The DiGRA list is currently batting around another retread of a debate that I feel has actually grown quite tired.  Given that this conversation has already touched on games as art, games as education, and games as moral and ethical systems, I think we can safely say that we are involved in several political and (dare I say) religious debates about what games are, and what they do to us as players (and researchers/designers).  The letter that kicked this debate off, from within the game studies community, included this gem:

“Contrary to novels and movies,  players do not merely observe the unfolding story, their sensory-motor  system is highly active while pursuing whatever goals, changing the course of events within the game space provided. They do not distance themselves from the situation at hand. Players of those games are not challenged to enlarge and deepen their empathy.  This notion is quite unsettling, providing the high potential of games in this regard. GTA-type games may  from a technical viewpoint look artfully designed.  They are not art. Therefore, the communities of gamers should treat entertainment games as toys.”

As you might expect, this launched an unsurprising array of responses, ranging from anecdotal discussions of individual researcher’s emotional moments in games to more nuanced discussions of the essential nature of moral dilemmas in game experiences.  Even when I was agreeing with the participants, I found the conversation alternately frustrating and boring.  I suppose that I should find the predictability of this conversation comforting, but as a young researcher in game studies I feel like I’m listening to the old veterans whining about that piece of shrapnel they took back in ‘Nam, as if it’s a new and pressing item of concern.  Can’t we move past this particular issue?
I’d like to step back from this discussion and look at it from a higher level.  To me this conversation feels a bit like the media effects/reader response theory debate.  As I interpret it, the initial post seems to work on the media effects notion that the message encoded in a game artifact (be it moral or immoral, or morally agnostic) is isolated from the context of its play - that it fails to improve the reader at best, and overwhelms the sensibilities of the reader at worst .  The rebuttals to this perspective take a reader response approach, suggesting that the game message is subject to how the player chooses to interpret the play experience.

So on the surface level I think that debating the role of violence in games is about as pointless as debating the role of violence in any media.  Games are a comparatively young medium, and there is no doubt in my mind that the preponderance of violent subject matter in games is a direct reflection of that.  However, I don’t expect that violence in games is going to magically disappear as they mature, nor do I think it ought to: that has not been the case with any other media form. Opera, theater, poetry, music, film and literature deal with human themes and violence is one of those things that humans must grapple with.  Like it or hate it, it is a significant aspect of our lives, and as such should not be taboo in any media.I can’t help but draw parallels between this debate and the debate around comic books in the 1950’s.  In both cases, you have a new popular medium, with humble roots, vilified for its supposed pornographic, violent, and corrupting influence on the impressionable young.  This is by no means a new trend: Plato’s Republic includes castigations of certain poetry forms, decrying them as dangerous to the innocent minds of the youth.
But my dissatisfaction runs deeper than a general disagreement with the first poster.  I’m generally fed up with the way in which this debate continues to play out - in particular I am not a fan of the way in which we as a game studies community only seem to engage this debate from a defensive reactionary position.  Why is it that it takes someone challenging the potential of games as art, or investigating the ways in which games violate the Geneva convention to elicit stories of the touching and ethically challenging moments afforded by these experiences?  Why do we as gamers and game researchers hold these views in reserve, waiting for the inevitably shortsighted or agenda driven review of GTA IV from Fox News before leaping to the defense of our medium of choice?  Why, for that matter, does every one of these conversations seem to center around Grand Theft Auto?  Surely you wouldn’t decry all film as a corrupting medium after a watching Uwe Bol’s Postal?  Corollary Disclaimer: Just because I disdain Postal, that doesn’t invalidate another viewer’s enjoyment of it, or even a viewer’s ability to extract profound meaning from it.
My point is, it seems to take some ignorant or naive critique of games to elicit the sort of thoughtful evaluation of games as the site of complex emergent meanings that I feel ought to be the de-facto approach to the medium (or to any medium, for that matter).  I’d rather like to think that media artifacts (including games) are gateways to meaning, and that it is the responsibility of a community of readers to explore their potential deeper meanings.

The other thing that bothers me about this debate is the unspoken (and fallacious) notion that because a shallow reading of games has the possibility of casting them in a bad light then games must be shallow.  We need to accept that not everyone is going to walk away from a mediated experience with a deep or thoughtful interpretation of it. Just because it is possible for an ignorant reader to walk away from Harry Potter thinking that it is about Satanism and Witchcraft doesn’t mean that Harry Potter is actually about Satanism OR Witchcraft.  It doesn’t mean that it’s NOT about these things either.  This is, I think, where media effects theory really breaks down.  In order for media effects theory to work, it presupposes some objectively verifiable Meaning (intentional capitalization) embedded within a given media artifact.  This meaning has the ability to transmit itself, intact, directly into the behaviors and values of the reader, negotiating any obstacles (such as cultural differences, age and gender differences, personal history, current emotional state, previous media experience, and context and intention of reading) that might otherwise interfere with the communication of the Message to the passive, and opinion-free reader.  The irony of this particular view being applied to games is that games, more-so than most other media artifacts, are plastic and indeterminate.  Unlike a film or novel, where the reader has no freedom to change the events contained within, games allow for radical emergent reconfiguration.  Thus, the player of games gets an opportunity to not only cognitively respond to the meaning created by the game, but also to literally react to it, feeding that interpretation back into the simulation.  The activity of the player in games is often used as a wedge for this argument about their corrupting influences:  note the quote that started this whole thing off.  I see this instead as a profound argument for the value of games to communicate the relationship between action an consequence, in a direct feedback loop that requires the participation of the player.

In conclusion, I’d like to see us move past simple debates around the content of games and instead consider the ways in which the form of games can enable or constrain complex and rich meanings.  I’d like to see less reactionary and defensive arguments that engage media effects theorists on their own terms, instead of just yanking the rug out from under their entire misguided project, and I’d like to see a game about Unicorns, because it’s an obvious cash cow that has been underexploited in today’s market.  In this game, the Unicorns ride on rainbows that they shoot from their horns, and their goal is to bring humanity into harmony with nature by sprinkling people with flower petals which are combed from their manes by pixies.  I think the main unicorn character - a loveable rogue with a checkered past - should probably be voiced by Jack Black, and that the pixies should be voiced by Neil Patrick Harris.