MoralKombat
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Henry Jenkins sounds off on Spencer Halpin's 'Moral Kombat'
Who is Henry Jenkins, you might ask? You should be ashamed for not knowing. Henry Jenkins is a gentleman and a scholar. He's a professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, and is a widely renowned expert on the effects of video games on the people who play them. He's also an interviewee in Spencer Halpin's Moral Kombat, a new documentary about the debates surrounding violent video games, which Jenkins heralds as "perhaps the most important film ever made about video games."Yes, we know there was quite a bit of backlash to the film's trailer which popped up early this year due to it's anti-violent game stance and, you know, its blaming of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on video games. But according to a recent blog entry on Jenkins' personal site, the film is much more balanced than the trailer makes it out to be.The film apparently gave a number of big names on both sides of the debate (Jack Thompson, Jason Della Rocca, Joseph Lieberman, and American McGee, to name a few) ample time to discuss their opinions in a relatively laid-back setting -- a jarringly different environment from the media circus-style debates that we've become rather accustomed to. This is the major strength of the film, according to Jenkins -- "we are all served by getting a taste of the complexity with which these matters get discussed behind closed doors within the gaming world."Read - Why You Should See Spencer Halpin's Moral Kombat (Part One)Read - Why You Should See Spencer Halpin's Moral Kombat (Part Two)
Friday Video: games destroyed the World Trade Center
We know the Moral Kombat trailer isn't terribly new, but the weekly video spotlight isn't about what's new or even what's good. It's a place for us to highlight a video that we think needs to be seen, for whatever reason, be it silly or a little weird or dripping with extra awesome sauce. This week's video is none of those things, but it's worth discussing. The actual film sounds potentially interesting and not so one-sided. Sadly, the trailer ... not so much. It's Jack Thompson and Joe Lieberman with holy light brigade and their vision of a gamer-centric apocalypse, complete with desperate, melodramatic music. And the continual invocation of Columbine and September 11 as a product of video games is just sick-making.There's not much we can say on this subject that can be repeated in any sort of polite society, anywhere, so we're just gonna direct you to the video after the jump.
