If you’re the type of who watches television or takes in popular culture, you might have noticed something. There’s a creeping sensibility moving through media about offending people. That is, media is trying very hard not to. But people can take offense at anything, so media removes everything. The end result is something where very talented people have tried very hard to delete anything that could possibly cause an emotional reaction in any viewer. It’s mindless, and worse, soulless. Video games are different. This is an entertainment designed to be interactive, so it must engage the player. Notice the difference between media’s viewers and gaming’s players. One is passive, one is involved. Here is an entirely British article about media and gaming. The Guardian has the story.
Players are even more involved with their games than just playing them. Thanks to mods and patches, gamers can twist and alter their games in horrible ways until the thing on the screen is a little more than a mockery of what shipped in the box. We can’t do that to television. Yet.
But I have some ideas…