ALSO BIG NEWS: DVDs are NOW ON SALE of the full version of the film, along with special features and the like are available on the film's website AsRealasYourLife.com
Kevin Yang said
If you want emotion, you read a book.
If you want fun and challenge you play a game.
Moritz Busing said
Games you just dont care about the thoughts of your avater, you dont think about the morals behind its actions, because even the best animations cant beat the virtual reality of imagination.
Dylan Wilbur
I've been playing videos games for as long as I remember. I can remember the first time a video game made me cry. It was Final Fantasy VII, and Sephiroth had just killed Aries. To this day, even just hearing Aries theme music makes me swell with emotion.
Damien Browne said
Your view does not nearly represent the majority. They (gaming companies) have done opinion polls, have market data, and research groups, you have... your opinion.
Alex Bricov said
Extremely nice and refreshing. And as for Highlander we should consider it for now an extreme but a very true possibility or at least a line of trend (don`t really know if "trend" is right for this).
Tadhg Kelly said
Perhaps the worst part, however, was the student video. Pretentious nonsense doesn't even begin to describe this half-assed cyberpunk-inspired drivel of virtual realities and addiction. Utterly terrible.
G Collins said
I liked the talk with the exception of the entire Michael Highlander video.
"And while my sense of free will in these games may be limited, what I do learn applies to real life." -- No it doesn't.
I don't care how long someone plays Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, they will never be able to land those tricks without months (or even years) of practice. X Left Triangle is not how you land a Kickflip in real life.
"Play enough video games and eventually you will believe you can snowboard, fly a plane, drive a 9 second quarter mile." -- Believing something doesn't make it true.
Go ahead and play Super Smash Bros all you want, but when a group of people jump out of a car to beat down one of your friends you will quickly rediscover the difference between real and virtual.
Sigh... It's a good thing there's people as intelligent as Michael Highlander who are capable of rising above the masses of brainwashed morons to let us all know what Big Brother is up to with the TV...
I am two years younger than Michael Highlander, which I suppose would make me a part of the generation of which he is only one, but I completely disagree with pretty much everything he has to say.
Michael Highland said
Everyone's reactions are really great to hear, often times people aren't critical enough for my liking when I show them the film. I really wish the whole film was able to have been shown, it goes into a lot more detail about my experiences as a gamer. Nonetheless, I think all of you got where it was going.
I found this statement particularly provocative:
"If you want emotion, you read a book.
If you want fun and challenge you play a game."
What makes game's special is their ability to stimulate emotional attachment on the part of the player. A book never asks you, the reader, to participate; video games demand action and establish a direct causal link between the player and the virtual world. Video games are unique in that ability, no book, tv show, film, song, or image has the ability to communicate experience so directly. Obviously not all video games aim to immerse and connect the player to a virtual world, many 'video games' are simply meant to entertain, distract, or amuse. Good game design today however means challenging the player not only on an intellectual or physical level, but in moral and social dimensions as well.
So why is this important? It all comes back to communicating experience, and in turn creating shared experiences for multiple people. It's through shared experience that societies and cultures were able to evolve. Historically the vast majority of world religions have utilized hero myths to communicate shared experience. When we read a parable, we imagine ourselves as the hero, and learn from his/her actions. Some religions intensity that experience through rituals in which participation deepens one's connection to a character, a story, a world, and thus communicates an experience even more deeply. Video games have the potential to be just that, ritual and myth for the 21st century. And as advanced as they may seem now, I honestly believe they will be essential to building a future we want to live in.
G Collins - You're right, I'm not a great snowboarder. And I know playing video games hasn't likely improved my skills as an athlete, gunman, or pilot. What's important is that my virtual experience makes me feel like I could do all those things, whether it's true doesn't matter. When we boil it all down all we have are beliefs, and those beliefs shape who we are. In that way I think video games are very much capable of molding one's self image and experience of the real world in turn.
See all the comments here on the TED site.
What's most interesting to me overall is the fact people look to TED for what in their mind is 'truth'. As though experts are capable of delivering that. I think their should be TED talk on the non-existence of truth. What's important is that people saw the film as a documenting truth, as opposed to projecting a potential experience. I won't lie, the character in the film is separate from myself, he's a concept, from a future where I think we are heading faster than we realize.
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1 responses:
Hey man,
Couple thoughts on this post... First, I want to look at this statement: "A book never asks you, the reader, to participate; video games demand action and establish a direct causal link between the player and the virtual world."
Though I understand what you're saying to an extent, I disagree with you on this. A writer has already written the book I'm reading. My picking it up and reading it does not change the symbols on the page. In a videogame, though, my input dictates the activities of my avatar. Fair enough.
My first response to your statement is, on a very basic level, a videogame will not really play itself, nor will a book read itself. Both require some basic level of participation.
To go a little deeper, I think sophisticated books - like sophisticated videogames - demand (but do not require) a deep level of participation. In fact, I think you could argue the relationship is causal.
To explain this, let me start by addressing participation in videogames. In a videogame, the player does not really "create" each set of actions. The possibilities of what one can do are defined by the game's code. Someone before you has defined the parameters of your action, and you function within those parameters. The possibilities are, to some extent, prescripted.
In a book, I think there is an analogous situation. While James Joyce has put the symbols on the pages of "Ulysses" what you make of the meanings of the symbols requires your participation. The reader has the ability to create and define meaning.
Now, one can read "Ulysses" as just a good beach read if you care to try, just as one can approach MGS4:GOP as an FPS and run around mindlessly blasting everything in sight like it was a Resident Evil arcade game at a movie theatre with the red plastic shotgun. But both the sophisticated book and the sophisticated videogame demand participation in order to "get the most out of" the game or book.
As for the point on emotion, I would say that there is little question that a great book can "stimulate emotional attachment" on the part of the reader.
But this analysis is structural. The more important point addresses the "value" of videogames versus books.
David McCullough put this point succinctly and I sort of agree with him. "Learning is not to be found on a printout. It's not on call at the touch of a finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books."
Now, I agree with McCullough in the sense that there is something that great books offer that nothing else ever will in the same way. There are simply essential truths that the written word can convey and I think a videogame cannot. The medium for the videogame does not allow for it. It clouds out the message of the game.
However. Your really great point is about the mythology of videogames and in that context I think it may be unfair to discuss videogames alongside great books or novels. I think the more appropriate analogue is comic books.
I have a friend whose father has a giant comic book collection that's like the third largest in the country or something. I remember him saying a couple years ago that when you read comic books you're reading "American mythology." Maybe that wasn't an original thought, but it was the first time I'd heard it and it stuck.
I would adjust his statement, perhaps, by saying that comic books were the 20th century's incarnation of American mythology. I expect videogames will be the 21st century's.
Now, if we think about videogames from that perspective, maybe we can engage them alongside books and literature.
Are 20th century American comic books and 20th century American literature "equals"? Is that not a fair question? My feeling is they are not equals, that the 20th century tradition of American literature far surpasses in scope, seriousness, depth, and effect, that of comic books. I don't like this comparison, and don't mean to diminish comic books' importance. But the question may be valuable.
Literature will not die off in the 21st century, but I would think that there will be far more serious "gamers" in the 21st century than serious "readers." If this is so, then can videogames rise to the occasion? Can they take the mantle that 20th century American literature held? I would seem to have already answered my own question with a "no," but maybe I'm wrong.
My issue with videogames is their medium - the television (or computer) screen. But Greek mythology, The Odyssey, say, began as a strictly oral tradition and was later written down and is now read in book form. The message adapted to a new medium. Was something lost in that transition? Probably. But I think we're better off for having The Odyssey in a book than having lost it in the ephemerality of speech.
Likewise, can videogames take part in literary tradition? I don't mean by simply putting symbols and words on the screen, something else would have to happen.
That, I think, is the real challenge of videogames in the 21st century. To go from oral to written tradition seems a fairly obvious step, perhaps: Hear the word, write it down. But how to go from literary to videogame? It cannot simply adopt the tenets of moviemaking, or it will simply parrot another artistic tradition. Videogames have to create a unique language. I don't think that's happened yet.
But that's the fundamental question to me; will videogames be the next iteration of comic books and the American (or global) mythology of the 21st century? Or can videogames expand the territory of comic books and find someway to combine and expand the literary tradition as well?
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