What happened?

Last post I talked about the fact that some of the highest grossing and best rated games are those focused on violence. The concept of violent video games is a prevalent one as well. Politicians in Germany are calling for a ban on them. In Minnesota the courts couldn't prove that violent video games were affecting behavior and therefore couldn't put in new laws preventing youth to purchase them. There are other articles about how video games can increase aggression.
The articles are endless on violence in video games. I've already spoken to the fact that I don't believe video games can induce crime but find it unsettling that these games that primarily focus on killing are so popular. It wasn't always like this, the movement of video games in the last 20 years is almost unbelievable. The atari 2600 was the first real video game system and most of the games were as simple as the classic "pong " game. When this was released arcade style a lot of stores reported their machines as overflowing with quarters. I assume what drew everyone was being able to control something they were watching. Pong was considered the best game in the world, yet compared in today's world it would be laughed at. What's entertaining to me is that most people would say graphics as the reason games of the past would do so poorly today. But don't we all know that these things aren't reality, therefore proving how real the game looks as pointless.
As we moved into the 80's Nintendo as well as Sega came out in what most refer to as the golden age of video games. This was a time in which side-scrolling screens and more developed storylines in games like Mario and Sonic devleloped. Graphics were better, still not as "real" as today but drew a lot more popularity because games like Super Mario Bros. 3, the best selling cartridge of all time , came out and let the gameplay go on for hours traveling through worlds and such. The gameplay was key, this stayed on through the early nineties with the release of the Super NES. This is when it appeared that developers had mastered the 2D world.
When I think video games started taking a turn for the worse was with the release of the first set of 3D systems. At this point, it was all about what looked better, and what sounded better, instead of what “played better.” “Realism” was now actually mentioned when people talked about video games. The problem was in the 2D world all of the graphics were basically the same so for a game to be a true success it had to have a great story or great gameplay. People weren't going to play to see how real the 2D Mario looked as he ran down the screen. They were going to play because they wanted to beat Bowser and because it was fun.
The development of video games is basically solely focused on graphics and how real the game looks. And the fantasy side of games loses out a little bit because if we want to see something real a war will always look more real than Sonic or Mario. What's frustrating for someone who loved playing video games as a young child was that when I played them I loved going through the new stories. When I watch people play games now I see them playing the same storyline essentially everytime but now you can see individual hairs on their character and the rips on their uniform. As we move away from developed stories and more towards graphics I feel like violence will become the reoccuring them more drastically than it already is. My only hope is that developers and those playing will realize they are playing something that doesn't actually exist and at the end of the day I'd rather play a 2D game with good gameplay and a good story than the 12th war game that I've essentially played already really being able to feel killing that other soldier. I can only hope others feel like that, because I don't get the feel now that I did when I played Sonic as a kid, and I think that others are in the same boat.

Symbolism?

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare essentially won every single game of the year awards for 2007.  In Gamespy's article they sum up all of the reasons this game deserved to be the game of the year and how it essentially had no flaws.  Personally I find that these games gain so much acclaim scary.  Now I want to make sure before I continue on this argument that by no means am I justifying the argument that video games are causing crime.  My worry is much deeper.

Most of the video games in competition with Call of Duty were also what is considered to be a first person shooter.  These are video games in which the prime focus of the game is essentially killing other people.  And this is not the type of killing in the classic Mario games with that classic death music that is more funny than it is scary.  This is killing done by guns in video games that are acclaimed for their realistic graphics.  These are video games in which the motive is killing as many people as possible before your character is killed, generally this motive is even more fueled in setting the game up in a war-like setting which pits the US versus other countries.  And again my complaints do not lie with the video game manufacturers because they will make whatever it is that they can sell the most of. And they can sell the most of these first person shooter video games.  My complaint is with us, the consumers.  And to be honest I'm confused about why these are so popular.  I've played most of them and the stories are generally nothing special.  Why is this fake violence so intriguing to our people?  Especially my generation which has never really been involved with a real war until a couple of years ago and for the most part the youth are against this war.  Why is it that we buy all of these things that we dislike in real life?  Maybe there is some psychology major that knows the answer to this because it escapes me.  I don't doubt that Call of Duty 4 had the best graphics of any video game made last year and that it was a well deserved award.  But there is no way that it would have won the award had it not been one of the most popular games purchased.  Millions of Americans, some very young ones I may add went out and spent around fifty dollars on a game so that they could go home and represent whatever country they wished to in World War 2.

I talked in my first post about using video games for educational purposes.  And I still firmly believe that this method can be the future of video games.  The problem I see is that these games have no redeemable value. With the exception of possibly remembering the names of a few battles, nothing positive about World War 2 will be remembered.  In fact it probably has some huge holes and biases involved in it.  Apart from the natural skills learned in video games, competition and problem solving with others, the fact that these games sell in such high volumes speaks darkly of who we are as a nation.  Possibly this is just me, but there is no way my child will play video games that portray pure violence when the valuable skills I think they can learn from the virtual world are available in thousands of other games.  Maybe its  just the government trying to prepare the young generation to go to another absurd war, I don't think that this is true, but it is a mystery that these games sell so much comparative to other video games.  Maybe we have a strange want to do be able to do things virtually that we can't do in real life?  Whatever the reason, my problem isn't that these video games are made, but that they are selling at such incredible volumes when they portray things that our society generally deems as unethical.  It truly is fascinating what the video game industry has been available to accomplish.

Expansion

The video game has experienced growth consistently since its conception in the early 1980's. Retail sales of video games in the US were over $7 billion in '05, up from $2.6 billion in '96. Unit sales increased from 74.1 million in 1996 to 250 million in 2006. The idea that the industry will continue to grow is undeniable. Our society has become more dependant on technology year after year and as both parents continue to go into the workplace our youth grow up playing video games or surfing the internet exponentially more and more. The video game industry is even making strides in Asian countries, as they are showing tons of potential.

Apple is even looking into coming into the home console industry. The concern that Apple does have going into the industry is that companies that sell video games generally take losses with the hardware they sell and make up that profit with software. Apple has always made profit off of selling the actual devices therefore they would either need to develop profitable games or somehow make profits on the systems themselves. I think that Apple would thrive in the industry because they have such a trusted name in technology. They have shown that they can expand into different industries and be extremely successful already. Going into an industry that has shown constant growth just seems to make sense. I believe that if Apple could extend into this sector of the entertainment world that they could dominate the home entertainment field. Especially with the global market of video games expanding at an even faster pace than the American market. The problem a lot of American developers are having with the growth overseas is converting games to sell in their respective cultures. Being new to the industry and with how global Apple is already they could easily look into developing games specific to certain cultures, allowing them to not only be a force in the American market but dominate the overseas market. In a way they could become very much like Coca-cola, who overall dominates the market against Pepsi despite Pepsi having the larger marketshare in the US. I understand the risks Apple sees in entering this industry but if done right would be well worth the reward.