Kobe Bryant and Black Ops: Perceptions About Video Games

Activision: There is a soldier in all of us.

I’ve been playing and studying video games long enough to know that a major release like Call of Duty Black Ops will cause controversy.  However sometimes I am surprised as to the path it takes. The hot issue this time is the advertisement where Kobe Bryant and Jimmie Kimmel are among dozens of people participating in a live action multiplayer match.  I admit I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal until I saw my old professor, Dr. Robert Thompson of Syracuse University, on ESPN’s Outside the Lines (OTL).  Well technically I saw it over Xbox Live’s ESPN channel (ironic, I know).

So Prof. Thompson and four other gentlemen whose names escape me were having a rather vigorous debate about Byrant and the messages his participation sends.  While Bryant’s team, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the NBA have been silent on the issue, there must be parties or groups who feel that Bryant should represent more wholesome entertainment. Thompson correctly pointed out there is, though there shouldn’t be, distinction between actors in a game and those in film.  If Bryant is to be condemned for his involvement in Black Ops, then why not condemn actors for participating in violent films?  However I will take it further: if Bryant were to play the part of a villain in a summer action movie would there be controversy?  Would there be such a discussion if Bryant were to take on Bruce Willis in the next Die Hard movie?  The implication here is that video games, especially the more violent ones, are not as acceptable as other media such as television and film.

In fact, video games reside at the lower end of popular culture.  Yes, we know that in the United States, the gaming industry out-grosses the domestic box office.  But if anything, that speaks to how popular gaming is and that sometimes leads to the argument that because games have broad appeal, they have little cultural value.  When compared to books, film, radio, and television video games cannot match the cultural appeal mainly because this newer medium is still viewed as “games.” As such, games sit on the lowest rung of the cultural ladder, somewhere between monster truck racing, Jerry Springer, and pro wrestling.  The message here is: “it’s okay to sit and watch violence in the movies, but it’s wrong to pick up a controller and kill someone.”

Now unless I am missing something, nobody actually dies in a movie.  It’s fiction.  We say characters die, but the actors who portray these people are very much alive.  Likewise, nobody dies in games.  It’s fiction, however interactive it may be.  Yet one type of violence is more acceptable than the other.

So while the gamer in me may be offended that such a debate even takes place, the researcher in me continues to be fascinated by the struggle of this medium to reach a higher level of acceptability in mass culture.  Over the past three years, I have watched debates swirl around Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto IV, Six Days in Fallujah, Medal of Honor, and now Black Ops. In this last case, the message from the commercial was supposed to be that Kobe Bryant is just like you and me: he loves hopping into a MP just like the next gamer.  However the lasting message might end up being that Bryant risked tarnishing his image by signaling that he approves of violent games and that would be a sad commentary indeed.

Framing My Online Game Experience Using Dynasty Wire

I’ve been playing college football video games for a long time, but from my memorable moments with Bill Walsh College Football (1994) until now, there has never been anything like Dynasty Wire.  Why am I so amped about this feature?  Simply put, it adds a new layer of depth to an already deep game.  It publishes the results of your online dynasty games (complete with stats, pictures, and video) on the web for others to see, but it also allows you to frame the events any way you want. That first part excites the gamer in me.  The second intrigues me as a media researcher.

For those who don’t know, Dynasty Wire (DW) is a new feature in EA Sports’ NCAA Football 11.  It connects your online dynasty with the EA Sports website thereby empowering you to tweak and fiddle with your dynasty whenever you can get to your computer, iphone, or ipad. Players now have the freedom to manage their online dynasty teams on the console, the website, or both. However not only can you recruit players, check your schedule, and see the results from all your games, but DW also grants you the ability to create stories from scratch or edit the existing stories automatically generated from your games.  It’s pretty good stuff, even if the website still has some hiccups and tends to give out too many error messages.

Now the researcher in me finds this fascinating.  For example, let’s look at my first game of the season. My team, the Texas El Paso (UTEP) Miners, lost a close game to rival New Mexico.  The story feature in DW allowed me to frame the game so that NM didn’t beat me so much as I beat myself.  Notice the language I used in the recap: founds ways to stumble, allowed them to win, place themselves in tough situations, and so on.  I gave no credit to the other team. With framing, I can downplay certain perspectives while encouraging others.  Now I have tools to slant the events in a way that benefits my team.

In addition, everyone else in my dynasty can read and comment on my game.  Add to that the ability to link to my Facebook and Twitter accounts and the connectivity between different media sky-rocket.  But let me return to my discussion about social media.  Gone are the days when you would play in solitude (or with someone else sitting on the couch) and could only reminisce about your glorious victories.  We have even moved past the days where you could upload an image or video to a website for a few people to see.  Now we participate in simulations where not only do you play, manage, and recruit, but you can now create and edit your own media as you see fit (provided you can get past EA’s nit-picky language filters).

Let’s think about that for a moment. Not only am I changing my game play experience, but I can also alter someone else’s view of the game (possibly) by writing a biased report on the event.  The site encourages you to “tell everyone  your side of the story.” There is no pretense of balanced journalism here.  Pure trash talking.  And while the games may not involve real players, the competition is most certainly real and the marriage of console and website only enhances the experience.  I get the same feeling looking at my dynasty sports page as I do from reading CNNSI on the web. My heart races as the page loads and I wait to see what’s new since the last time I visited my page.  To me, dynasty wire feels just as real as CNN or ESPN and provides the same inspiration to start a conversation or a debate as the mainstream sports outlets.

That’s the beauty of this new feature. In dynasty wire, you have the fanaticism of fantasy football and the connectivity of Facebook now combined to produce a service that is just too darn easy to access and obsess over.  For those gamers who love to tell a good yarn, the temptation can be too great to ignore.  I have already penned three or four trash-talking stories and the dynasty is only three weeks old (in game time that is).  Imagine when I have access to stories, images, video, and statistics from four or five seasons.  I may just become something like a sports journalist after all.  At least in the world of my online dynasty.