Games can't replicate "real".

So the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is over. There were endless documentaries, made for TV movies, blogs and articles that commemorated the event. It brought back my own vivid memories of 9/11. I had quit full time work that year and was at home. I turned on the TV in the morning and there was news of the first tower being hit by a plane... an apparent accident. It wasn't until the second tower was hit that the word "terrorism" was used. Mostly there was utter confusion. Newscasters speculated, they gave incorrect information, they corrected that information, there was video footage... and the newscasters didn't even realize what they were seeing. The entire day induced in most of us who watched it a feeling of absolute and utter horror.

From the perspective of a gamer, I found it interesting that watching 9/11 as it unfolded on TV induced far more horror than even the most immersive of video games. Both experiences involve audio and video images on a screen, yet most of us do have a switch in our brains that differentiate between what is real, and what is not real. Most of the images of 9/11 were not in themselves graphic or horror-filled, instead it was the reality that induced the horror. The realization that those black "blobs" falling from the buildings were actually people... people that chose to jump, or that fell to their deaths. It wasn't so much the image... it was our minds filling in the horror that led to that vague image on the screen, and even the dawning horror on the faces of the newscasters as they realized what they were seeing. Games have tried. In Homefront there is a scene where your character hides among a mass of bodies to escape detection... bodies of women, children and men. The mind.. it says "ewww", but there isn't a sense of reality about it. In Modern Warfare there is a potent scene where your character dies and you have no control over the event. It was a powerful scene, but still a tiny corner of my mind was also saying "the devs did a great job with this, I didn't see that coming!".

When psychologists or tabloid newspapers blame the "immersive reality" of movies or video games for a person's actions or societies ills, I think they do a disservice to the impact of true reality. Our hearts and minds do know the difference. No voice actor can imitate the utter confusion and dawning horror in the voices of those broadcasting the live events of 9/11 as they unfolded. Ironically, video games are often accused of not being able to show facial emotion... yet in the TV images of those watching the towers fold - it was the utter blankness in the faces that was far more chilling than those that cried or or did show emotion.

There are no pictures in this blog. None are needed... we all have pictures in our heads and they are all different. These are just my quick thoughts after a day of re-living the events... events that took place far away and were merely images on a TV screen. They were "real" events though... and there is nothing that the human imagination can produce in a video game that can even come close to producing those same emotions of horror.

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