Philosophy through Video Games

Promises and pitfalls of Video gaming

Team Members

Abhijat Biswas (120101054) Aditya Jain (120122002) Ajinkya Shejul (120123003) Akanksha Sharma Arpit (120121006) Atif Ayub (120122008) Dhvanil Patel (120205016) Dipti Kumari (120205018) Radhika Patodiya (120101054) Saurabh Choraria (120122041)

Video Games
Avideo gameis anelectronic gamethat involves human interaction with auser interfaceto generate visual feedback on avideo device. From the days of a simple Tetris game or the latest Grand Theft Auto 5, video games have evolved a lot. The graphics have improved, the genres have multiplied, the gameplay has improved and so on.

How are video games different from the traditional sources of And why all the fuss about them? entertainment?
Video games differ from the traditional media in many ways. Traditional media includes films, novels, television, sports. The Traditional media provides a relatively passive experience. That is, the content flows in one direction. From the source of the entertainment to the audience. It is a one directional transfer. None of your actions will have any effect on the events of the media.

While, Video games, on the other hand, provide an added aspect of interaction. You can actually interact with the virtual objects of the game and can somehow or the other change the game. Video games provide feedback to your interaction. Your actions have a effect. They do not go unnoticed. Although the extend of feedback and the way in which our actions affect the game is highly determined on the technological constrains, but Video games is one of the few media which actually has such a feature.

Video Games
Avideo gameis anelectronic gamethat involves human interaction with auser interfaceto generate visual feedback on avideo device. From the days of a simple Tetris game or the latest Grand Theft Auto 5, video games have evolved a lot. The graphics have improved, the genres have multiplied, the gameplay has improved and so on.

History of Video Games

 1958 PhysicistWilly Higinbothaminvents thefirst "video game"at

the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton,New York. His game, a table tennis-like game, was played on anoscilloscope. 1961 Steve Russell, a student at theMIT, createsSpacewar, the first interactive computer game. 1975 Atari'sPongis released with help from Sears Roebuck, which finances the production of 150,000 units. It becomes the hottest selling Christmas present. Gunfight, the first "computer" game is released. 1977 Atari introduces its first cartridge-based home video system called the Video Computer System which later becomes known as the Atari 2600. 1983 The Commodore 64 is introduced. It is the most powerful video-game console to date and the least expensive. 1985 The popular gameTetrisis developed byAlex Pajitnov. It is played on a PC. 1989 Nintendo releases the handheld Game Boy. 1994 In Japan, the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation make their debut. 1997 PlayStation is considered by many in the industry as most popular game console as the 20 millionth unit is sold.

 2005 Sony releases the PSP, a portable system with a large, highresolution display. 2008 Grand Theft Auto 4 breaks sales records its first week after gamers bought more than 6 million copies. 2013 GTA 5 was released breaking 7 Guinness World Records and a record sale of $ 1 billion in 3 days

Video Game and Meaning of Life

Computer games have become a major cultural and economic force, and the last decade has seen the emergence of extensive academic study of such games. Up until now there has been little attention from philosophical point of view to investigate issues that arise from the phenomenon of computer games. Imagine what your life would be like if you were the hero of one of these gamesBaldurs Gate, say, or Aidyn Chronicles, or Jade Empire, or Elder Scrolls. From the moment you were born, you would have been marked out by destiny to fight some monumental battle or go on some elaborate quest with the fate of your people (or perhaps your fellow elves, sprites, or goblins) resting in your hands.

With the ever-increasing intervention of Video Games in our lives, the need for an extensive study of its pros and cons and its effects on our lives have become very important. In some sectors of academia video games have recently become a subject of attention: a few MFA programs exist to train artists in the technology used in game development and Ph.D. programs devoted to the study of video games and interactive media, such as the program at Georgia Tech, are starting to pop up. Within the past few years, many books have been published on video game theory.

The evolution of Video Games have witnessed thinning of line between reality and fantasy. In games like Everquest and Second Life. there is a persistent realm that one gains access to via the internet. Many other people, and perhaps computercontroller NPCs (non-player characters) will be present as well. One can buy property, visit other people and their homes or locations. For example, Harvard University has a presence on Second Life.

A social Experiment
PETER YELLOWLEES, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, has been teaching about schizophrenia for 20 years, but says that he was never really able to explain to his students just how their patients suffer. So he went online, downloaded some free software and entered Second Life. This is a metaverse (ie, metaphysical universe), a threedimensional world whose users, or residents, can create and be anything they want. Mr Yellowlees created hallucinations. A resident might walk through a virtual hospital ward, and a picture on the wall would suddenly flash the word shitface. The floor might fall away, leaving the person to walk on stepping stones above the clouds. An in-world television set would change from showing an actual speech by Bob Hawke, Australia's former prime minister, into Mr Hawke shouting, Go and kill yourself, you wretch! A reflection in a mirror might have bleeding eyes and die. When Mr Yellowlees invited, as part of a trial, Second Life's public into the ward, 73% of the visitors said afterwards that it

Women and Video Games

To anyone researching the topic, it is quite obvious that the majority of characters in the video game universe are male. Women characters in most video games are essentially passive. Some Barbies are just eye candy and play no significant role in the games storyline. Examples include the bikini-clad women who wave the flags in the race driving game Need for Speed Underground or who sun themselves on golf courses in some golf games.

What men think

Or may be this

There have been extensive research on the topic with the following outputs. Guys like to :

Girls like to :

WIN within the game Be punished for failure Have Competition Need action and some even prefer violence Prefer games like : First Person shooter, Real Time Strategy, Racing Games, Role play Games

Adventure within the game Be forgiven for failure

Have low frustration Prefer games like : Sim games, Adventure Games, Activity Games, Animal Games, Role Play Games

The games that "women prefer" are not "less demanding games" than those that men prefer. They are simply demanding in different ways. Some would even argue that the commitment and patience required to play them make them more difficult than the more aggressive titles. We must remove ourselves from the suggestion that video games are a male market, and begin to look critically at what games are popular among the different genders. When these two items are finally accomplished, only then will this inequality be obliterated.

The need of the hour is : Role play Games Fantasy and Humour Rewards and not punishments Complex Activities and Storyline Likeable Central Character Like Tomb Raider, Lara Croft, Metroid Prime, Halo, Mario etc.

Digital game genres played

Percent of Grade

Puzzle Adventure First Person Shooter Role Play Do not play Other

23

20

10 22

20

Other First Person Shooter

Puzzle Role Play

Adventure Do not play

Realistic Blood and Gore

Do Violent Games Make Violent Gamers?

For the Motion

From the third century BCE to the fourth century CE, one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the civilized world was gladiatorial combat. Citizens of ancient Rome watched prisoners of war, slaves, and criminals fight one another with deadly weapons, often with the predictable outcome of maiming or death. Sometimes, for variety, the audience was treated to the spectacle of bloody fights between exotic, imported animals.

Mortal Kombat
The most infamously violent game of the 1990s was Mortal Kombat, a two-dimensional fighting game that features huge eruptions of gore, elaborate spectacles of dismemberment, and the opportunity to cause a fatality (via decapitation, impalement on long metal spikes, or other equally gruesome means) at a point in the game after one had already beaten ones opponent.

Against the Motion

First Person Shooters and Action Games : A Scientific Perspective

In 2007 the University of Rochester, New York, revealeda studythat had found just 30 hours of training on a first-person shooter can result in a significant boost to ones spatial resolution; that is, the ability to clearly see small, densely packed together objects. In 2009 another University of Rochester study also found that players of action games can become up to 58 per cent better at perceiving fine contrast differences. If you are driving at dusk with light fog it could make the difference between seeing the car in front of you or not seeing it, study leader Daphne told Live Science at the time.

Daphne Maurer elaborated on why she thought first-person shooters proved so helpful. Well, if you stepped back and asked what might be an effective therapy for visual defects, first-person shooter games have a lot of whats needed, she said. They require a person to monitor the whole field of vision, not just what is ahead of them. The player has to monitor everything, because the enemy could come from anywhere. The game is fast-paced. You cant sit back because you will get shot dead. It causes an adrenaline rush. That potentially may make the brain more plastic. Video games could be actually rewiring the brain and allowing new connections to be formed. They could be unmasking connections that have always been there, but werent quite strong enough to be expressed. They might be helping the brain get more efficient at responding to small and weak visual signals. Or all three.

First Person Shooters and Action Games : A Scientific Perspective

Summing Up

A segment of the population that is demonstrably more prone to committing violent crimes than any other (males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five) have been the most avid consumers of a type of entertainment that allows them to vent their aggressive feelings without punching, hitting, or shouting at anything other than a game controller or a PC monitor.

For surely the moral wrongness of violence derives from the fact that people actually get hurt by it; if nobody is being injured in any way, then, it follows that the makers, sellers, and players of these games have nothing to feel guilty about.

The player knows that she is not causing real agony, mutilation, and death. The closest one ever comes to doing any real harm to man or beast is when one kills another real players avatar in online multiplayer FPS games such as Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, or The Ship.

Just-Kidding !

Games and Gods Goodness

In classic world-builder games like Civilization, Tropico, SimCity, and Age of Empires, players direct the evolution of an entire culture through technological and scientific breakthroughs as well as military and cultural expansion. Usually, the player takes on the persona of some small-scale dictator The avatars power over the world of the game is superhuman. And astute players and programmers of these types of games have wrestled with the moral quandaries that such power raises. It is for these reasons that the designers and fans of world-builder games are not exaggerating unreasonably or exhibiting impiety when they refer to worldbuilder games as God Games.

The philosophical task of answering the questions about the ethical content of god games is a major issue in the hands of philosophers. to discern the connection (if any) between God and morality to derive meaningful criteria to differentiate right from wrong, and to describe how video games, properly informed by upper points might be designed.

Censorship
Most gamers are familiar with the little stickers on game packaging that describe their level of mature content. These ratings range from Early Childhood to Adults Only, and include descriptions of the kind of potentially offensive content in each game (e.g., Violence, Crude Humor, Use of Tobacco, etc.) They are applied to games by a group called the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB). The ESRB was formed in 1994 by major companies in the game industry as the result of pressure from the US Congress.

Since commercial video games (unlike pornographic films, in the age of digital video) are extremely expensive to make, this rating code has the effect of destroying the economic viability of Adults Only games by limiting where and when they can be sold. Because of this, and given the specifically political pressure that led the industry to impose the rating system in the first place, many consider the current system to be an instance of censorship.

Since commercial video games (unlike pornographic films, in the age of digital video) are extremely expensive to make, this rating code has the effect of destroying the economic viability of Adults Only games by limiting where and when they can be sold. Because of this, and given the specifically political pressure that led the industry to impose the rating system in the first place, many consider the current system to be an instance of censorship.

5 Real Skills Video Games Have Been Teaching Us

Timing: In most cities, the lights along major thoroughfares are timed. The reds and greens sync up to keep you at a certain speed. Navigating stoplights isn't a gaming exclusive skill, of course; anybody can manage it -- floor it past one intersection, slam on the brakes and then wait for the next to turn. But if you're a gamer, you recognize the obstacle for what it is: A matter of timing. There's never any need to stop at all. As long as you pay attention to and catch the overall pattern, you can slip right through those lights like bullets in the Matrix.

Hand-Eye Coordination: The hand eye skills a person can develop by playing video games also transfer into real life. Neuroscientists have found a positive correlation between the time a person may spend on video games and their ability to complete everyday tasks, such as driving. Because of this, iis important to engage in activities to improve hand eye coordination much like exercising to keep your body relatively healthy. Playing video games in general should help to improve hand eye coordination because of the fact that you have to use an external device, such as controller or mouse and keyboard, to control elements in the game. The brain will have to be constantly thinking about performing the real world commands that will in turn be performing the desired in game actions.

Organization is vital in your day to day life: Staying organized at work nets better job performance, while staying organized at home nets better hygiene. And if you ever need to point to a skill that video games have taught you far better than any other medium, look no further than organization. Years of spatial-awareness based gaming like Dr. Mario have given gamers an exquisite sense of place and order

Resource Management: Resource management is as fundamental a skill-set in the job world as it is in most game genres. In First Person Shooters, you have to carefully ration out and preserve your various types of ammunition. In Real Time Strategy, they're actual resources that you manage: Building materials, fuel, elements, manpower, etc. In Role Playing Games, it's your inventory: Potions, revives, antidotes, and weapons. Basic Morality: Mass effect, Oblivion, Fallout: Every single one of them presents the player with a "choice." You can be the hero, or you can be the villain. It's totally up to you. But it's always, always a trap. Good is the only right choice. The hero option in every one of those games will net you better companions, more interesting quests, and a more ultimately satisfying story.

Video Games are beneficial in developing linguistic, creative and strategic skills and intellectual capabilities.
-European Committee on Culture and Education

Acquired skills from playing games Percent of Grade

Hand/Eye Co-ordination Social Skills Knowledge Others None

45

10 7

20

18

Other Knowledge Hand/Eye Co-ordination

Social Skills None