video games and magazine ads. more meaningful than we think?

When we play video games there are a few things we expect from them. Mostly we expect them to be entertaining. When we were young games would often have educational themes and would force us to learn something as we played and enjoyed these games.In a way we were tricked into acquiring knowledge through a medium that we deemed fun and not so much educational.The two games that we were assigned have similiar effects.The main difference is that t now we are older we do not necessarily need things to be as fun in order to be mentally stimulated. While all still enjoy the mindless games of mario,tetris,mortal combat or whatever your favorites might be, now we are able to see games in a more analytical way.A game may be trying to portray a message rather than simply take up your time or entertain you. Both of these games accomplish this very well. The interesting thing about a medium llike video games is that it is so specific and engaging. It accomplishes things that absolutely couldn't be done in any other format. For instance if game,game,game,and again game were made into an art piece and was displayed in a museum it could still have the home videos and the squiggles and noises and arrows and very crucial aspects of the work. It would however be far less effective because you would be observing the work instead of interacting and progressing the work forward. This interactivity,no matter how limited, forces us to have a certain engagement in the information that we receive. It again poses the question of the importance of the content over the importance of the form of narrative the content is in. The Mcvideo game reminded me very much of another medium that uses what we know about the medium in interesting ways. There is a magazine called adbusters that changes the rules of magazines instead of the usual emphasis on buying products and traditional advertisement that we expect from a magazine, Adbusters depicts images and has articles against consumerism and large corporations[like Mcdonalds]. So while the Mcvideo game turns something fun like a video game into something more serious like a message about mcdonalds, Adbusters turns something enticing like advertisement into something repelling.

http://24.199.160.51/classrooms/media/macad.jpg

http://bp0.blogger.com/_FFVV1tVidtU/RxiFHN6myfI/AAAAAAAABsQ/d2MSJbQin0Y/...

http://www.adbusters.org/files/images/mcdonald_macattack.preview.jpg

http://www.craphound.com/images/indianmcdsbabyad.jpg