Liao 1 Daniel Liao Ms.

Caruso ENGL 1101 28 September 2011 Violent Video Games: Gears of War *No children were harmed in the writing of this paper* Remember the good ol days of Pac-man, Pong, and Tetris where 8-bit gaming was all the rage? Kids would take their hardworking parents cash and exchange them for quarters at the arcade to play these games on big hulking machines. Lines would loop around the arcade for a chance to check out the latest update of a world-renowned game. When it was their turn each child would tirelessly stare at these screens and masterfully manipulate the joystick and buttons hoping that they would beat the recent high score set by the infamous and anonymous initials AAA. Remember those days? Yeah, I dont remember them either but it sounded like a lot of fun. Anyways gaming has changed a lot within the past couple of decades from graphical enhancements, gaming engine updates, increased violence, increased educational purposes, and its use as a social network. This paper will focus on the topic of violence in video games, and the main point of reference will be the popular Xbox 360 game Gears of War (GOW). Gears of War was developed by the company Epic Games and is a military science fiction third-person shooter game. Military, as in the human race is on the edge of extinction and is fighting another army composed of human-like monsters that live under the earths crust known as the Locust horde. Science fiction, as in it uses futuristic technological weapons/equipment and deals with an otherworldly intelligent species (the Locust). A thirdperson game is where you see the world over the shoulder or above the character being used. To

Liao 2 better describe this Halo: Combat Evolved and Call of Duty are examples of a first-person where you see the world through the eyes of the character and you see the gun being used as if you are holding it up to your face. Third-person is similar to riding a horse and the horse was completely in tune with the actions you want it to do. So your perspective of the world is seen behind the horses body. A shooter game is self-explanatory, but lets not assume. Shooters are generally games that make use of tools of destructions such as; guns, grenades, or even shooting fireballs out of your hand in order to decimate enemy opposition in front of you. Why was the Gears of War game chosen for this paper rather than any other violent game? GOW has reached huge achievements in the gaming industry. It was one of the most anticipated games of 2006 and became the Best Console Game, Best Action Game, and Best Overall Multiplayer Experience according to E3 (gamings big award show) prior to its release. It even received the Game of the Year award from a reputable game site. Just ten weeks after GOWs release it sold three million copies and by the next year and a half it had sold almost six million copies. GOW today has now successfully launched two proceeding titles making GOW an epic trilogy. No doubt the success of this game can be clearly seen, but the main reason this game was selected was its raw display of violence. Blood and gore is GOWs specialty, where your main weapon for destroying your enemies is a fully automatic gun. A fully automatic gun? Whats the big deal? you might say. Well thank you for asking. Attached to this gun is a huge chainsaw used not for cutting trees, but cutting through human/monster flesh. When doing this you can hear the organs being grinded and blood is generously splashed on the screen. Your enemy (what is left that is) plops on the ground lifeless. Other violent extremes in GOW would include blowing a head off with a perfectly aimed sniper shot, picking up an enemy and using them as a shield against bullets, and

Liao 3 upon the recent release of GOW three, the ability to rip an enemies arm off and beat them with it. Now all this probably would not be so bad if this were all in Space Invaders visuals. But what really enhances this experience is GOWs incredible graphics. Using the Unreal Engine the game has extremely realistic graphics and designs. Utilizing the HD feature in televisions, this game was not made for the queasy, but Epic Games decided to give the players an option to turn the gore On/Off anyways. Somebody reading the above description of the games violence would have to assume anybody who enjoys this game should be checked into a mental facility, and they may be right. But the gruesome factor is what makes the game fun. It is one thing to play Madden against a buddy and score a touchdown, but it is another thing to stick an exploding crossbow bolt into your pal and watch it obliterate his body across the ground. The game creates a sense of extreme competition. People go online and hone their skills in order to own their noob opponents. Competition breeds more than hate and violence. GOWs multiplayer is primarily composed of five versus five matches where teamwork is the key to victory. Unfortunately the majority of teamwork is based on random grouping of people from around the world you do not know. Nothing is worse than teaming up with a bunch of random high-pitched children against a fiveman group of gaming professionals. The combination of the two variables yields a result of pure frustration and the use of vulgar language mothers would not believe exists in their honor students vocabulary. On the occasion you have skilled partners to compete with; the destruction of the high-pitched children are inevitable and very satisfying. Coordination of attacks and the control of objectives bring about a strong sense of the teamwork previously stated. Practice can only make it better and this is a good life lesson to be learned. Teamwork and practice breed success.

Liao 4 GOW is fun for sure. Its violent gore adds intensity to the game and its strong language adds a real gritty, military feel to it. What could possibly be wrong about that? In extremes the violence could cause a mentally unstable person to potentially become a killer or who knows what. An example of this would be the shooting at Virginia Tech where the killer was an avid player of the first-person shooter Counter-Strike (a drastically less violent game compared to GOW). If the game Counter-Strike really did have an influence on his mental state then an obvious problem of violence in video games arise. That is the extreme but what about the normal people in the world? Offensive language can become a part of somebody who normally does not make use of it. Particularly, online play allows people to hide behind their gaming personas and say things they would never say in person. Anger and aggression may become more evident, and this could harm social life with others. A potential case of negativity would be the graphic portrayals of death that may potentially scar an individual. Caution and a strong mind should be present before playing such games offline or online. GOW is a very unique game. A game not warranted for little children that enjoy Leap Frogs and Fischer Price toys. Even grown adults would reject to partake of it. It upped the bar on graphics in gaming. It brought the third-person shooter genre to life. It managed to excite kids enough for them to convince their parents to use their hard earned cash to buy them a game too mature for them to play. Xbox Live payments kept them paying eight bucks a month for multiplayer. Leaderboard rankings kept them staring at their screens and masterfully manipulating their controller to beat the top player in the world, the infamous DeathProSniperDragon047 (Not real). The epitome and benchmark of violent video games of its time, GOW is an instant classic and has finally ended its gut wrenching, science-fictional war against the Locust horde in its last release of Gears of War 3 this last September. Whether

Liao 5 GOW positively influenced the population or horribly scarred them, GOW is one of the best and most entertaining gaming experiences around for not all ages.

Liao 6 Works Cited Epic Games. Gears of War. Microsoft Game Studios. 2006. Xbox 360. " G e a r s o f Wa r . " G e a r s o f Wa r . 3 O c t 2 0 1 1 . < h t t p : / / g e a r s o f w a r . w i k i a . c o m / w i k i / G e a r s _ o f _ Wa r > .

Liao 7 Te x t : G e a r s o f Wa r ( V i o l e n t Vi d e o G a m e )

To: The Reader From: Daniel Liao Date: 4 October 2011 Subject: Address to the Reader My purpose of writing this paper was to show a clear description of the Gears of War game to the reader. The paper was fun to write, but not as fun as playing the game. One thing I want to make known is that I did not use many citations in this paper. Most of the information used in this paper was from my own knowledge and experience. No other problem can I recall that I had besides that. Hopefully this paper was an enjoyable read. Thank you.