Thanks to Lovefilm being stored on my PS3, I managed to watch a documentary called Moral Kombat which focused on video game violence.
Whilst it wasn’t the greatest documentary ever made; it did portray a neutral argument of pros and cons. For example, there were interviews with Jack Thompson who completely opposed video game violence; juxtaposed with scenes staring Lorne Lanning who praised how encapsulating a video game experience can be.
I wanted to post a few of Lanning’s rants on my blog via YouTube- but there isn’t much Moral Kombat on the site (except for a trailer). So I’ve typed it up myself!
What I could not believe, however, is how much hatred there seems to be towards poor Spencer Halpin with plenty of insults and abuse aimed at his youtube account. What many people don’t understand is that, scenes that are negative towards video game violence are opinions of the speaker- not Halpin. If you disagree with Jack Thompson’s remarks, then you disagree with Thompson not Halpin (who managed to make a very fair film-praising and condemning videogames in equal measure).
Anyways...here are some wonderful things spoken by Lorne Lanning (Creator of Oddworld)
Quote 1- “We released Odyssey in 97 and we got a letter that was from a seventy-two year old man from England. And he says ‘You’re gonna think I’m nuts, but I have to tell you this story because something happened playing your game and it saved my life. My wife of x number of years died after a very long illness, my granddaughter died...’ It was just one after another of these horrible stories. This man was on the verge of suicide- he went out and bought a gun – but he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t figure out why. Somehow he associated that ‘maybe the reason I don’t have the guts to pull the trigger right now is because I’ve still got some spare cash...I’m just gonna spend it on the most frivolous, stupidest thing I never spent money on.’
He went and he bought himself a Sony Playstation and he bought our game Abe’s Odyssey, and he started playing that game and he said it was a point in his life when he was completely depressed, he was bitter and he could find no joy anywhere. Playing Abe’s Odyssey; this guy became our biggest fan, and what he said was that he laughed...and he hadn’t laughed in years. If we could just make people laugh, if we could give them something to rope them up and make them feel good along the way...and here is this man sending us this mail and when we read it, we all cried we all just couldn’t believe that the game had that much impact on a life.”
Quote 2- (Talking of Abe) “He wants to break free- he’s reflecting how we all feel. But then he learns more from looking at the history of his people; from having a deeper understanding; from not being ignorant- which is the place that he came from- that knowledge gave him more empathy. In that sense, he can’t just let everyone be screwed ‘I’ve gotta go back and save them.’
If we can embrace that, and we can reflect the feelings that we feel as individual people- living in a world where there are such huge forces that in many ways are influencing our lives and influencing the lives of our children we feel helpless against...these characters could embody some of that feeling- maybe they can be mechanisms to give us hope in our worst times.”
A final point- it’s a shame that the documentary was made a year or two before the whole Modern Warfare hype took the world by storm.
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