Monday, September 28, 2009

Street Fighter IV- A harsh lesson of reality

Recently I've been putting alot of time into Street Fighter IV, and after thinking about it for a while, even though this game probably didn't do this intentionally, it shows what the world is really like.
The game is a standard fighter. Essentially hit your opponent till they lose their health and are knocked out, so on the surface level there isn't really much to be thought about.
However that's if you don't want to think about it.
The game in my view raises some points; the government is always telling us about how violence is bad and we shouldn't encourage it in film media and other forms of entertainment. But just look at some of the subtle tones in Street Fighter.

1. The masses of people watching these fights, who cheer and what not
2. The in-game commentary says some very meaningful things
3. Brazilian school children skip school sit under motorway overpasses all day watching fights

Now, I think this in a way shows what society likes. It very simplistically shows that watching people beat the crap out of each other, is quality entertainment for many (Think Tua v Cameron).
The commentator also says occasionally after a fight "I don't care what the critics say, violence is a beautiful thing!".
A game just said what hundreds of politicians have failed to realise.
THIS
S**T
SELLS
No matter what the nannies think, violence is entertainment and well-selling entertainment I think.
Think of how many people find violence entertaining, just about the whole of America, or how ever many people tune into WWE every Saturday night.
Now I refer back to the title of this post.
This is a harsh lesson of reality, it shows in the simplest way, that violence isn't shunned or looked down upon as much as we would like to think it is.
It shows people want to watch it (in a controlled environment(sometimes)), if not pay to watch it because it is entertaining.

BTW if anyone reading this is a avid SF player like i am, comment me, and if you have an XBL GT I'd love to play sometime.

1 comment:

Berry said...

Try this one Robert: what is the role of conflict in society?
Cheers