<Fantasy life is a powerful tool for shaping real life - that's why DR
is so good, after all>

Very interesting post, but I do disagree with this part.  Fantasy provides 
a venue or a stage.  It's a motivational advantage but it doesn't shape 
real life.  The content and experience of DR is what shapes life and the 
fact that it starts out with the premise that it wants to teach.  The AM 
helps to reinforce this by guiding the group into learning experiences and 
drawing it out of the players.

Games are a distortion of reality and even when they think they are showing 
reality, they are fooling themselves (or the players are fooling 
themselves).  This includes DR.  DR provides teaching opportunities, but 
the only real-life aspect of it is the group context in which it's played. 
 The lessons and the experiences will have no real impact if the players 
don't decide for themselves there is something in the lesson that has 
meaning in real life.

Even though anything and everything we do has some kind of impact on our 
life, for it to be a "powerful tool for shaping real life" it must be far 
more than just a game.

Eric


-----Original Message-----
From: long_wj@... [mailto:long_wj@...]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 1998 9:36 AM
To: dragonraid@...
Subject: Re: [DragonRaid] Computer games


On Thu, 2 Jul 1998, Brian Shultz wrote:

> Hi there, I am glad you have agreed on this topic.   The first thing I
> would like to ask is....
> When is it a sin to play a videogame.  Like when it has magic, or
> bloodspill, or does depend on when you play it.  Any responses?

Hmmmm.
    I read a book not long ago by a Special Forces light colonel, with
advanced history and psychology degrees, called "On Killing: The
Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society". (Just why
I picked up that volume is a tale in itself, but anyway...)
    The good Colonel spent most of his time on historical and tactical
problems, of course, but toward the end he had some commentary
on...video games.  You see, the Army after WW II had a study done
which proved most soldiers were not taking deliberate aim at enemy
soldiers and killing them, because of a healthy aversion to such a
personal act of violence. The Army learned to replace all of their
"bullseye" targets with man-shaped sillouettes as one facet of a
program designed to de-sensitize soldiers to shooting men. (At Basic I
never once saw a bulleye target, only sillouettes, even for "zeroing"
the sights.)
    For the Army it was a good call, because that's the Army's job.
In Vietnam and other recent "rumors of war" more soldiers have been
shooting deliberately. But, the Colonel pointed out, on the rifle
range there is a clear command to begin shooting and a clear command
to stop and powerful reenforcement of ONLY shooting the appropriate
targets at a specified time.
    In your average video game with a gun-shaped controller and
human-sillouette shaped targets, there is just "reward" for hitting
lots of them. It's like the Army's design for de-sensitization, only
without the command-and-control.
    Is this a "sin enchantment?"
    I suspect it can be, and would strongly discourage "casual" play
of games of personal violence without a STRONG context of ethics.
Fantasy life is a powerful tool for shaping real life - that's why DR
is so good, after all - and the more graphic the game and the more
vague the context, the more you are being desensitized.  For example,
the "Wolfenstein" series has a clear context (war against the Nazis)
but is pretty graphic; the Mortal Kombat series is absurdly graphic
(more violence than humanly possible) and the justification for the
violence is extremely questionable (to win a tournament? Come on).
    I'll let others comment on "magic" in video games. It doesn't
worry me nearly as much, because button-punching has very little in
common with real-world occult activities, but point-and-shoot has a
LOT in common with real-world...point-and-shoot. (And lest I be
misidentified, I'm totally in favor of marksmanship.  Get kids BB guns
and bulleyes Olympic targets, I say.)

      Joe Long, Mercer Main Library xt 2961
                The way of the sword:
               Kill not, be killed not, hesitate not;
                 Go forth! Return not;
                The way is focused.             -Kunii Zen'ya


--
To unsubscribe, send ANY message to <dragonraid-unsubscribe@...>