Right, so I heard about the required blog posts a bit late and now the next few blogs might be a bit dry. Brace yourselves.
Rather, don't. You have better things to do. Look up Hyperboly and Half or Lackadaisy.(Hyperboly and Half's wonderful and impossible to describe, Lackadaisy is Prohibition-era rum-runners except its cats and the later art is some of the best I've ever seen.)
I mean, seriously. You have Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Friends to watch, maybe even Dollhouse if you're feeling eclectic and awesome. We've got a museum on campus with some incredible Japanese art deco, and there's entire shelves of fiction to sink your teeth into. Talk to a friend. Give people chocolate. Don't read people's research paper blog posts. You have better things to be doing.
If you're still with me... Well, I guess you're crazy enough that I can't really tell you what to do. Well done. Even I can't rant at you over this one. Which is saying something.
I started the research paper when I heard about Google Blogger doing something incredibly dumb and trying to restrict certain kinds of free speech(Read: Porn) on the Blogger platform. It was very technically legal, but Google was taking it into its own hands to restrict free speech, so... Public outcry happened. Google retracted, and I wasn't left with enough material to write a paper on. I changed topics and scrambled.
I ended up writing a paper on the debilitating effects of media. Did the reading on whether video games actually cause violence, that sort of thing. (They do, by the way. Measurable across whatever kind of controlling you do.) Also went into the idea of social media creating a large number of "friends" with very little depth to the friendships(I know this isn't always the case. I once met a girl in a chatroom, and we talked 'till morning. It happens, I know.) Then there was ranting about empathy, because I do so enjoy ranting about that.
The weird thing is, I am a gamer. Anything relatively big-budget, I'm relatively sure to have heard of, even if I haven't actually played. I've played Minecraft with over a hundred mods enabled, and wasted more time than I'm comfortable admitting between Fallout and Skyrim. I can converse about the current meta for League, even though that was never really my game. I've been to Rapture, and Caelondia, and the many worlds of Starcraft, FTL, and Sins of a Solar Empire. Tabletop, RPG, FPS, puzzle... name a genre, and I've probably played at least a thing or two in it.
I went in biased. I wanted to believe that gaming was inherently good for you, that it increased your decision-making capabilities and reflexes, not to mention the storylines and atmospheres leading to enhanced creativity and all the whatnot. I'd like to believe that all forms of media are inherently equal, and that the accessibility of gaming media doesn't conflict with its ability to tell a fantastic story.
Afterward.... Well, I'm conflicted. I've seen the research, and violent gaming does cause violence. Games in general cause withdrawal from the world, and all sorts of other nonsense. Violence is caused by gaming, which then results in lack of empathy, which can be inherited, that sort of thing. This paper's made me worried for the future and guilty about playing so many games and confused why we're still arguing over conclusive data, all at the same time. But I'm still not sure that the pro-gaming standpoint is entirely wrong.
Take Bioshock, for instance. It's set in an underwater city called Rapture, and it's gorgeous. Sixties vibes everywhere, neon lights and windows to the ocean. Beautiful. By the time the game starts, the city's decaying, which adds an entirely new dimension to the pretty. Water flowing down stairs, darkened restaurants and bars, everywhere the signs of a society gone horribly wrong. You wouldn't think that that could be pretty. You'd be wrong. The two styles of the game play of each other, and you're left feeling thoroughly creeped out and simultaneously wondering just what the sunken city was like before it got taken over by madmen and walking diving suits. The game was was wonderful. I learned things that I later put to use against my friends in a more traditional role-playing environment that left them feeling sorry for fighting the game's mooks. I'm pretty certain that if I ever have to write horror, that's what I'll be turning to for inspiration. And yet, I know that gaming's incredibly debilitating now. I know that's it's going to make me a worse person, and even more telling is the fact that most of the research I read was based around violent FPS games that reward the player for choosing violent actions- games exactly like Bioshock. Everything I know now, everything I've learned, applies to this game. But playing the game taught me how to recreate it, which, if I choose to write for money anytime down the line, will be an incredibly useful skill.
I'm definitely going to be more careful choosing my games from now on. And I'm glad that I know the research side of things now. But I have to admit, I didn't expect to learn anything from the research paper, and I really didn't expect to be left with a moral quandary that challenges how I spend my free time.
So that's what I got out of writing the research paper. That and lack of rest from four all-nighters, and way more stress than really needed to ever exist in my life. Or anyone's life.
Next time, I'm going to choose something simple and just learn how to cite sources.
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