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K
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Post by K » Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:39 pm

Facebook's being stupid about posting messages, and I don't want to have to write this a third time, so I'm putting it here and linking it to Tracy's post. If you're not already in on the discussion, feel free to ignore this.

I never pardon anything as "just a game" in an infantile and short-sighted manner. I may say it that way, but I'm summarizing a much more complex evaluation. Any medium can be used to convey an influence, and the influences are what we're concerned about, I know.
Games have made me feel all kids of things, just as is the case with any story. Do I feel scatter-brained or otherwise as though I've had some attack to my spirit? Not in the least. The worst effect that a game has had on me is some mild frustration when failing to accomplish a task, esp. when I've failed due to a concept that we call "fake difficulty," and that little bit of frustration is nothing. In fact, as many gamers can attest, games have been more educational and perspective-broadening than anything else on a multitude of subjects. Before I got out of high school, I didn't do a lick of "research" on anything, but I always knew what I needed to know and ten times more because I had picked knowledge up from games.
Do I play them more than I do anything else? Well, I play mentally stimulating, entertaining games a lot more than I sit and erode in front of the boob tube. I keep my mind running on a game more than sitting here and looking up ten thousand pictures of cats, sitting in the living room with nothing to talk about because someone thinks that I need more "family time" of letting my brain ooze out my ear, or another hobby. I always pause to take care of anything that comes up, though. You can ask my grandma: Usually, she'll ask me to do something when I get a chance, and I'll just pause and take care of it immediately. Elsewise, I'm in the middle of something and will take care of it within a few minutes, no problem. Anything can be addictive and obstructive if you are weak-minded enough to let it be, but I'm not. Nothing is possessing me in any sense.

Again, the issue here is the influences. Having been a gamer all my life, I can assure you that I have evaluated said influences, and they are from humans. It seems obvious when you think about it: Games are made by game developers (devs), who have free will and can thus bring all sorts of influences to the recipients. Mind you that a game does not necessarily reflect the devs exactly, or even by majority. If, say, the devs for a game are mostly racists, they may still show equality in ethnic diversity in their game because they know that they score PC points that way. You can read plenty of stories, fictional or not, by people who have checkered backgrounds. Examples include Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt. David exemplified a type of Christ at some points, but look at how he behaved at others. We don't dismiss all the good just because some parts of a human's life are unfavorable, of course. By that same measure, it's illogical to be nosy about a dev's life and beliefs just to find an excuse to discard a game, right? Okay, this is pretty obvious, so let's move on to exemplifying the human influences throughout games.
-Let's say that the devs of a franchise in question are primarily good people, or they at least know to design a game that gives a good influence, whether they individually agree or not. They make a wholesome game with a good influence. No harm, no foul. Running on the example that I've been using, TLoZ fits this. Did you read that article that I had linked you to previously? The message of TLoZ is to see the pertinence and power of faith. That's strictly good. Someone can still be weak-minded and addict themselves or otherwise convolute such a game for bad, as they can with anything, but it's a good influence. Other examples include other long-standing franchises from Nintendo, the Megaman franchise, and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Come to think of it, I can put almost all of my games within this realm without even a second thought. Anyway, our concerns about the influences are justified, but here put to rest because it's clear that the influence is right unless twisted to be wrong, which can be said about all good things; just look at how people twist God's word.
-Let's say that the devs of another franchise express the motive of, "People are suckers for these life simulators and sandbox environments, so here." Let's use Grand Theft Auto, The Sims, and Minecraft as examples. You can play GTA and be a criminal going straight, or you can be a terrible person. The Sims is just life, but you pay for it because you're a sucker who wants a second life and gets hyped up because it's online and you're technomyopic. Minecraft can be farming, exploring, mining, building, and so on, or you can go online and cause grief for others by destroying their stuff. The games don't really give you any direction (unless you count the quests that you never really have to do in GTA) or any point. This kind of stuff, to me, is a waste, but people can still derive good or bad from it. What if you play one of these to test the market of an economic enterprise? These games start you out with some money and let you earn plenty more quickly and in your spare time, so you can get some starting funds to try stuff without actually spending real money, driving your real car, spending real time and energy on tasks, et cetera. You have a controlled environment. What if your idea is that you can take your frustrations and angst out in these games, whether to other people or non-player characters (NPCs) and stuff, and it's okay because it's not real and there thusly aren't consequences? I say that that's wrong, because cruelty and problem-solving skills need to be handled at the core, not given a detour. The point is that the influence from the devs is a big, fat, "We don't care." That's a neutral influence. The games are exactly what you make of them. The concerns of the influences are again settled because there is none of significance, here; when we see good or evil here, we're seeing the player, not the devs.
-Let's say that some other devs are decidedly bad. I still don't want to be presumptuous and say that the Elder Scrolls (Recap: Skyrim is the latest in the Elder Scrolls franchise.) devs are, but let's go ahead and say that they are in this instance for the sake of the discussion. Say that the motivation that they express is, "Let's compel people to join in occult practices and do evil." Well, they'd have to make a more compelling argument, don't you think? If that's their motive, they're doing it poorly enough to ignore. A bit more likely, though, would be a motive of, "Let's normalize occultism. Let's make it to be socially acceptable and emotionally detached." Up until the last part of that video, I wouldn't have accused this, but that last part did instill some suspicion, I will say. Still, this befalls on the player; it's up to the player's own will and submission to other influences, be they parents, other family members, friends, or whatnot, to nullify the evil influence. The game can't force us to accept occultism. Even secular people can be mentally strong enough to dismiss such an influence and enjoy other parts of the game (which can be of good or no influence and enjoyable), so how much moreso should we be? We don't have to let that influence in. It's not a radioactive material; it's some dumb dev's opinion, and we're not supposed to be so over-sensitive to mere opinions when we have a rock-solid foundation. Think about how long you tolerate a friend who's a bad influence because you have some good times with them and don't want to give up on the notion that they could go straight later. I'll bet that it's a lot longer than 350 hours. If I were to play such a game and find such content as that, I'd let it wash off me like water off a duck's back, I'd play through until I was done with the game, and that'd be it. We tolerate bad influences from real people in our lives, in our immediate vicinity, for ages, and we let God empower us to be vigilant and not let such an influence get to us. How, then, are we incapable of being vigilant against something from some idiots that we barely know the names of, if that, for just a brief sojourn? We find that our concerns over influences are herein quite relevant, not dismissed so easily as before, but we still have a way to work it out, whether we creatively redesign the negative points in our heads or just ignore them.

At no point would I ever suggest that these concerns are illegitimate or irrelevant. In all three of the above instances, positive, neutral, and negative influences, concern of influences is considered. It's always relevant. It's something that we should be steadfast about, absolutely. However, being aware and concerned about influences is not an excuse to be a victim to fear-mongering. We can't be social shut-ins because we're afraid that someone might say something that isn't godly; God tells us to go out and bring His way to others, not fearing the conflicts. We can't refuse to educate ourselves because we're afraid that some information might upset the way that we already think about things; God explicitly instructs us to exercise our minds and intelligently probe for a better understanding of all things. We can't throw out all stories of any medium, whether newspapers, online articles, books, games, word-of-mouth, television, phone, written letter, telegram, or whatever else, and we sure can't blame the medium for the story (Note: Every single one of these media, even word-of-mouth, has encountered fear-mongering. Throughout the ages, people refuse to admit that humans are the ones that are corrupt, not inanimate objects. Guns don't kill people, a spoon didn't make Rosie O'Donnell fat, and games don't force people to do evil things.); God said that people will use all sorts of tools for good and for bad purposes. We have to resist the bad when we hear and see it, not plug our ears and cover our eyes.

To answer your question about just what games I play, there are too many to conveniently list here. How about you call and I read them off and tell you about them according to whatever you ask? Better yet, don't be a stranger! Come on over. I'll tell you about a bunch of my games and show you more. I want you to see things first-hand, rather than just hearing the fear-mongering side.
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