Humanities 1
The Mask Project
How video games affects our social Interactions.
Antonio crouchelli
Period ¾
Humanities
Our world only about a century and a half ago had very few sources of “technology”, when I mean technology I mean electrically powered inventions such as the elevator in 1861. Where is this going? How does this relate to video games? You might be thinking, well where I am going with this is that in only in roughly 160 years technology is the center of attention in this world. Our personality as humans has had a significant change due to this uprise of technology. We seek medical attention due to technologies influence. Education recently has made a large change to switching over to technology instead of books. Even farming and agricultural means of business have started relying on technology.
The most universal use of technology has to be, Entertainment. Tv’s and gaming consoles are not even close to reaching the peak of their evolution. Vr (Virtual reality) systems and Huge computer setups with 4 monitors are still evolving. The video game industry started in the 1970’s and grew immensely throughout the decades. Video games have grown into a large multitude of genres all facing at least 1 game that's multiplayer (aside from the fact of the genre single player). Multiplayer games can have a multitude of effects on people depending on the game, how old they are, their skill level, their gender and even their race.
For example a child about the age of 7 to 9 might have a very low skill level on a video game. Now this 7 to 9 year old will play let's say the first person shooter Call of Duty. So he will play this and will be very bad at this he will die a lot in the game, he will get kicked from a lot of servers because people think he’s bad at the game. Then eventually if not on his first match another player who's older than him that has a higher skill level will say on game chat “Hey dweeb! You suck at this game you should just quit or kill yourself!”. He will then either most indefinitely argue and cry on the game chat through his mic and rage quit or will just be kicked from the match and will then join another match in an angered fit to try and prove his self worth to himself.
So imagine you were that child, How would that make you feel? How would your undeveloped brain perceive yourself as? Would you keep playing or would you never want to touch a controller again? It the sad truth but, that's a common social interaction in the gaming community.
Another common social interaction is that imagine you’re a 17- 20 year old man who just joined a match in another first person shooter. Your skill level at the game is a bit over average, you have had a large amount of experience in this game. You join the match you score a few points and eliminate a few opponents, but then another player eliminates you and in game chat in his mic he insults you with “HA! You fricken noob! Go back to easy mode loser! (more taunting and gibberish)”. This player sounds to be the age of 11 or 12, you respawn in your base and you keep playing and the same player kills you again taunting and throwing careless insults. He starts to get on your nerve and so what you do is that you just keep your chill and lowkey start to target him getting those juicy unsuspecting eliminations and satisfying long range sniper rifle eliminations. You eliminate him many times and eventually he screams in his mic “stop targeting me! You hacker! My dad works at (game company who made the game)! He’ll get your account banned!” you then see that he quits the match assumably in a fit of rage and you are amused and yet have a sliver of pity and sympathy.
If you couldn't tell already children take a heavy toll in social interactions in video games due to their skill level not being very good. On a more positive note people find joy in their games to by playing by themselves, with a friends or playing on a globally multiplayer game with friends. Playing with friends is always a joy since you can have easy communication, you have people on your team you know, they will more than likely will have easy teamwork with you and it's a good way to talk and have positive social interactions with your friends. Parents might look at their children and say “ugh my child is having their brain being turned to mush by staring at that screen all day!” but if they look closer they might find they are playing with friends and building bonds with other people over a collaborative effort and it lets the child be who they want.
How parents and guardians see video games is about the equivalent of the media's opinion on officers. “Video games are ruining my child’s brain!”, “video games are the reason my child is failing school!”, “ video games are the reason there was a school shooting! They influenced the boy to shoot up the school!”. Those are all quotes that i’ve heard through multiple media and news sites. Adults see video games as a sin, a bad thing or a thing in this world that has ruined society because the news and media portray video games as a bad thing all the time. I saw an article by CNN that was called “Do video games lead to violence?” and when you read it they say they did research on games and such. There were many researchers and scientists that were included in the article and were all saying video games were a cause for violent kids. Even President Donald J. Trump was blaming video games for kids being violent. I read on the site polygon.com that out of 100 of the most deadly school shootings 40 took place in the United States. 7 of those were before video games were even an idea, and 4 I repeat 4 of those 40 shooters were video game fans.
Columbine high school, those shooters were both into video games like Doom and Quake (both extremely violent video games), but they also had many other cultural interests like dark music and theatre. They were also a large target of bullying. Heath high school, the shooter was bullied to an excessive amount and had a mental illness, he enjoyed video games but not shooter ones. Sandy Hook, the shooter was very lonely and also had a mental illness, he also had a fascination with school shootings. His video game that he played all the time was “Dance Dance Revolution”. Parkland, another loner and had a severe case of depression. All 4 of these were blamed on video games.
To wrap things up Video games Affect our social interactions in A variety in different ways that its still hard to explain them all.
Project Reflection
In this assignment we did many things to lead up to making our masks. We had to learn every square inch of the cycle of socialization. We had to learn the bases of labeling and stereotypes. Another thing was gender socializing and objectification. Something I found Interesting was the race stereotypes. The mask project itself was us thinking “how are we socialized in society.” The thing I did that was different was make two masks instead of just one. The first one was how I felt people saw me as an individual. The second one is how I feel that I see myself, someone who plays video games more than often.
Honestly, I don’t think I stretched myself that much as I wanted to this project. I don't think I pushed myself enough to be enough to be productive and focused. On advocacy I don't think I did well at all. I didn't ask for help or seek for it. I gave to a level of “Get some help.” How I persevered is that I made sure that both of my masks were done and made sense. The masks for me though, were probably the easiest part of all this. My final product in the end wasn't the greatest. My mask was fine but my essay wasn't as good.
This projected affected me in a way that makes me think and look about someone before I make a judgment. An idea and skill that I learned was mask making or plaster work whatever you want to call it. There was also learning that everyone is the same and to accept it. Brown or white, we’re all the same egg on the inside. This project was fun though and the content of the project was really good.
