Antipwn

I thought I had got out of the business of needing to attend games conventions but, over a year after I hung up my flameproof suit, I’ve been tapped to speak at the Community Manager Conference in Leipzig. This is held as a part of the annual Games Convention so if any of you reading this are going to be there on July 9th, drop me a line below.

My talk is going to be all about how community experience can be an asset in other areas of the games industry – either for community managers who want to move on to new roles or those who simply want to expand the scope of their current position. This is something I feel pretty qualified to talk about as I’ve worn quite a few hats over the past few years and ‘community’ has been at the core of nearly all of them. In fact, in my current role as a games designer I’m mostly responsible for creating social and retention systems. These are clearly areas where a strong understanding of player dynamics are essential.

Plenty of notable CMs will be there too, I’ll be in such august company as Donna Prior, Jörg Koonen, Sean Kaupinnen, Martin Rabl and a former colleague of mine, Fabien Alexandre. This is the first event of its kind in Europe and hopefully will become a fixture in the industry calendar – there’s certainly been a lot of lively discussion on the main CM industry forum and it looks as though Two Pi Team who are organising it intend to build on it for the future. For me it will be a nice change to be at the GC without needing to be on my feet for 14 hours a day and to be able to wander round and chat without feeling guilty.

There’s also a strong possibility that a Warmachine game between myself and Donna Prior may happen at the event. Should such a titanic struggle come to pass then it will of course be properly chronicled over on my other blog.

Recently in Germany the perennial topic of ‘killerspiele’ (violent video games) has been reopened. This time the trigger event was the Winnenden shootings where a troubled teenager went on a rampage at his school. Following this, there have been rumblings in the legislature that Things Should Be Done.

This isn’t a new thing in Germany, some years ago (after a similar incident in Emsdetten) the topic was raised but quietly dropped again after many German developers advised that they would leave Germany if this law came to pass. Now we are in an election year, the Winnenden massacre has created a lot of media frenzy over the issue of violence in culture and there are strong calls from many quarters to be seen to do something. And so now the German Congress is considering a law that would make it illegal to develop or distribute these games in Germany. There’s a good chance that nothing will come of it, but the fact that it’s even being discussed in such terms should be worrying.

To be clear, these aren’t simply media soundbites from off-the-cuff interviews with fringe politicians, these are serious policies put forward by senior state ministers.

In the interests of full disclosure I should point out that I work for a German developer working on what would be classified as a ‘killerspiel’.

The argument that’s being used is that the people who do these horrific acts often play violent games and so there is an unspoken causality made between the two events. The assumption is that playing violent video games either makes ‘normal’ people into violent killers or it makes disturbed people more likely to externalise their feelings and become violent. Additionally some of the more… excitable… elements of the press are performing he usual hand-wringing ceremony and asking ‘but what about the children?’ as if Counterstrike (which is the most often referenced game in this debate) has the power to turn rosy faced cherubs into remorseless psychopaths.

Let’s deal with the first point. People who find violence attractive are attracted to violent entertainment. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. If you like hurting people, you are likely to enjoy games or films where people get hurt a lot in graphic ways. Somehow this fairly self evident piece of analysis gets turned around by magic logical leaps to ‘violent entertainment is enjoyed by violent people therefore anyone who enjoys violent entertanment is a psychopath.’ This is clearly false but it is at the heart of the argument being used against our games.

To be clear, I think that there is truth in the claim that constant portrayals of graphic violence have a desensitising influence, but how much that is has been a topic of several studies with no clear answers as yet. In any case the base assumption that bad people won’t go on shooting sprees if they never get to play GTA or Counterstrike is clearly absurd.

Secondly the ‘why are our children being exposed to this’ argument. Short answer, ‘Because you are a terrible parent’. I look forward to the day when the generation in charge have grown up with video games their whole lives. At that point we’ll finally bury this pervasive misunderstanding about games in general. Politicians assume that computer games (because they are games after all) are targeted at children and so when they are confronted with a game that is very much unsuitable for children they naturally question why this is allowed to happen. To them it is like putting a chainsaw rape scene in a Disney movie; it’s a fundamental paradigm clash.

Games are entertainment (or art if you must), and like all entertainment choices they are tailored for different demographics. The sooner that this is absorbed the better.

So what is to be done? Well, firstly consumers (especially parents and politicians) need to become more aware of the various ratings systems and how to use them to make informed decisions. PEGI in Europe and the ESRB in the US both provide clear and unambiguous guidance on any rated title. People need to pay attention to these. Retailers need to be better at restricting sales to underage customers and in helping parents make an informed choice. Yes I appreciate that this is unlikely to happen without at least some state coercion. Finally, people who need help need to be identified and treated before they become a problem. This means better resources for parents, teachers, colleagues and friends to spot the signals and provide assistance. There have always been crazy people who did terrible things well before we had computer games or movies or heavy metal music or books or whatever. The sooner that we can help these people, the less often we’ll be having this debate.