There was a Sayyid episode of Lost where a terrorist cell (whom he later betrays to the police) are playing Half Life 2 on their flat screen TV in some Australian apartment.
Gah, how could I forget that?
Not only that, but then the creators of Half-Life put a (non-canonical) DHARMA logo into HL2: Episode Two, as well as a computer screen with the numbers.
There was a Sayyid episode of Lost where a terrorist cell (whom he later betrays to the police) are playing Half Life 2 on their flat screen TV in some Australian apartment.
I think that was the original Half Life, being played on a PS2. I remember one of the characters laments being out of ammo, is told to use the crowbar, and then remarks something about how it "only works on zombies", or something along those lines.
The Big Bang Theory (A guilty pleasure ..... ) has had lots of videogames featured, alot of the time it's really accurate, although they tend to make stuff up for comedy purposes.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
The Big Bang Theory (A guilty pleasure ..... ) has had lots of videogames featured, alot of the time it's really accurate, although they tend to make stuff up for comedy purposes.
they do tend to stick somewhat close to whatever game they're playing. names and stuff will be off but it's obvious when it's warcraft or halo... they always throw in one thing that's exactly specific which may seem like not much but it makes me happy.
I came in here to mention it. It's not a great show by any means but every so often it's funny and it's geeky enough. plus, Roseanne people from time to time.
I forget which show it was - probably one of those CSI clones, definitely some sort of cop drama bullshit. Anyway, they were investigating a bank robbery - there had been a cop in the bank at the time, and there were other weird circumstances, and eventually they find out that it was perpetrated by a group of asshole twenty-somethings who had been playing too much "GTA-clone" (i forget if they actually gave the game a name, but that's clearly what it was). The robber they caught kept spouting game quotes and talking about points like they were all that mattered to him (apparently in the game robbing a bank while a cop is inside is worth more points). Basically the whole episode was about how video games brainwash people to the point where they think the real world is the same as the game and all they care about is scoring the most points.
it was CSI Vegas.
Thats almost as bad as watching people play one console, with the controller from another [ or worse, from a previous generation as well ], over acting the playing. No one jumps off the couch every time they fucking jump in a game, for instance.
The Big Bang Theory (A guilty pleasure ..... ) has had lots of videogames featured, alot of the time it's really accurate, although they tend to make stuff up for comedy purposes.
they do tend to stick somewhat close to whatever game they're playing. names and stuff will be off but it's obvious when it's warcraft or halo... they always throw in one thing that's exactly specific which may seem like not much but it makes me happy.
I came in here to mention it. It's not a great show by any means but every so often it's funny and it's geeky enough. plus, Roseanne people from time to time.
Speaking of which, Roseanne was the first show I could think of where they had a video game console on top of the television (SNES).
One of the recent Law & Orders (SVU, I think) opened with a family playing Wii Sports. Grown women, definitely not your stereotypical "gamer" types.
If Second Life counts as a game, then The Office did a bit where Dwight's Second Life avatar was exactly like Dwight (in appearance, job, etc.) except that he could fly.
And there was a Ghost Whisperer that involved a Second Life knockoff. I wasn't really paying attention, but somehow the main character was able to "enter the game" and interact with other avatars. I think that it was all an excuse to get Jennifer Love Hewitt to dress up like a "sexy" video game character.
SVU used a Second Life knock off recently, maybe last season. Like most L&O the case really didn't revolve around the game, even though they're heavily promoted in their commercials, and it was just a tool to get the case started (typical L&O affair start off with something familiar then give it a twist, like that episode that started off like it was about a Michael Jackson clone, but turned out to be based on that kid whose guardians lied to and told her she had cancer when she didn't so they could scam people).
Anyways, The Office usually has pretty good product placement. I thought The Staples stuff was a little heavy handed, but check out all of the HP products they have, all with the logos prominently displayed, but no one ever throws it in your face.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited January 2009
Personally, I'm impressed with Hollywood's ability to both acknowledge that playing games is a very common event these days but still be so out of touch as to almost universally do it wrong (overacting, wrong sound effects, etc). It takes some real effort to be so ignorant.
Heh, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Hollywood folks do it deliberately because they know video games are threatening their market. But that would be giving their intelligence far too much credit. Realistically, somebody up top probably orders that a show have games in it, nobody does their research before putting it in, and it ends up looking stupid.
And I really doubt a dev is going to demand money to let somebody show their game for a few seconds on a show or movie. What kind of stupid company says no to free publicity?
Haven't read pages 2 & 3, but off the top of my head, the crew of the Stamford Dunder-Mifflin office playing some PC game, I forget which, either Call of Duty of Counterstrike.
VoranthMI NOMBRE, POR CIERTOES DONTÉ!Registered Userregular
edited January 2009
I loved the scene in Shaun of the Dead where Nick Frost is playing Timesplitters 2 or something, and Shaun is trying to have a serious discussion with him but keeps getting distracted and giving him game tips. "Don't forget to reload. Top left!"
Spaced always had good videogame references as well; in one episode Tim's really depressed about girl troubles so he keeps drowning Lara Croft over and over again on the PS1. He also has a poster of low-polygon Lara Croft on his wall in his flat.
Haven't read pages 2 & 3, but off the top of my head, the crew of the Stamford Dunder-Mifflin office playing some PC game, I forget which, either Call of Duty of Counterstrike.
I loved the scene in Shaun of the Dead where Nick Frost is playing Timesplitters 2 or something, and Shaun is trying to have a serious discussion with him but keeps getting distracted and giving him game tips. "Don't forget to reload. Top left!"
Timesplitters 3 references Shaun of the Dead also. When you're in arcade mode and you select one of the zombie characters they say something like "Have I got red on me?"
This isn't a TV show, but the movie Reign Over Me used Shadow of the Colossus quite extensively. One of the characters was playing it as coping mechanism for the death of his family, and eventually the other main character starts playing it too and it ends up being a bonding experience.
Except Reign Over Me is an actually good movie and the game is a perfect metaphor for the literal demons Adam Sandler's character is fighting
Oh and the game was played like it was supposed to instead of the actors slapping the controllers
Damn I should watch Reign Over Me again sometime
Also, that video was a fucking travesty
A hilarious travesty, but a travesty nonetheless
He didn't say Reign Over Me was bad, nor the product placement. Product placement doesn't have to be a bad thing if done well.
Again, I point to The Office (and more than just COD).
Ah, my mistake then
One of the few things I remember about that movie (besides Adam Sandler doing a really serious role and doing it well) was was it had a videogame reference that actually fucking worked
Seriously how hard is it to have your actors ACTUALLY PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME before filming starts? Just spend like 15 goddamn minutes messing with the game in question so they don't look like goddamn idiots when playing
It's like if someone went "OH HAY LETS WATCH THE GODFATHER" so the characters pop the movie into the DVD player, the movie starts, and suddenly the people watching start taping their eyes open and press their faces into the screen
Yeah, Reign Over Me did it really, really well. They even had Adam Sandler explain the controls to Don Cheadle, which is something you don't really expect to hear, especially for a game that unique.
Anyway, it wasn't a series but I remember Vince Vaughn playing Madden on XBL in The Break Up. Mediocre movie but it seemed to demonstrate pretty well how much people are dicks online.
Oh man you guys have forgotten like, the grand-daddy progenitor of all "conspiracy information is inside a video game"... The Net.
The Sandra Bullock movie? Is that what that's about?
I avoided it like the plague because it's a Sandra Bullock movie.
No, the computer program wasn't a game. Primus is a dumb head with silly avatar/sig combos.
The Net was a 1984-esque movie wherein Sandra Bullock gets a random ass computer program and not a game that housed a backdoor into government/military systems. The hackers responsible discover her stumbling along their plans and remove all computer records of her existence, or add a pretty robust rap sheet to further fuck her life up. They go so far to kill Dennis Miller in a hospital by erasing the fact that he's allergic to penicillin in the database.
A movie of fear mongering for having all our information on computers, and it's 14 years old.
I remember seeing her playing a DOOM clone or something though and then a message popped up on her screen. I don't know I only saw like 15 minutes of it on television. You're the one who actually memorized the plot to it, so I'm still the better person here.
Oh man you guys have forgotten like, the grand-daddy progenitor of all "conspiracy information is inside a video game"... The Net.
The Sandra Bullock movie? Is that what that's about?
I avoided it like the plague because it's a Sandra Bullock movie.
No, the computer program wasn't a game. Primus is a dumb head with silly avatar/sig combos.
The Net was a 1984-esque movie wherein Sandra Bullock gets a random ass computer program and not a game that housed a backdoor into government/military systems. The hackers responsible discover her stumbling along their plans and remove all computer records of her existence, or add a pretty robust rap sheet to further fuck her life up. They go so far to kill Dennis Miller in a hospital by erasing the fact that he's allergic to penicillin in the database.
A movie of fear mongering for having all our information on computers, and it's 14 years old.
The Net was a pretty good movie as I recall. Sure, it was fearmongering and all but the scenario is pretty plausible. Sandra Bullock was living alone, in fear of society (due to stuff that happened in her past that turned her into a recluse), and she had very few friends that she could trust. It's not too far fetched that some shady bastards with access to government databases could essentially erase records of a character like hers from existence. If anything, they could classify her as being dead 2 years ago in a car crash or some such.
Thats almost as bad as watching people play one console, with the controller from another [ or worse, from a previous generation as well ], over acting the playing. No one jumps off the couch every time they fucking jump in a game, for instance.
I'm pretty sure it was CSI Miami. The gamers then break into the police station and shoot up the place using 3d VR maps that they cobbled up somehow. Because all gamers are architects with access to state of the art military technology.
I remember in the beginning a bank teller gets her head blown off because the gamer says it's worth 200 points or something.
Horatio "Yeaaaaaaaah!" Caine arrests a game developer and the guy is remorseless about what his products are doing to people. I guess that's an attack on Rockstar and developers in general.
The first lead they have is a dead end because it's some gamer who died while playing a game because he starved himself or had a heart attack or something. He was one of the robbers.
They rape a couple of bystanders because it gives em more points.
Getting infuriated by bad TV is a spectacularly useless kind of rage, an exercise in futility akin to bemoaning the badness of "Star Wars'" romance scenes or the stupidity of intelligent design advocates. It's always better to just change the channel.
But getting mad about bad TV depictions of video game culture takes such pointlessness to truly stratospheric heights of inanity. When I first saw the reports Monday morning on various geek news sites warning that the upcoming episode of "CSI: Miami" involved a plot in which college students run amok around town imitating scenes from a game called "Urban Hell Raiser" (an obvious homage to "Grand Theft Auto"), I found it hard to get riled. I was more amused than anything else -- who can't grin at the thought of one medium already under (misguided) assault for purveying murderous schlock going after another? Sure, TV rots your brain, the producers seemed to be conceding, but, but, but, look over there -- video games destroy your brain cells even faster.
I couldn't drum up even a mild indignance. Until I somehow found myself watching the show, and against all my better instincts, viewed the entire episode to the end. Like rubbernecking at the scene of a car wreck, it proved impossible to look away.
Readers beware: Motivated by pure venom, I'm going to spoil the hell out of this episode. The hook is that a band of murderous university students are acting in a bizarre fashion -- for example, they rob a bank, but abandon the stolen cash. It doesn't take long for an ex-gamer cop to realize that the bad guys are reenacting scenes from a video game so evil that it gives players bonus points if they rape bystanders during a crime. "Now you know why I stopped playing the game at home," the cop confesses.
In conjuction with the venom and disgust that enfuses the word "gamer" when it's spoken by star David Caruso, aka "Horatio Caine," it is made clear, as one poster on the Web noted afterward, that people who play games are but one step removed from pedophiles or suicide bombers in the social hierarchy of evil. Even worse, one gamer actually plays so long without a break -- "70 hours!" -- that he experiences renal failure and dies. Evil, stupid and unlikely to reproduce!
But that's not the real kicker. When Horatio confronts a slick, smarmy executive from the company that makes the game, the suit refuses to divulge any information about the internal narrative of the game that would help the cops figure out the next target of the criminals. And, of course, he disclaims any responsibility for what people do in real life as opposed to what they are encouraged to do in a game.
To those of us who do live in the real world, as opposed to video game land or the tortured plot devisings of bad TV writers, it might seem unrealistic that a gaming company wouldn't cooperate with the police in such a circumstance. Kinda suspicious. Hey, you don't suppose the gaming company might be involved, do you? It turns out that executive isn't just smarmy -- he's Satan. Not only is the company providing bad role models to the youth of today, but, in an effort to boost sales in a competitive industry, it's also actively supplying college students with Tec-9 automatics and encouraging them to murder innocent people.
This neatly solves the problem of whether video games are responsible for violent behavior. If the gaming company itself arms its customers, the causal link is hard to deny. I'd almost be tempted to give the writers a point or two for irony, if I weren't entirely sure that it was completely unintentional.
Never mind that in the real world, teen violence has steadily declined, almost in parallel with the rise in sales of video games. Let's not go there -- after this episode of "CSI: Miami" I am almost ready to concede that there is a link between media portrayals of violence and the real thing. Just one hour of watching David Caruso's leaden acting and banging my head against this ridiculous plot did, I confess, make me want to get my own Tec-9 and start laying waste to televison executives. But I refrained, just as 99 percent of everyone who has ever played a violent game refrains from throwing a punch at someone in flesh and blood.
Instead, I'm going to devote myself to writing a screenplay for a cops-and-robbers TV show in which the producers of a cops-and-robbers TV show are found guilty of murdering members of their shows' audience every week in exactly the same style as the crime on that week's episode. The clincher will come when an undercover cop who is playing the role of the cop on the cop show arrests his own producer. And then everything will go black.
Wasn't there another CSI (or it might be Without A Trace) where to find the kidnapped person the authorities checked Second Life? The kidnapper had recreated his lakeside home, and they made the Second Life programmers change the time of day so they could see where the sun would rise; that way they knew which side of the lake to search.
Not exactly video games, but the Internet episode of Fairly Odd Parents was pretty cool.
This is Pen-and-Paper game reference, and I know I'm risking getting kicked-off PA for mentioning this, but my mom used to watch Lizzie Mcguire for some reason, and for some reason I watched an episode with her.
Said episode featured a DnD-clone called "Dwarf Lord". In the episode some guy starts playing it and goes around dressed like a viking with some other kids dressed like wizards and knights and shit.
The weirdest part is that the moral of the story was not "don't be obsessive about things", but "you can be obsessive about sports and stuff, but not things that aren't cool."
What an awful show. I used to really like Vegas before I got saturated with the science of forensics and couldn't take it anymore. Every criminal is a fucking retard. They always get caught for some stupid, but avoidable reason.
Thankfully I missed the VG episode. I would've become uselessly angry about it.
Fun Fact: Nintendo didn't have anything to do with the creation of "The Wizard." They just gave them the Super Mario Bros. 3 stuff (Which had been out in Japan for TWO YEARS anyway). The movie certainly centered around Nintendo, but they didn't pay to have it use their name. Notice how NOBODY ever says "NES" or "Nintendo." It's always "Video Games"
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I like the episode of Invader Zim where Gaz is waiting in line for the midnight release of the Game Slave 2 handheld system, and they run out, but the guy behind her lies about his name to get the last preordered one, and she stalks him until he gives it to her.
On Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles this kid is being targetted by a terminator because he has the same name as some guy they want dead, when they first show him hes playing some xbox 360 game with the headset on being a douchebag. Unfortunately, he doesnt die. I think in a different episode they use guts from a 360 to interface with a terminator ai chip.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
Oh man you guys have forgotten like, the grand-daddy progenitor of all "conspiracy information is inside a video game"... The Net.
The Sandra Bullock movie? Is that what that's about?
I avoided it like the plague because it's a Sandra Bullock movie.
No, the computer program wasn't a game. Primus is a dumb head with silly avatar/sig combos.
The Net was a 1984-esque movie wherein Sandra Bullock gets a random ass computer program and not a game that housed a backdoor into government/military systems. The hackers responsible discover her stumbling along their plans and remove all computer records of her existence, or add a pretty robust rap sheet to further fuck her life up. They go so far to kill Dennis Miller in a hospital by erasing the fact that he's allergic to penicillin in the database.
A movie of fear mongering for having all our information on computers, and it's 14 years old.
The Net was a pretty good movie as I recall. Sure, it was fearmongering and all but the scenario is pretty plausible. Sandra Bullock was living alone, in fear of society (due to stuff that happened in her past that turned her into a recluse), and she had very few friends that she could trust. It's not too far fetched that some shady bastards with access to government databases could essentially erase records of a character like hers from existence. If anything, they could classify her as being dead 2 years ago in a car crash or some such.
There was a shot of her playing Wolfenstein 3D though.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles is just so bad. I'm glad I don't watch it.
Oh yeah, I remember a movie starring Kurt Russell, where some truckers kidnap and do bad things to his wife and he has to rescue her. It turns out that those trucker rednecks have a family and there's a scene where the kid (who's like 11) is playing a video game, I think it was Doom 2 or Wolfenstein 3D (I can't remember which), and Kurt Russell surprises him and the kid grabs a shotgun but he can't fire it.
I thought it was pretty neat because, at the time, the media was going on about how gamers are all ruthless psychopath murderer-rapists in the making. And here's this kid whose parents are a dozen kinds of screwed up and he's playing Doom but he's not crazy and can't bring himself to shoot Kurt or anything despite his uncles and dad screaming in the room next door to kill Kurt.
Fuck, I forgot about an episode of 7th Heaven I saw once (I don't remember why), but it was about one of the kids playing some violent videogame, and goes around shouting "boom" at people.
Then, when the father actually found out, he was in tears, pleading with her that "shooting someone is bad, even if you're pretending". It was horrible
Edit: Found a synopsis:
Ruthie is running around the house "Baboom-ing" everyone and everything, pretending to be shot, just like in the video game "Baboom." Annie tries to explain to Ruthie that even a violent video game is bad news. Ruthie is disappointed, but Annie looks like she is going to stand her ground
Back at the house, Annie and Eric talk over the problem with Simon, and they agree not to tell the other kids. Annie says the kids should both stay home from school tomorrow, and Dina can come over and spend the day with them. Eric plans to go talk to Johnny's father about the threat. At that moment, Ruthie runs in says "Baboom!" Annie says to knock off saying "Baboom" and Eric backs Annie up. Eric tries to explain to Ruthie why shooting someone, even pretend, is bad.
Hahaha... "Baboom". What the fuck
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All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
Fuck, I forgot about an episode of 7th Heaven I saw once (I don't remember why), but it was about one of the kids playing some violent videogame, and goes around shouting "boom" at people.
Then, when the father actually found out, he was in tears, pleading with her that "shooting someone is bad, even if you're pretending". It was horrible
The irony about that dumb show is that Jessica Biel grows up to play the role of strippers in movies quite often. I guess religious instruction didn't help very much.
I just watched Grosse Point Blank for the first time in probably a decade. The convenience store has a custom stand-up Doom II cabinet. The kid playing overacted playing it, but it was in fact Doom II, and the cabinet had the actual title on it.
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Thanks, I needed an excuse to buy a new TV show.
Gah, how could I forget that?
Not only that, but then the creators of Half-Life put a (non-canonical) DHARMA logo into HL2: Episode Two, as well as a computer screen with the numbers.
I think that was the original Half Life, being played on a PS2. I remember one of the characters laments being out of ammo, is told to use the crowbar, and then remarks something about how it "only works on zombies", or something along those lines.
edit: Found it,
Around 2:27
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Best parody of GTA I've ever seen. Great episode of King of the Hill.
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they do tend to stick somewhat close to whatever game they're playing. names and stuff will be off but it's obvious when it's warcraft or halo... they always throw in one thing that's exactly specific which may seem like not much but it makes me happy.
I came in here to mention it. It's not a great show by any means but every so often it's funny and it's geeky enough. plus, Roseanne people from time to time.
it was CSI Vegas.
Thats almost as bad as watching people play one console, with the controller from another [ or worse, from a previous generation as well ], over acting the playing. No one jumps off the couch every time they fucking jump in a game, for instance.
Speaking of which, Roseanne was the first show I could think of where they had a video game console on top of the television (SNES).
SVU used a Second Life knock off recently, maybe last season. Like most L&O the case really didn't revolve around the game, even though they're heavily promoted in their commercials, and it was just a tool to get the case started (typical L&O affair start off with something familiar then give it a twist, like that episode that started off like it was about a Michael Jackson clone, but turned out to be based on that kid whose guardians lied to and told her she had cancer when she didn't so they could scam people).
Anyways, The Office usually has pretty good product placement. I thought The Staples stuff was a little heavy handed, but check out all of the HP products they have, all with the logos prominently displayed, but no one ever throws it in your face.
Heh, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Hollywood folks do it deliberately because they know video games are threatening their market. But that would be giving their intelligence far too much credit. Realistically, somebody up top probably orders that a show have games in it, nobody does their research before putting it in, and it ends up looking stupid.
And I really doubt a dev is going to demand money to let somebody show their game for a few seconds on a show or movie. What kind of stupid company says no to free publicity?
For shame, G&T. For shame.
There is no shame to be had in the repression of traumatic memories.
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Spaced always had good videogame references as well; in one episode Tim's really depressed about girl troubles so he keeps drowning Lara Croft over and over again on the PS1. He also has a poster of low-polygon Lara Croft on his wall in his flat.
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It was Call of Duty, we mentioned it.
Timesplitters 3 references Shaun of the Dead also. When you're in arcade mode and you select one of the zombie characters they say something like "Have I got red on me?"
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Yeah, Reign Over Me did it really, really well. They even had Adam Sandler explain the controls to Don Cheadle, which is something you don't really expect to hear, especially for a game that unique.
Anyway, it wasn't a series but I remember Vince Vaughn playing Madden on XBL in The Break Up. Mediocre movie but it seemed to demonstrate pretty well how much people are dicks online.
No, the computer program wasn't a game. Primus is a dumb head with silly avatar/sig combos.
The Net was a 1984-esque movie wherein Sandra Bullock gets a random ass computer program and not a game that housed a backdoor into government/military systems. The hackers responsible discover her stumbling along their plans and remove all computer records of her existence, or add a pretty robust rap sheet to further fuck her life up. They go so far to kill Dennis Miller in a hospital by erasing the fact that he's allergic to penicillin in the database.
A movie of fear mongering for having all our information on computers, and it's 14 years old.
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The Net was a pretty good movie as I recall. Sure, it was fearmongering and all but the scenario is pretty plausible. Sandra Bullock was living alone, in fear of society (due to stuff that happened in her past that turned her into a recluse), and she had very few friends that she could trust. It's not too far fetched that some shady bastards with access to government databases could essentially erase records of a character like hers from existence. If anything, they could classify her as being dead 2 years ago in a car crash or some such.
I'm pretty sure it was CSI Miami. The gamers then break into the police station and shoot up the place using 3d VR maps that they cobbled up somehow. Because all gamers are architects with access to state of the art military technology.
I remember in the beginning a bank teller gets her head blown off because the gamer says it's worth 200 points or something.
Horatio "Yeaaaaaaaah!" Caine arrests a game developer and the guy is remorseless about what his products are doing to people. I guess that's an attack on Rockstar and developers in general.
The first lead they have is a dead end because it's some gamer who died while playing a game because he starved himself or had a heart attack or something. He was one of the robbers.
They rape a couple of bystanders because it gives em more points.
It was a really stupid episode.
Edit: http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/tv/review/2005/11/22/csi_gamers/
But getting mad about bad TV depictions of video game culture takes such pointlessness to truly stratospheric heights of inanity. When I first saw the reports Monday morning on various geek news sites warning that the upcoming episode of "CSI: Miami" involved a plot in which college students run amok around town imitating scenes from a game called "Urban Hell Raiser" (an obvious homage to "Grand Theft Auto"), I found it hard to get riled. I was more amused than anything else -- who can't grin at the thought of one medium already under (misguided) assault for purveying murderous schlock going after another? Sure, TV rots your brain, the producers seemed to be conceding, but, but, but, look over there -- video games destroy your brain cells even faster.
I couldn't drum up even a mild indignance. Until I somehow found myself watching the show, and against all my better instincts, viewed the entire episode to the end. Like rubbernecking at the scene of a car wreck, it proved impossible to look away.
Readers beware: Motivated by pure venom, I'm going to spoil the hell out of this episode. The hook is that a band of murderous university students are acting in a bizarre fashion -- for example, they rob a bank, but abandon the stolen cash. It doesn't take long for an ex-gamer cop to realize that the bad guys are reenacting scenes from a video game so evil that it gives players bonus points if they rape bystanders during a crime. "Now you know why I stopped playing the game at home," the cop confesses.
In conjuction with the venom and disgust that enfuses the word "gamer" when it's spoken by star David Caruso, aka "Horatio Caine," it is made clear, as one poster on the Web noted afterward, that people who play games are but one step removed from pedophiles or suicide bombers in the social hierarchy of evil. Even worse, one gamer actually plays so long without a break -- "70 hours!" -- that he experiences renal failure and dies. Evil, stupid and unlikely to reproduce!
But that's not the real kicker. When Horatio confronts a slick, smarmy executive from the company that makes the game, the suit refuses to divulge any information about the internal narrative of the game that would help the cops figure out the next target of the criminals. And, of course, he disclaims any responsibility for what people do in real life as opposed to what they are encouraged to do in a game.
To those of us who do live in the real world, as opposed to video game land or the tortured plot devisings of bad TV writers, it might seem unrealistic that a gaming company wouldn't cooperate with the police in such a circumstance. Kinda suspicious. Hey, you don't suppose the gaming company might be involved, do you? It turns out that executive isn't just smarmy -- he's Satan. Not only is the company providing bad role models to the youth of today, but, in an effort to boost sales in a competitive industry, it's also actively supplying college students with Tec-9 automatics and encouraging them to murder innocent people.
This neatly solves the problem of whether video games are responsible for violent behavior. If the gaming company itself arms its customers, the causal link is hard to deny. I'd almost be tempted to give the writers a point or two for irony, if I weren't entirely sure that it was completely unintentional.
Never mind that in the real world, teen violence has steadily declined, almost in parallel with the rise in sales of video games. Let's not go there -- after this episode of "CSI: Miami" I am almost ready to concede that there is a link between media portrayals of violence and the real thing. Just one hour of watching David Caruso's leaden acting and banging my head against this ridiculous plot did, I confess, make me want to get my own Tec-9 and start laying waste to televison executives. But I refrained, just as 99 percent of everyone who has ever played a violent game refrains from throwing a punch at someone in flesh and blood.
Instead, I'm going to devote myself to writing a screenplay for a cops-and-robbers TV show in which the producers of a cops-and-robbers TV show are found guilty of murdering members of their shows' audience every week in exactly the same style as the crime on that week's episode. The clincher will come when an undercover cop who is playing the role of the cop on the cop show arrests his own producer. And then everything will go black.
Not exactly video games, but the Internet episode of Fairly Odd Parents was pretty cool.
Said episode featured a DnD-clone called "Dwarf Lord". In the episode some guy starts playing it and goes around dressed like a viking with some other kids dressed like wizards and knights and shit.
The weirdest part is that the moral of the story was not "don't be obsessive about things", but "you can be obsessive about sports and stuff, but not things that aren't cool."
What an awful show. I used to really like Vegas before I got saturated with the science of forensics and couldn't take it anymore. Every criminal is a fucking retard. They always get caught for some stupid, but avoidable reason.
Thankfully I missed the VG episode. I would've become uselessly angry about it.
Oh, God, I forgot how bad this was.
Incidentally, this is also what I do. Whenever I see a game being played, I mimick the controls with my hands. I can't help it! I'm a prodigy!
Also, they were playing Halo on The L-Word this one time. Flailing controllers and everything
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
On Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles this kid is being targetted by a terminator because he has the same name as some guy they want dead, when they first show him hes playing some xbox 360 game with the headset on being a douchebag. Unfortunately, he doesnt die. I think in a different episode they use guts from a 360 to interface with a terminator ai chip.
There was a shot of her playing Wolfenstein 3D though.
Oh yeah, I remember a movie starring Kurt Russell, where some truckers kidnap and do bad things to his wife and he has to rescue her. It turns out that those trucker rednecks have a family and there's a scene where the kid (who's like 11) is playing a video game, I think it was Doom 2 or Wolfenstein 3D (I can't remember which), and Kurt Russell surprises him and the kid grabs a shotgun but he can't fire it.
I thought it was pretty neat because, at the time, the media was going on about how gamers are all ruthless psychopath murderer-rapists in the making. And here's this kid whose parents are a dozen kinds of screwed up and he's playing Doom but he's not crazy and can't bring himself to shoot Kurt or anything despite his uncles and dad screaming in the room next door to kill Kurt.
Then, when the father actually found out, he was in tears, pleading with her that "shooting someone is bad, even if you're pretending". It was horrible
Edit: Found a synopsis:
Hahaha... "Baboom". What the fuck
The irony about that dumb show is that Jessica Biel grows up to play the role of strippers in movies quite often. I guess religious instruction didn't help very much.
The King of the Hill episode mentioned earlier was the best GTA spoof i've seen. Those guys are always sensible.
That's actually how you know it's true.