The Nerd's Soup

I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head these past couple days, which is why I didn’t make a post a little earlier.  I should tell you, first and foremost, that this is the last post I’ll make before my summer ends and my senior year of college begins.  I’ve got a hefty set of English classes (and I’ll hopefully get a workstudy job), so I don’t know how much time I’ll have to post.  Maybe I’ll cut Tuesdays, which would make me feel silly, since I suggested Tuesdays in the first place.

Anyway, I was considering doing a midway-through-view (as opposed to a re-view) of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, since, if I ever finish it, it won’t be for a long time.  A midway-through-view is likely the best critical treatment I’ll be able to give it.

The other issue that’s been swirling around in my head is one that I come back to every now and again: game violence.  This particular bout was inspired by an article where the pope said that games which “exalt violence” were a “perversion.”  What?  No, don’t laugh!  I know you thought he was stupid when he said that condoms weren’t helping the AIDS situation in Africa, but the pope is a smart man, a good deal smarter than me, and likely a good deal smarter than you, too.  You don’t have to agree with him, but if you can’t take the things he says into consideration with a healthy dose of respect, if you can’t ask in all seriousness why he says these things, you are the worse off for it, not him.

“Exalting violence”… what is that, exactly?  At what point does a game go from simply having violence to exalting violence?  My little sister thought that The Legend of Zelda was okay, while Halo exalted violence.  That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me; there’s not a whole lot of objective difference between fighting baddies in Zelda and fighting baddies in Halo (but this is how girls think, you see).  Animated blood is just the dressing that propels a game from E to T to M rated.

There’s an interesting article here about the treatment of death in games, but I’ve played enough online multiplayer to know that death isn’t really the issue.  It’s the means of getting there that I’m wondering about.  Let’s take the sniper headshot.  Do they get our attention because some guy’s head just exploded, or does that just highlight the fact that some other guy was skilled enough to put a round though a small target?  Executions in Gears 2, what about those?  Is the fact I enjoy the fast-paced intensity, the epic storylines, the competition, the cooperative nature of these games something to be worried about?

On first glance, what the pope says makes sense to me, but there’s a certain amount of it that doesn’t mesh with my experience.  If I haven’t become “perverted” by playing, does that mean the games are “perversions?”  It’s something to consider, especially because I’m thinking of dropping a couple hundred bucks for a new HDTV (soooo pretty…).  More seriously, video games have become my medium, more than books, more than movies, although I enjoy both of those as well.  I really want to continue to see games evolve.

Any… opinions?