Column "Frontier Media" Published in the Melbourne AGE, October 1994

Are Computer Games Simply an Extension of Man?

Author: David Cox

Date: 24 Oct 1994

Words: 706

Publication: The Age

Section: Computer Age

Page: 50

``As extensions of the popular response to the workaday stress, games become faithful models of a culture. They incorporate both the action and the reaction of whole populations in a single dynamic image ...

The games of a people reveal a great deal about them."-- Marshal McLuhan's 1968 book.

THE classification codes currently used by the Federal Government to label games with rating stickers reflect the suitability of content for audiences, but how appropriate is this? A video-game player is not, in the strictest sense, an audience member at all. Playing a computer game is a participatory experience, like using the phone, or playing with a train set. In fact, the first video games were an after-hours hobby of the model train society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Seeing and hearing every bit of content in a video game - for the purpose of classification - would take many, many hours; perhaps even days and weeks. In games, the use of narrative is different. Like life itself, many branching paths can lead the player to different outcomes.

You can't just cut a video game. A game's technical construction resembles a house of cards, take one element of code out, and the whole structure is affected. Even small refinements in software involve a lot more than the quick cut of the moving picture and sound editor.

Even if they are strategically harder to assess for censors, games put a strong onus on the consumer directly to deal with what is on the screen and judge it actively, through play.

Like the model train enthusiast and his track-switching decisions, a game player has some complicity in the action.

Surely what is under contention here is not the potential of the imagery itself to offend, or cause harm, but rather the relationship of that imagery to the role of the player? Games that use actors in video sequences seem to reinforce a sense of the moral responsibility of the player, even though the actual choices made available are no broader than those offered by a jukebox or a soft-drink vending machine. You hit the button and you get a single prepackaged result, but the player alone decides the when, where and how of that selection.

Should the video sequences in a game using live actors be classified differently to similar sequences for use in non-interactive media? Surely what is under contention here is not the potential of the imagery itself to offend, or cause harm, but rather the relationship of that imagery to the role of the player? Video material, should not attract a harsher set of classification standards than the same material used in film or television simply because it is interactive. Rather, it should be judged in the context of its function in a game. The video death of a girl in Sega's Night Trap was mistakenly reported to be the actual goal of the game.

Instead, the sequence signalled the game's end, where the player's role was to prevent this outcome. Thus difficulty, achievement, choice and skill play a part, as do notions of success and failure.

The classification system therefor needs to reflect an understanding of a player's engagement in process. Pinball machines, automobiles, telephones and video games require that the user embrace active involvement, and feel responsible for outcomes. This responsibility is heightened when the player is online, playing against a real-life complete stranger. Most players of modem-based games understand that while online in cyberspace, one's words and actions are one's own.

If a 20-year-old really wants to rebel against status quo today, he or she can use a personal computer to cut some amazing code. The results might resemble Doom, that interactive, notorious knowing blend of horror movie and comic book carnage. In youth culture, the measure of a title's success might be the extent it can offend the oldies. Games are the rock 'n' roll of the '90s.