Moral panic. The history of the conflict of the game industry and society
People are afraid of almost all new. This is a normal evolutionary reaction, because everything new carries a potential danger, and while there is no clear understanding of how dangerous the phenomenon is, the human brain will signal the possible threat. Moreover, he will invent non -existent dangers for an unusual phenomenon, until it enters everyday life, will not become commonplace.
At the beginning of the XIX century, opponents of railways argued that the steam locomotives bearing smoke would certainly lead to the collapse of civilization, destroy meadows and animals grazing on them. At the beginning of the 20th century, cinema was accused of falling morals and assured that over time it would lead to the degradation of art and culture.
In the XXI century, a similar fate befell computer games. According to public opinion, the games are addictive no worse than drugs, lead to an increase in aggressiveness, reduce the academic performance of schoolchildren and students, contribute to the growth of terrorism, are responsible for the aggravation of the political situation in the Middle East and almost guilty of reducing the Penguins population in Antarctica.
The fact that it is true from all this, that the partial is true and that frank stupidity and fiction, we will not argue – this is completely ungrateful, and most importantly – meaningless. Instead, we decided to trace the history of the conflict of the gaming industry and society, without sharing participants in the confrontation on the right and guilty.
Sexual question and torn spine
The confrontation of society with the game industry began about thirty years ago. In 1973 Atari I released a slot machine GOTCHA : the company's employees jokingly said that the joystick in its form resembles the phallus, and in order to “eliminate discrimination”, they decided to make a game with “female attributes”. So engineers attached an original control in the form of two pink bulges to the machine. The appearance of a “machine gun with boobs” was generated by one of the first major scandal in the history of the gaming industry. Then the public won its first victory – universal discontent did not affect sales poorly, and Atari gave up, replacing the pink indecent for traditional joysticks.
[[Bullet]] The original version of the Gotcha slot machine today can only be seen in the picture. Only late versions equipped with joysticks survived to this day.
The next major scandal erupted in 1976, when machine guns appeared in the gaming halls Death Race. The gameplay was simple. When driving a machine, the player had to put pressure the men crossing the road. No matter how many developers assured that it was not the men at all to shoot down, but the goblins, the facts were against them: the working name of the project was a “pedestrian”, and the game itself unequivocally hinted at the “deadly racing 2000”, where the riders wound on wheels an year earlier. Careless passers -by.
President of the Association of Parents and Teachers of Long Island Ronnie Lam, a mother of two children and an ardent opponent of slot machines, launched a real crusade against the game. The indignation of people, most of whom did not see Death Race in the eyes, was so great that the manufacturer had to curtail sales; In total, a little more than five hundred machines were released. It’s scary to think what would happen, go out in those days a game reminiscent, say, GTA. Its creators would probably be linked right in the parking lot in front of the studio.
Time passed, morals changed, and the game industry grew teeth and claws. It became more difficult and more difficult to intimidate it. In the eighties, electronic entertainment became a serious business: slot machines gradually replaced consoles and personal computers, large gaming companies appeared, and artisanal studios and publishers grew like mushrooms after rain.
[[Bullet]] Death Race accused of propaganda of dangerous driving, killing people and excessive cruelty. For a modern person, to discern all these horrors in a small black screen and running white pixels will be difficult.
The first victory of the gaming industry can be considered a scandal around the game Custer’s Revenge For Atari 2600 – A naked man in boots, a cowboy hat and with an incredibly huge masculine organized organ, avoiding the arrows flying into it, to get to an Indian woman tied to a pillar and perform a series of sexual actions with her. Even by current standards, this is a fair busting, and then everything was protested against the game, starting from the organization “Women against pornography” and ending with the movement for the rights of indigenous Americans. The creators of the console even tried to sue developers, but they only chuckled – the circulation of the game amounted to 80,000 copies, twice as much as the sales of previous games of the studio. It would seem a ridiculous case, but according to the famous writer-French Andrea Dvorkin, the popularity of this sex arcade provoked many real rape of Indian girls. However, no one spent reliable studies showing the correlation between crimes and the peak of the sale of the game.
They could not ban Custer’s Revenge, and by the beginning of the nineties the game industry completely unbelted. The players unceremoniously exploited in the themes of sex, violence, blood, dissected, drugs and other scandalous ones that in those Puritan times were allowed to show only in the movies or in the evening news. One of the most egregious cases of "moral degradation" was published in 1992 Mortal Kombat , Where rivals burned each other alive, decapitated, pulled out hearts and spine, filling the screens with streams of red pixels. For us now, all this looks normal, but then Mortal Kombat has become a real red rag for bulls of various stripes – from politicians to journalists and even preachers.
[[Bullet]] Cartridge cover with Custer’s Revenge. Screenshots from the game, alas, cannot show. They have at least six pixels – completely pornographic properties.
Of course, they were not going to endure such lawlessly politicians. In 1993, the US Congress began hearing on the issue of violence in video games, which was led by Senator Joe Lieberman, already known for his intolerance to violence and debauchery in games. The result of the hearing was the ultimatum of the entire gaming industry: either developers and publishers accept the system of age ratings during the year, or the government will do it on its own. So the organization appeared Entertainment Software Rating Board , or ESRB – today their labels with the letters "E", "T", "M" and others can be seen on most boxes with games.
However, ESRB did not solve the problem, and in places even aggravated it. For example, before the ratings are introduced Nintendo She pursued a policy of hard self -censorship: say, Mortal Kombat mentioned above on the Snes prefix was deprived of blood and other atrocities, which extremely negatively affected its sales. After the ESRB ratings appeared, the company abandoned self -censorship and released a full version.
In the twenty -first century, the games have already entered adults. A happy childhood was left behind, and in his pocket was a “rating” passport, legalizing the right of developers to produce games with sex, drugs and rock and roll. Graphics every year became more beautiful and realistic, the number of players grew rapidly, the prices of computers and consoles fell. The game industry has become the fastest growing industry of mass entertainment. Old people and youth have not yet understood each other before, and now the young generation has completely gone into another world – a virtual universe, inaccessible to those who grew up on radio, newspapers and lamp televisions. Sooner or later, the thunder was supposed to struggle. And he struck.
Scientific look?
Modern science cannot come to a consensus regarding games. But some scientists have long set a bold point in this matter. Take, for example, the work of Professor Craig Anderson, completely wonderful in his category, in his category Cruel games: myths, facts and current issues " – the author once and for all pronounces the games of a conviction, calling all alternative opinions to myths, lies and frauds of facts.
And most of all Anderson does not like journalists who are captured by an unusually stupid error, as if research of cruel games are controversial. Craig himself believes that it is more and more clear, and only the most perfect profan can doubt the corruption of cruel games on the human mind.
Opponents of the video game love to invite Anderson to hear the Senate, and the professor himself even released the book “Cruel Video Games”. It is only a pity that he himself does not disdain the lies and tags of facts, otherwise we would believe him – he really convincingly knows how to express the thoughts.
In the crosshair of the sight
The silence was torn by the dry crack of gun shots. Powder smoke, blood and corpses, flame from an exploding bottle of incendiary mixture … This is not a description of the next shooter about how brave American special forces wet in the toilet of evil Wahhabis. Thus began the morning of April 20, 1999 at the American school "Columbine", Colorado. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Clibold, booting to the top with weapons and homemade explosives, went to terrorize their own alma matater. Fortunately, both novice terrorist were dimensions in terms of chemistry, so most of the bombs they made did not explode.
[Bullet]] Today Mortal Kombat is just another fighting wiping, but in the nineties of the last century it was a real cult. Suffice it to say that the militant battle militant was the first film shot based on the game.
But even without explosives, Eric and Dylan made a real “Texas massacre” at school. Within 50 minutes they shot defenseless children and teachers, killed 12 students, one teacher and wounded another 21 students. Only an hour after the end of the shooting, the police dared to go into the building, but there was no one to arrest: having shot plenty, Eric and Dylan committed suicide.
After this incident, a real storm broke out in the American community. People demanded to ban cruel games, forbid children to enter the Internet, prohibit the Rammstein group, show the Goths Kuzkin’s mother and stop writing out antidepressants to children. It would seem, what does the games have to do with it? It turned out that the killers were fans of Doom, and even led the fan site dedicated to him. You can’t argue with such accusations – it is amazing as soon as the ID Software studio was not attracted to the case.
The echoes of this terrible tragedy pursue Americans so far. "Arrows from Columbine" became almost idols of marginally tuned youth. In 2005, Danny Ledon using the program RPG Maker Made the game Super Columbine Massacre RPG. It was a classic role -playing gameplay game in the spirit of Final Fantasy VI. Interestingly, at first it did not attract any attention. But a year later, the journalists noticed it, they were indignant, began to pour mud on as a logical result – complete success and tens of thousands of downloads. The game colleagues also liked the game. When Super Columbine Massacre RPG was removed from the competition of independent games, half of all the finalists (among them were the creators Braid , Flow , CASTLE CRASHERS and others.) refused to participate in the competition in protest.
[Bullet]] Killer simulator Manhunt was accused of at least two murders committed by children playing it. Grand Theft Auto was subjected to great persecution. By the way, both games take place in one universe.
Super Columbine Massacre RPG really liked the 25-year-old Canadian Kimvira Jillu from Montreal. He also loved the killer simulator very much Hitman And he was very interested in the events at the Columbine school. And so, having quarreled once with a girl and finally disappointed in this world, he took a gun, CX-4 Storm carbine, ammunition bag and went to a nearby educational institution. The yard was September 13, 2006, on the clock – without twenty hours. What happened a minute later is now known as "Brotherha at Dawson College". Police counted 65 shooting sleeves. Kimvir almost did not aim, so only one student died as a result of his shooting, another 19 people were injured. Having received a bullet in his hand, the criminal immediately committed suicide. In the best traditions of Columbine.
A year later, on April 16, 2007, the South Korean student of the Virgin Polytechnic Institute, the son of Hi Cho shot two fellow students in the hostel-first it is not known what the 19-year-old Emily Jane Hilsher, and then came running to the sound of a guy shot in front. It is difficult to hope for a bright future after the murder of two people, and, not wanting to suffer because of such a “small thing”, Cho decided to enter his name in the history of crimes. He wrote a suicide note, made a statement in front of the camera (where he remembered the “martyrs of the“ Columbine ”by Eric and Dylan), and then, armed with a pair of pistols and several hundred cartridges, went to set a world record for the speedy murder of people in educational institutions.
[[Bullet]] Eric and Dylan walk along the defeated cafeteria of the Columbine school.
Unlike predecessors, Cho was a good and prudent shooter: closing the doors with chains, for 11 minutes he made 174 shots, killing 32 people and injuring a couple more dozen. The last, 175th shot, he made himself in his head. In the best traditions of Columbine … Jack Thompson, an ardent opponent of the brutal video game, who at that time at the peak of his popularity, immediately took advantage of the chance and brought down his anger at the playing industry, the benefit was a reason for this – the son of Ho really was an avid player.
So it happened. The murder of eight people in the Finnish school of Yokel – the press shows the statistics of the killer in Battlefield 2. Mass murder at the University of North Illinois, six dead – Jack Thompson once again goes to television, asking American citizens how many deaths should occur before they realize the Satanic essence of the video game. The Norwegian terrorist used Modern Warfare 2 as a simulator for preparation for a terrorist attack? So the games are forge of terrorism! Everyone knows that terrorists use voice chats of games to prepare operations to avoid wiretaps of special services! And do not ask how serious people can believe in such a delusional lie. You may not like the answer. The fact is that in all this nonsense and lies there is much more truth and common sense than it might seem at first glance.
The tragedy of the situation
It is possible that the console era is coming to an end. The excitement after the Vita and 3DS exit is little comparable to what was during the release of the previous generation consoles. Seven to eight years ago, when the prefixes were at the peak of popularity, for them people were ready to give life. In order to get Xbox 360 and PS3, people lived in tents for several days in front of shops. One man, unable to get out of work, sent his wife at the ninth month of pregnancy all day to stand in line so that she bought him the cherished PS3. Fortunately, everything worked out and the woman did not give birth right in line, but the fact itself.
And cheerful sellers from the Wal -Mart store, having seen a crowd of hundreds of Sony fans on the street, decided to “joke” – they carried out several chairs and said that PS3 would go to those who have time to sit down on them. In the subsequent landfill, several people were injured, who had to be taken to the hospital.
Spoons do not exist
Although the struggle of society with the game industry went from the very beginning, her motives were approximately the same as that of the fight in the glass: “Your face is about nothing, getting brick!»Everyone considered himself right, having no evidence at the same time. Only in the early eighties, scientists were seriously interested in the influence of games on people and began to bring the scientific basis under the dispute.
The first experiments did not bring much benefit. Mark Griffiths, Professor of the British University of Hotting, TPENT, studied the data of two dozen studies conducted from 1982 to 1996. Some argued that the games provoke aggressive behavior and hostile attitude towards others, others believed that cruel games are reassured, allowed to give out natural aggressiveness, and others did not notice any deviations from the players at all at all.
[Bullet]] Irony of Fate: At first, Schwarzenegger taught us in the cinema how to kill people with whole divisions, and then, as a governor, tried to ban the sale of cruel games.
“The question of the connection of the video game with the growth of aggressive behavior has not yet been resolved: the existing works on this subject are too contradictory, and there are too few of them, while the number of game genres is very large, and each of them affects a person in his own way,” Griffith's output. And although he wrote his work 13 years ago, over the past time little has changed. Fans and opponents of the video game can freely gain a whole armful of research in support of their position, and the arguments of both parties will be very convincing. And there are simply no studies that can put an end to this issue.
Take, for example, the recent experience of German scientists. They have established for certain that fans of cruel games are less sensitive to stressful situations. For the experiment, they took a group of ordinary people, as well as a group of fans of jousters who play an average of 15 hours a week. Both groups showed pictures that caused negative emotions: both players and non-players reacted equally emotionally to them, as the similar activity of the almond-shaped body (brain area) spoke about them. But the zones in the left frontal lobes, responsible for fear and aggression, reacted noticeably weaker among fans of the jokes.
The study stalled on this. There is information, but how to draw conclusions? Yes, we can say that lovers of jokes are less sensitive. But it is not clear whether this is a consequence of the games, or, conversely, such people prefer to tickle their nerves, playing cruel games? It is also incomprehensible whether this insensibility is a bad sign or good, because, as you say, a reduced level of fear and aggression means only that a person was not afraid and retained the sobriety of reason, which is very useful in extreme situations. Moreover, this insensibility does not affect the sphere of emotions – players can empathize, experience disgust, hatred and other feelings no worse than anyone else.
[[Bullet]] Lawyer Jack Thompson. They say that once he accused the US Department of Defense of Zombing Children with the help of shooters and turning them into fearless murder machines.
Consider several of the most interesting scientific works on the topic of computer games, and we will try to bring the arguments for both the pros and cons. First of all, the game industry can bring to its defense the statistics of the FBI, collected from 1972 to 2010: the last 20 years the growth of serious crimes, such as murders and robberies, is constantly declining, as well as the demand for drugs. No reliable explanation for such a phenomenon has not yet been found. The police, of course, talks about their heroic efforts, but some American and European scientists believe that the situation is changing for the better thanks to the Internet and video. Previously, bored teenagers went to the streets, went astray in the company. The need for self -affirmation gave rise to violence, the children easily picked up bad habits. Now they have a new, “electronic” drug, which is better than usual at least what is cheaper, and the passion for them does not lead to premature death from AIDS or overdose.
At the University of Rochester, they did not intend to science issues of morality and morality, deciding to experience the impact of cruel games on the reaction and natural ingenuity of a person. The results were amazing. Control group playing in The Sims , did not change its intellectual indicators in any way. But those who played shooters began to answer a variety of questions 25% faster. Aggressive games teach a person to make vital decisions faster, activate mental abilities, allow you to quickly adapt to a changing environment and react more adequately to unexpected incidents.
Run away from the zombie
Players who wish Wii are also capable of madness. When in one of the stores all the prefixes ended, which bought the last box, the girl had to flee: dozens of distraught players attacked her, trying to tear out the box out of their hands, and then chased after the flock of brutal drug addicts.
Fortunately, there were no casualties. Another horror story at night. One woman, to get WII, took part in a completely cretinical competition, where it was necessary to drink as much water as possible. After drinking a few liters, a woman, alas, did not win. In the evening of the same day, the 28-year-old mother, who wanted to please the new prefix of her children, was found dead. Doctors found that excess water caused a sharp imbalance of electrolytes, the so -called "water intoxication". Such a "surprise" family will not forget until the end of life.
About the power of attachment
However, for society, all this is insignificant – much more important that a person works well, observe the laws, and be adequate and controlled. And from this point of view, the games can cause significant harm. We will not talk about numerous studies about the connection of cruel games and violence – all news tapes are trumpeted about them. We better start with a reliable fact: games can cause a strong dependence, especially in children.
For South Korea, for example, gambling is not the name of a popular magazine, but a problem of national character, which the authorities are forced to fight through the adoption of dragon laws. For registration in an online game, every inhabitant needs to enter his own identification number. If the number belongs to a minor, exactly at 12 in the morning all games and services go offline until 6 a.m. This measure should force students to observe the regime of the day, although in general it does not solve the problem: the number of people who irrevocably hooked on virtual entertainment of people still remains incredibly high.
[Bullet]] It seems that Grand Theft Auto has become the main target of public indignation only because of its popularity, because there were games much more bloody and cruel.
And here is another fact. About a year ago, the British Triathlon Federation conducted a study of one and a half thousand English children 6-15 years old. If earlier the bicycle was the limit of the dreams of every boy, now a third of the respondents said that they did not need a bicycle even for nothing, and ten percent of teenagers do not know how to control this healthy means of movement. Almost a quarter of children never participated in the race by 400 meters, 15% do not know how to swim … What is the triathlon if only 34% of young British are more or less engaged in sports. But almost everyone has mobile phones and consoles.
What in the ranking for you?
Despite the criticism of ESRB ratings, they certainly have a certain significance. So, for example, censors can easily assign the game a rating of AO (from 18 and older), which means the death sentence for most projects. Large retail chains of the United States and Europe refuse to exhibit wheels with the rating of AO for sale, and Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft usually do not let such games on their consoles. But this barrier can soon disappear: with the development of digital stores and alternative platforms, developers are less and less dependent on both consoles and retail chains. And then – goodbye censorship. The only obstacle to the imagination of the developers will be only the Criminal Code.
Extreme
When human stupidity becomes the fault of the incident, it may be scary, it may be funny, but it is still available to understanding. Much worse when the dark side of the human soul becomes the cause of the crime, to understand which a normal person is simply not able. Two brothers, Jamir Ricks Thirteen years old and Antoine sixteen, played in turn in a sports simulator. Once the elder did not want to give in to the console, then the younger took the kitchen knife and stuck it into his brother's chest. After a second, Jamir himself was already crying, horrified by what he had done, but it was too late – the knife passed between the ribs and hit his heart, killing Antoine on the spot.
Another older brother entrusted the younger credit card with five thousand pounds, and he took them, and spent them. In response, the elder took the Xbox prefix and all the games to sell them, compensating for at least part of the losses. Then the young embezzle burned his brother alive, falling off the house. Father and mother, fortunately, managed to escape from the fire. Another terrible example: the sweet young man Stewart Harling one day catches and kills the nurse, causing her 72 stab wounds. The murderer’s mother blames the video games in everything – his son played them from the age of 11 and most of all loved the killer simulator Manhunt. Well, mom has the right to have her own opinion.
[[Bullet]] will always be, with or without games. Maniac James Holmes, imagining himself a joker, mined his apartment with mines-trames, and then arranged a slaughterhouse in the cinema.
A thirteen -year -old student does not have money for a purchase Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? The way out is obvious: you need to take a knife and go demand money from the teacher. Mom turned off the console during the game? It is necessary to beat her on the head with a heavy object until he is aware of his mistake. And what to do if my mother confiscated the prefix for good? It is necessary to hire a killer to kill his parents, and offer their car as a fee. But two exactly the same occasion at once: two men live in different parts of the country. But both did not like that the young children of their cohabitants play too much on the prefix. And Lucky Carnival Casino both decided to punish them with the help of kitchen utensils: one brushed off the baby’s head in a bloody stuffing with a kitchen tesak, and the second dragged a four -year -old baby to the burner and began to burn his hand alive. Yes, dear players. In such cases, they also blame the game industry, although it is obvious that no game can create such sick people.
Often, serious accusations are lying into one boiler, and such examples that have been stolen from the criminal chronicle that have nothing to do with the Games at all. But all these notes, regularly appearing on the pages of news tapes, only fan the fire, which has broken up for a long time. The question arises – why? What was the first spark? Why exactly the games became outcasts in the eyes of society, and long before the data on game dependence, research of cruel games and other objective facts appeared?
So why is the games?
When a maniac thinks that he is a Joker, and shoots a whole cinema during the premiere of the new Batman's adventures – no one is advancing for banning films at all. When it becomes known that the maniac played in between Doom , The public is ready to close the playing industry in general, and to hang developers on lampposts for intimidation – so that the rest would be disgraced. Players have always been outraged by such injustice, but it arose not without reason. There really is a lot of blood and cruelty in the cinema, but this is compensated by the abundance of comedies, dramas and melodram. In games, the number of destructive themes just goes off scale.
Take, for example, Nintendo , which has a lot of games for the whole family. The study conducted in the 1990s stated that of the fifty of the best Nintendo games, less than ten. More modern statistics indicate that in 2010 only 1% of the Games received the ES rating (for children from three years), completely excluding violence. In defense of the industry, we can say that 55% of all games have a rating E (from 6 years), that is, they contain a minimum amount of cartoon violence. However, this merit is small. Although the games for adults with the rating M made up only 5%, it was they, despite their small numbers, took a third of the places in the list of bestsellers.
[[Bullet]] For the older generation, the virtual world seems no less mysterious and dangerous than the matrix: viruses, cyber terrorists, game addiction, chosen people, Battery people ..
Politicians and public organizations are engaged in hunting for game “witches” not because they like it – they simply express the opinion of their voters, we can say that the opinion of society. If you take a couple of recent surveys of American inhabitants, curious statistics are found: 54% of respondents were sure that cruel games make children prone to violence, 72% voted for the introduction of restrictions on their sale, and 75% believe that ratings and other restrictions in no way do not interfere with children to access non -childish content.
The effectiveness of the ratings is really in doubt. In 2007, a survey was conducted among 1126 American schoolchildren, who once again confirmed the long -known truth: most of all children love games with sex, violence and cool guys who smoke, stirring vodka and curses obscenities. Worse, they can get access to such games without difficulty, especially now, in the era of digital stores, where in order to obtain access to the “18+” content, you need to click on the “Yes, eighteen I already” button ”. Sad, but fact: not fans from GTA or Call of Duty Schoolchildren are the same mythical creatures as fairies, Easter rabbit and queen of England. You can turn your back to this fact, saying that the case of raising a child is the care of parents, that the developers are not to blame for the fact that the rating system does not work. But the fact from this will not go anywhere. Teenagers 8-10 years old play the bloody games of rating m. Therefore, the indignation of adults is quite clear.
You weren't standing here
What claims did not make games! For example, Mafia 2 was persecuted by the organization Unico National , defending the rights of Americans of Italian origin. The head of Unico National Andre Dimino called the game a "collection of racist absurdities" and demanded Take-Two remove any mention of Italians and Italo -Americans or completely cancel the release.
The developers objected that dozens of films and TV shows were shot about the Italian mafia, many novels were written, so the claims should be made to them lastly. Suddenly, the law enforcement agencies of Belarus joined the camp of opponents of Mafia 2, which saw in it the propaganda of organized crime and dishonest methods of doing business. I really want to tell them about the “godfather” and “Soprano clan”, but we will not knock on our colleagues. If the Belarusian special forces come to the Coppole with a charge of propaganda of organized crime, he may not survive this.
Panic of morality
There is nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens with games today is a completely typical situation. Back in the late sixties, the English sociologist Stan Cohen put forward the theory of moral panic. Let's look at the foreign sociological dictionary: “Moral panic is a case of widespread anxiety and fear caused by the events that are inherent in essence. Moral panic has a long and diverse story, ranging from accusations of witchcraft in the Middle Ages and ending with modern fears before youth subcultures.
Moral panic usually focuses on certain “scapegoats”, who are accused of the situation and are considered responsible for all moral and social damage, whatever it may be. Such a panic is accompanied by calls for punishment or restoration of proper moral values. She can take the form of crusades in defense of morality (for example, against the use of drugs or alcohol) led by public activists who can make the eradication of their perceived as a matter of their life. In modern societies, a very important role in the emergence of moral panic plays mass communication, spreading rumors and contributing to a sharp increase in fear and anxiety ”.
[[Bullet]] Fans of the Skateboard simulator Tony Hawk decided to do in reality a “tour of destruction” – they set fire to the city sewage management department. They were not given points for this, but they allocated a free place on the bunks.
It sounds very familiar. We have a crusade against the gaming industry, and scapegoats in the form of developers of cruel games, and even public activists in the form of Jack Thompson and his associates. If you believe sociologists, it will end when a generation that grew up on computer games will become the most influential and respected layer of society.
Players will sit in the government, write scientific papers, begin to dictate their moral values and moral foundations and, in turn, will make a moral panic in relation to, say, cyborgs and will take over against creating a matrix. “This youth has gone crazy. In our time, there was no such dissolution, everyone sat quietly at home and played Call of Duty! And today, you just think, take the capsule, insert electrodes into their brain and lie like vegetables for months. It is necessary to prohibit these capsules until it's too late!" – maybe this is how the current students will get rid of the kitchen in fifty years, suffering from shortness of breath and radiculitis.
Already now, the tolerance of the population has increased significantly. The “great and terrible” Jack Thompson was deprived of a lawyer’s license and ceased to be taken seriously. The sensational law on the restriction of the sale of cruel games in the state of California, which Arnold Schwarzenegger himself adopted, ended with zilch: the US Supreme Court recognized the law unconstitutional. Call of Duty shooter is annually sold in a circulation of 25 million copies, becoming the most popular entertainment, ahead of films, music, poker game, sex and praise in the nose in all respects. With the help of casual games, the industry successfully takes to the hands of elderly people, housewives, always busy business people and other audience far from games. It would seem that things are getting better, but ..
“There are good moral panic and bad. Society sometimes denies the presence of certain problems, pretending that everything is fine. In this case, moral panic plays a useful role, drawing attention to really important problems, ”says Stan Cohen. We started the article with the statement that people tend to be afraid of the new. However, this was never a particular problem. The problem was that people are often afraid of newly justified, even if they themselves do not understand this.
At the beginning of the XIX century, opponents of railways argued that the steam locomotives bearing smoke would certainly lead to the collapse of civilization, destroy meadows and animals grazing on them. They were ridiculed for a long time, then they forgot, and then again remembered when at the end of the 20th century the term “ecological disaster” migrated from the pages of scientific papers to newspaper headlines.
One hundred years ago, cinema was accused of falling morals and assured that over time it would lead to the degradation of art and culture. They also laughed at this, while the artists of the art of dozens of countries did not become anxiety: with the help of Hollywood, American culture actively seizes the minds of youth, who quickly forgets the heritage of their ancestors who had been accumulated centuries for centuries.
Each medal has a flip side. Sometimes the most obvious facts can be a lie, and delusions can eventually be true. On which side of the medal will be the games, it is impossible to say so far – modern science is not ready to tell us the truth in this matter. But this does not mean that each of us cannot find the truth for ourselves. To do this, it is enough to honestly admit what harm and what benefit your passion for games brings. And then make sure that the harm is just a little, and the benefit is a wagon and a small cart.
The hit parade of the most stupid game accidents
Stories about how the next stupid player went to another world, having lost a day/three days/week in a row, they no longer cause the same emotions as before. Many are commonplace for this. But the fighters of the game front still have something to surprise us. We have compiled a small rating of the most stupid ways to suffer from games.
5th place
The 18-year-old fan of Final Fantasy is awarded the fifth place, which stole a credit card from her own grandmother and withdrawing more than ten thousand dollars from her for the purchase of collection figures dedicated to his favorite game. The loving grandson conducted the entire operation exclusively cleanly, and he could live happily ever after with his figures, as his conscience suddenly jumped out of the corner, grabbed his throat and began to choke. The young man tried to resist, but to no avail. Conscience won, forced him to come to the police and confess to everything deed. Perhaps the granddaughter expected everything to cost. Not did. The police confiscated twenty boxes with figures, brought a criminal case on an unlucky collector and sent him to a catalak.
4th place
The fourth place is occupied by an incredibly stupid thief who stole from the neighbors Xbox 360. He spent a lot of time on the development of the plan – he studied habits, daily routine. And so, when the victims left for rest, the criminal entered the house and stole the coveted console. Sorry, I forgot to take a power supply with me. Do you really have to go to theft again? The thief was very stupid, but not so, so he did a little smarter – he ordered a power supply in Microsoft. But he still could not play. Probably, the police did not really hoped for good luck when they took the local service center for the repair of prefixes under control, but, as they say in one famous film, "should never underestimate the predictability of deadly".
3rd place
The third place does not go to a person, but the police of the city of Pittston. One of the fans of Halo 3 was fond of drawing and depicted a weapon from the game with a card on a piece of paper on a piece of paper. The vigilant administration of the school regularly inspected the cabinets of students and, finding this sheet, stood on its hind legs. Plans! Schemes! Weapon! Yes, these are terrorists! The special services arrived at the place of the shortest time created the headquarters to counteract a terrorist attack.
The school was evacuated, and the sappers began inspection of the premises for explosives. To detain potential terrorists, two special forces detachments were allocated: one of them went to the house where the boy and his mother lived, and the other to his father’s house. The police also confiscated the computer of the young fan of the master of Chif. Realizing that it would be difficult to prove the preparation of the attack and put a schoolboy on the basis of one picture, the authorities reluctantly turned the operation and released the detainees.
2nd place
The second place is occupied by a drug addict, who stole Wii console from a certain resident of Oklahoma. Either the grass was particularly fatal, or he did not like the game … Be that as it may, the next day the guy returned Wii back, and so that the owner was not very angry with him, give her a bag of marijuana as an apology. And everything would end well, but the victim recklessly refused to accept the gift. Offended, the addict stole the prefix for the second time – and was a lot surprised when the police appeared in his house.
1st place
An honorable first place is a story in which there is everything – drama, betrayal, a deadly confrontation with a villain, a gun hanging on the wall (which will surely shoot), as well as a Christmas miracle. It all started with the fact that one player has broken Xbox 360. Drama! What to do? All service centers are closed on the occasion of the New Year holidays, and I really, really want to play. The boy suffered a dead console to his father, but he turned out to be an insidious villain-flatly refused to repair the prefix, citing some miserable excuses such as “I can't”.
Shocked to the core of his soul with such a monstrous betrayal, the young player took out his father's gun and asked him to shoot in tears. For why live in this world, when the Xbox 360 does not work, and your father – you just think about the horror of these words – your father refuses to repair her. “Better kill me! Better kill!" – sobbed a child. And then a shot struck. In front of the dumbfounded father, an accidentally shot rifle of the 22nd caliber made a hole in his son's son. You think it was a tragedy? It was rather a tragedy for a gun bullet. “Mo-o-o-OZG!"She shouted, wandering around the skull. “Mo-o-OZG, where are you? You should be here?»But everything was in vain. Either the brain in the head of the boy was not at all, or he was very small. Charter to look, the offended bullet sent everyone to hell and sat in the skull behind her ear. The victim alive was taken to the hospital.
