Video Games Promoting Nationalism and War?

I struggle with this particular topic. I truly enjoy video games (borderlands/ Diablo III currently) and play them frequently. However, I find my mindfulness and presence suffer both during playing as well as for a couple of hours afterwards. I become so attentive to the game that I forget to be present in my actual body.

As for the violence I think awareness of it and our response to that stimuli is the most important.

Gaming, like any other artistic medium, must be taken in context. Video games present fictional realities, and within the context of those fictional realities, your choices and options may seem less harmful. It's when we start to blur the lines between fictional realities and "actual" reality that these things become problematic, and while it is easier for more "realistic" games to blur the line easier, ultimately the onus is on the individual gamer.

Ratcliffe wrote: I struggle with this particular topic. I truly enjoy video games (borderlands/ Diablo III currently) and play them frequently. However, I find my mindfulness and presence suffer both during playing as well as for a couple of hours afterwards. I become so attentive to the game that I forget to be present in my actual body.

I don't know if you'd find them as entertaining as I do, but there are many games out there directed toward those of us who are interested in enhancing/improving ourselves and helping us better connect with our true natures. For example...

Deepak Chopra's Leela (2011) is a game for the Xbox Kinect and Wii that is more or less a training program to help with focus and mental/emotional relaxation. You make simple movements to control the on-screen visuals and they react to your body's movements (the Xbox 360 version is more refined and senses subtler movements along with your breathing). The music is quite nice and I've found the program reasonably beneficial.

The Journey to Wild Divine series (The Passage, Wisdom Quest, and others) is also great (available for PC & Mac). Wikipedia refers to it as "a biofeedback video game system promoting stress management and overall wellness through the use of breathing, meditation and relaxation exercises." Basically, these are Myst-like first-person puzzle games, but instead of solving riddles you work through various mini-games related to breathing and meditation with the help of a biofeedback device that you attach to your fingers. The games are surprisingly responsive and it's an interesting use of gaming technology.

And Your Shape: Fitness Evolved (2010) / Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 for Xbox Kinect have a 'Zen Training' option that teaches a combination of basic movements borrowed from yoga, tai chi, and ballet. I find it very relaxing and it's a nice stress reliever. There's a 2013 version of the game for Wii U as well, but I haven't tried it.

The degree of benefit and joy that you feel you receive from these types of games may or may not be equal to my own, but I think they're worth taking a look at. I like the direction this kind of gaming is going and look forward to seeing even more interesting uses of modern technology as time goes on.

I have high hopes for the Microsoft HoloLens. The ways in which it could be used to help people learn and grow (mentally, physically, and spiritually) are limited only by a lack of imagination.

carlos.martinez3 wrote: The saying is "I'd you don't bring it to the island, you won't find it" better known as "garbage in garbage out." it's a easy theory in which a person's mind and heart are a empty box. What we put in it WILL indeed come out.

I don't agree with this. We're humans, not computer programs. We make the choice of what comes out of us. Just because I experienced some particular bad things, doesn't mean I have to turn around and dish that out too.

Take bullying for instance. Instead of turning around and bullying others, I realized how it made me feel and decided to do my best at never making another person feel that way. That's turning garbage into rainbows there. Like pigs! Who turn trash into bacon!

When I used to work for Best Buy parents used to ask me about violent video games all the time. I would always steer them towards the more unrealistic ones that involved aliens and lazer guns because it created a clear cut line between the game and reality. Parents seem to like that answer, the people who make Call of Duty do not. :laugh:

Personally I find that I have a hard time playing a game when I don't agree with the motives of the character I'm playing. When I was young I didn't have this problem as much, but even when I played Grand Theft Auto all I did was start wars with the other gangs and protect my turf and the people in it. I was more of a vigilante than a gangster. In games where I'm given the choice between "good" decisions and "evil" decisions I usually do one play through as good and then try to be bad the next and it never works for me. I seem to have difficulty escaping who I am.

One of my all time favorite games is Total War: Shogun 2. I will play that game for 12 hours at a time if nothing inturrupts me or shows me a clock. But even in that game I have trouble starting a war with another faction if they haven't first wronged me in some way. I sometimes lose because I haven't gained enough territories.

Believe it or not I had a point when I started this post. :laugh:

I guess I'm just saying that I understand not wanting to be the bad guy even in a fictional world and not enjoying playing a game that seems to focus on sensless violence just for the sake of violence. Give me an epic quest to save the world and some obvious bad guys that I don't have to feel too bad for killing though and it's game time!

I believe that all games should be seen as RPG, just a make-believe. Of course the games as well as poetry, music and movies make us think in situations that are beyond our reality and that's the beauty of them. If there was a war, we would run the weapons or would do part of the peace movement? So as well as any artistic expression the games, take us from our reality and make us embody other characters make us reflect on what we really believe and what is ethical. A soldier of war is a hero in war, but in peacetime people can see it as monster. Just think of everything that happened in World War II. Of course it is only my opinion.

In war there are no winners, only survivors.

our societies generally promote sectarianism/nationalism and violence. popping ballas is OK, but the hot coffee mod comes out and oh noes! We must protect the children from air sex!

ren wrote: our societies generally promote sectarianism/nationalism and violence. popping ballas is OK, but the hot coffee mod comes out and oh noes! We must protect the children from air sex!

I fully agree. The problem as I see it are two. Some parents just do not bond for what their children do; I do not know elsewhere here is more common means that happen. Another problem is that in my opinion is that the indicative recommendation is very low. Any game here, that the recommendation is above 16 ta full of sex, blood, butt and gut.