Jenkins essay about the meaning of video games as either a teaching tool as seen by most humanistic researchers or as a platform of rotting the minds of young players and grooming them to become violent beings is defiantly one that is relate as I am part of the generation where they really fought and scratched at game developers by saying that their games where influencing us to act out in violence. I’ve always found this subject interesting because when it comes to school shootings and young kids or teenagers acting out in violence they just about always try to bridge it to video games. This is why this reading is so interesting because Jenkins presents the argument of the governments view on games and that in no way they could be a positive outlet for the people that play them, however this goes all the back to Caillois and his definition of play. Its up to us how we play the game and when we understand what is reality and and whats real and more connected to our free will. If video games are having the finger pointed at them the same should be aid about other mediums such as TV, films, music and even literature. As a world that was already violent way before we had any of this medium it has always been a part of our culture. That’s why in this reading it heavily stretches the effects on the person that plays and they way these games don’t really have any real goals as to things like the army where you are trained everyday the same routine to be prepared for battle and have a very specific goal. One other thing is how Jenkins looks at the idea of how games can be a teaching platform and how its and experience and shows that the gamers use as learning and reflection and that the gamers are ” constantly searching for newer better solutions to obstacles and challenges”(Gee). This also connects back to our discussion about procedures and rhetoric and how you are giving the tools to play the game that is made by programmers with the game they want you to play, but this still puts it in our hands how we will take that narrative and how it will effect us.
3 thoughts on “Jenkins War between Effects and Meaning”
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Game Studies 
I truly believe that videogames do affect and persuade the brain that some things are okay by desensitizing violence. Although I grew up on this genre of games, the idea never consumed me and changed by behavior. I do enjoy guns, paintballing, airsoft, and etc due to it. But the game itself never placed a feeling in my heart that I didn’t agree with. I do agree with Caillois that, “It’s up to us how we play the game and when we understand what is not reality and and whats real.”
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I totally agree with you on that because it does rely on the person playing and what the take away from it just like when we were younger and played make believe with stuff and you had those who never really break away from it become so immersed in that world.
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I like the connection that the above comment and you made in your post to the Callois readings with how we play is up to us; I think it was an excellent point. For me this was also a debate topic when I was in a public speaking course in my first semester in school (which we had won that one on the side arguing video games are NOT the cause of real world violence in children and teens). A lot of the studies for sure show that it can agitate and even increase aggression, but never has a respected study showed a causal link to shootings or forms of terrorism even when the perpetrators state specifically that “X video game taught me how to do X action”. I will also agree with the above saying how media we take in can eventually sub-consciously teach us things but it does ultimately go back to how we receive and understand it. FPS games like Call of Duty were a huge part of my early teens and at some point I do recall having an interest in weapons, however, in my later teens, as I began to consume media that tended to be more left leaning, I began to think of weapons as an issue, almost counteracting the influence from all those years. I also like the stats that Dr. Kemp brought up showing that the only cases we see where intense violence appears to be connected to that childs interest in video games is when those kids are already a little messed up to begin with. We lean towards what we already believe and already wana hear, and its only those that truly see these violent depictions in movies, games, books, etc. as real and as possible are those that we should be discussing, not the market that produces entertainment for people who can understand it as purely *entertainment*.
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