First off I want to say that I haven't played this game, I have however done a fair share of research behind it and have also played similar first person shooter video games before.
I know this news has been out for awhile, but I wanted to bring this to anyone's attention that has yet to hear about it. Video game publisher EA put out a game this past fall called Medal of Honor. This game is a shooting game set around the current war in Afghanistan and puts you in the shoes of an American Army Soldier as he fights his way through Taliban forces. The controversy behind the game though is that the game developers were going to allow players to play as the Taliban in the multiplayer side of the game. Obviously that was going to draw some criticism from people, especially since the war is still going on. However the level of response to this decision was more than the developers anticipated. In fact before the game was released the developers made the decision to rename the Taliban side into the "Opposing Force".
This has me disappointed for a variety of reasons and not in the game developers, but the people who decided to rally against this game. First off, and what I think to be the most obvious, is that you don't play as the Taliban in the game's campaign missions at all, just the multiplayer. This means that there are no scripted events where you go around gunning down American soldiers as the Taliban. Instead, you were simply supposed to be either the Americans or the Taliban in a multiplayer level where you played against other people online. The way I see it, that shouldn't be offensive at all. With all the flak their game was getting, EA released several statements defending their position saying things such as:
"[The game] is set in today's war, putting players in the boots of today's soldier. We give gamers the opportunity to play both sides. Most of us have been doing this since we were seven.
"
"If someone's the cop, someone's got to be the robber, someone's got to be the pirate, somebody's got to be the alien. In Medal Of Honor multiplayer, someone has to be the Taliban."
Which I believe to be perfectly sound arguments. There always has to be a bad guy involved when there is a good side, and I believe that not including the Taliban in the game in the first place when the game is so clearly stated to take place during the Afghanistan war would have also generated some conflict. Probably not as much, but I believe there would still be some there.
Fox news also ran a segment on Medal of Honor before the game was even released where they did an interview with a mother, Karen Meredith, who lost her son to the war. In this interview they spoke about how "war isn't a game", and how Medal of Honor is "disrespectful to the soldiers" who were currently serving. At one point Meredith said something I found to be very interesting:
"War is not a game, period. The fact that they've already done games about World War 2...That's far removed from our current history, people aren't dying in World War 2 any more,"
So it's ok to play first person shooters about a war that happened in the past but not ones that are set in present time? Were there not also countless people who died in WWII as well? That statement really confuses and upsets me, especially since many people seem to believe it.
Jim Sterling, a writer from the gaming website Destructoid, points out that Meredith doesn't have to play the game if she doesn't want to, in fact, anyone who doesn't want to play the game doesn't have to, that does not mean it should be banned for everyone though. He adds:
"Her son made a decision to become a soldier and put his life on the line, just as other adults have the decision to play what games they like.
"
Which I couldn't agree with more. Just because some people believe something to be controversial does not mean everyone does, or someone might still believe it to be controversial and just not care that much about it. It's up to people to make their own decisions, Medal of Honor is a Mature rated game aimed at people ages 18 and up, people by that point in their lives have a definite knowledge of what they do and don't like, what does and doesn't offend them. Younger gamers might get their hands on the game, but that would be under the guidance of whoever was old enough to give it to them too.
I just want to end this rant by saying that the critics and other officials out there should let people make their own decisions about something, rather than going off and saying everything that is controversial should be banned. If that was the case then tons of TV shows, movies, songs, and other media would also had/have to be banned as well.
Links to articles and videos I mentioned:
Article Describing Fox New's Response to Medal of Honor
Article Offering Another Viewpoint Towards the Controversy
A Review of Medal of Honor by IGN
The Fox News Video Clip on Medal of Honor
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Questioning the Media: Chapter 1
For the first blog entry out of our textbook I choose the following question:
"Make a critical case either defending or condemning Comedy Central's South Park."
First off, I am a huge fan of the show South Park for both its portrayal of popular culture, and because it is plain ridiculous.
For those of you who don't know, South Park is about a group of four young boys from South Park Colorado who go about their day to day life. Except that their day to day life usually contains things such as being literally sucked into Facebook, dead celebrities possessing one of their brothers, an invasion of people from New Jersey into their town, and other equally crazy things. The show has been under scrutiny almost since it was released considering it includes themes such as adult language, strong sexual content, and extreme violence. More recently the show has gone to a more pop-culture-parody way of presenting itself and these episodes have caused just as much if not more bad attention from the press. However, beneath all of the vulgar language and violence is a show that can show the current pop-culture in ways that are both funny and smart, often saying things that no one else would dare to. It is because of this that I am going to defend South Park, or more specifically a recent episode, so people can realize that South Park is more than meets the eye.
I will be analyzing the episode "You have 0 Friends" from Season 14.
Description: This episode focuses on the social networking site Facebook, and how so many people have become addicted to both Facebook itself and the games that are on it. This episode focuses mostly on one of the four main characters Stan, who has refused to sign up and become a part of Facebook even though virtually everyone he knows has made an account. The main conflict of this episode is that everyone that Stan knows is pressuring him to get a Facebook account so they can add him to their friends list, or use him to visit their virtual farms, to which Stan declines time after time. It is only until his best friend Kyle comes to his house crying about how he only has one friend on Facebook that Stan agrees to make an account and become his friend.
Analysis: There are a large number of patterns in this episode; obviously they mostly focus on how Facebook sucks you in as evidenced by Stan and his Facebook page. Even though he made an account just to befriend Kyle, all of his other friends and even his relatives begin to question "How come you aren't my friend on Facebook? I thought we were actually friends/related". Later on Stan even gets yelled at by strangers when he didn't accept their friend requests. Which of course points to the people on Facebook who have hundreds of friends, many of them they haven't actually ever met. Some other noteworthy culture mentions would be another main character, Eric Cartman's performance on his Facebook based podcast Mad Friends in which he points out important Facebook facts such as, who has a Birthday coming up? Add them as friends to get invited to the party! Which kids have been growing in friend popularity lately? Make sure to add them to become popular! This podcast that he does is a reference to the financial show Mad Money on CNBC hosted by Jim Cramer. Another pop-culture reference is found towards the end of the episode; Stan has unwillingly become the person with the most friends on Facebook, and after being bothered every few seconds by people who want him to visit their profile he decides to delete his account. However, when he tries to he discovers that he cannot, and that his Facebook account has become self aware and won't let him destroy all that they have worked for. Stan then gets literally "sucked into Facebook" and must compete against his profile in a game of Yahtzee in order to escape. These scenes draw heavily from the movie "Tron", which is about a man who gets sucked into the virtual world. The characters and programs have very similar mannerisms and even clothing to the characters from the movie.
Interpretation: What South Park does really well is make most of it's cultural references easy to understand for the general audience, which is part of the reason why South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone get a lot of flak for the show itself, if they can create a controversial episode and everyone can see that it's controversial then obviously people will complain. This particular episode really highlights the general culture's addiction to Facebook. The characters on the show appear oftentimes distraught or hurt when they either lose friends, or someone won't add them as a friend. This is relating to how so many people on Facebook, and even MySpace before it, wanted to have friends for the sake of their friends list rising to huge numbers. To them it wasn't about who was their friend, but rather how many friends they actually had. This episode points to the concern that people also have over Facebook games, particularly games such as Farmville. The characters would brag about how great their "farm" was doing and would ask others to go check on their farm as well to make it better. There are currently over 63 million people who play the real Farmville on FacebookFacebook be very similar to the movie. By that I mean that there are virtual versions of everyone who has a Facebook account, and Stan watches them "socialize" by commenting on each others pictures, visiting each others farms, and both "liking" and "poking" each other. This is mocking the communication style that many people have today, especially on Facebook. Many people don't even talk in complete sentences to one another, and very rarely do I go on Facebook and see proper grammar, or even close to proper grammar. We as people have gotten to communicating through 150 words or less, or through status's and "pokes", and the "Tron" scenes show this off perfectly.
Evaluation: It's clear by now that I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I am both a fan and a critic of Facebook and I was laughing out loud at some of the comparisons, concerns, and problems that Facebook has created for us in today's society. This episode took something that is huge right now, not just with pop-culture but just a massive part of our culture as a whole and was able to make fun of it in a way that everyone who uses Facebook would be able to relate to. Strength-wise, this particular episode was able to portray part of how our culture has evolved, in some ways not for the better, in a light that many people don't associate Facebook with, that light being a negative one. Facebook is great, I will attest to that, it allows me to keep in touch with people much easier than I would normally be able to. However at the same time I totally agree that sites like Facebook can be huge time-sinks in the forms of customizing, games, and adding friends just for the sake of "having friends". This episode of South Park highlighted all of those things and more, and is one of my favorite episodes of the show to date. I can't really think of anything negative to say about "You Have 0 Friends", some people may argue that they could have put some of the benefits Facebook provides into the episode, but this is South Park and they rarely talk about why anything really is good.
Engagement: For those that would like to learn more about the show visit http://www.southparkstudios.com/ there you can find an episode viewer, news about the show, and forums for all your South Park discussion needs.
To the outside viewer South Park may seem like a stupid animated show that doesn't contribute more than vulgar jokes and violence. If that person was to actually watch the show however, they would find that at least most of the episodes have significant cultural references and tie-ins that are smart, hilarious, and very accurate of how whatever it is that they are portraying should really be viewed. I strongly urge people to give this show a chance. Find an episode that looks appealing to you first, the show itself rarely needs to be viewed in any sort of order, and watch those episodes before you make an opinion. View the show in context as well, the vulgar language and violence are there because that's just what South Park is, take into consideration whatever it is they are parodying and view it from there. I hope that focusing on the parody style rather than the other components of the show can make new viewers more likely to enjoy it, or at least viewers who aren't watching for how ridiculous the show can really get. The 15th season of the show starts up this April on Comedy Central, and if you want to catch up on what's happened so far, every episode ever made is available to watch on the South Park Studios website that I posted above.
"Make a critical case either defending or condemning Comedy Central's South Park."
First off, I am a huge fan of the show South Park for both its portrayal of popular culture, and because it is plain ridiculous.
For those of you who don't know, South Park is about a group of four young boys from South Park Colorado who go about their day to day life. Except that their day to day life usually contains things such as being literally sucked into Facebook, dead celebrities possessing one of their brothers, an invasion of people from New Jersey into their town, and other equally crazy things. The show has been under scrutiny almost since it was released considering it includes themes such as adult language, strong sexual content, and extreme violence. More recently the show has gone to a more pop-culture-parody way of presenting itself and these episodes have caused just as much if not more bad attention from the press. However, beneath all of the vulgar language and violence is a show that can show the current pop-culture in ways that are both funny and smart, often saying things that no one else would dare to. It is because of this that I am going to defend South Park, or more specifically a recent episode, so people can realize that South Park is more than meets the eye.
I will be analyzing the episode "You have 0 Friends" from Season 14.
Description: This episode focuses on the social networking site Facebook, and how so many people have become addicted to both Facebook itself and the games that are on it. This episode focuses mostly on one of the four main characters Stan, who has refused to sign up and become a part of Facebook even though virtually everyone he knows has made an account. The main conflict of this episode is that everyone that Stan knows is pressuring him to get a Facebook account so they can add him to their friends list, or use him to visit their virtual farms, to which Stan declines time after time. It is only until his best friend Kyle comes to his house crying about how he only has one friend on Facebook that Stan agrees to make an account and become his friend.
Analysis: There are a large number of patterns in this episode; obviously they mostly focus on how Facebook sucks you in as evidenced by Stan and his Facebook page. Even though he made an account just to befriend Kyle, all of his other friends and even his relatives begin to question "How come you aren't my friend on Facebook? I thought we were actually friends/related". Later on Stan even gets yelled at by strangers when he didn't accept their friend requests. Which of course points to the people on Facebook who have hundreds of friends, many of them they haven't actually ever met. Some other noteworthy culture mentions would be another main character, Eric Cartman's performance on his Facebook based podcast Mad Friends in which he points out important Facebook facts such as, who has a Birthday coming up? Add them as friends to get invited to the party! Which kids have been growing in friend popularity lately? Make sure to add them to become popular! This podcast that he does is a reference to the financial show Mad Money on CNBC hosted by Jim Cramer. Another pop-culture reference is found towards the end of the episode; Stan has unwillingly become the person with the most friends on Facebook, and after being bothered every few seconds by people who want him to visit their profile he decides to delete his account. However, when he tries to he discovers that he cannot, and that his Facebook account has become self aware and won't let him destroy all that they have worked for. Stan then gets literally "sucked into Facebook" and must compete against his profile in a game of Yahtzee in order to escape. These scenes draw heavily from the movie "Tron", which is about a man who gets sucked into the virtual world. The characters and programs have very similar mannerisms and even clothing to the characters from the movie.
Interpretation: What South Park does really well is make most of it's cultural references easy to understand for the general audience, which is part of the reason why South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone get a lot of flak for the show itself, if they can create a controversial episode and everyone can see that it's controversial then obviously people will complain. This particular episode really highlights the general culture's addiction to Facebook. The characters on the show appear oftentimes distraught or hurt when they either lose friends, or someone won't add them as a friend. This is relating to how so many people on Facebook, and even MySpace before it, wanted to have friends for the sake of their friends list rising to huge numbers. To them it wasn't about who was their friend, but rather how many friends they actually had. This episode points to the concern that people also have over Facebook games, particularly games such as Farmville. The characters would brag about how great their "farm" was doing and would ask others to go check on their farm as well to make it better. There are currently over 63 million people who play the real Farmville on FacebookFacebook be very similar to the movie. By that I mean that there are virtual versions of everyone who has a Facebook account, and Stan watches them "socialize" by commenting on each others pictures, visiting each others farms, and both "liking" and "poking" each other. This is mocking the communication style that many people have today, especially on Facebook. Many people don't even talk in complete sentences to one another, and very rarely do I go on Facebook and see proper grammar, or even close to proper grammar. We as people have gotten to communicating through 150 words or less, or through status's and "pokes", and the "Tron" scenes show this off perfectly.
Evaluation: It's clear by now that I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I am both a fan and a critic of Facebook and I was laughing out loud at some of the comparisons, concerns, and problems that Facebook has created for us in today's society. This episode took something that is huge right now, not just with pop-culture but just a massive part of our culture as a whole and was able to make fun of it in a way that everyone who uses Facebook would be able to relate to. Strength-wise, this particular episode was able to portray part of how our culture has evolved, in some ways not for the better, in a light that many people don't associate Facebook with, that light being a negative one. Facebook is great, I will attest to that, it allows me to keep in touch with people much easier than I would normally be able to. However at the same time I totally agree that sites like Facebook can be huge time-sinks in the forms of customizing, games, and adding friends just for the sake of "having friends". This episode of South Park highlighted all of those things and more, and is one of my favorite episodes of the show to date. I can't really think of anything negative to say about "You Have 0 Friends", some people may argue that they could have put some of the benefits Facebook provides into the episode, but this is South Park and they rarely talk about why anything really is good.
Engagement: For those that would like to learn more about the show visit http://www.southparkstudios.com/ there you can find an episode viewer, news about the show, and forums for all your South Park discussion needs.
To the outside viewer South Park may seem like a stupid animated show that doesn't contribute more than vulgar jokes and violence. If that person was to actually watch the show however, they would find that at least most of the episodes have significant cultural references and tie-ins that are smart, hilarious, and very accurate of how whatever it is that they are portraying should really be viewed. I strongly urge people to give this show a chance. Find an episode that looks appealing to you first, the show itself rarely needs to be viewed in any sort of order, and watch those episodes before you make an opinion. View the show in context as well, the vulgar language and violence are there because that's just what South Park is, take into consideration whatever it is they are parodying and view it from there. I hope that focusing on the parody style rather than the other components of the show can make new viewers more likely to enjoy it, or at least viewers who aren't watching for how ridiculous the show can really get. The 15th season of the show starts up this April on Comedy Central, and if you want to catch up on what's happened so far, every episode ever made is available to watch on the South Park Studios website that I posted above.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
A Little About Me
Hello there blogging world, my name is Fred Serpico and I am a 21 year old college student originally from New York but now living in Georgia. I am currently an English and Professional Communication major in my 3rd year of college, but before that I was a Computer Game Design and Development (which mostly consisted of programming) major, and before that I was in a Business and Management field.
As far as hobbies go I really enjoy playing video games, reading, listening to music, and browsing around online. More likely than not, those are what I spend my day doing, in addition to school work of course.
I mentioned that I am currently an English and Professional Communications major but I don't really have much of an idea what I want to do with that career-wise. This is my first semester with this new major though, so I'm hoping to gather as much information as I can about what I can actually do with this degree.
While there will be times that I just talk about whatever it is I feel like talking about, it is my blog after all, I am planning on centering this blog about Video Games and how general society and culture views them. Considering that in the general media video games are often portrayed in a not-so-kind way, I am hoping I will be able to shed some light on the good side of gaming instead.
As far as hobbies go I really enjoy playing video games, reading, listening to music, and browsing around online. More likely than not, those are what I spend my day doing, in addition to school work of course.
I mentioned that I am currently an English and Professional Communications major but I don't really have much of an idea what I want to do with that career-wise. This is my first semester with this new major though, so I'm hoping to gather as much information as I can about what I can actually do with this degree.
While there will be times that I just talk about whatever it is I feel like talking about, it is my blog after all, I am planning on centering this blog about Video Games and how general society and culture views them. Considering that in the general media video games are often portrayed in a not-so-kind way, I am hoping I will be able to shed some light on the good side of gaming instead.
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