A Multiplayer Melee on Politically Sensitive Games

Are some of today's video games crossing the line with their use of offensive racial and ethnic stereotypes, and how they cover sensitive political issues? Or are we just living in a world of over-the-top political correctness? That's the question at hand for editors Aaron McKenna and Rob Wright, who debate yet another hot topic.

I don't think any game should have to be politically correct or sensitive to any group. If games were to become totally politically correct we'd have a bunch of boring games where everyone works out their problems with kind words. I agree that, if a game is really offensive, few people will play it and no one will take it seriously.

i hardly see how wife swap fits in with that bunch. it can be quite interesting to see how people get on in a situation like that. i think you may be from the U.S and from what i have seen it is different from what we get in the u.k. sorry to sidetrack.

I personally dislike most games that go over the top. I will never lobby or picket or rant about how they should be banned, I just won't play them.

A lot of people love that stuff... I say more power to them.

Live and let live.

Not only that but a few months ago in a mag I read (PCPowerplay, for all the Aussies on the forums) reported that the 2 groups of people least likely to have their brains (can't think of the proper word but it's more than just memory) affected by old age are gamers and those whose are bilingual. Lucky I'm a bilingual gamer then!

I can imagine an old age gamer though. "Sonny, when I was your age I conquered Europe AND vanquished the demons from hell all in one day!"

"To the best of my knowledge, the only "group" of people that protested GTA is the Sex Workers' Outreach Project"

Just thought I'd point out the Haitian community (in New York I believe but not certain) filed a lawsuit against GTA for they're portrayal in the game.

Chavez is fucking nuts plan and simple...
he thinks america is conspiring to invade venezula, LAFF!
hes a dictator, end of discussion. you know what? he will prolly say this game is a training tool for people to invade, over throw or attack venezula!

First off Rob cry me a river and Aaron I'm glad there are still some people in this world that don't try and make a problem out of everything. I found this site randomly when I was looking through some WoW stuff and reading this post made me sick. Rob first off you say "I'll point out that not everyone pays attention in class, nor are they all as intellectually enlightened as you and I." I fail to see you as very intellectually enlightened if you can't see the simple solution for yourself. I think crying, tree-hugging idiot is a better description. If you honestly think that people being able to use their right to freely express their ideas is wrong then at least offer a solution to this "problem." But naw you can't do that can you? The only way you could possibly stop people is government control if you think about this topic the way you are. But clearly as you stated in your last response, "I'm not suggesting in any way that the government clamp down." So which is it smart guy? Censorship or free speach? I'll help ya out since you fail to offer much enlightenment on a possible solution. Back in the day there was a game called Deer Hunter Avenger for PC. Basically you were a deer with tons of rediculous weapons and you walked through the woods and shot hunters. Now I'm sure that game was probably made by some PETA, animal-humping moron in protest to deer hunting sims, but honestly who cares...that game was fun as hell and I would have played it over a hunting sim anyday! You know what that person did? They didn't go crying to the government, they didn't try and make it a public issue; they retaliated by making a game that was more fun to play. Wow isn't that incredible? Could it be that instead of crying, taking action actually gets things done more effectively? Even if that wasn't the intention of the game, the strategy could be applied to these other games that you feel are so politically incorrect. For instance if the Native Americans didn't want people playing Gun or Custer's Revenge maybe they should have learned how to program and made a game of their own. That seems to make sense doesn't it? Fact of the matter is liberals like to instigate a ton of problems which they have no solution for. In reality if they would just shut up and do something instead of waiting for someone else (ex: the government) to do it for them, they would actually get something done. So anyways "intellectually enlightened" Rob as we say in WoW: pwnt QQ more. K thx.

P.S. Being politically correct is retarded. Let me say first of that I am in noway racist. But the fact is according to one of my highest ideals all men are created EQUAL. If an African American can call another African American a N***a without either of them getting offended, a white guy has every bit as much of a right as them to say it and they shouldn't be offended. Personally I never would say it because I think it's a horrible word, but it's a good, drastic example to prove my point.

Oh well then sorry for the attacks on Rob then (they were a bit too harsh and i apologize), like I said I just randomly found this and thought those were his actually opinions (If that is how you really think though then they still stand). However, true Republicans are conservative...that means they support smaller governments, not dictatorships which involve a government with total control over people. Liberals (Democrats) are the ones that want to make policy that encroaches on everyone's lives (like a dictatorship) soooooo maybe ya should get your facts straight (Bush is not a true Republican by the way). Also eventually in millions and millions of years from now (I know it's a long, long time but eventually it will get there) the sun is gonna expand and swallow the Earth and completely destroy all the tree hugger's attempts at having an animal to hump everyday when they wake up, and that's assuming something else doesn't wipe it out completely before the sun. Keep in mind now I'm thinkin about the future. Eventually (remember probably not in our life time) if humans want to survive they'll have to have a way to get off Earth and if that involves creating more industry to promote faster technological growth then I'm all for it. Think of the long term benefits...at the moment the Earth isn't going anywhere and there has been plenty of reform as far as the atmoshpere is concerned.

Haha man judging from your avatar I bet you smoke a lot of pot. You should stick with that...it helps idiots deal with reality. I love when people bring up the P word......btw I'm curious which part you think is propoganda. But if you knew anything you'd know Right=Conservative Left=Liberal obviously you haven't taken too many government classes in college. If you stick to what a rightist is supposed to be then yes they should support a more limited goverment and the exact opposite would be a liberal (leftist) who wants radical reform which requires a bigger government. Granted in the US politians misrepresent their politcial alignment all the time, like Bush who isn't a rightist at all. But the point still is that right=conservative, left=liberal is a fact.

Hehe wow you are stupid...so very very stupid. Take some government courses dumbass. Like I said keep smokin your pot...it helps ya think you're smarter than you are. Liberals=Reform, Conservatives=less change. I mean come on man think about what the word conservative means. Maybe ya'll just got it backwards over there in Scotland. K thx bye.

Oh and that stuff about the sun...that's just facts, you can sit here and cry about the ozone layer, and trees being cut down all day long. Regardless the point was it's all gonna be gone someday anyways.

wow lol still hung up on that sun thing eh? it's a dramatic example. i'm glad people like you stay hidden on internet forums....if you were running a country or i'd feel sorry for them. and yes change is good WHEN IT IS REQUIRED but why fix something when it isn't broken? you should only change policy if it is a necesity. but then you have your extreme leftist groups like PETA that would probably like the world to become vegetarians and after that would probably change their name to People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants. regardless it's nice to see that you can only focus on the sun thingy because you know you got destroyed about the conservative/liberal thing. either way nice chattin with ya. you should go smoke a bowl or something to escape reality a bit dont ya think hippie?

I was tought in grade one that sticks and stones may brake my bones but words will never hurt me. As all Canadian children learn at a young age...mere words, images or general media can't harm you.

Such debates are childish to even be considered.

I would just like to point out a quote by Aaron McKenna: "Rob, videogames are not influential." This statement is almost as outrageous as the belief that videogames cause violent behavior in children. Do movies or books influence people? If anything, video games have just as much influence on the players as the books they read and the movies they watch. The only thing that differentiates video games is that they have a narrower audience: teenage and young adult males. Nevertheless, gaming is a huge part of society: videogaming is becoming a billion-dollar industry and millions of players around the world are actively engaged in gaming (mmorpgs). Now, i'm not saying that 20 years from now, the future president of the United States is going to feel like taking over Venezuela simply because he played Mercenaries 2, but the fact is that kids learn from from what they see in games, just as they would in books or movies. I understand that Mercenaries 2 was made simply for entertainment, like a Tom Clancy novel, but when other truly controversial games like GTA: San Andreas or Super Columbine Massacre are exposed to adolescent teens, who knows what the players may think of the content in the game? Whether these games would make them more culturally aware or more culturally ignorant is beyond my knowledge, but it would be completely inane to state that these games will just fly over the players' heads and that the content in the games will have no influence on their views of society.

I wish I could agree with you but there are a lot of gullible people out there who believe the crap they are fed. I believe the crap that is fed is called "news".

And the television executives wonder why the younger generation is switching off the television in favour of other forms of entertainment (such as video games. It would be interesting to see how many people purchase a T.V. mainly for gaming purposes).

I'm not one to say whether that makes you a hypocrite or not, because everyone does have a personal limit as to what they can find amusing. I just think that people in general need to expand that limit, which is I guess how my opinion relates to the topic at hand.

The General Custer game in itself wasn't funny. On a matter of ethics, the premise of the game should be absolutely horrifying, just as you said. What's funny about it though is that someone wasted time making such a worthless game, and I wasted time playing it. I guess I can't really explain why I found it funny. All I can say is that things that I know are not real do not affect me. While playing GTA, I can pick up a hooker, drive my car into the water, and then snipe her head off while she is drowning, and enjoy any second of it, yet when I go out into the real world I'm still the same polite and friendly person that I've always been.

Also, I should probably elaborate on my opinion about political correctness. I have nothing against respect, in fact I think it is very important for people to respect each other. What I despise is when people go out of their way to eliminate any possibility of offending anyone who could ever conceivably catch wind of what they have said. For example, we have the continually evolving descriptive words for disabled persons. Originally we had the word "crippled," then "disabled," then "handicapped," and now it's "people with diverse ranges of abilities." I kid you not, that is the phrase that is used now, as well as "differently-abled persons." I participated in a problem solving course last fall at my university where we worked on making the campus more accessible, so that's why I know about the transition of these politically correct phrases.

So, what bugs me is not being respectful, but doing so to the point that it gets completely rediculous. It makes much more sense for everyone to just take things lightly and not be offended at the drop of a hat. We shouldn't need to continually update how we refer to categories of people, nor should we have to worry about what content is in games. Some people like me already don't care, and I think that more people need to learn to be that way.

I have to grant to your side of the argument that my opinion represents an ideal case and the real world is not so perfect. People do get offended by things. My response to them is "too bad, look the other way." I won't impose myself on them as long as they don't try to limit my fun. Kids do get ahold of games that their parents don't like. My response is that the parents have failed to do their job on several levels. First, they failed by being naive about the abilities of kids to get what they want. Second, they failed because instead of teaching their kids about life, they tried to shelter them. Third, they failed by being closed-minded and uptight about something that is not real.

We can put all the warning labels and boycotts that we want on games or any other kind of media, but what the problem always falls back on is an issue of family values. Parents need to teach their kids right from wrong, real from virtual, and harmless from offensive. If this has been accomplished, kids can be exposed to nearly anything and not have negative results. I've been exposed to violent entertainment all my life. I used to play River Raid when I was 4, Eye of the Beholder II: Legend of Darkmoon in 3rd grade, Wolfenstein and DOOM in 5th grade, Duke Nukem in 6th grade, and so on. My favorite movie ever since about third grade has been Commando (I liked it then because it had good violence, now I like it just because it's so corny and lame). Where were my parents through all of this? They were with me. I don't remember ever watching a movie without my parents knowledge until about 11th grade, nor did they ever tell me I couldn't watch something. As for the games, my dad played them with me. We still do Call of Duty deathmatches as a family whenever I'm home from college for vacation. I haven't even mentioned yet the fact that I've been shooting guns, real fireams, for as long as I can remember (since about 3 I guess). I grew up with violence all around me and I loved it. And after all this, I somehow am still a stable and respectful individual.

As for how to spread the concepts of openness and levity....I'm stumped. I don't know how to convince people to think logically when they are so absorbed by illogic. A worldwide decrease in religion and increased focus on intuitive ethics would probably help immensely, but again, how do you make such a transition? I wish I knew....

Here are my personal opinions/rants...

All of the views and opinions expressed in this post are a product of a free thinking mind and I stand by each and every one of them!

First off what in the world are parents thinking when they buy games like GTA for their 12 yr old kid? Are they really that naive and don't know that the whole object of the game is to kill, carjack, and work with groups like the mafia? Obviously the 12 yr old kid didn't walk into the store and buy it for himself. It seems (speaking from an American point of view) that parents these days use video games, tv, and numerous other medias to occupy their children so they can basically ignore good parenting. When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to watch PG-13/R rated movies unless my parents had seen it and felt that it was appropriate for me. The same goes for anything else. I'm still not sure why but I wasn't allowed to watch transformers when I was 6. Guess I need to take that up with my mom. lol Anyway, censorship is the correct answer but not at a level beyond good parenting. What happens in reality is that parents push the job of censorship from themselves (for whatever reason) to other/higher authorities. This is then pushed onto those of us who don't need/want censorship and are responsible enough to know what right and wrong is. If you can't teach your own child that beating someone with a baseball bat is wrong then maybe you should be beaten a few times to jog your memory... I think you all know where I'm going with that point so I'll leave it at that.

Second point I'd like to make is if it offends you DON'T BUY/PLAY it!!! Why in the world do I care what offends you when it comes to my video games? Just because your morals/values/beliefs cause you to be offended by the material doesn't mean that I should be offended by the material. Frankly, I'm OFFENDED that YOU ARE OFFENDED!!! The world we live in is, generally speaking, a free society and if you want to remove an item from that society just because it offends you, or even a group of people, I think you should go live someplace where you don't have the freedom to piss and moan about stupid stuff like being offended because you think the US is going to invade your country based on a video game. Video games are a VIRTUAL REALITY. Keyword being VIRTUAL. I could walk down the street and blow someones brains out but in the REAL world I'd be in jail/executed for my actions. Anyone who claims "Video games/Music/any other media made me do it" is full of ****! An inanimate object cannot make you do anything. YOU MADE A CONCIOUS DECISION to act upon a thought or an idea.

The third point is on political correctness. I agree with CapnBFG on this. I can't stand it when someone goes out of their way to avoid offending anyone and everyone. Why should I have to pick and choose my words so carefully that it takes me longer to formulate a sentence than it does to say it. On top of that you run the risk of losing the true meaning of what you were trying to convey. I am a very polite and respectful person. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POLITCAL CORRECTNESS AND RESPECTFULNESS. If you're offended because I said "he" instead of "he/she" I'm sorry but you have wasted too much brain power on that already! Obviously I'm not going to walk down the streets in a place like Harlem using the word nigger like there's no tomorrow. I'd personally like to live to see tomorrow. I choose not to use words like that out of respect for others, not because I want to be PC. Speaking of offending someone, Anyone else find it rather humerous that I can't use the word nigger when speaking because it's offensive but if you are around enough African Americans you'll hear that word numerous times when they speak to each other to include "What's up my nigger?" Ok, enough with the rambling. Again, I go back to the ability to be FREE THINKING. I choose not to use words that offend the person(s) I am communicating with. If you don't know what's in your best interest when it comes to censoring yourself or being respectful (notice I used respet and not PC) when communicating with others then maybe you ought to try wearing the sign that Bruce Willis wore in Die Hard 2 in a perdominately black neighborhood. I'll be more than happy to hold the stop watch and let you know how long it took for you to get the crap kicked out of you!

I don't need or want someone else to impress upon me how I should see/think/feel/beleive something. I have my own mind and can make a decision for myself. Society has put forth rules (laws) that govern how one should behave. There are no laws (in many societies) that dictate how someone should feel. Anyone see the movie Equilibrium? That whole movie is based on a society that cannot "FEEL" emotion. I personally like the ability to feel emotions and be able to think freely :!:

All of the views and opinions expressed in this post are a product of a free thinking mind and I stand by each and every one of them!

Totally in disagreement on games needing to be more politically correct.

This little post is my personal rant space here, you have been forewarned.

Sure sure, have your own view, but lets face it, if you look at any game (or thing, for that matter) hard enough... ya keep squinting... you can find it offensive.

"Guffaw! Deus Ex is a game about a situation where the president uses War Powers Act to take over the United States and oppress it, which can somehow be related to George Bush... though it could be related to any other president during a "war" in history... IT STILL SOUNDS LIKE AN INSULT AGAINST GEORGE BUSH! I'm OFFENDED, I'm going to POST!"

Why is it that anything offensive against the American government is never complained about, yet if its offensive about a third world country, "Oh poor third-world country that may be portrayed in a game related to some political fiasco".

Get over it, and stop crying. People call me a fatass, am I offended? Hell no, because I do have a pretty fat ass, and I love that squishy chunky butt I sit on.

Yes, damn right games are influencial, but who cares? So are magazines, so is anything that gets into our short stubby fat fingers. Is Venezuela gonna be offended if The Inquirer said their president was making a Porno with Bigfoot and declaring pink the national color? I'd hope they wouldn't, because it's mostly a BS magazine anyway. So should they be offended by Mercenaries 2 (which I think is mostly half-ass anyway) that mentions them in a fictitious, yet likely situation? No. Am I offended that Battlefield 2, one of the greatest games out right now, pits USA against China and the Middle East? Hell no, power to them.

Lets remember people, we're in a capitalist society. Now what is a capitalist society run by? Yes, you got it. GREED. MONEY. POWER. Naturally, if the above "offensive" game does not fit the three above principals, then it will choke to death on its own little short-shafted cumshot of an attempt to infiltrate the market with their game portraying their own political views.

If some controversial game happens to become popular, and influence people, its not like the people never had that thought or desire before. People who don't like to think about beating the crap out of 2-bit hookers after getting sexed in GTA, and stealing their money back from their cold, dead, cheaply manicured fingers, will not buy the game, or if they do, they will not beat hookers to death.

If someone is OFFENDED (OMG!) by a game that portrays a fictitious, yet likely, situation about some third-world country... Then they won't buy it...

But oh no, guess what? That person is the minority currently, and so they are offended, and so they will complain about what the rest of the -majority- should do ... But ya know what? Power to them, it's your -right- to bitch about what you think needs to be done, as it is mine.

That's my two cents, damn right this is an aggrivated post, and while I normally lay out everything into uniform organized arguments of debate, I feel there isn't that much effort needed.