Ironic Video Games

It was mind-blowing to find that video games that we all play are very ironic. I think the presentation on Wednesday was very interesting actually, something that caught my attention. This was probably because of the fact that we could all relate to it. All of us had played some sort of video game, but I'm pretty sure that none of us had ever really stopped to think about the message that the makers were trying to get across or even the shocking culture revelations.

I very much enjoyed the examples of Bioshock and Grand Theft Auto, personally because I had played those games before. However, while I played those games, I had never stopped to think about the irony behind it all. For example, Grand Theft Auto had many parody-type factors that played into it. In class we went over the commercials that appeared in the game. When you are playing, you never really pay attention to things like this. Instead, we simply move on with the game and the goals set out for us. But the songs shown actually do contain a message that can be shared with everyone.

There was a message about fast food restaurants and this was interesting to me because it was a reflection of real life. We had heard many scandals about the food industry and the way that it worked so it was fascinating to see that even in media such as video games, we can see messages reflected there. The injecting of hormones into chickens in the song of the restaurant (whose name I cannot seem to remember right now) was very alike to how fast food restaurants operate. I remember hearing a lot about how McDonald's would crush the chicken completely and use every single part of it, even the eyes and the beak and everything to make chicken nuggets. Of course, this was something that we all tend to ignore - even I ignored it because I love chicken nuggets.

Even if we see all of these messages in our video games, I can't help but to think that the majority of us simply ignore them. It may be funny because we relate to it, but seemingly at the end of the day, we only care about beating our game and moving onto the next one.