Grand Theft Auto inspires Thai murder

[Cerek]

Originally Posted by Jaradu I wasn't aware that anyone had the right not to be offended. Different people are offended by different things, and by claiming abuse left, right and centre, it would be the quickest end to free speech possible short of totalitarianism.

Well, the KKK will certainly be glad to know they can start burning crosses in public again - since nobody has the right not to be offended by their free expression. Hey, who knows, maybe they can even start using the "N-word" openly again. After all - our Constitution does supposedly grant them the right to free speech, right?

Wrong! Because very few rights are absolute. You have the right to express yourself up to the point that it infringes upon the right of someone else.

But that is really an entirely different discussion. As I said before, video games do not qualify as "art" any more than backgammon or monopoly.

MY point is that companies should NOT produce games designed specifically around the player committing acts that are ILLEGAL in their country. That does not mean that you can't have any games that you enjoy. Just that games where the sole purpose is to indulge in acts of crime should not be an available outlet.

You like to play FPS games? Buy a hunting game. You want the "thrill" of enemies firing back? Duke Nuke'm, Doom, and any of the war-based games can provide that. The difference being that they provide an setting that is NOT realistic or available right outside your front door. You can't go out and shoot aliens and most players can't run out and jump in a tank and start shooting at enemy soldiers.

You like fighting hand-to-hand? There are any number of "fighting" games available where you can pit your skills against another opponent one-on-one. Mortal Combat, Soul Caliber, Tekken, etc. These games have do have violence, but the violence is not done while doing something ILLEGAL. Rather, it is more like a simulated boxing or MMA match.

You want to drive fast cars? There are as many racing games as there are fighting games.

You want to simulate being with a prostitute? I suppose you could get SIMS 2. But if that's your thing, it seems like any one of the gazillion internet porn sites would provide a better outlet for that.

This is not about preventing companies from designing exciting games and make lots of dollars. It IS about companies exercising common sense and not producing games that glorify illegal acts and reward players for pretending to be a successful criminal.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Jaradu I wasn't aware that anyone had the right not to be offended.

Well now you're aware.

http://www.adl.org/international/le-pen_new.asp

In 1990, he was convicted of incitement to racial hatred by casting doubt on the Nazi persecution of Jews and Gypsies under a French law banning such rhetoric. He was fined the equivalent of $233,000 and appealed the sentence to the European Court of Human Rights. He made similar statements in Munich in 1997, violating Germany's hate speech laws.

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/109233.html

A Paris appeals court upheld charges against a French comedian for making anti-Semitic remarks. The court on Thursday fined Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, known as Dieudonne, nearly $11,000 for referring to Holocaust remembrance as "memorial pornography" at a news conference following a performance in Algeria in February 2005.

http://www.antisemitism.org.il/eng/struggle/page/6

A Canadian court handed down a rare conviction to a white supremacist for posting hate material on the Internet, and blog, police here said. A judge ruled that Keith Francis William (Bill) Noble, 31, did "willfully promote hatred against identifiable groups, namely Jews, Blacks, homosexual or gay persons, non-whites and persons of mixed race or ethnic origin," said a police statement. Noble was sentenced to four months in jail, plus restrictions on his use of computers for three years, said the police statement. He was charged after police raided his former home in the rural community of Fort St. John.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Cerek But that is really an entirely different discussion. As I said before, video games do not qualify as "art" any more than backgammon or monopoly.

Actually Cerek my brother, I would say that video games are art. At the very least they contain myriad art forms:

Story
Moving picture art
Music
Illustration or captured photography or motion capture etc etc.

It's a form of interactive art - like a concert, illusionist or comedian that may have audience participation within defined parameters.

[Cerek]

Originally Posted by Yorick Actually Cerek my brother, I would say that video games are art. At the very least they contain myriad art forms: Story Moving picture art Music Illustration or captured photography or motion capture etc etc. It's a form of interactive art - like a concert, illusionist or comedian that may have audience participation within defined parameters.

That's where we disagree. Do you consider Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Pacman to be art as well? I certainly don't and I doubt many others do either.
Just because technology has become more advanced doesn't mean video games have stopped being games and become art.

[CerebroDragon]

Planescape Torment, Ultima VII - if they don't qualify as art, then I don't know what does...but that's another topic altogether.

One overlooked theme that I attempted to introduce into the Australian Fallout 3 debate and would also like to emphasise here, is the vital importance of education.

The more effort we put into creating reflective practices within our most vulnerable members of society, the less likely we are to see these kinds of acts occuring. This is why I can forsee full units in school subjects like english and IT on the study of video games and the effects on culture becoming more widespread.

We simply need to be able to create a mindset that is reflective about gaming habits and its core issues (such as the morality vacuum in 'sandbox games', which I mentioned.)

I loathe the GTA games from a conceptual point of view, but I'll certainly defend the right of the company to make it. It's up to the consumers at large to educate themselves and indeed others to make informed decisions on the choices they make between the virtual and real world.
I think this is far more important than having some sort of inflexibly dogmatic and patronising morality imposed upon a creators vision for what games can and can't be.

[Iron Greasel]

Originally Posted by Cerek Do you consider Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Pacman to be art as well? I certainly don't and I doubt many others do either. Just because technology has become more advanced doesn't mean video games have stopped being games and become art.

Could you explain this a bit further? What exactly do you mean by "games" and what differentiates them from art?

[Cerek]

Originally Posted by CerebroDragon Planescape Torment, Ultima VII - if they don't qualify as art, then I don't know what does...but that's another topic altogether. One overlooked theme that I attempted to introduce into the Australian Fallout 3 debate and would also like to emphasise here, is the vital importance of education. The more effort we put into creating reflective practices within our most vulnerable members of society, the less likely we are to see these kinds of acts occuring. This is why I can forsee full units in school subjects like english and IT on the study of video games and the effects on culture becoming more widespread. We simply need to be able to create a mindset that is reflective about gaming habits and its core issues (such as the morality vacuum in 'sandbox games', which I mentioned.) I loathe the GTA games from a conceptual point of view, but I'll certainly defend the right of the company to make it. It's up to the consumers at large to educate themselves and indeed others to make informed decisions on the choices they make between the virtual and real world. I think this is far more important than having some sort of inflexibly dogmatic and patronising morality imposed upon a creators vision for what games can and can't be.

I cannot defend a companies "right" to design and mass produce a product that promotes anti-social behavior. This is not a question of morality, this is about designing a game with the specific intent of having the player violate the rules of society. It isn't about the player trying to decide if he/she should steal a car to get their spouse to a hospital because he/she has just been shot. It's about becoming proficient and stealing cars merely for the sake of stealing. No matter how you sugarcoat it, stealing and killing is illegal in every society on Earth. To design a game that rewards and promotes this activity is irresponsible at best and criminally negligent at worst.

Critics always complain about the "slippery slope" of censorship. If we censor this game, then the government will feel empowered to start censoring other games and the cycle will self-repeat until there is no stopping it. There have already been posts to that effect in this thread. The problem they ignore is that the "slippery slope" slides both ways. If we condone material that is clearly anti-social by claiming companies have a "right" to produce what they want and adults have a "right" to decide for themselves whether to play it or not, then that example can be extended as well.

If we extend the theory that artists have the "right" to produce what they want, then there is nothing to prevent an "artist" taking pictures of a man brutally raping a woman and hanging them in a gallery under the guise of "harsh realities of society".

When we allow games and "art" to promote anti-social behavior, the only result we can expect is that people will interpret that to mean that the anti-social behavior is really acceptable, so there will be an increase in the behavior.

Anything that promotes such behavior should be just as illegal as the behavior it promotes.

[Cerek]

Originally Posted by Iron Greasel Could you explain this a bit further? What exactly do you mean by "games" and what differentiates them from art?

art1 Audio Help /ɑrt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ahrt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.
3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.
4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.
5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.
6. (in printed matter) illustrative or decorative material: Is there any art with the copy for this story?
7. the principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling.
8. the craft or trade using these principles or methods.
9. skill in conducting any human activity: a master at the art of conversation.
10. a branch of learning or university study, esp. one of the fine arts or the humanities, as music, philosophy, or literature.
11. arts,
a. (used with a singular verb) the humanities: a college of arts and sciences.
b. (used with a plural verb) liberal arts.
12. skilled workmanship, execution, or agency, as distinguished from nature.
13. trickery; cunning: glib and devious art.
14. studied action; artificiality in behavior.
15. an artifice or artful device: the innumerable arts and wiles of politics.
16. Archaic. science, learning, or scholarship.

This is a fairly comprehensive list of the different definitions of "art". However, I think we can agree that anyone who claims video games are "art" are basing their opinion on definition 1. I simply don't believe a game qualifies as "art" under that (or any) definition.

To differentiate further, "art" can be defined as a medium used by a person or group to express a viewpoint or highlight an issue, the purpose of which is to evoke an intellectual or emotional response from others. A "game" can be defined as an activity to entertain an individual or group.

The two are NOT the same. Checkers can be entertaining, but I don't think many people would qualify the game itself as "art". The same applies to video games.

During the early days of arcade games, graphics were terribly simplistic. While these games were hugely popular and entertaining, nobody considered promoting them as a form of art - because it was still just a game. Technology has advanced to the point where the presentation of the game is much more advanced. The images themselves might be considered artistic, but that does NOT make the game a form of "art". If someone paints an elaborate picture on checkers, the pieces may be considered artistic, but the game itself has not changed. Checkers hasn't suddenly become "art" because the board or pieces are painted differently.

Monopoly is a great example. The playing board and game pieces have been adapted to dozens of different themes and pasttimes, but the that doesn't mean that monopoly is now a form of art - it is still a game, nothing more. The rules haven't changed and it's value to society as a whole has not been increased just because the board has different pictures and the pieces are molded into different shapes.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Cerek That's where we disagree. Do you consider Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Pacman to be art as well? I certainly don't and I doubt many others do either. Just because technology has become more advanced doesn't mean video games have stopped being games and become art.

I sure do Cerek.

Stick figures drawn on cave walls are art.

Just because technology has given us canvases, frames and better paints, as well as more adept painting techniques doesn't negate the art involved in creating pictures that tell stories.

In "asteroids" there are human-created symbols that depict asteroids. They are not actual asteroids, therefore that is art. The use of colour in pictures is also art. Comic books have "colorists" for example, while some paintings are just one colour.

I do believe your definition of art needs to be expanded, for I played Morrowind pretty much because of the moving art. It then reinforced my ability to see the whole planet as God's work of art.

In that sense the game, not only moved me with breathtaking images and sounds, but also inspired a deeper connection with the divine, while affecting my view of my everyday surroundings. How is this not the highest definition of art?

Just because a game may not move you, doesn't mean that it's not art.

However, all that said, "art" doesn't guarantee unrestrained freedom from responsibility either. Art is expression, and "free speech" has limits.
If a game were inciting anit-semitism I'm sure, like the others posted, France or Canada would prosecute the creators.

[Yorick]

Crek, by your own definitions, computer games are art:

Originally Posted by Cerek art1 Audio Help /ɑrt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ahrt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun 1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

Morrowind, WoW, and countless other games are aesthetically pleasing. That is part of the pleasure in playing them. Immersion.

2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.

The same games contains drawings that shift perspective as the player moves their frame of reference. 3 dimensionality is greater art than 2 dimensions. Perspective was a development in art, as we moved from heiroglyphic 2 dimensional Egyptian art, into art that created the illusion of depth.

3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.

Computer games, as said, contain the artistic categories of music, image creation, storywriting, and acting.
Like the movie, which contains these things, the game also becomes a category itself.

4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.

Games are not architecture.

5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.

Games contain these.

6. (in printed matter) illustrative or decorative material: Is there any art with the copy for this story?

Most assuredly Cerek. "Copy" is text that goes with picture. Anytime you read or hear words in a game, you are hearing/reading "copy" that goes along with the decorative, or illustrated pictures.

7. the principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling.

The Art of game design, game creation.

8. the craft or trade using these principles or methods. 9. skill in conducting any human activity: a master at the art of conversation.

It takes skill to compose music, construct a story, act in character and design a picture. Games take skill to create.

10. a branch of learning or university study, esp. one of the fine arts or the humanities, as music, philosophy, or literature.

This itself is an expanded definition. Philosophy doesn't fit your description, yet is included here.

11. arts, a. (used with a singular verb) the humanities: a college of arts and sciences. b. (used with a plural verb) liberal arts. 12. skilled workmanship, execution, or agency, as distinguished from nature. 13. trickery; cunning: glib and devious art. 14. studied action; artificiality in behavior. 15. an artifice or artful device: the innumerable arts and wiles of politics. 16. Archaic. science, learning, or scholarship. This is a fairly comprehensive list of the different definitions of "art". However, I think we can agree that anyone who claims video games are "art" are basing their opinion on definition 1. I simply don't believe a game qualifies as "art" under that (or any) definition.

As I put forth, under all your definition, games qualify.

To differentiate further, "art" can be defined as a medium used by a person or group to express a viewpoint or highlight an issue, the purpose of which is to evoke an intellectual or emotional response from others. A "game" can be defined as an activity to entertain an individual or group.

As said, games most assuredly CAN be used in this manner. An educative game used in schools to teach history. A games used to forward environmental, spiritual or philisophical values. A key cause for concern is how many kids absorb the values espoused in certain games.

I see philosophies promoted in certain games constantly re-communicated by kids on forums for example. Cerek, games are art!

The two are NOT the same. Checkers can be entertaining, but I don't think many people would qualify the game itself as "art". The same applies to video games.

Chess pieces are artistic! Crafted, representative and beautiful.

By your above definitions, one could call playing chess, "the art of playing chess" as it requires such skill, planning and mental function that one can better with time, practice and study.

During the early days of arcade games, graphics were terribly simplistic. While these games were hugely popular and entertaining, nobody considered promoting them as a form of art - because it was still just a game. Technology has advanced to the point where the presentation of the game is much more advanced. The images themselves might be considered artistic, but that does NOT make the game a form of "art". If someone paints an elaborate picture on checkers, the pieces may be considered artistic, but the game itself has not changed. Checkers hasn't suddenly become "art" because the board or pieces are painted differently. Monopoly is a great example. The playing board and game pieces have been adapted to dozens of different themes and pasttimes, but the that doesn't mean that monopoly is now a form of art - it is still a game, nothing more. The rules haven't changed and it's value to society as a whole has not been increased just because the board has different pictures and the pieces are molded into different shapes.

I believe I covered this in my above post. Stick figures drawn on cave walls are early forms of human art. Technology allows us to create more developed art.