Here's an idea.
When you buy "Call of Duty," you are buying a gun.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
From 1961's "Space War to Bioshock Infinite" and beyond,
the gun, in a million different forms and makeups,
has played a huge--
(FROM CLIP) Huge!
--if not central role in the history of video games.
And unsurprisingly, as video games have grown up,
so have the Gats depicted in them.
Video game guns have progressed from cartoonish make believe
pea shooters, blasters, and lasers, to become--
starting around "Goldeneye 64" and culminating in games like
"Call of Duty"-- crazy realistic,
lifelike recreations of actual firearms.
I mean, it makes sense, right, because realism is desirable,
it's exciting.
Strong verisimilitude or semblance to reality
makes games immersive and believable.
A complete realistic world makes a good game.
But is it possible that we've crossed a line at some point,
from a semblance of reality to real reality?
Like, what if I told you that the Barrett 50 cal
you fire in "CoD" is an actual Barrett 50 cal,
like, it's real.
I mean, real is a-- that's a complicated thing, too.
But many guns in many games are faithful reproductions
of actual firearms.
Makes and model numbers match, they look the same,
operate the same, they sound the same.
And in a growing number of situations
are representations licensed to game developers
by a real arms developer.
Now, I'm not talking about the Needler, or the Barnstormer,
or the Grav gun, or the "Portal" gun,
as much as we all wish that I were,
but about the Barrett, and the Colt M16A4, and the FN
P90, and Remington 870, and Desert Eagle,
real weapons made by real companies.
So when devs want to include ultra-realistic depictions
of guns, including their names, in games they're
expected to pay a licensing fee to the manufacturer, who
then overseas and sometimes approves the design, operation,
and use of the gun in the game.
Ralph Vaughn, head of licensing at Barrett Firearms,
says that their modeled guns must,
quote, "Perform to the standards that their rifles do
in the real world."
So when you purchase "Call of Duty," or Battlefield,"
or whatever, you're not really buying a gun, no.
But in some sense, you are buying an officially recognized
and licensed digital facsimile of one,
and filling the coffers of the arms industry to boot.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I'm not trying to start some kind of Second Amendment
argument, here, especially if guns are your jam, or blam,
as the case may be.
But there are some people, myself included,
who just don't like guns.
I don't mind if other people have them,
I just don't like 'em.
Some people don't like shellfish, roller coasters,
or John Cusack movies, I don't like guns.
It's nothing personal.
But I will sit down in front of my Xbox
and shoots bad guys in the face for hours, if not days,
without so much as confronting the moral problem staring me
right in the game face.
Maybe it's because I've been playing games my whole life,
and guns as a game mechanic just feels familiar and comfortable.
There is a level of practical fantasy
which isolates wielding a pixel firearm from my ideas
about wielding a not-pixel fire arm.
But that isolation gets a little less isolatey
when I consider the fact that buying
a game with realistic depictions of guns
could be supporting the arms industry.
So should someone who doesn't like guns not buy
video games which license them?
Well, if you really don't like 'em, and you don't want them
bought or sold or in people's hands,
and you are dead-set on that, then no,
you probably shouldn't.
You would be transgressing your personal moral imperatives,
which is a fancy way of saying you might be a hypocrite.
I might be a hypocrite.
But wait, now, what about, like, books and movies and everything
else?
This slope can get really slippery.
Well, aside from the fact that most movies don't license
depictions of firearms, and a huge number are
generic prop replicants, movies don't productized firearms
in the way that games do.
They might fetishize or glorify them,
but they don't list specs, prices, or qualities
in the same ways or with the same frequency that games do.
Like, think about how much "The Matrix" taught you
about guns compared to, say, "Battlefield 3."
Now, am I saying that video games are
going to teach you to do something stupid and dangerous
with firearms?
No, I am not.
And furthermore, that line of reasoning is infuriating.
However, what I am saying is that the critical and economic
distance between guns and games and guns and other media
feels different.
For people who are all about guns, this isn't even a thing.
They get to learn and play and support an industry,
it's great.
But for folks who are not all about guns,
it could be that the critical distance
they do get-- saying stuff like, aw, man, naw, it's cool,
it's just a game where I shoot pixels at other pixels,
no big deal-- is traversed by the fact
that they are putting their not-pixel dollars
in the not-pixel pockets of some people
they might not totally not-pixel agree with in real life.
This is the essence of moral choice.
You can do whatever you want, but if you feel as though we,
like people and gamers, have a responsibility
to stop the manufacturers of weapons, or at the very least,
not support it, then your thoughts on arms
might not be compatible with your love of shooting things.
Which I think, in moral philosophy,
at least, is known as being stuck
between a Glock and a hard place.
[BA-DUM CHING]
What do you guys think?
Can purchasing a video game with realistic weapons
present a moral conundrum?
Let us know in the comments.
And that we got you this, so you can practice
your long-range subscribing.
What's the Dean with postmodernism?
Let's see what you guys had to say about community
as a postmodern masterpiece.
To Oswordo and everyone else, I want
to formally apologize for calling the Dreamatorium
the Imaginarium.
In my defense, if you Google Image search Imaginarium
Community, you get images of the Dreamatorium,
but that's no excuse.
I apologize.
Dizzysadako, there's actually a really great post on Tumblr
that does, like, a critical comparison
between "Big Bang Theory" and "Community."
Um, it's on, uh, But My Opinion is Right.
We'll put a link in the description.
It's really, really good.
Drew Manning offers a hypothesis of why season 4 of "Community"
is so different from the other seasons, which I totally
agree with.
And would also add that it seems like the show runners have
abandoned the trope of contradiction, which I think
was one of the things that make "Community" what it is.
To Will Kois, I would say that subscription
is only a metanarrative insofar as success
is a metanarrative, that it relates
to the metanarrative of success.
So, maybe.
To Gemma Hall, I have a bachelor's degree.
I actually had a triple major.
It was computer science, music composition, and talking really
fast.
Inglonias and Stillnina write comments
which seem to suggest it's hard, or maybe impossible,
for "Community" to be postmodern in the very
strict structure of a sitcom.
Which, actually, I think that that
is what gives it its critical power, that it
can do these really weird things within that common form.
But maybe agree to disagree?
Melpo16 points out that there is a difference between sort
of, uh, philosophical postmodernism
and architectural modernism.
And yeah, I don't know much about architecture,
but I do know that Dera del worked with an architect,
right, and there was a schism.
So yeah, it's interesting that there
is a difference between sort of the theoretical
and the architectural side of things.
Michaelmayo72 says that "Community"
is not postmodern but just strongly modern,
and that there actually is a lot of structure.
I would respond to the individual structure
points as such.
I think everybody who has family,
all the family does is provide strike.
And everybody who's involved in a romance, the romance
is totally invalidated in some way--
except for the fourth season.
You did, however, get me on the friendship thing.
Troy and Abed have a great on-screen friendship.
So yeah, it's a-- it's a thorny patch, isn't it?
Uh, but what you call over-thinking,
I call enjoyment.
So I think we might be at an impasse, Ridenhour.
To respond to Haldered's comment,
I think that Dan Harmon might saying this.
We're going traveling, so all of these awesome people
are going to get next week off, so you won't see us.
This week's tweet of the week comes
from Christina, who points us towards Wefunder,
the Kickstarter for investing.
And we go nominated for two Webbys, how awesome is that?
We'll put some links in the description
so you could vote for us, because hopefully you
want to vote for us, because you want us to win, and like us.
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