游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

游戏研究者观点:玩游戏可以帮助树立道德观?

发布时间:2011-01-27 17:04:26 Tags:,,

《破碎的现实》一书的作者简·麦格尼格尔(Jane Mcgonigal)曾发表了这样的观点:游戏赋予了现实世界很多的东西——它给予玩家现实生活所无法给予的心理慰藉,并促使社会变得更加美好。

据游戏邦了解,麦格尼格尔和印第安纳大学的电信学副教授爱德华·卡斯特罗诺瓦(Edward Castronova),及《Exodus to the Virtual World》(帕尔格雷夫,2007)的作者在本周就“视频游戏是否真的对玩家有益”进行了辩论。

卡斯特罗诺瓦表示,尽管游戏有它的益处,但如何衡量快乐还是个值得探讨的问题;而且即便游戏能使人们“快乐”,大家就有必要将大把时间花在游戏上吗?

麦格尼格尔对此则反驳:既然游戏的确可以治愈心灵,造福社会,那又为什么要纠结于其他无关痛痒的问题呢?

事实上,大多数游戏研究者都认为要通过正确的方式将游戏融入生活之中。现在,不少电视、电影,互联网或媒体研究者,甚至是文学家都认为:人们要么过度沉溺于游戏,要么则是对游戏知之甚少。我们仿佛预见这样一个未来:从小玩游戏的人在成年后,将比浪费童年观看《午夜巴塞罗那》之类电影的人表现更出色。这里并不是呼吁大家少接触电影电视之类的媒介,而是让人们先对美德有深刻理解,然后再对媒体内容有所选择地加以吸收。

Medal of Honor  Allied Assault

Medal of Honor Allied Assault

游戏可以帮助人们树立美德吗?这个问题甚至催生了相关学科的问世。多年来,人们一直强烈抗议游戏暴力,似乎任何情况下的暴力元素都是非常糟糕的东西。在诺曼底战役中登陆奥马哈(Omaha)海滩的战士个个都算是暴力分子,但这并不是坏事。以游戏《荣誉勋章:联合袭击》(Medal of Honor: Allied Assault)为例,当玩家独自进攻沙滩时,最好相信自己是个残暴的人,并且乐在其中。使用暴力并不意味着喜好杀戮,而只是在当时的情境下,消灭当地敌人是一件无比崇高,超越日常琐事的活动。

玩家的双手是否沾满了虚拟的鲜血?是的。但这些虚拟鲜血的付出是为了重现故事,把过去带到现在,深化其意义,歌颂逝去的战士,并让世人了解他们牺牲的重大意义。在游戏中,以暴制暴中已成为一种惯例,但它让玩家感觉良好。有关的游戏学术文章才刚开始探讨暴力发生的情况,还没有明确的结论。而我更情愿与孩子们坐在一起玩所谓的暴力游戏,指导他们应该如何作为。如果不确定那人是好是坏,那就先不管他;而如果是坏人,就杀了他,动作要快准狠。

麦格尼格尔举了很多例子说明游戏对玩家有益,这里侧重谈论游戏如何帮助玩家提高辨别能力,形成人生观。据游戏邦所知,美国心理学家菲利普·津巴多(Philip Zimbardo)曾写道,想要看一个人能否成为英雄,得先给他表现的机会,再看他的表现。最近一篇文章指出,一名研究者因运用游戏教导青少年做出安全选择而得到了一笔巨额的拨款。然而事实上,该“游戏”并不存在什么选择,更像是一种填鸭式的反复灌输:在3D画面中,有一个男孩接近玩家扮演的女孩,男孩说 “喂,想发生性关系吗,没有什么安全措施的哦?”,之后,游戏中的女孩不得不回答“不!没有安全措施的性行为是很不好的,原因很多,我现在就跟你一一说明”。如果让我来设计这款游戏:首先,这个男孩应该英俊而富有魅力,女孩应该刁根烟,做出不同选择将获得不同的结果。游戏中,如果选择与男生发生关系可以获得很多快乐积分,但发生性行为的后果是女孩会被绑在一个10磅重的生物上,想要生存下去,每天就得干20小时的活(当然,男孩离开了她)。道德教育应该允许人们选择做一些有害的事。人们无法在书本或电影中进行选择,但在游戏中可以。

对于道德和游戏两者之间关系的研究才刚刚起步,但我相信即使在游戏中担任反派角色,也同样可以学会分辨是非善恶。当然,人们都希望在学校中就能学习分辨善恶,但这是美国,现在是2011年,善恶好坏这类的词语仍旧让许多人感到不安,或多或少无法理解其中的真正含义。但无论如何,如果世界失去善恶概念,将变得索然无味。

让我们来假设一款《Empty Quest》游戏。游戏中,玩家杀了龙,救了公主,却被国王也就是公主的父亲告知,不同的人对英勇有不同的理解,而所有观点都需要受到尊重,因此鉴于这个社会重视保护龙或批判公主主义,国王无权判定什么才是高尚的行为,最终玩家没得到任何嘉奖,更别提赐婚了。与此同时,Sinners-Burn-In- Hell神殿的僧侣还告诉勇士,由于他没有按照程序杀死龙,因此不算一种高尚的行为。《Empty Quest》中的每个角色可能价值观千差万别,这样的一款游戏真的十分糟糕。但如果真的这么糟,在这个真实的后现代社会里,为什么我们每天还会玩这款游戏?从游戏中我们学到了什么美德?亚里士多德教导我们要多做善事,才能变成一个品德高尚的人。如果他今天还活着,乐于实践的他可能也会参与游戏,拿起武器,屠杀敌人。(本文为游戏邦编译/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

Games Debate: Can They Teach Morality?

In this weekend’s Review, Jane McGonigal, author of the new book “Reality Is Broken,” made the case that games have a lot to offer the real world—that they provide players with psychological benefits that people can’t get from real life and that they can be a force for social good.

This week, Ms. McGonigal and Edward Castronova, associate professor of telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington, and author of “Exodus to the Virtual World” (Palgrave, 2007), are debating whether video games really are good for us.

In his first response to McGonigal yesterday, Mr. Castronova argued that while games have their benefits, we have to be careful how we measure happiness. And even if games do make us “happy,” he asked, do they really represent what we should be doing with a huge chunk of our lives?

Ms. McGonigal, in turn, asked what’s so frivolous about games, when they are helping soldiers recover and being put to use for social good?

Most game scholars agree on one point: We have to find the right way to integrate games in our lives. TV and film scholars, Internet scholars, all media scholars–even people who study literature–would say the same thing: There’s always the possibility of too much use. At the same time, there’s a possibility of not enough use. I foresee a future in which people who grew up playing hard games outperform those who wasted their youth watching films like “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” The trick is not to set specific hours of media use, but to first have a sound conception of virtue and then tailor media consumption to enhance it.

Do games help with virtue? This question is generating a growing academic literature. For years there has been an outcry over violence in games, as if violence was always and everywhere a bad thing. The men who landed on Omaha Beach were awfully violent, and I’m glad they were. When I play “Medal of Honor: Allied Assault” and storm the beach myself, you’d better believe I’m being violent and enjoying every minute of it. I’m being violent not because I love killing, but because in that context, killing the local enemy was the most noble thing for a person to do, a lot more noble than anything I do on a normal day.

Do I get virtual blood on my hands? Yes. But taking on that virtual blood is a way to reprise that story now, to bring that history into the present and validate its meaning, to honor the fallen dead, and to once again remind the world of the infinite value of their sacrifice. Game violence against evil enemies takes on a ritual and almost liturgical flavor. It is deeply good. The academic games literature is just now starting to consider the contexts in which game violence occurs, and pending the results of that work, my commitment is to sit with my kids as they play violent games and help them learn what to do. If the guy is good, or you don’t know, leave him alone. If he’s evil, kill him. And do it fast and well.

Ms. McGonigal points out many cases in which playing games helps people, and I’d like to stress how they help specifically in this question of discernment, deciding what a moral life is. Philip Zimbardo has written  that if we want people to be heroes, we need to put them in heroic situations and let them choose. Recently I read about a major grant given to a researcher who was using a game to teach safe choices to teens. The “game,” it turns out, did not actually allow choice. It was more of a rote exercise, a 3D immersive graphical environment in which you – the teen girl – would be approached by a boy who said more or less “Hey, do you want to have unsafe sex?” And then your character was forced to say “No! Unsafe sex is bad bad bad, for many reasons that I will now elucidate!” If I were to design that game, the boy would be really quite attractive and charming; the girl character would be allowed to take drugs, resulting in occasionally random choices; sex with the boy would result in loads of Happiness Points; and then finally, the sex would result in the girl character being chained to a 10-pound creature whose survival required 20 hours of her work every day (the boy would take off, of course). Moral education demands that you be allowed to choose evil things. You can’t choose evil stuff in books or movies. You can in games.

Research on morals and games is just starting up, but I’ll bet a quarter it will show that even games in which you do evil things teach you something about good and evil. Yes, I’d rather people were learning about good and evil in school, but, well, this is America, it’s 2011, words like good and evil still give many people the willies, and too many of those who are comfortable with them have a crude and vicious sense of what they really mean. Be all that as it may, I can assure you that a world without those words, whatever its other faults, is a BORING world.

Imagine a game called “EmptyQuest,” where you kill the dragon and rescue the princess only to be told by the King her Royal Father that different people have varied views on what constitutes valor, all of which are to be respected, and therefore out of a concern not to offend the Society for the Protection of Dragons or the Critical Princessology scholars, his Royal Highness is enjoined from rendering judgment on the nobility of the act and no medal ceremony is envisioned at this time, let alone marriage. Meanwhile, the priest of the Sinners-Burn-In-Hell Temple tells you that it couldn’t have been a noble act because you didn’t read from the proper scroll when you cursed the dragon. “EmptyQuest”: A game in which everyone you talk to is a moral na?f bursting with anxiety and anger. Awful game. But if it’s so bad, why do we keep playing it every day, in the form of our wonderfully real but awfully postmodern world? And what practices of virtue do we learn from this game? Aristotle advised us to do virtue until we are virtuous. If he were around today, being a man of action, he’d take up his controller and get fragging.(Source:Ideas Market)


上一篇:

下一篇: