The News really sucks...Game for Change

Link to the game:  http://philome.la/FilmTravdc/game-for-games

I had a difficult time deciding on how I was going to do this week's project. I had decided a  long time ago that I was going to address violence in video games but with the restriction that we had to use Twine, my initial idea was thrown out the window. However I did manage to overcome this difficulty and came up with something informative, and hopefully still enjoyable, at the same time. Some might criticize the humor that I use as being insensitive or offensive for which I apologize, I did not mean offense with my sense of humor and that was not my intent at all. However humor has always been a tool in help people point out, learn from, and over come difficulties in their own lives and society.

The Twine game that I made explores the way that the mass media has portrayed, and is currently portraying, violence in video games while addressing the issue itself. I find people's lack of in depth research before developing their opinion very frustrating. It doesn't make them look good and it doesn't help spread concrete facts but instead perpetuates the spreading of half-truths and misconceptions. I tried to expose this trend with a sarcastic narrative in the game. While it is very short, I believe that it gets the point across and I hope that someone benefits from it with other important issues that come to their attention in the future.

I find that the issue that video games cause violence behavior to be based on a foundation of sand. It doesn't hold up very well when you really begin to inspect and test it. There many articles on news sites out there that point to video games as the source of violent behavior among youth and adults who use them. All of these articles that people point to are on the verge of being 10 years old. In more recent studies, such as this one which was published this year, show that violence lead to increased aggression. Other research has actually shown that overall youth crimes, including murder, rape, and assault, have all declined. This doesn't mean that video games caused the decrease in overall crimes but that they aren't a contributing factor in causing serious crimes. Some other articles in the past couple of years, like this one from the New York Times, are thankfully being more open with their opinion about what the real problem is. The problem is one that is compounded on so many other factors that it makes no sense that video games should be taking the blame.