Feed the Taco

Society has a lot of fun little drawbacks. One of them is litter. A few days ago, I found a used pregnancy test in the street. I thought to myself, “really?” I mean, was this really such a concern that you had to take the test right there on the street? I can appreciate this woman’s ambition. Imagine if everyone approached all their problems with such need. Still, I wonder what kind of world that woman is going to bring her kid up in, what with her littering in it and all. Also, that plastic test isn’t biodegrading anywhere.

A more common litter is the condom. It seems the worse the neighborhood I’m in the more likely I am to find a condom. I guess if I lived in a dangerous part of town, I’d rather have sex in a back alley instead of risk getting mugged on the way home and dying before I could have sex. This may also explain the pregnancy test. If you’re going to "do it" in the streets, you might as well take care of some other business out there as well.

The most annoying litter today has to be the cell phone. Whenever a new technology becomes cheap, it starts becoming litter. Writable CDs were the “in” litter five years ago (not surprising given most people’s taste in trendy music) but now cell phones have become the tech junk of the day. I get it, you’re out of minutes. That doesn’t mean you have to smash your phone on the street. You could just get more minutes.

I'll admit, I don't miss all the smashed glass bottles. They're still around but, plastic as really reduced their numbers even if it's fucking up the environment.

L4D is a game that focuses on cooperative play and the political experiences I’ve seen while playing are staggering.

I’m pretty good at first-person shooters and I know L4D pretty well. As such, I often end up leading my team. I’m not a particularly active leader, since I feel uncomfortable experimenting with tactics with people I don’t know and will probably never meet again. However, I often offer advice and bark orders into the microphone and strangely enough, most of my orders are followed.

It’s odd, how many times in our life do we just go into a setting and someone takes command? Cashiers are a pretty good example, whenever we go into a restaurant or store, these thankless servants attempt to maintain order among hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people and just like in L4D, sometimes a dick gets in the checkout line.

Since L4D is often a public game and the players can come and go as they please, you can find yourself fighting a horde of zombies with someone who’s a complete ass. All he does is complain, yell at people, and makes it pretty difficult to be around him. These guys destroy the group dynamic and rarely offer anything constructive. In a way, he’s a lot like a blogger, only he has a shotgun and thus we tolerate him.

Perhaps the most significant moment in my memory was when another leader figure was in a game I was playing. Only this leader sucked. He kept leading charges through side corridors looking for gear we didn’t really need and all the time zombies kept coming at us while we rarely got closer to our objective. How often in life do political leaders keep making terrible discussions and wasting our resources while various issues keep coming up? Yet, I didn’t get involved. Like Hobbes, I figured some form of government was better than none. We were getting towards our objective, be it slowly. A democracy would have taken too long to establish and L4D often designs their levels to make group decisions unnecessary. Establishing a democratic system may have been a total waste of time anyway since the US democracy often can’t get participation so why should my game be any different? I could have tried to wrestle for control of power, but really, what was the point? The conflict would have distracted too much from the zombies and the game would be over in a hour.

Who knew zombies were such political animals?

Labels: group dynamics, l4d, left 4 dead, politics, zombies

I’ve played my fair share of video games. Lately, I’ve been wondering what kind of long term repercussions video games are going to have. A lot of people already talk about the increased tendency for violence. It seems true to a point, in a study people who played Wolfenstein 3D tended to be more aggressive in a follow up test than people who played Myst. But Myst was also a video game. It seems to depend on the game, which makes me wonder, what else depends on the game?

What are the consequences of instant gratification, lack of creativity and consequences, and isolation. People are always going to escape reality for a time, but things like books at least offered a means to expand your vocabulary. I fear games like Gears of War aren’t having a similar benefit. Would it kill the makers of the game to sneak in some decent vocabulary?

My creativity and consequence fear seems to get worse as years pass. So many games just give you a gun and point you in a direction. Really, is this the best the gaming community’s writers can do? Video games have such potential to tell stories, but all we hear is “die zombie!”

Speaking of dead zombies, when you die, oh well, it’s cool. I admit I don’t miss the old days from King’s Quest when you’d end up stuck because you didn’t pick up a shoe earlier than a Yeti would kill you. Even worse, you have no idea why you’re stuck, because there was no hope of going back for the shoe! Still, I’d like to see that if I interact with my world, the world changes. So many video games are limited to, “you’re an evil dick!” or “You’re such a nice guy.” There has to be more than two generic moral sides in the world!

The repetitiveness can’t be healthy either. Japanese RPGs and MMOs are crazy popular and most of those games are just hours of endless boar killing for experience or a rare drop. I mean… is this really what people want? Is this the answer to happiness scholars couldn’t answer for years, killing boars for 12 hours straight? I’m overcome with hopelessness just thinking about it.

Also, the isolation, sure people can find online buddies. But it lacks the intimacy and reliable of someone you know in the meat. I can ask someone I know if they want to get some tea, I can’t ask my cyber buddy. I realize cyber cafes may be a solution to this, but I don’t think most of these cafes are really interested in helping people make friends. Just taking your money. Perhaps if gaming companies and these cafes worked together more, it may provide some better solutions, but most of these cafes fail so quickly that may be impossible.

Alright, so I’m concerned with some issues, what am I going to do? I’m not really sure what I can do. World of Warcraft actually seems to be trying to improve their game a bit, if only in small areas. But given their subscription rates, there is nothing I can say that will influence Blizzard. And while Blizzard keeps making cash, people are going to keep copying them. I guess it’s going to come down to what these communities want to do and since I avoid these kind of online interactions, I may not be involved with these things. But if the entire community speaks up and protests, it could create some changes, but such organization and commitment seems unlikely for now.

Labels: Consequences, MMORPG, Psychology, Video Games