Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

One video game fear just won't die

Despite years of research, one old video game fear still keeps throbbing along.  It's the idea that computer gaming causes players to act out offline violence.

And it appeared this weekend as an explanation for two mass shootings.

Reason has a good round-up.  Here's one sample:

[Fox News Channel Host Jon Scott] wonders if these guys "raised on a diet of violent video games—if they actually start pulling the trigger of a real weapon and they see real death and they find it's not as satisfying as it was when they're playing on a television screen." He wonders out loud if this is why the alleged shooter, Patrick Crusius, stopped shooting.

Another: "(As I'm writing this blog post, another talking head has come on Fox News Channel to blame it on Fortnite and bad parenting.)"

Have you seen any other examples?

Trump gets into cyberfear

President Trump turned to digital fears in his response to the Florida school shooting.

First, he riffed on general internet fear:

“We have to look at the internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds and their minds are being formed, and we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it,” the president said from the White House during a meeting with officials on school safety.

Next, he targeted computer games:

“And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.”

These aren't especially interesting comments from a cyberfear perspective.  It's pretty simple instance of the old classic: blaming a medium for shaping consumers' mentalities and influencing their behavior.  

But it is noteworthy as a very high profile instance.

Haunted arcade game Polybius: the documentary

Classic arcade game urban legend Polybius now has a documentary.

There are many nice details here, including etymological explorations, fonts, fan art and mockups.  There's some ARG-level investigation, too, with deep dives into Usenet, .exe files in hex editors, interviews with various people, gaming magazines from the 1980s, etc.

We first noted Polybius in 2009. More on haunted, older computer games here and here.

(via MetaFilter)

More Pokemon GO fear!

As the global Pokemon GO frenzy spreads, naturally creepy stories are cropping up.  Why "naturally"?  Because we tend to generate disturbing stories about almost every new technological development, trying to haunt the tech that otherwise delights us.

The following stories are of variable veracity, being new and riding the craze wave.

ITEM: police fear Pokemon GO players hurting themselves or getting robbed.

ITEM: pedophiles could use the game to lure young victims.  (Note the use of "could")

ITEM: folks playing Pokemon GO... in the Holocaust Museum.

According to The Washington Post, there are three Pokéstops associated with the museum, which predictably leads to hoards of fans, young and old alike, swarming those areas at any given time.

The museum's communications director, Andrew Hollinger, told The Post, "Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism. We are trying to find out if we can get the museum excluded from the game."

ITEM: cops are targeting GO players.  Not really, but still:

ITEM: black players face death.

ITEM: Pokemon GO is a government conspiracy.

ITEM: the mobile apps, especially for iOS, snarf down a lot of personal data. For real.

And let's not forget the old Pokemon Satanism urban legend, which is now recirculating.

Previously, we've noted the robbery fear and the surprise floating corpse around this seething Pokemon game.

One additional reason these stories are taking off is that augmented reality hasn't really captured the public imagination.  This game has brought it to our collective attention, and now all of the potential anxieties can fly free.

Another reason: fears about computer games have been running for years, and haven't lost their power.  Ditto mobile computing.

Mobile, AR, gaming - it's really a nice fearsome brew that Pokemon GO has stirred up.

Remember, we try to haunt every technology we make.

(thanks to Todd Bryant, Reason, Snopes, Ed Webb, Jesse Walker)

Games of death

A small but growing number of computer games are taking death more seriously. Gabby DaRienzo explores this trend across platforms and genres.

The article touches on permadeath, then goes on to describe games where the afterlife grounds play mechanics, or where the player helps characters cope with impending doom.  Another uses permadeath to block replay ability, but allows the player to play a dead character's descendants.  One game even promises to die when enough of its player-characters die.

Note that DaRienzo is "Also developing my own game #MortuarySimulator", according to her Twitter bio.

(thanks to Todd "Still Alive" Bryant)

The sadistic horror of princess medical emergency games

Here's a good introduction to that new gaming genre, cruel and cute pregnancy and injury games.  These put you, o player, in the role of a paramedic tasked with helping a Disney princess or similar character, who comes to you with various injuries, plus a baby to be born, or related challenges.

For example,

There’s Baby Elsa Ambulance where baby Elsa (there is so much Frozen stuff out there, seriously) with a bleeding slash to her chest and a black eye crying in the back of an ambulance.

Yes, this is how it begins:

Or:

In Pregnant Anna Emergency you’ll find Anna from Frozen sporting a huge baby bump and lying in bed after what looks like an accident at a wood chipping facility. Wooden spikes jut out of her skin, her nose is bleeding and her face is bruised.

"wooden spikes"?  Yes:

There’s never any explanation of how a pregnant Disney princess would end up quite so punctured, she just is and you must use some green medical pliers to yank them out. It’s not an easy job either – there’s a real sense of the nails being jammed in and needing a great deal of tugging to pull them out. Bare arms, legs and bump are all afflicted.

Or consider the graphic horror of Elsa Throat Doctor:

Down with Minecraft, says the Turkish government

A Turkish ministry found that Minecraft is a dangerous game, especially for children.

“Although the game can be seen as encouraging creativity in children by letting them build houses, farmlands and bridges, mobs [hostile creatures] must be killed in order to protect these structures. In short, the game is based on violence,” Habertürk quoted the report as saying.

Some children may confuse the real world with the game world after playing Minecraft, leading them to believe that torturing animals would not give them pain, added the report, which was based on the game experience of a nine-year-old child.

 

The Family and Social Policies Ministry added another bit of fearsome digital media:

It also suggested that the game could lead to “social isolation,” while exposing children to social risks in the multiplayer form, such as abuse and bullying.

Let's see if suppression follows.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

Necromancy, undead celebrities, games, and lawyers

Game players might confuse the living with the dead, argues a very strange lawsuit in California courts.  Let TechDirt explain with full Gothic flourishes:

CMG Worldwide lawyers are necromancers.

Wait, let's rewind a bit.

We live in a strange world, folks. How else can one describe an era in which intellectual property has morphed into a form of publicity rights necromancy, in which dead celebrities haunt the living to the tune of lots of dollars? First it was the CMG Worldwide's quest against Twitter on behalf of James Dean. Now CMG has shaken its summoner's staff in the direction of Maximum Games, siccing none other than General George S. Patton (zombie) on them.

More:

if you somehow think that I'm being unfair in calling this world a stupid place, please understand that the estate of George Patton, who has been dead for just shy of seven decades, is suing the video game maker claiming false endorsement. Yes, the use in a game of a historical figure who died roughly just as the computer was being invented, has been construed to potentially confuse people into thinking that Patton was endorsing the product personally, from the grave.

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(link thanks to Todd Bryant; statue photo from Wikipedia)

Desiderata for this season of horror

What are the best works of horror produced during the past five years?  Consider this a seasonal query, as we approach splendid Halloween, Infocult's apogee of the year.

Let us restrict our nominations to longer works, including: novels and short story collections; movies; computer games.

Currently on Infocult's dark radar:

• Livia Llewellyn, Engines of Desire.   A fine, very sexual, intense short story collection so far.
• Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.  A dark steampunk horror game (PC).  Deeply melancholy, mostly focused on an extraordinary underground facility.
• Berberian Sound Studio.  A loving tribute to Italian giallo, with an emphasis on audio production.

Also under consideration: nominees and winners of the Bram Stoker Award.

What else has the past half-decade unleashed upon our trembling world? 

(lovely photo by Steven Depolo)

Trading dangerous computer games for ice cream

A Bay Area county initiative encourages parents and children to give up computer games, in exchange for ice cream.  They can also exchange toy guns.

This story has several classic digital fear features, including the emphasis on children, as well as assigning media a causal role in human violence.  

Let's look closely at a couple of points:

"As we know domestic violence incidents almost always have children present and these children develop over time imprinted images of the family violence," Berberian said. "These children then carry those experiences into their adult lives and often repeat the pattern of violence in their own family units."

It's as if getting rid of games and their images willl exorcise childrens' minds of their own images.  This feels like ceremonial magic, or the invocation of media attention.

And:

Disposing of toy guns and violent video games provides "a chance to change today's modeling patterns," the district attorney advised. Reducing exposure to violent video games may "alter how one later addresses conflict situations," he added.

That takes us back to medium as teacher, and the idea that parents will learn domestic violence from gaming.  Again, there's never been any proof that this actually occurs.

Note that the leaders of this program want to have a conversation.  Heh.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)