As popularity for video games gets larger and larger with new and exciting games coming out, you have to stoop and think sometimes why are we so attracted to these games? Is it because of their unusual storylines, fascinating and immerse graphics or is now simply to get a "kick" out of killing and maiming people and other fictional characters?
After watching the above trailer I though about how far media institutions could go in order to attract and pull in their target audience with what they show and explain. The use of the little girl first of all being chased and bitten by these well used storyline "zombies" and how her parents fight for they're lives make the audience become emotionally attached with either sorrow for the fighting parents or excitement for this new and brilliant looking game.
A youtube comment (see below) attached to this video gives a insight into one of the audience's own personal reactions:
[Wow. Watching it forwards was actually more depressing. I mean, seeing the futility of this family trying to protect itself from zombies and slowly losing the battle is the saddest thing I've seen in a while.]
The above video from Rooster Teeth's "Achievement Hunter" Online series shows the reaction of Geoff, the AH presenter and the reaction towards the trailer. His own reaction is similar to mine as I questioned why the people making this game would decide to use the little girl being thrown out of the window to be a good addition to their marketing and how would that improve on sales. Many people watching this video may say that this makes people feel something towards it which then wants them to see it (could be compared to Maslow's Hierarchy of people seeing something and then wanting it - people who aspire to have better or interesting things) but most would say it would make them "shun" or not to become attracted as it is too emotionally effecting and personally disturbing.
What ever the case it still received hundreds of complaints within a day of the trailers release.
Could this say that people are believing the media institutions could be going a little too far?
This is as a result of what Falk describes as the ‘struggle for amplification of effect’ which is ‘part of a wider struggle across the various categories within the mediascape for the attention of the audience.’ Falk says of television documentary...
ReplyDelete'Over the last two decades there has been clear move towards the spectacular in the documentary genre, exemplified especially by the being-there-when-it-all-really-happens reportages which take the spectator to the primal scene of the act(ion) in a way not unlike the evidential effects of hard-core pornography.' (Falk in Nava et al 1997: 72) What is true of television is even more so of video games.