Two Minutes Hate

[Dog Pants]

This is an interesting article for several reasons. The graphical realism presented by games these days is easily misinterpreted as actual realism. I found this link via Cliffski, who found it interesting enough to tweet. If a veteran gamer can consider that Arma or Battlefield 3 can convey realistic sensations of battle the God only knows what the Daily Mail reader types must be thinking. This line immediately grabbed me as absolute rubbish:

As the latest generation of computer war games are so realistic, he wondered, perhaps the next sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may not even have left their bedrooms.

A little bit of background for those (few) who haven't heard this story already. I've served briefly in Baghdad, and while I was there I thought I was coming under mortar fire. As it happens I wasn't, it was the Americans blowing shit up as Americans are wont to do, but they did it within a few hundred yards of where I was and didn't give us any warning. It was perfectly safe, but I didn't know that as I felt the shockwaves rippling my clothing and the explosions shaking the ground, and I felt briefly what it was like to come under fire. No game has come even one percent of the way towards representing that - the sights and sounds are entirely secondary to the pressure waves, the ear-splitting roars, and the genuine feeling that you may die soon.

Oddly enough, though, I found the opposite of what this article is saying to be true. I can't truthfully place my reaction at the feet of gaming, but my reaction was calm, calculated and mostly rational. I asked what the fuck was going on, grabbed my armour, threw it on the bed then ducked underneath. I remember thinking that it wouldn't stop a mortar bomb, but it might stop shrapnel or a collapsing tent twatting me. I placed my finger in the book I was reading and waited for things to stop exploding, feeling resigned to the fact that whether I lived or died was now purely left to chance. I don't remember being scared at any point during or after. Now, I've read that computer simulations have been used to treat PTSD sufferers, placing them back in a simulation of combat so that they can come to terms with their experiences. If my reaction to perceived incoming fire was in any way linked to my decades of gaming then I'd speculate that such treatment could be very effective, being the exact reverse of my experience and the exact opposite of what this article insinuates.

Just for flavour, here are a couple of photos of that trip:

[FatherJack]

It's not a very good article, as it scaremongers without really delving into actual facts.

- Yes, graphics are better (duh) but you still know it isn't real - it is supposed to simulate stuff, and they are getting better at doing so.
- The author's quoted source's heightened sense of danger are merely triggered by the game - it's his actual experiences doing photography in the combat zone which are the real root of his discomfort at it being 'eerily similar'.
- It doesn't fucking matter, this whole "War Simulation" thing - we played Cowboys and Indians as kids, more real in our heads than any computer game will ever be. As humans, we want to play War. My sister got the headdress, teepee and tomahawk (heaven knows what my parents were thinking) as I got the cowboy hat, sherriff's badge and gun - no prizes for guessing who triumphed in every single conflict. (My sister was pretty feisty however and I did end up being scalped and have to have tea with the dollies sometimes even though she was supposed to have been shot dead)

However, a point missed by the article is quite valid - that of "bedroom PTSD". I don't mean that people playing games actually get real PTSD, as that utterly trivialises the real condition, but I am reminded of the game America's Army.

While it is blatently a recruitment tool by the real US Army, which encourages teamwork, strategy, recognising targets in silhouette, basic triage and not shooting your drill instructor in the head, many have suggested it also has a more sinister purpose - that of training the next generation to be UAV pilots, or even controllers of land-based combat drones. This is where the "bedroom PTSD" tag gains traction, as it is not so different as to how existing operators of remote-controlled bombs such as we saw used in Iraq (not the first TV war, btw - Vietnam was) might feel, or deal with their actions.

With that disconnect between them guiding a missile to its destination and the actual carnage we might only see on the news later when perhaps a school or hospital has been accidentally bombed, it is clearly not a case of games not being believably realistic - as the in-game footage, stimulus and feedback mirror exactly what a real operator would experience.

[Joose]

At the risk of derailing an interesting conversation: are you hiding something under your helmet there?

Back on subject, as someone who has never got closer to real combat than a paintball match, I don't think it would matter to me if the game got so realistic that it was impossible to tell between it and a video of a real war, I would still know that I'm sat safe at home and at no risk of death. I have no memories of similar but real situations for it to stimulate, like you say, so it can have no more impact than watching a war film. PTSD can't be caused by loud bangs and gore alone, or you would need therapy every time you watched something like Saving Private Ryan. It's the fear of potential death thats the problem, and you won't get that in a game. Not until you have StarTrek holo deck style experiences that run the full gamut of senseory immersion, anyway.

[Dog Pants]

Here we are again, this time courtesy of Anders Breivik. The popular press yet again ignore the facts in order to push sensationalism. Note that I don't think this is a press agenda to discredit gaming, it's more cynical and less deliberate, simply a way of appealing to their demographic who lap this sort of misinformation up. It's purely financial. Incidentally I encountered this readership at work recently, with someone blaming videogames for everything kids do wrong, and declaring there's no reason they should be made. My team-mates all immediately looked at me, and I proceded to dismantle his argument and make him look silly. Not something I enjoyed, since he's a nice old gent, but I couldn't stant by and let him rant. Anyway, the Breivik article on RPS;

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04 ... the-facts/

[Joose]

See, I just dont look at the mainstream news any more. If they are getting the stuff I know about so obviously wrong it makes me think there are probably loads of other things they are getting equally wrong and im just not noticing. I would rather be uninformed than misinformed.

[Thompy]

I watch the BBC news headlines, if there's anything noteworthy I'll watch it fully. I've never had any interest in either newspapers or online news. The plus is I'm never exposed to crap like this or the morons who read it, unless specially linked to me. Clearly there is major critisism against me for not seeming to care, but I don't believe it's a choice I made, I've just never grown into being interested. My general and current affairs knowledge is pretty poor as a result but meh, can't really help if it doesn't interest me.

[spoodie]

I watch the BBC news headlines

BBC News is terrible these days, especially for world news. Does anyone else watch Al Jazeera? I find it very good for world news. Also The Guardian, as I'm a soft leftie liberal.

[Dog Pants]

The BBC are just as prone to sensationalism and editorialism as the next awful news source. It's all driven by the News Corp factory - with them churning out inaccurate but edible news so cheaply other sources must do likewise or be priced out of the market. I don't watch it because I don't go looking for news, but I've heard that Al Jazeera are about as impartial and accurate as you're likely to find in a commercial news source (not the 'terrorist news' most people think it is, an observation based purely on the name I suspect).

[Thompy]

I didn't actually mean to imply that I watch it because I think it's better, in some misheld belief that the BBC is the god of news. It's just the most convenient, as at some point during the day I'll be watching the TV when it's on. For checking whether Australia is still there, it'll do.

[Dog Pants]

Information can be gleaned from any news source as long as you see it with a critical eye. An example from earlier today;

The Sun report: A man's dog attacks a child, he vaults over a four foot fence to wrestle the dog off and save the child, yet he faces prison.

How I interpreted it: A man's dog attacks a child. The man rescues the child. If a dog attacks someone the owner can be held responsible, with the possibility of a jail sentance.

It's all a matter of interpretation, but the media will selectively report and add inflections to cause a reaction in their readers. Both lines say the same thing, objectively.

[buzzmong]

If you want to see an obvious example of how newspapers, especially the red top taboids, tweak and change things then just pick up a copy of the Daily Mirror. Famously a stauch Labour supporting paper, any time they have to report on a Labour cock up it's massively down played and the blame shifted to other parties. If it's a Conservative party cock-up, they'll savage them. Reports on the Lib-Dems could go either way, although they used to be fairly positive about them before the coalition happened.

The papers are nearly all biased, but at least the broadsheets tend to limit to UK politcal pieces, and actually make a decent attempt at facts for proper stories.

[TezzRexx]

See, I just dont look at the mainstream news any more. If they are getting the stuff I know about so obviously wrong it makes me think there are probably loads of other things they are getting equally wrong and im just not noticing. I would rather be uninformed than misinformed.

I also find you also start to question EVERYTHING in media, not only to what you're being told, but also question the imagining used, I.e are the images being manipulated to lead you to feel positive or negative, supportive or against the regarding the story. Other forms of media do it, so why not the news?

The most recent example of this I can think of was Abu Qatada being arrested in the last day or so - all the media pounced on him smirking, with several shots from different angles, giving the impression that it was a long lasting, cynical smile, which it may well have could have been, but it also could have been a smirk that latest a mere second but enough cameras managed to capture several angles of that one second, and the media used that one imagine to make your feelings lean towards getting rid of this "smug bastard" from UK shores and into prison elsewhere.

/tangent

[Joose]

I also find you also start to question EVERYTHING in media, not only to what you're being told, but also question the imagining used, I.e are the images being manipulated to lead you to feel positive or negative, supportive or against the regarding the story. Other forms of media do it, so why not the news?

They absolutely do this, so much so that the telly news gives me the steaming rage. Some of the stuff they do is really not very subtle, like putting sad music behind stories that they think you should be sad about. Some of it is more subtle though: notice how often stories will go live to someone at the scene, and how often that live link up adds no extra information. It's just a guy telling us the facts while standing in a street, or a field or something. It's just so that the story seems more exciting and interesting.

Which is the big problem really, it's not news any more, it's drama. I long for the old days when the news was presented as just a series of facts told in a monotone voice by people sat behind a desk. You tell me the facts mr newsman, and let me decide how I want to feel about them.

Information can be gleaned from any news source as long as you see it with a critical eye.

That only works up to a point though. Take the "nutter uses games to train to kill" as an example. It's obvious to us that using WoW to train to shoot people wouldn't work on any level, but that's because we know about games, we know what WoW is and how its played, and we know that it has bum all to do with shooting Doods. If he had claimed to be training to shoot Doods by playing lots of ARMA...well, it still wouldn't help with the actual shooting, but it might have helped with the planning/tactics side of things, so suddenly it would become a lot less clear cut. Now, from someone like my grandmas point of view, computer games might as well be fully immersive virtual reality program's, she has no clue. He doesn't know what WoW is, so as far as she knows playing a year of WoW could absolutely give someone the skills to turn into a deadly killer.

I might not get taken in by stories about computer games, or obviously twisted stories like the one you describe, but what about when they start talking politics? I don't know shit about politics other than what the news tells me, so when they report that so and so has done such and such and that means something else, I am suddenly the equivalent of the granny listening to people talk about WoW. I lack the required base knowledge to be able to discern the truth from the bullshit.

Thats not the only reason I don't watch the news either though. As well as that and the dicking about telling me how to feel, there is also the fact that a large chunk of the news is utterly irrelevant to me and only serves to make me think the world is slightly more shitty. Stories like "a gang of teenagers beat an OAP to death" would only affect me if I knew either the teenagers or the OAP. Odds are good that, presuming this is on the national news, I don't. So why do I need to know?

[Dog Pants]

You're exactly right, and that's why we should care about it. The majority of people watching or reading a news item won't understand the subject, so they use the news to formulate an opinion. We've found ourselves that with gaming that's generally grossly incorrect, so why not with any other subject? I saw a tweet from Rupert Murdoch which said something along the lines of "don't like my newspapers? Don't buy them", which is utterly missing the point; whether we buy them or not we should care and talk about it because the mass spread of misinformation, deliberate or otherwise, affects public opinion, and public opinion affects policy.

[Joose]

Oh, I do care. That's the point. I will wax lyrical for hours to people about how and why the mainstream news is bullshit. You say that Murdochs tweet is missing the point, and you are right, but does that mean you *are* buying his papers? Of course not. Similarly, I don't watch the BBC news because I come away angry at the drivel that's pouring out of my telly whilst I don't feel any better informed, but that doesn't mean I don't care about it, and it certainly doesn't mean I don't talk about it.

[buzzmong]

Here we are again, this time courtesy of Anders Breivik. The popular press yet again ignore the facts in order to push sensationalism. Note that I don't think this is a press agenda to discredit gaming, it's more cynical and less deliberate, simply a way of appealing to their demographic who lap this sort of misinformation up. It's purely financial. Incidentally I encountered this readership at work recently, with someone blaming videogames for everything kids do wrong, and declaring there's no reason they should be made. My team-mates all immediately looked at me, and I proceded to dismantle his argument and make him look silly. Not something I enjoyed, since he's a nice old gent, but I couldn't stant by and let him rant. Anyway, the Breivik article on RPS;

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04 ... the-facts/

Just read an article in the Sun today. They're reporting Breivik took a year off to play "realistic wargame simulator Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to hone his sharpshooting skills". Which is codswallop.

[fabyak]

^
By that logic I would be one of the best shots in the world, and the greatest F1 and rally driver ever to tread this Earth

[Dog Pants]

Oh, I do care. That's the point. I will wax lyrical for hours to people about how and why the mainstream news is bullshit. You say that Murdochs tweet is missing the point, and you are right, but does that mean you *are* buying his papers? Of course not. Similarly, I don't watch the BBC news because I come away angry at the drivel that's pouring out of my telly whilst I don't feel any better informed, but that doesn't mean I don't care about it, and it certainly doesn't mean I don't talk about it.

That wasn't directed at you personally, I think most of us here care. I was just spouting off to the universe really. He reads this, you know.

Just read an article in the Sun today. They're reporting Breivik took a year off to play "realistic wargame simulator Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to hone his sharpshooting skills". Which is codswallop.

Not least because he didn't, he took a year off to play World of Warcraft. Checking facts is not a policy familiar to The Sun.

^
By that logic I would be one of the best shots in the world, and the greatest F1 and rally driver ever to tread this Earth

I've been considering writing an article on this. I've been playing games for around 25 years, yet I was a terrible shot on the range. I consider myself living proof that videogames do not make you more accurate, although I was very good at picking out fleeting targets.

[TezzRexx]

Just read an article in the Sun today. They're reporting Breivik took a year off to play "realistic wargame simulator Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to hone his sharpshooting skills". Which is codswallop.

Not least because he didn't, he took a year off to play World of Warcraft. Checking facts is not a policy familiar to The Sun.

They probably got it wrong because it wasn't mentioned in his voicemails.

Gaming does increase hand/eye coordination so that could be attributed to his "training", but so would hours of a whack a mole and I personally would prefer it if the media blamed that.

The closest thing I could imagine that would increase your shooting skills would be sometime like Time Crisis? But even then that's so, so far away from the real thing, surely shooting pellets would be far superior to this.

[spoodie]

I'm going to apply for a job in the Navy, I have 100s of hours of experience spotting enemy boats.