Virtual worlds of true memories:The gaming experience and other issues

Ever since I was a little kid, I have always carried a great love for videogames. No matter the genre, good videogames have always been my most enjoyable sin and I cannot have enough of them, even though I no longer have the time or the patience to play for six to ten hours like I used to when I was twelve years old. Today, twelve years after I bought Final Fantasy VII, I am a few hours of gaming before finishing the storyline and I have decided to write down my thoughts and memories on gaming.

My relationship with games starts from the early days of my life. Our family lived in the United States of America and even though my parents worked really hard to earn their living, I have to admit they almost never played it cheap when it came to picking up presents for me. The NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) was one of the gifts they gave me and probably the one I hold dearest to my heart. It was the first console of the Nintendo Company and we only bought one game for it, Super Mario Brothers. My pap still tells me that at the time, I did not quite understand what the game was all about, so he discovered a trick: he bought two control operators for NES and he let me push one of the two, the one that was unconnected to the console while he played the game. I was so happy and went on laughing because I thought I was the one that was making Mario move and jump. But when dad had to go away for a while, Mario did not move anymore, so I got bored and started to cry. Even after our return to Greece this relationship did not ceased to exist. Instead it grew rapidly from year to year, console to a new console: from NES to SNES and Gameboy, to Sony Playstation (my favorite console of all).

Of course, I was not the only one who had these consoles and played with them. My generation was probably the first generation of youngsters that were called “Gaming Generation”. And if there is a single reason for it, that is the Sony Playstation entertainment system. Until now it has sold 94 million copies and more than six thousand games have been released for Sony’s system. You may be familiar with some of the following titles: Gran Turismo, NBA Live 2000, Final Fantasy VII (VIII and IX), Resident Evil (1, 2 and Nemesis), Tomb Raider(1, 2, 3 and 4), Tenchu, Wipeout, Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Breath of Fire III, Alundra, Quake II, Rayman 2, Medievil, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Driven, Tekken (1, 2, and 3) and many more that I do not have the necessary space to mention. What this console managed to do was unbelievable for its time: gaming was trendy, or better, Playstation was the next big fashion, the brand of the 1990s. Both boys and girls enjoyed playing it and the great offer could not follow the rapidly growing demand for the console. It is very hard to describe how much and in what ways it changed my generation in many levels. Not only the kids who played videogames were not necessarily considered nerds and increased in numbers, but the even the traditional aspects of playing and games started to follow the electronic version of gaming. Barbie released her first videogame and so did Mickey Mouse. Both games were extreme failures, but signaled a turn in the way kids perceived the role models: the medium had changed and dolls or traditional toys were not enough. Posters and painting books of those heroes were not enough and television could no longer fill the gap. Kids wanted to be active through their relationship with their heroes, and games offered that opportunity more than anything else.

characters of FF VII

That of course had ambiguous results: on the positive scale, many kids came in contact with games full of positive messages. Take for example Final Fantasy VII, a 1996 bestseller RPG (Role Playing Games) were in a futuristic world, a company called Shirna controls most of the planet’s life energy and a group of revolutionaries called AVALANCE tries to destroy Shirna. Through the game, along with the main storyline, the game gives examples of how we should love and respect the planet and its environment, a message of high importance in our days. Such games opened the road for a generations of educators experimenting with games as a medium to pass beliefs and social norms to children and teenagers. Videogames are now tested not only as a source of entertainment but also on their ability to educate young minds.

But of course, not all games could be philosophically deep, for a very simple reason. Games do not intend neither to educate nor to give joy, they are not objects of art more than modern versions of fairytales. Games, are primarily, products in our free market and their primary cause is to sell enough copies to make some profit for the producers. And as with everything in the market, games represent all kinds of tastes in great variety, in order to earn the money of the target group they aim to. Thus, we have games that are shallow and offer instant fun (such games could be sport games or even car race games), other offer great multiplayer fun, others offer amazing graphics. Many games combine these characteristics. But the sorts of games that seem to be what you’d call “black sheep” are the ones dedicated on blood and violence.

Silent Hill (PSX), one of my top three games ever and surely my favorite horror game, was introduced to the audience in 1999 and right from the first moment it made kids happy playing it and moms horrified to find out the scenes of sadism (and masochism), violence and horror, the running blood all over the rotting flesh of the endless bodies the graphics animated in our eyes. The game was not one to be considered extreme in terms of gore, but on the level of psychological effects there was no match for Silent Hill. The music and sounds, or  their absence, in combination with slow developing plot and the shocking script made the player tremble more of what they were expecting to see after the next corner, rather than what they already saw.



A few years earlier, another game, Resident Evil, had shocked the public opinion in Japan with its patterns of gore, the undead who franticly searched for living human flesh, the mutant dogs and the huge snakes and sharks that presented a constant threat for gamers. Resident Evil designers had to apologise many times for the images the game depicted, but there was no comparison with what the developers of Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto had to go through.

Mortal Kombat was the first beat ‘em up game to introduce special ways to kill your enemy after you’ve won the match, called fatalities. Some characters could decapitate their enemy using their teeth or his bones, others could eat their opponents or blow enough air into them to force them to explode, etc. The imagination of Midway (the designing team) came through with unbelievable ways to kill or torture a person and the game was an instant success to younglings, while “poor” mothers tried to “protect” their children from the game and Christian union tried to pass laws that would not allow MK to be sold freely to the public. Today, 20 years after that time, the franchise has released at least 20 + games, two films, and it seems like it is on its way to retirement, as sales have dropped drastically the past five years, due to competition to much more violent games, such as Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto.

Grand Theft Auto gave the player the role of a gang member, ready to steal and kill, enter mafia wars and complete missions given by the mafia boss. Having police men, the FBI, sometimes even USA army chase after you was considered amazingly “cool” and young men bought copies of the game at once. That is, of course, for those who could do such a thing. In many countries such as Arabia, Egypt and Malasia, to name a few, the game was forbidden by law. Many in the Islam and Christian world called it “work of the Devil” and burned as many copies as they could. Games like GTA were the reason for intense controversy among psychologists, who could not decide whether games were a positive effect for younglings, whether it depended on the case or if violent videogames should be totally forbidden both to adults and underage men and women.

Yuffie Kisaragi from FF VII

My own experience shows that the answer lies more to the individual rather to a general rule. Different people react different to the same things. I did not have the same reaction Foxy Lady had, when I first witnessed violent scenes in movies or games. That may be because of different family environment, different family values, different character and way of thinking, etc, but it is not so important what the source of that antithesis is, but the fact that like the two of us cannot agree on the subject, I am sure that 10 million people cannot do such a thing either. The weakness of certain people to control issues that may lead them to violent acts should not limit the freedom of choice I and others have in entertainment, like the religious right of Christians should not be limited if I, too weak to seperate truth from lies, go and kill a great numbers of babies inspired by the massacre of Herod. It is our responsibility how we react to the sources of information and it is through that perspective that we should deal with videogames too, because they are now part of our lives, part of our culture. We have fun with them and enjoy to talk and make fun of them, we make stories out of them, stories that inspire us to dress like sexy ninja girl Yuffie Kisaragi (one of my favourite characters of all time), to sing their soundtracks or even make up new stories and drawings based on the world of videogames. No matter what the positives and negatives of videogames, the way we treat them, can be no different and show no less of our way of thinking than our approach to art, free press and philosophy does.

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