Machinima, the Next Gen Artform

I am not particularly picking one specific artist but a group of artists that conform to form a group called hankandjed. This group of artists create animated videos that are classified as Machinima (Machine and Anime). What this means is these artists will use specific programs to manipulate the artistic pictures they draw, piece them together and form an animated film. An example that I can give of these type of animation is called Doraleous and Associates as well as Red vs Blue which is created by another set of animation artists.

This particular genre used in this would be that which is similar to the film "Your Highness."

For arguments sake the above film could be considered art as what is used in this real-time film is acting, story telling and emotional involvement. With that being said Roger Ebert would tend to disagree as he states, "I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control. I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art." (Champion, Keeping it Reel: Is Machinima A Form Of Art?). I do not agree with Mr. Ebert. As he looks at the term art as a emotional involvement why can't the same be said about Video Games or in the case that I am presenting Machinima? For instance, Red vs Blue is a Machinima series created by utilizing a game engine that is used in the Halo series. The brand name, Halo, a video game that is common household name for almost any gamer. In video games, the graphics ( artwork) are presented upon the medium (TV) to allow the consumer to interact and immerse themselves within the world of the game. Some common emotions that may appear as frustration, happiness, sadness, sympathy, empathy among others that I have not listed. Everything that I have previously mention are all things that can be present when viewing artwork. Now if we go back to Machinima, essentially this is the same thing. The acting is done in the background and recorded to go along with the images that go across the screen. Isn't this essentially an animated movie in which Roger Ebert reviews and considers art? How is this any different? How are video games any different? I do not believe that they are

As technology grows the more animation or digital trend will start to appear within movies or even to go as far as our everyday lives. Machinima, for instance Machinima created by hankandjed, will start to grow more and more as the ideals of gaming start to spread and become a lot more mainstream. The idea of art needs to be broken down to a more liberal base and we need to take a step back and view things that are created whether it be by hand or naturally, with a more open eye. By creating this Machinima, Doraleous and Associates, all they want to achieve is a fan base that enjoy watching the show. This in turn is assumed that this brings some sort of happiness to the fans by telling a story that is engaging and strikes up emotions in that viewer. Isn't that why we are fans of something because we enjoy the emotion that it strikes in us? 



http://www.digra.org/dl/db/09291.09190.pdf


http://www.hankandjedmoviepictures.com/#!press


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk1B8DiIJI8&list=PLBC839BEC48A3E264

New Media Tool that can fuel a non-gamer POV

When writing my case study there was something that I didn't mention however in a way still is along the same lines. A huge new media tool that is utilized in the gaming world is online video. A gamer can record game play from any game they play assuming that they have the right recording device to do so and they post this online for other "gamers" to see. This tool is YouTube. There is a large following to online gaming news outlets like IGN, Machinima, Dtoid, and Rev3 Games just to name a few. This news channels so to speak are loaded with game play footage taken from the video game companies themselves or even going as far as user submitted material. This footage can contain anything that even seems relative to the gaming genre. On the same token this media is view-able to everyone that has access to YouTube. There are no restrictions when it comes to viewing this videos. The videos can be grotesque and also can be very humorous. This types of videos need to be taken as just that. People that are unfamiliar with what YouTube has to offer can be intimidated by this media outlet almost going as far as saying "...this is the prime contributor to the violence that is plaguing this country." This comes from a friend of the family that still owns a rotary phone so none the less he is a bit outdated with technology. This just goes to show you that people that do not understand the technology and media that is in front of them are scared of it and easily blame it for the problems we have today.

The reason I say that this is comparable is because essentially YouTube is online TV but just in shorter and smaller doses. On YouTube a viewer can view exactly what they want to view without all of the extra fluff that comes with watching TV aka commercials. We all hate commercials, except for those really really funny ones, those we can keep.

Case Study on Violent Media

            For the longest time violent video gaming has been a crutch for most arguments when it comes to a violent outbreak somewhere in our country. Not a lot of people really understand the concept that is this media. Most of the time the media that I am discussing, has the most detrimental effect when displayed through televisions or computer monitors which in this case is the medium being used. Video games are electronic games that involve a human interaction with a user interface (sometimes referred as GUI; graphical user interface) to generate some sort of visual feedback on the device. These electronic games have been around for almost 40 years but as our technology evolved over time they are just now starting to cause a controversy.

            Why are they just now causing this common controversy which is that they can cause addiction and potentially lead to or cause violent behavior? A prime example of this would be an article about a crime committed by Jacob Hartley while playing video games. His son was crying and “interrupted” his play session and he shook the baby to make the 3 week old boy stop. This kind of incident is prime material for advocacy groups such as MAVAV (Mothers against Videogame Addiction and Violence.) There are other groups out there that are back by politicians to further support the restriction of violent video games. Also, there have been studies done on the effects of violent video games. One such study in 2004 led to evidence showing that video game violence exposure was related to a wide array of aggression (for ex, verbal aggression, moderate physical aggression and violent behaviors). However, no one research study is conclusive and finds definitive results stated Hal Halpin. I believe the reason why this sudden urge for an answer is happening now is because we as a society are changing into a culture that we are unsure of. Older parents now are growing out of sync with current generation media. What’s a better scapegoat to blame the lack of parental know how then one that we do not understand? The answer is there is none. This is the best they have. There are studies that

            With the expansion of technology and rise of the video gaming community more and more cases of who’s to blame with arise. People need to understand that video games are not the culprit here yet there is something greater at fault here. There are also studies that show the beneficial effects of video games like surgeons playing video games three hours a week decreases mistakes by 37 percent. This goes to show you that it can have great hand eye coordination building skills. Why isn't this ever brought up? Sadly, it is because at the end of the day it is easier to blame something for problems rather than take responsibility.

Bibliography

TELEVISION GAMING APPARATUS AND METHOD. FPO IP Research & Communities. 2004-2013. 23 Feb 2013.

<http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3659285.html>

Video Game Addiction and Violence in Underground Video Game Cultures.MAVAV. 2002-2006. 23 Feb    2013.

<http://www.mavav.org/>

Violent Video Games: The Effects on Youth, and Public Policy Implications. Handbook of Children, Culture and Violence. 2006. 23 Feb 2013.

<http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~caa/abstracts/2005-2009/05GA2.pdf>

Surgeons may err less by playing video games. Games on NBCNews.com. 2004. 23 Feb 2013

<http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4685909/#.USu1e6KyDSg>

Modifying a Wiki page?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversies#Biological_links_to_aggressive_behavior

More specifically...

Researchers found that people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played. Meanwhile, those who played nonviolent games showed no meaningful changes in aggression or hostile expectations over that period. Although other experimental studies have shown that a single session of playing a violent video game increased short-term aggression, this is the first to show longer-term effects, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University. "It's important to know the long-term causal effects of violent video games, because so many young people regularly play these games," Bushman said. He continues to say, "Playing video games could be compared to smoking cigarettes. A single cigarette won't cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk. In the same way, repeated exposure to violent video games may have a cumulative effect on aggression." Bushman conducted the study with Youssef Hasan and Laurent Bègue of the University Pierre Mendès-France, in Grenoble, France, and Michael Scharkow of the University of Hohenheim in Germany. . Their results are published online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and will appear in a future print edition.

The study involved 70 French university students who were told they would be participating in a three-day study of the effects of brightness of video games on visual perception. They were then assigned to play a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 minutes on each of three consecutive days. Those assigned the violent games played Condemned 2, Call of Duty 4 and then The Club on consecutive days (in a random order). Those assigned the nonviolent games played S3K Superbike, Dirt2 and Pure (in a random order). After playing the game each day, participants took part in an exercise that measured their hostile expectations. They were given the beginning of a story, and then asked to list 20 things that the main character will do or say as the story unfolds. For example, in one story another driver crashes into the back of the main character's car, causing significant damage. The researchers counted how many times the participants listed violent or aggressive actions and words that might occur. Students in the study then participated in a competitive reaction time task, which is used to measure aggression. Each student was told that he or she would compete against an unseen opponent in a 25-trial computer game in which the object was to be the first to respond to a visual cue on the computer screen. The loser of each trial would receive a blast of unpleasant noise through headphones, and the winner would decide how loud and long the blast would be. The noise blasts were a mixture of several sounds that most people find unpleasant (such as fingernails on a chalk board, dentist drills, and sirens). In actuality, there was no opponent and the participants were told they won about half the trials.) The results showed that, after each day, those who played the violent games had an increase in their hostile expectations. In other words, after reading the beginning of the stories, they were more likely to think that the characters would react with aggression or violence. "People who have a steady diet of playing these violent games may come to see the world as a hostile and violent place," Bushman said. "These results suggest there could be a cumulative effect." Bushman goes on saying "Hostile expectations are probably not the only reason that players of violent games are more aggressive, but our study suggests it is certainly one important factor." He continued, "After playing a violent video game, we found that people expect others to behave aggressively. That expectation may make them more defensive and more likely to respond with aggression themselves, as we saw in this study and in other studies we have conducted." he also notes Students who played the nonviolent games showed no changes in either their hostile expectations or their aggression. He said it is impossible to know for sure how much aggression may increase for those who play video games for months or years, as many people do. "We would know more if we could test players for longer periods of time, but that isn't practical or ethical," he said. ^[49][50]

I added all of that because I feel that since it is a recent study it should be relevant to this entry of Video Game controversies.

I am still a little unsure of how I feel about modifying a wiki entry or using wikipedia at all however, on the same token I view wikipedia as a unverified official word of mouth or word vomit type of way of researching. That being said, wikipedia tends to lead you to links that are from official sources IE. the one that i posted above is linked to a official study on video game violence. I think that using this kinda site for a starter point is great as long as it can redirect you and you are not taking what this says for granted.

Virtual Worlds and Gaming

              When sitting down and trying to think about a concept that I would find interesting to research that has to do with New Media I was considering all my options. I started to think about things that make a difference in my life and things that I tend to be passionate about. Among those topics I chose to do my research on the violent media and gaming aspect of evolution of new media. Video games and the like have made evolutionary steps to provide a media experience that captures its audience. As the time progressed so did the graphical nature and the capabilities of the games/consoles themselves. They can be associated with learning; they can be stress relievers and/or just fun in general. One thing that people need to accept that in this world of evolutionary technology is the video games (or type of) are starting to play a major part in child/teenagers up to self sufficient adults lives.

             One thing that really stood out to me when wanting to do a research project on this is the primary fact that violent media and video games get accused of corrupting the human mind and deterring them onto a path of violence. I want to show that violent media is not responsible for the mass violence that is done by these teenagers that cause such trauma around the world. Restricting the use or placing bans on this type of media is not a solution but an excuse to avoid the real problem here.

Evolution of Video Game Consoles up to 1977

Home consoles up to Nintendo's first consoles!

This is a timeline on how the home video game consoles changed or didn't change up to when Nintendo first emerged into the market.

On a side note, I tried to embed it but it failed miserably ha! 

What is Being Human in the Digital Era?

What is being human in the digital era? 

That is an easy question to answer! We have skin and need water to survive and digital media does not. 

Man drinking water to re-hydrate.

Media device not taking in water.

Well if only it was that simple. Marshall McLuhan said "...Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without the knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical." This is something that he was quoted in 1967. Is this still relative to the nature of today's media boom? In a way yes it is; it is very relevant. First we need to understand the psychological nature of media and how it affects us on a chemical level. Does this even happen? To an extent it does affect us. However, with that being said it doesn't physically change us. We, as a human being, are influence by things which are around us. The media itself is always around us. Whether the physical media such as a news report give us bad news about a company that we looked up was stealing our money or a tablet we use to find out that information is still the same in theory. Hearing bad news affects us on a chemical level as it changes our chemical balance of neurons to induce sadness. In this case absolutely it does affect us on a psychic level. McLuhan was correct then as much as he is now. The situation that we come across will determine how we are affected by it.

McLuhan says, "The medium is the message" by which he means it is how information is presented as opposed to what the message actually is. Keeping this relevant to today's digital age; we as humans are affected by all that we see and hear in this current world. We experience all of this via a plethora of mediums but at the same time we have gained a certain technological intelligence in which we choose how we display this message. By choosing how we get the message across we can affect the overall population on a much greater scale. What does this mean in regards to being human in a digital age? Since we are a part of this technological boom we ARE affected at physical level by all of this.  We help contribute to this advance in technology so much so that we are walking a fine line between staying a physical form to being a digital self. What I mean by this is that the more we "dial in" or "plug in" we start to lose our concept on what is common to reality because all we know is media. Being human in this age doesn't necessarily have to be like that. If we can maintain that break between those two versions of ourselves we can progress to a level that is unrivaled. We are all subject to the media around us but the trick is to know when to cut the cord to keep that distinction.

I found this very intriguing. You may as well.

Bill Buxton, Being human in a digital world.

http://dmcc.acm.org/pres/?query=/dmcc///confdata/chi2008/plenary/2008-04-10_16h53