2 Online Articles

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2181/ethics_of_game_design.php

This first article immediately puts forth the argument on how far games are entitled to go by definition of the first amendment and the responsibility’s of the game designers to not abuse that right. The article brings in the legal action politicians have taken to muzzle some of the content of games and has show that the first amendment has so far throated any attempt to accomplish that. To me this is a good point that game designers should address as to how far the should go as to portraying sex, drugs, and alcohol as well as violence in their attempts to make the game seem “realistic”. It gave the example of the game “Men of Valor” and the attempts of the game designers to make the game realistic with the use of language and violence but limiting it as to not offend people enough to harm the games sales. I think this is a good example of responsible game design that shows that the industry does have insight as to how far they can go. But this also brings up a question, if game designers continue to try to push the envelope to try to develop more intense games then little by little will games become more graphic to violence and crime as to influence us all to accept it more in our daily lives. To me although we don’t have any standards or boundaries to the games content we mush each look inward and decide for ourselves what is acceptable to portray in games.


http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=196237
This article sights a specific problem with a game in an international sense and how our games could be viewed by the international public. Mercenaries 2 takes place in South America and its opened to destruction and mayhem as if we are in real life going to do just that. At least that’s the argument of Hugo Chaves, this was also brought up when Ghost Recon chose to base its game in Mexico. We have to look at our games and realize that they speak for our nation and we have to try to find a way to balance our fun and our view of the world. After all we kill Germans in our games on WW2, we even kill our own police men in some of our own games and I ask how much of these games can we allow to showcase and should we at least consider how others view them. To us they may be fun but for a war that ended 60 years ago is it really necessary to continue to produce games where you can decimate legions of German soldiers or is it just to much fun? Our video games do have influence over us and we have to be careful as to how far we can let them go.

Video Game Theis

Video Game Thesis


Thesis: Persuasive and Adver games both wish to sell either their products or views, and its the colorful and outrageous characters of these games that assume the roles of salesmen and sell their product to the tailored audience.

I. Intro
A. Introduce Dinohunters and Darfur is Dying and explain the thesis.

II. Body 1 (Dinohunters characters) explain how each character draws in and sells the product.
A. Candy
B. Roger Wallaby
C. Harlan Davis
D. Shaw

III. Body 2 (Darfur is Dying) explain how the characters draw in and sell the view to the audience.
A. explain se of children characters
B. show the characters impact on the audience

IV. Body 3 Compare and contrast how these games use their characters invoke aimed emotions on the audience.
V. Closing. Summarize and complete

3 Video Games you may or may not want to play

When I looked through the list of games I was looking for a game that would interest me the most and had good game play, but some games can draw you in with flashy graphics and a explotation of some character assets. This game is Dinohunters ,an advergame from Kuma Games, and if you haven’t seen it then the first glance may draw you in like it did me. Dinohunters takes two really neat concepts, dinosaurs and hunting, and puts them together, tying them with graphics and a comedic storyline. But despite its good graphics (for a free downloadable game) and its flashy appearance there are only a few real reasons to play this game, and one of the games characters “Candy” (The Dinohunters teams female producer) has two of the biggest. The game is sponsored by Schick ( a company that produces the famous Schick Quattro Razor) and in its first episode your see the characters running a commercial of it before you can even play. There is also a sponsor from Jeep, which means the only drivable vehicle is of course is a Jeep. This game fits the perfect criteria of an advergame mainly created to get the audience buying a product because the colorful characters tell you too. An easy example is to imagine Gecio making a game with the cute gecko saving the world by selling you car insurance.

The second game I played was more strait forward, it’s a game from Mullenindustria and it advertises one of Americas most well know stars, our good friend Ronald McDonald and his hamburger empire. This game is very befitting to the food chains happy and lovin it attitude, but if you play this game its hard to tell if it is advertising for or against McDonalds. The game lets you take control of the whole McDonalds chain, for the cows you grow and slaughter, to the restaurants you control, and to the board of directors, who can bribe and cheat the health food regulations to make sure this product comes out on top. The game has a goal of showing the audience that in order to make a good food chain you’ll have to break rules of nature and morals to hack it, a goal that could defend or destroy the McDonald way of industry. I suggest you play this game yourself and try to figure out whether its for or against the fast food chain. If its for McDonalds then I would classify this game as an advergame, seemingly trying to show the audience that McDonalds does what is has to do to survive and deliver you good food. But if it is against then it’s a persuasive game that will show you that McDonalds cheats and exploits the 3rd world. Either way it’s an addicting game and if you can get past the unusually demonic Ronald McDonald then you’ll spend hours fattening up the virtual world.

Finally probably one of the most hard hitting and real game is the Darfur is Dying website Darfur experience game. This persuasive game lets you command the refugees in a camp in Darfur, whether you find this game fun is up to you. This game hits hard when you play as the refugees, you laugh at the peculiarly animated character running in the desert avoiding militia by hiding behind rocks and cow carcasses but thinking about it you’ll get a churn in your stomach and a feeling that you aren’t playing anymore. It uses games to educate you in the genocide and show you how basic and harsh a life these people live. If you want to succeed you’ll eventually need to send messages or give a donation if you want to be successful in this game and if you are dead set on completing it the games cause will benefit. So in terms of the games overall goal it succeeds the best by forcing you to help there cause and while some games merely advertise and hope you’ll purchase there product, this game will only allow you to succeed if you directly make it worth their while.