Tactical Media in Video Games
Video games have opened a whole new approach and canvas for tactical media artists. This form of media allows for a wide range of audiences to be informed on a specific issue or idea. Some examples of games that touch on Tactical Media are Darfur is Dying and September 12. One example of a game design studio that works in tactical media is TAKE ACTION games(TAG). The video game website www.newsgaming.com greatly embodies the idea of tactical media in video games. Newsgaming coins this name as a new genre that brings awareness to current news-related issues based on true world events, as opposed to fantasy worlds that other video games are based upon. This team of game developers contributes to the emerging culture that is largely aimed at raising awareness on important matters in a new and brilliant approach.
Another examples of tactical media within video games is The McDonald's Game; the author of this game takes power away from the executive officers of McDonald's and gives it back to the public by informing then, through rhetoric, on how McDonald's does its business and what means they use to accomplish it.
Chris Crawford's Balance of the Planet, made in 1990, is another example of tactical media, in which the game describes environmental issues.
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Famous quotes containing the words video games, media, video and/or games:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)