~twisted-venom

I sat down and started spewing this rant about children to poor ThornedVenom and I realised that it's probably intersting enough to share with everyone else too. SO....

We spoke about how Eleectronic Arts have published a game called "Battlefield:Bad Company", a game that's part of a prestigeous series of first-person-shooter games. However EA released the game with a few....exceptions. The game came with 5 weapons, but if you paid money on the EA store, you could buy an extra number of weapons and unlock a number of vehicles. This also applied to the online portion of the game, which left furious gamers at a HUGE disadvantage unless they forked out extra cash. Enough gamers boycotted purchasing the game for EA to change their game plan and make the weapons free via subscriptions to free newsletters, fillin gin polls etc.

It lead me to question the morals of EA and corporate industries as a whole. EA is quite possibly the largest publisher in the video game industry (next to ActivisionBlizzard). They have, in recent years began to buy small developer companies with noticable achievements (the studio that brought you the Burnout Series and Crysis notably). This is fine- however! They have been placing billboards within games and advertising third party products (drinks, OTHER EA games etc). They have a reputation of liquidising sucessful studios and shuffling teams around into other areas.

Games used to be made for a niche market of people, often nerdy kids that spurred the IT revolution that came with Microsoft. They were made with small budgest, often self-produced and published and done with love and care. Nintendo released a host of such games on the SNES, a console defined by having quite possibly the greatest catalogue of game titles ever produced for a console. It seems that gaming has drastically changed. As such beautifully produced games were released and society began to get more comfortable with computing the game industry boomed.

The industry can only be seen as a "market"..a target audience for them to sell a product to, weighing up production costs with projected sales. It's too big an industry to survive with just a heart- it's become a well oiled money factory. It's given rise to EAs "aftermarket" items, their adverstising and use of spyware in games to collect information about you PC. All in order to better understand the people handing them cash. It's very much a moral dilema-how can you balance between your wallet and your heart?

I realise this may be quite a sterotype and forgive me if you don't agree- but I've often considered the majority of the gaming market in todays world very one-track minded. That is to say, in America, the vast majority of gamers play FPS games, sit around playing countless hours of online matches screaming and jeering at the screen. That or playing the 9,000's installment of Madden NFL, which costs them $60 for a new layer of depth to the grass on the field in their newest improved version.....

It led me beleive that young people are certianly becoming part of an ever growing generation of control...or being controlled. A sort of mindless wave of people that stick only what they're shown behind all the censorship and ultimately, being totally screwed by whoever is doing the censoring.

High School Musical is a phenomenon here in Britain, kids aged 8-14 are absolutely NUTS about it. A second and even third installment have been made in the space of a year. However after I saw the film, I was horrified to see the message it put across. The film attempts to deal with the jock culture of America, the taboos of social groups and the way society refuses to acknowledge the openess of some people. Isuees that are all important. However, the film approaches the issues in a watered-down and very hollywood mannor. Such a problem could NEVER be solved by dancing around and singing songs. "But it's for kids" you might say- that's exactly my point. Society is encapsulating and holding back children from any of the realities of life. I'm quite sure, in reality, if Zach Effron was to destroy his basketball career for a girl, the words "fuck you" would be screamed a lot by many different people. If Zach's black friend admitted his love for bakery, he'd more likely be branded a "fucking queer" or something alone those lines. I'm not suggesting we put such things in- but it warps childrens perspective of reality to see situations dealt with in such a mannor.

Power Rangers is never shown on TV anymore, it's branded too violent, although it promotes a sense of justice and defense of morals. The High School Musical of my age was probably Karate Kid. I'm not old by any means- I'm 18 years old! But I can still see the issues we're faced with.

Mylee Syris (I think that's right) otherwise known as Hannah Montanna featured naked at the age of 15 YEARS OLD in Vanity Fair magazine, her father even thought the photoshoot was tasteful...her recent single has topped UK charts. Are we really at a celebrity worshipping stage where a 15 year old girl has to take her clothes off and sing about how much she wants to have sex to be noticed?

The way children of the age of 6-14 are growing up horrifies me. Constantly shielded from the realities of life, a generation of insecure and immature people are beginning to grow up. I dub this generation the "High School Musical" generation. A generation who's perception of reality is warped to the extent that childish dreams are made reality. Homosexuality is something widely accepted in today's society, except by the older more traditionlist generations. However I feel in an attempt to encourage boys and girls to shares hobbies we're PROMOTING homosexuality (to a lesser degree). That's obviously an extreme case.

But what I'm trying to say is that we're strangling kids here and that censorship and control are suffocating the very values which we built the world we stand in today.

Enough of my rant xD If you've read this far, I'm sure you want to scream SOMETHING abusive at me- so go for it.