Week 2

In The second week we looked at how some violently themed games have caused moral panic via the media. we looked at one case of murder which was said to be linked to the game said to be the most violent ever made, Manhunt, a game which i have previolulsy played in the past and found much to satistic for my liking. the game puts you into the a character who has been saved from death row but must carry out brutal killings inorder to stay alive. the main aim of the game is to sneak up on unsepecting victims and kill them with a range of wepons, the longer you sneak behind them and hold one of the buttons the more savage the killing is. i am not wholey against violent games but for me manhunt goes a bit to far. it is easy to see how it caused such a panic after a young bot killed his friend with a hammer which reflects one of the ways to kill people within the game. However when we looked into the news artical it is easy to see how the media can blow things out of proporstion. the murder did not own a copy of the game, the victim did which says alot about how the media put spins on storys. i belive that if you have a level head and dont allow yourself to be drawn in to much by a game like this then there is not a problem playing them, but not everyone has a level head in the world and it is easy to see how manhunt could infulence people because you can use everyday objects in the game such as plastic bags and screwdrivers to preform satistic killngs. In the lecture we also looked at the teachings of a man named Dr Spock who wrote a very important book on child care, in which he says of digital games that, although the can help with hand eye co ordination they can also promote violnece nd agression a thoey which was backed up by the daily mail around the time of the murder linked with manhunt. we also looked at rhetroic laungage first in the paper, were we saw how the writter used persuaive laungauge to convice readers about the story. we the also looke at it in cojuntion with digital games. i decided to rent out one of the other games metioned in the artical about evil games as i had already played manhunt. i got a game called Hitman Contacts in which you play a man who kills for a living. we were told how games reflect vaules and belifes. In hitman the objective is to kill the people you have been told to as secretly as possible, the emphasis is on quietness and not being seen, if you are seen you are in trouble. the game is telling us that it is ok to kill for a living and to sneak around killing people and stealing the outfits to get into buildings and so on. in manhunt the game is telling us that it ok to kill people in horrible ways with everyday items if you are being forced. playing hitman i found alot more enjoable than manhunt. Hitman is a violent game but i think that way that it justifies it is that the people you are sent to kill have background storys, like they are a rapist or pedofile and this is why you have been hired to kill them. i think that games cause more of a moral outrage when you are killing humans, in a game like doom 2 or halo you are killing aliens that do not exist which puts a fantasy kind of twist on the violence