Chapter 6

In chapter 6, Nielsen discusses his thoughts on video game culture. While games are very widespread and almost everyone plays them, they are still "underrated as an art form" because they are "consistently considered to be: unsophisticated in their form; problematic in their content; the cause of health problems--from obesity to addiction; and inculcated in amorphous cultural fears--like the seemingly ever-present scourge of anti-social, aggressive teenagers." At first, games were seen as just something new to pass the time because they left such little emotional impact. But soon, with the release of Death Race, video games have caused media panic ("the public's reaction to the form or content of new media; typically the novelty is seen as inherently dangerous for people who are thought incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality"). As a result, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was created to "assign a game one of a number of six ratings--from Early Childhood (3+) to Adult Only (18+)--and a series of content descriptors (there are more than thirty) such as 'Drug reference,' 'Nudity' or 'Strong Language.'"

Because games have been and still are highly contested as being the cause of extremely violent behaviors, game companies have had to market their games in ways that don't reinforce those beliefs. Atari had a campaign that displayed their system and games as being "family friendly". "Their slogan, 'Have you played Atari today?' was sung by happy voices, and the commercials depicted family members of all ages enthralled in gameplay." Another way companies marketed their products was to not have campaigns focused on playing games. With the 3rd generation consoles, "the adverts were dreamlike and surreal, depicting aesthetically universes that emphasized the high quality of escapism offered by their machines: the possibility for leaving this reality behind and entering another one that was ultimately more satisfactory." This can be seen in this commercial for the gamecube:



The commercial shows the Gamecube as a medium in which you can escape the real world and do anything you want.

Nielsen overall makes the claim that video games are an art form and that they've been targeted for overly violent behaviors like school shootings. They've been underrated as an art form where in reality, they can make statements and influence other forms of art. An example of making a statement with games is Velvet-Strike. Velvet-Strike is a collection of Counter-Strike "sprays" that users can use within the game to spread thoughts on war within a violent game. Video games also have influenced movies by the way they are structured. "...films such as The Matrix, Terminator II and T3 are structured like video games, each with plots that feature levels of increasing difficulty. The hero battles past one set of enemies to win entry to a new world and another set of foes. Waiting at the end is an uber-villain who's extremely hard to dispatch." These types of movies are an art form and are extremely entertaining to watch.