Hold on...this guy is a war photographer. He is out there taking pictures of things that would make anyone of us feel sick to our stomach and not once has he ever felt like quitting his job but taking pictures from a video game made him feel that way?
This has to be one of the biggest drama queen articles I have ever read. The real zombie is him not gamers. The fact that he seems to be fine and dandy when taking pics of actual decapitated children and soldiers, broken families, etc. but video game violence? Oh nooo I want to quit my job!
What a joke.
EXACTLY. This guy says a freaking video game made him want to quit his job but taking pictures of actual decapitated people didn't make him feel that way? Lol. Just lol.
Perhaps it's because the dude is a war photographer, he has PTSD? which accounts for his/her terror when encountering a scary videogame. Doesn't make the rest of us soulless zombies, though.
Also it's dangerous to categorize "everyone else" as everyone else It doesn't account for variety at all. I've been gaming for 30 years and I don't consider myself desensitized at all. I get a variety of emotional responses to a well made videogame, and that brings us on to another problem.
A lot of videogames aren't well made. They don't impact the gamer with the weight of the actions they are carrying out within the game world, which may lead the casual observer to assume the problem is with the gamer, rather than being either a problem with the game, or a compound problem of poor games AND a desensitized gamer.
TLOU however is an emotionally impactful game. I think it's a mistake for the photographer to assume his friend is somehow emotionally desensitized because he didn't go into convulsions during the scary or morally objectional portions of the game. There really is only so many times you can watch a scary movie, or play a scary game and be disturbed by it.
Lastly, the photographer frankly seems like a bit of a wanker who wants to impress people, so it's difficult to really take anything he says as meaningful. You can't really get to the root of a subject when you approach it with the goal of making yourself appear thoughtful or sensitive as the primary objective.
War photography can give important messages, but most of the time it just serves to reinforce propaganda.
As for ISIL, we were tricked into that conflict with some fade to black beheadings of stupid journalists who put themselves in harms way, wasn't anything to do with photo journalism.
That guy having PTSD, or whatever other emotional issues he's suffering from doesn't make the rest of us emotionally stunted.
If he's not suffering PTSD, he's a psychopath. He's really in a no-win situation, but I can't scrape up that much pity for him since he's sitting on the moral food chain somewhere above lawyers and somewhere below paparazzi.
Yeah war photographers give liberals stuff to gawk at and cluck over while sipping their 15 dollar coffees. Also they provide invaluable material for governments to reinforce their pro war propaganda, and help keep the MIC afloat.
Three cheers.
Congratulations on being more disgusting than Tim St Pierre's reactionary rationalizing
Maybe if you had met someone with a socially impacting barrier you'd realize how frustrating it is when something as simple as controlling your emotions gets in the way of day to day life, let alone playing a video game you were assign as a job from what is most likely a last ditch effort to keep working. I'm pretty sure a gamer could easily sympathize with the concept of "doing" as "working" since past all the cynicism, they end up being one and the same..
PS: I am pretty certain if your PTSD is severe enough they wouldn't allow you near your regular light settings until you were cleared, which I doubt happens with PTSD.
Yeah, reading the comments trying to debase this article is really making me glad I never got attached to the idea of groups let alone comfort in groups.
They can really be the devil's playpen.
I like your response, but I would like to inject that it is absolutely frightening how long it took for the subject of PTSD to come across from the detractor side in any sort of empathy towards the journalist. If you ask me, that WOULD be the "zombie" part.
Part of that lack of reasoning for the journalist's reactions from the detractors I will admit is that PTSD seems as an absolutely alien a concept when you first meet someone with it. It doesn't seem real. It feels completely fake. It's when you realize that they have no inherent agenda attached to it that the concept feels real. The journalist is probably very recent with his diagnosis, so his concern about his friend is most certainly mixed feelings with his constant outgoing field work alongside his initial reactions to fight or flight situations. He may be in the process of getting his level of awareness back. That lack of compassion for him losing his basic social awareness is just disturbing to me. My Step-Father is dealing with the same process and has dealt with the same process of realizing what is super-critical, what is benign, what is important, etc., etc.
The other part would be "gamers" sheltering themselves with nothing but the droning actions of going through poorly written game after game of anything remotely deemed serious, let alone just droning through games for other reasons, If you ask me, a healthy "gamer" is someone who doesn't let the setting/theme/looks/concept of a game deter them from playing with it. A healthy "gamer" is someone who has phases playing what ever they feel like, even if it's grinding, and is able to understand the weight of everything else in their daily life. Hell. There isn't even a "gamer" title. There's only a phase of engagement with entertainment before realizing that there's something else out there or that you yourself want to create rather than take in. There is no gamer. There is only suppression of emotions, responses, perspectives that fuels someone to keep playing well past a normal point of boredom and being bored. Blind indignity and inexperience don't help either.
All I have to be known for on being an artist is to make a song, no matter how short handed it's perception is? No matter how much my entire catalogue and personality reflect how much of a shitty person I am?
Oh damn, how come I'm not making millions off of suckers like you?
Edit: Oh, and another thing, all that you described doesn't make video games art. What you have described are the separate points that have to work together (let alone the god damn superficial eye-candy side) Not anything about actual collaboration or where the line of "shitty/banal title pumped out for the masses" and one that actually attempts to be art.
Hell, even the title of "art" has nothing to do with what makes a video game a game.
A desensitized person can yell "There's no racism" as much as an any other until they come face to face with the subject. Same thing with people making their rationale logistic journey to their unsubstantiated "reverse racism" findings, let alone when they bitch and moan about how it's simply the "matter of the concept" when compared with taxing minority filled zip codes, low balling funding for said schools, in regards to campuses and colleges making a push to bring in people of different races/ethnicities.
Congrats on reiterating his point.
Maybe you'll understand the concept of a spinster next.
I can only assume from the nonsensical nature of this as a reply to my comment that you meant to reply to something else.
Yes, the problem is clearly that people identify with a group and not that someone made a sweeping generalization about the group. This from the guy that went on that racism rant above even. Wow.
So you believe "Matter of the concept" still applies despite gamer being a self-made, self-applied title?
To me it's just as ambiguous as the title of "sports fan". Too many ways to go and no real concrete threshold to follow through on.
Fair enough, doesn't make your point any more intelligible though. Then again, based on your other comments here it doesn't seem like that's really your forte anyway.
If it's such an ambiguous title all the more reason not to make sweeping generalizations about the group much less defend those who do.
You're right, you know?
I should really stop calling neo-nazis ignorant, disgusting and blatantly disregarding any and all matter of social resolve for their own devil's advocacy.
