Games and CSI: Miami, or particularly clueless television.
I don’t exactly watch television so much as keep it on for company. After all, I live alone except for a dog, a mutable number of cats, and part-time children, and I enjoy the sound of human voices. I do enjoy the occasional crime program, not for the crime but for the mystery element, a favorite guilty-pleasure for me in almost any medium. Of course, there are schools of lit-crit that argue all forms of literature are a subset of the mystery, since the author knows something the reader (or viewer) must figure out; I nearly pursued a Ph.D. in the deconstruction of the narrative form. But I digress.
After an intense GDC, 48 hours with my family, a red-eye flight home, and much e-mail and other work, I was ready for some downtime in the form of passive entertainment, that CSI: Miami (my least favorite in the franchise) featured an episode called “Urban Hellraisers,” about gamers, was a bonus. Or not.
It’s always easier to blame crime, suicide, and attacks of crazed stoats on a new, external influence rather than any personal pathology or individual responsibility, and in this episode, the crime in Miami is the fault of gamers. Here’s the set-up: Masked college kids, “addicted” to a GTA-type game, take to the streets for “points” in the game and social status. They rob banks, shoot and rape people, and are generally rotten. Taking place in the CSI multiverse, of course an evil game developer tycoon is behind it all, handing out automatic weapons to players in the hope that the ensuing crime spree will bump sales.
Sure. When I was a teenager, D&D was evil, and at various times, it’s been rock and roll, violent television, jazz, and the latest dance craze. My teenager, on the bleeding edge of such things, tells me that German rock is now thought to cause the above-mentioned stoat problem.
There are all kinds of crazies on the world, including those without a conscience, and those who can’t distinguish reality from fantasy. As far as I can tell, people who play, design, develop and/or market games are not more likely to have such problems than the general public. “But,” you say, ”In a game you enact the violence, which is different from merely seeing it.”
Have you ever watched a Shakespearean play?” Night after night, actors pretend to put people’s eyes out, drown themselves, and stab their rivals, and yet, I do not believe that Shakespearean actors are more likely to murder their wives in a jealous rage than anybody else.
Let’s look at the offending episode.
We’re shown the game packaging, which looks as much like Grand Theft Auto as possible without the risk of a lawsuit, and we’re shown the game play. I guess they don’t sell console systems in Miami because this game is being played on computers.
The evil developer, when asked what happens on the next level, won’t say because it’s proprietary information. Aside from the silliness factor, I can only assume that walk-throughs are illegal in Miami.
Next we have the “games master,” who is the only person to know the identity of all the masked, rampaging kids. Assuming you can get past the nebulous function of this individual, he’s dead of a heart attack. It seems he played for 70 continuous hours while consuming nothing but Jolt (maybe it was Red Bull; product placement was involved) and peeing into empty bottles of Poland Spring water. To be fair, there was a case of an Asian player who died under similar circumstances, but it made international news because it was so weird.
But my favorite part was the gamer ringleader. It turns out that he was really a girl-person, and the reason she shot lots of people was because if she had a higher score, boys would like her more, because it’s so hard to noticed by gaming boys if you’re a girl.
I lost beverage though my nose. I mean, see previous rants. Look, if you’re a teenage girl and you are willing to talk to stinky gamer boys who pee into bottles, you already have attention, possibly even flowers, corn dogs, and sexual favors. Does this show not employ researchers?
I don’t mind having my field demonized; it will pass and something else will be the source of all the world’s ills. However, I don’t like being ridiculed. God or the devil, whichever you prefer, is in the details. You might as well get the major brush strokes right.
Games are no more evil than any other form of entertainment. Really. Even the most violent of games serves a function, which is the subject for another post. If you’re going to portray games in the media and you don’t like them, that’s fine; it’s a free country and you get to express your own opinion. But if you don’t make it real enough to be credible, you convey neither the threat nor the allure. My problem with “Hell Raisers” was not so much one of personal offense as it is withmy problem with Quidditch, which is a system designed by someone who does not understand what is fun about watching or playing sports and can therefore use the invented game only as a deus ex machina.
Games are fun. If you’re going to use them at least get that much right.