a young audience in the first place? The game Grand Theft Auto IV is not purchasable unless you are at least 18 years old. That is over double the young boy's age. Sure, you can easily get around an age limit by having your parents or someone else above the required age to purchase the game for you, but these older consumers should be forewarned as of what the game's content includes if they don't already know. Even still, the game is named after a crime related to stealing an automobile, which should already raise some flags if you're trying to be a responsible caretaker. There are plenty of factors here that prove that the boy playing the game did not provoke him to shoot the gun at his grandmother.

Now, the above situation involved that of a young, naive child who, for the sake of argument, might not have known better or even known what he was doing. It's highly likely, more likely than for the game to be literally telling him what to do (even still - you don't shoot your grandmother in Grand Theft Auto). Back to the topic, there are plenty of violent occurrences out there performed by older individuals that who are more responsible and old enough to purchase these violent video games. This is where the topic gets even more controversial, with the media saying that there are underlying problems within the individuals such as the individual being mentally unstable. THIS would be the main cause behind the gun violence. This alone would explain all of the actions any shooter involved in a mass shooting would do. Violent video games are just a part of entertainment. I have been involved with violent video games ever since I got an XBOX - and I admit that for a couple of those years I was under the age of 18. Call of Duty - one of the world's largest first-person shooter franchises, has been my favorite series of video games to play for years now - and not once I have ever gotten the urge to go out and shoot some random people or join the military because I think I'm experienced with a gun. I've had hands-on experience with a pistol before at a shooting range. Between the preparation required, the recoil of the gun itself, and the feel and sounds of the gun - I would definitely not be an experienced gun handler in any situation, regardless of all the years of "simulating" a shooting game.

I understand that this post may be a bit hectic and all over the place, and may not cover the entire content of the persuasive gaming industry. However, I really feel like this is a topic that gets an over-abundance of attention from the media for the wrong reasons. Violent video games are not the underlying causes behind mass shootings. It's a combination of irresponsibility, poor parenting, and possibly derived from any sort of disabilities. If a video game - something that is not even close to being real - can push you to want to do thing as horrible as shooting people for no reason or running people over with a stolen car - there's something more to it that is unique to the individual. This is coming from a gamer, someone who has grown up with video games for a good majority of his life, a gamer who is very experienced in shooting/violent video games - but in no way is experienced to associated with real life violence.

Finally, I'd like to end with a poll from FOX news regarding violent video games. When non-media have a say, it looks more like this:

Politics, Polarization, & Partisanship

This week we learned about the 3 P's - Politics, Polarization, & Partisanship. There were two sides of this topic, with each side being represented by different people; Horkheimer, Adorno, and Sunstein. Media effects are generally more limited than critics would have you believe they are, which really puts the whole movie rating system into a new perspective. If the media effects are so limited, what is it that we as the consumers of media are missing out on and being held back from? Horkheimer and Adorno did not appreciate the positive role that was being played by the general interest intermediaries, while Sustain may have idealized them.

In today's day and age, business models are constantly changing. However, this does not stop personalized nor mass media from being produced. Neither are disappearing any time soon. Despite Sunstein's concerns, some sources of information are more diverse than ever before. As we grow, our knowledge increases and we store this knowledge in various ways. This means that our sources of vast knowledge and information are constantly growing and changing as well.

Finally, we learned about a man named Dan Kreiss. Kreiss believed that new technologies for convening political supporters don't necessarily coincide with deeper underlying changes in the management of campaigns. This means that the two things don't necessarily work together like a clockwork mechanism; it is simply coincidental that the two are happening at the same time in today's society. Just because political figures such as presidential candidates are now using social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter to gain more supporters for their campaigns does not mean they are the reason behind the new and changing ways that these campaigns are behind managed.

My question relates to the final paragraph. Will new technology and campaign management ever fully coincide? Since our technology is evolving faster and faster every day, who knows what future political figures will be using for campaigning in the coming years. Will we one day rely on technology so much that we can't have "deeper underlying changes" without it?

Ambient Awareness

This week in class, we talked about ambient awareness. Ambient awareness is defined as, in academic tradition, distributed cognition. Distributed cognition is a hybrid approach to studying all aspects of cognition, from a cognitive, social, and organizational perspective. The most well known level of analysis is to account for the complex socially distributed cognitive activities, of which a diversity of technological artifacts and other tools and representations are an indispensable part of.

One example we used in class was a three-layer naval bridge:

-The first layer: Crew Member - Artifact
-The second layer: Crew Member - Crew Member
-The third layer: Captain - Crew Members

This is a representation of how information is always traveling anywhere and everywhere. There is inter-relatedness among people and artifacts, where information is distributed and transferred. We get our information from artifacts and spread the word to cause information to rapidly grow and spread.

Further examples include one with planes and cockpits. On planes, they redesigned specific instruments in the cockpit. Once before, anyone could see the information, and after the change, only the captain could. This had a negative impact after it was reveled that pilots could still reference the instruments even though they aren't used very often. This proves that people make more thoughtful decision s when they are socially exposed.

Another example of how distribute cognition has changed technology is with social networking and software. With computer information technology, it used to be one person to a machine, and that was it. Nowadays, people use their machines to socially interact with many others who are behind their personal computer screens.  Social Networking Sites, or SNS, shares information on the user with many other users. Before, software interfaces were for only 1 specific user, but now it serves multiple users simultaneously and helps them coordinate one another.

With forms of communication such as email or texting, it is all asynchronous. The sender of an email doesn't know the current social status of the receiver. They could be sitting at their computer screen, anxiously waiting for that email or they could be out and about playing baseball or shopping at the mall, not focusing on the email conversation. In class, we discussed how technology is changing the way we communicate with one another. Email conversing is demanding. Especially in the workplace, people who communicate via email will be wondering "hey, did you get my email yet?" or "why haven't you responded to my email?" because they don't know the social status of the recipient. Once again, it's not like they are always eagerly awaiting that inbox to fill with a new message, having nothing better to do than to reply. Sometimes, as we discussed in class, we are overwhelmed with emails and end up deleting massive amounts of them without reading any, which could cause us to delete important emails. And what is our way out of it? To simply blame the technology... "oh, I didn't get that email, that's why I didn't respond." With other forms of online communication, such as Twitter, it's not as demanding and there is no pressure to respond to a twitter mention as soon as possible. If you don't read your tweets, they won't sit there on your feed waiting for you to reply, they'll move along with the other tweets from all of the people you follow. Twitter and Facebook are new communication outlets and do not demand your attention like earlier technological communication tools.

Impression Management Online

This week we talked about impression management online and different pre-web forms of communication that use technology. Before the World Wide Web was established, there were three main forms of communication using the Internet, all of which contributed to the way we use the Internet to communicate today.

During the pre-web era, impression management online wasn't really an issue. Typically, users remained anonymous, so your online identity did not define your offline identity. Because of this, there was no real need to manage an online presence.

The first of three forms of communication we used before the WWW is Bulletin Board System, or BBS. BBS is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program, like the command prompt. Once you are logged in to this system, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading the latest news, and even exchange messages with other users that are in the system. Exchanging messages could be done in a variety of ways, including e-mail, public message boards, and direct message chatting.

The second pre-web communication system is the Multiple User Database, or MUD. This is a single database managed and accessed by multiple users. It was very popular during the pre-web era due to this anonymity, since users could remain anonymous while contributing and accessing the database. MUD still exists in today's Internet, and is used on sites like Wikipedia, where any user can edit information on pages within the database.

The final pre-web communication system is Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. It's a protocol for live interactive Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, which are called channels. However, IRC also allows for one-on-one communication via private messaging as well as chat and data transferring.

One part about this week's lecture that I found to be very interesting was the Social Presence Theory. It evaluates the communication technologies and how post-web communication technology are new and improved ways of communicating than its predecessor. BBS, a useful way to chat with others online, has been replaced with instant messaging, where users can instantly communicate with others and have online identities to refer to each other with. However, phone calls to be a more personable way of communicating than instant messaging, since you can physically hear the voices of those communicating. And to be even more personable, video chatting using programs such as Skype, where you can see and hear the other people.

Overall I think we've come a long way from pre-web era forms of technological communication. Nowadays, we can even video conference one another from our mobile phones. Today, we have instant access to communication technology wherever we go. My question is; what's next? With today's technology, we can send and receive messages in an instant, send and receive phone calls and video chats on the go, and so on. It really makes me wonder how we can improve our forms of communication from where we currently stand, and what the next step in the Social Presence Theory will be.