Article: I'll Cry When I'm Done Killing

[warcrow]

Ask yourself: Can video games be uniquely therapeutic when compared to other entertainment mediums? No other medium matches the catharsis of interaction.

Let?s take the extremely intense button-mashing sequence near the end of Metal Gear Solid 4. You must help the protagonist?Snake?pull his dilapidated body through a fiery corridor before he?s burnt to a crisp. As the clock ticks away, you must furiously mash away to assist him in his agonizingly slow progression to safety. One sweaty hand reaches forward slowly clutching the floor as a leg bends slightly to help push him forward a few inches. Bit by bit the screen glow an ominous red reminding you that death is imminent. Once I completed that particular experience and lived, I dropped my controller to the ground in need of a break! It felt like I ran a mental marathon dealing with all the emotions the sequence evoked. Nervousness, dread, anguish, excitement, and then finally relief were all there and all because of game play. No words or touching dialog to take me here and yet I felt exactly what the game wanted me to feel.

Can video games go the other direction? How about actually consoling the loss of a loved one? According to one man--who?s brother was unfortunately killed in Iraq--they can:

?I was fighting back too. Not from some watered-down, digitalized version of patriotism. I was inflicting retribution on the people and the ideas that had hurt Luis, working through my grief and my rage. It wasn't the real thing; I don't think I could survive twenty-four hours of patrolling the physical, flesh-and-blood Baghdad. But Call of Duty 4 was as close as I could get. By the time I'd reached the end, I felt a visceral sense of relief and satisfaction. And part of me thought: "This one's for you, buddy. Hooah."

"I'll Cry When I'm Done Killing" is an interesting read and I highly recommend it. Thanks goes to SVGL for the link. More here for those that are interested.

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: warcrow
Can video games go the other direction? How about actually consoling the loss of a loved one? According to one man--who?s brother was unfortunately killed in Iraq--they can:

I'd say most definitely. The human mind is capable of very extraordinary things of which we only know a small portion of. Since it's entirely possible to convince yourself you are in danger when no real danger is present, I think it would also be possible to convince yourself of joy, happiness, or even closure to a traumatic event by associating a video game with consolation or a similar response.

For instance, when you're watching a horror movie, your body can't distinguish between the emotions you feel watching the actors on the screen and emotions you might feel if you were actually going through the events being depicted. It's up to your mind to make that distinction. Experiencing emotions by playing a video game would be no different, and in some cases may feel more real due to the interactive element of actually playing the game.

Thanks for the link, i'll definitely be taking a look.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Hell yeah, games are intense, it makes sense.

 

[way2fast91]

I worked for a developer in the late 90's/into 2000 and before I left we had been approached by the wife of the founder (or one of them, can't remember) of eBay, she approached us about possibly funding development by our company for a game that would be directed towards children with cancer or possibly other illnesses of a similar nature. The idea was and the scientific research she presented showed that, children were able to overcome diseases such as cancer when they kept a positive mental attitude and actually felt as though they were 'fighting' the disease. So the idea was to come up with a game that was enjoyable for the children to play that had them actually 'fighting' the disease. Obviously the game would be setup so that the children always won or could overcome the obstacles, we came up with an idea that had the children move through the inside of the human body in a "space craft" and actually blast the disease (bad guys), there were going to be puzzles along the way and a few other elements thrown in to keep things interesting, however the project was scrapped shortly after our brainstorming sessions started, something about her wanting our company to donate a large portion of the development of this game. She is a billionaire and wants a small struggling development company to donate their efforts? WTF???

 

[coloumb]

Games allow me to let off the daily steam of crap I accumulate by dealing with assholes all day without actually hurting anyone.

 

[fallout man]

Originally posted by: coloumb
Games allow me to let off the daily steam of crap I accumulate by dealing with assholes all day without actually hurting anyone.

Well, it depends on which game you play and how you play it.

Having played a few MMOs, I've always been far more likely to want to pop a vein in my forehead while playing the game than during any interaction IRL; then again I tend to remain nice to others in games despite the lack of real consequences for griefing and trolling.

 

[Zenoth]

Yes games can be therapeutic, it's a form of entertainment, of "forgetting about your problems for a moment", players have a different mind set when playing a game when compared to simply being at work or at the hospital fighting a disease without anything to interact with in your room. It's the same mind process with other forms of entertainment or "arts experiences", such as listening to music, drawing, writing or reading a book.

When the human mind's imagination is used to interact physically or virtually (the later being very new in human history) with "another reality" it seems to exert mostly usually unused parts of our brain, which is something we still don't fully understand to this day, and probably won't for a couple of decades if not more.

There certainly are forms of entertainment that can influence our mind and therefore our physical being (the scientific world still don't fully agree that the mind can influence the body, but we don't need their expertise when people who really experienced that understand it in their own way), of which video games play a good role, but it also applies to music, and other arts and "mind-stimulating" activities.

In the end it could be compressed under the following well-known statement for certain cases: «We become what we think about.» And I found a superb example of the definition of that statement, which implies a lot of things (including in a general sense the power of the human mind), but which in the end is just very simple, as long as we use the gray matter that we all dispose of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0vRa3KiUEU

 

[JoshGuru7]

Any form of entertainment can be therapeutic but I'm not sure that the potential release of gaming is actually better than other forms of entertainment. Sure it is interactive, but that isn't always an advantage. Passive entertainment is often better at allowing you to think and absorb the experiences as you go, and I've had every bit as engaging of an experience while reading my favorite novels as I have playing video games. How do you compare playing "Empire at War" with watching "Sunshine" or reading "Use of Weapons" or listening to your favorite CD? I think any art has the potential to be relaxing, mentally stimulating, thought-provoking or disturbing and the value has more to do with the creator than the medium.

 

[way2fast91]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7
Any form of entertainment can be therapeutic but I'm not sure that the potential release of gaming is actually better than other forms of entertainment. Sure it is interactive, but that isn't always an advantage. Passive entertainment is often better at allowing you to think and absorb the experiences as you go, and I've had every bit as engaging of an experience while reading my favorite novels as I have playing video games. How do you compare playing "Empire at War" with watching "Sunshine" or reading "Use of Weapons" or listening to your favorite CD? I think any art has the potential to be relaxing, mentally stimulating, thought-provoking or disturbing and the value has more to do with the creator than the medium.

Yes and the value will also vary from beholder to beholder of said art.

 

[rudder]

I normally don't play games to socialize. I generally play to wind down (although sometimes the computer cheats and I get wound back up). Games are a quick escape.