LVL Headed

A decade from now I will turn to my cyborg grandchildren, and I will tell them “I was there.” And I will also tell them “It kind of sucked.”

Yesterday was the opening of the 4th annual I Am 8-Bit art show, and it was right here in Los Angeles. I owned the art book and I love games, so of course I had to go. Only it wasn’t so much of an art show as it was just a big party. We waited in line around the corner to get in and the place was packed with people hanging out and talking and dancing and drinking (If I remember correctly, the event was sponsored by Colt 45). When we finally did get in, it was pretty difficult to work our way around the people just standing around and partying to look at the (wonderful) art hanging on the walls.

In the first paragraph, I said it kind of sucked. This is not in any way because of the artwork inside. It was all beautiful and creative and wondrous, and it made me proud to be a part of the culture. I’ll try to go back some time and append some pictures into this post, though I’m sure you could just google it and find pictures on any other site. No, it wasn’t the art, it was the atmosphere. It was as if nobody gave a damn about the artwork. I think one of the pieces had been broken, and I witnessed some guy leaning against a wall-sized canvas painting. Leaning on it. Butt rubbing against it, faced the other way just so he could look at the DJ.

Unbelievable.

The evening ended pretty well though as I did get one of the wonderful MegaMan 9 posters. I can’t wait for that friggin’ game to come out.

People have an understanding of games as toys, and not as media.  This causes them to have odd reactions to the discoveries of current games.  At least, that’s what I think.

Appearantly, GTA IV includes a parody situation in which if the player tries to access littlelacysurpisepageant.com on the game’s faux internet, the player will see a warning from the police department and their wanted level will automatically raise to the maximum level.

We could look at this logically and realize that the inclusion of this site in the game is parody, that the player is punished for visiting the site, and that the purpose of this site’s inclusion in the game and it’s consequences is to make the point that child porn is something you can get arrested for.  And obviously all of us (or at least the non-sleazy majority) can agree that kiddy-porn is wrong.

But people don’t look at it like this.  It’s crazy to me that there would be any controversy around this message, that people would see it as “glamorizing” child pornography.  Not everything included in a game is meant to be a goal.