Comments on "Values and Aspirations"

An interesting chapter! Let me say why in a moment. But first a preface . . .

As I've written before:

(1) I give Bogost real credit for addressing a gap in the visual and digital rhetorics literatures by suggesting a novel approach and putting his claim out in public,

(2) doing so helps move the conversation forward, and

(3) describing a phenomenon is a necessary step in laying out a proposed new perspective, but

(4) the next step is more theory development, and

(5) I believe that development should look to what's already available in the literatures on visual rhetoric, digital rhetoric, and procedural literacy.

Now, why did I find "Values and Aspirations" interesting?

Laying aside Points 1-5 above, I thought Bogost's "Values and Aspirations" chapter offered some good grist for thought on media effects. I've been around Comm Studies long enough, and seen enough good studies by good researchers, so that I'm not ready to discount the contributions that a behaviorist perspective can make to our understandings of media effects.

But Bogost's chapter, with its critical assessments of games that encode a given morality, was useful. Granted, there's a lot of knee-jerk reaction in the public square about the "evils" of videogames with violent or sexual content. And admittedly, I must identify myself as one of those citizens who is concerned about the coarsening of our culture. Yet Bogost's critiques take us beyond questions of what games show and offer insights into what games do to rig the rules in favor of the designers' moral perspective.

These observations from Bogost were interesting to me:

> Many "values-based" games do a poor job of instantiating their values.

> But more sophisticated treatments are possible.

Both observations lead to more thoughts:

> Do "values-based" commercial games inherently seek the lowest common denominator?

> Or on the flip side, would the emergence of videogames that are truly effective in promoting values be a positive or a scary development?

Your answer, I suppose, would be based on whether you believe (a) the behaviorist view of media effects, or (b) that the people's procedural literacy will increase over time so that they can read the rhetorics and critically engage the values promoted in a game.

I suspect the answer may be a combination of the two: Yes, if truly effective "value-based" games spread (like, say, TV has done) throughout the culture, then the values pushed will in time instantiate the mainstreaming and resonance effects documented by media effects research. Yet if so, then promoting procedural literacy becomes a more salient issue. Less happily, though, I would point out that we're still talking about teaching media literacy even after 60 years of television.

The discussion of the Left Behind game was quite interesting!

Yes, I make no secret about being a person of faith. But let me hasten to add I was never a fan of the Left Behind franchise. Here I agree with Bogost: the game (like the books and all the other LB licensed products) play a little fast and loose with the Bible in order to boost sales. They merely promote "interest" in and "discussion" about spirituality.

The way that "prayer" is operationalized in the LB videogame was disturbing to me, reducing prayer to merely an instrumental value. The business about Christians battling Antichrist to recover territory is absolutely not in the Bible and even against the doctrine of evangelical Christians who teach that Christ will return to establish his millenial kingdom and won't need earthly believers to prepare the way for him.

Bogost ends his chapter with a sentiment I can readily endorse: The rhetorical power of ethical and religious videogames remains largely untapped. But I would add: Is it even possible to reduce systems of belief to mere systems of rules-based procedures? For in reducing belief systems to mere sets of rules, don't we rob faith of its power? When activating a given rule produces a given result, no faith or belief is required.

And an added bonus for reading this post . . .

My wife was talking to our 25-year-old daughter (married, no kids, husband in grad school) this week and, since I'm taking a PhD class in Video Games, asked our daughter if she or friends play these games. Her immediate reply? "Who has the time!?!"

That got me thinking: Is the videogame market generationally self-sustaining, in that current gamers will keep playing even as new younger games are constantly added? Or will the gamers as they grow older eventually lose interest, so that the videogame market must constantly replenish its losses?

What do you think? Here are three research reports I found:

> This 2006 article from Hollywood Reporter describes a study released that year by the Consumer Electronics Association (sorry, but CEA website itself only allows association members to access past research):

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002539233

> Here is an industry facts page from the Entertainment Software Association website:

http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp

> Nielsen Media (the same people who do TV ratings) compiled this 2006 report on The State of the Console:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/nmr_static/docs/Nielsen_Report_State_Console_03507.pdf