The child and the animal play due to the inner desire to learn, to improve skills and to socialize. If we look on the genesis of the game we see that, by playing, children usually imitate some acts of adults (i.e. playing in the sand with pail and shovel) or improve their certain skills (i.e. hopscotch- as the precision of throwing the stone). Playing cat and mouse or mother and father, involves personal projections within these beings which children identify with and prepare to become like in adulthood. Regardless of aggressive, destructive or dreadful impulses that the child projects within the game, the purpose of game and toys is very important for her/his mental and physical skills development. But at this level, the child and animal game has a certain dose of innocence with the act of playing, especially given by the safety of game play activity.
Some adults have kept this healthy need to socialize through games or art. Actually, in English, “play” means playing a role as an actor or using a musical instrument. In Romanian, among to acting, “play” word is used for traditional dancing. Many games developed by the human society over time, for socialization and spending time as pleasant and relaxing as possible, is an important fact of human civilization. This is the innocent or infantile aspect of the game in adult human being. Unfortunately, among this, there is the aggressive game that shows the ugly face of human civilization, specially its wildhood remains. Getting into the game reveals sublimation of a very visible aggression so the gamer is irritable, aggressive, threatening and determined to get “more” from a particular activity. This determination and ambition is very useful for general capitalist economy but, actually, they are symptoms of a society that can not decide itself for war or peace.
In addition to well known paranoid, depressive, obsessional type etc. symptoms, this specific contemporary society aggression sublimate into the consumerist spectacle (circus, movies, TV shows, tabloid newspapers) or gambling, sports games and video games. Gambling was a big subject in psychopathological descriptions. Psychopathology has identified a certain disorder as “Pathological Gambling” (DSM IV TR at code 312.31). I will not analyze it now, brought that up just to mention that it is found in certain levels in other forms of aggressive games. The fact is that the technology enabled bringing the classical casino into common people homes through video games. Video games are home casinos indeed! Perhaps at some point in the descriptions of psychopathology there will appear also a kind of “pathological video Gambling”.
Every aggressive game looks like true war scenes and competition with the difference that, at least for the moment, no one dies and no one violates any law. This detail has made them accepted as games. They have the capacity to exteriorize the aggressive element within the human being in a parallel reality without becoming addicted to. The society traditionally punish those who put raw aggression into act but, it is freely manifested more than in a traditional fantasy way, trough the games. Online games are true “second life” for such enthusiasts. The simulation of reality trough computer techniques is today a much more accurately than the traditional social games and the art has ever succeeded. Losing identity between the two realities happens often. Using the nicknames, that hide real persons, is an incentive to break the traditional rules of punishing put into act aggression. We can see this as a technology invitation for personality splitting. Therefore, inside the online community of players, the insults and the death threats are on the agenda. Some players go so far with their anger that end up by searching for online enemies IP data, with the intention of revenge into real life.
But, if we consider the simple games of childhood, then we can see that these manifestations have nothing in common with them. We call them games because they are unproductive activities that mimic a specific reality. But, comparing the child and animal simple games with cynical and aggressive human gamer that sweats and trembles in front of the computer or console monitor, we see a difference that looks like the one between heaven and earth. However, innocent – aggressive border within adult games is very unclear and many lose temper because of the game, although its purpose is simple socialization. Unfortunately, this phenomenon happens to some children and stressed animals; they begin by playing innocent but end up in combat and partner’s aggression. Aggressive phenomena happen very often in sport games practiced by adults for fitness.
The sports practiced by professional with perseverance and skills, cease to be games, in the classical sense of term, but real jobs. These professional sportsmen practice them under the desire for competition and for love from the fans. This increased need for love is actually an attempt to cover the maternalist satisfaction of this inherited slavery condition which is perpetuated through educational level. The athlete has a schedule and a lifestyle that involves a lot of pressure and more stress in order to achieve this. Satisfying the angry fan's needs for victory is the engine of his lifestyle. The tumults of fans in stadiums actually recreate the call to battle that the past armies began their march and the potential attack. The result is the same: the phantasmal fortress which is a symbol for classic concrete fortress which the army wants to conquer. There is food, drink and women. The phantasmal fortress is a psychodynamical anaclisis between the strongest instincts (hunger and sex) plus entertainment provided by the alcohol found inside the fortress.
The need for play or for show in general is the contemporary slave's need to escape from its humble social condition just like the classical slave had in mind in the past. Most players are so hardened and so hungered to win that their feeling look very much like revenge. Adults practice sports games because they sometimes have nothing to do and can’t stand doing nothing. They are so programmed to work. So I think that the gaming and gambling problem originates long before contact with the game and not necessarily the game itself. This hiperstenical state, which makes gamer or team/club supporter to have a competition and SF experiences dependency, is speculated by video games industry which will gradually replace the film industry. The need to humiliate the opponent and achieve performance, in order to raise up in the competitive hierarchy, is actually a phantasmal remake for the classic slave's need to escape from the "despicable" condition by making rebellion or war.
The most popular sports combine these common people (as contemporary slave) basic desires, which descend from the classical slave. In football, the shot from a big distance is a delight of spectators. Such a score from a great distance get the fans in the air. Such a goal is selected for the generics, as a football beauty top. It is more than an ordinary score because the ball shot from distance is like a projectile that the opponent does not have. Moreover, this perception is mixed with a phantasmal erotism; the ball trajectory entering the net reiterates the intercourse: the trajectory represents the penis and the net represents the vagina. The farther from the target is the shot the bigger is the penis, in this phantasmal perception of the intercourse. Beating the rival in the fight, and conquering the females is an ancestral psychological predisposition that get inside the symbol of the goal scored from distance in football or basketball. This target is also found in the essay scored in rugby or American football by the player that surpasses many opponents. Although there are certain variations, most sports require a kind of well defended “hot spot” that the opponent player must attain. The fan’s joy delirium, as its favorite team scores, is the anaclitical joy of satisfying these phantasmal impulses. Without fans, there would not be any sports masters, legends and celebrities. They are well paid to satisfy this classical slave's need to escape the humiliating reality and jump into the phantasmal joy of conquering certain fortresses.
The video gamer is such a supporter that uses the technology. Compared to traditional sports where the supporter was only a spectator or phantasmal coach, in the video games he or she is also the star. Most players are not professionals but many are close to this state of mind since the points, the scores and all kinds of phantasmal compensations feed the sports star addiction to the love of its fans. Although, rarely insists on feminine symbols in sports such as goal/ basket / target field, still the video games have the advantage of creating very real war scenes. Most video games are shooters. The phantasmal fortress is indirectly simulated by the degree of simulation of reality offered by modern technology. Their reality is not necessarily based on photorealistic 3D objects within games (although with NextGen technology made 3D games almost indistinguishable from those within the movies) but on the possibility of interaction with it.
From this perspective, the video games have beaten the films. As popular movies are consumerist productions of putting in the act the contemporary slave fantasy, in the same way video the games have come to create a story to get player’s attention and incite it. The video games have become movies that the player can change the story for. All gamers are looking for happy ending that actually never completely comes. Just like the classical revenge or like the spiral of violence, the video games have no end. Even if the gamer ends or gets bored of a certain video game, there soon will appear another one with greater difficulty or greater diversity. The frustration about game failures, the aggression and the joy of solving the game will be higher and ever higher. Just like the psychoactive substances consuming, the gamer increasingly becomes split between the manifestations of extreme joy and extreme frustration. And, continuing in this way of life, both the game and the player will step by step separate from concrete human community and will go beyond it, in a perpetual savage war regression. This is why the original purpose of the community game, which is to develop social functioning skills in the society, is canceled by the degeneration of aggressive games that marginalize the player from the community. Instead of community building, the video game splits up from. By this, the human aggression can degenerate and become out of object, compared to animal limited rough aggression.
The video games and generally the popular spectacles show the limits of false liberties that modern society promises to its members. Despite the promised freedom, the today society slave is increasingly stifled by rules, laws and regulations that make him or her to explode into auxiliary sublimations. Antisocial tendencies, overusing the instinctual satisfactions like excessive sexuality and nutrition, are found in every contemporary spectacle. Humiliated at work for having a lower status in the hierarchy of concrete production, the modern slave takes revenge in the evening when gets home by taking the virtual gun in hand (the computer mouse or the joystick) and starts shooting enemies. Despite the relief, the gamer get more and more trapped into consumerism predators pitfalls. The next step of this aggressiveness is taking a real gun and start shooting classmates or former colleagues. There are so many cases of these passages from the phantasmal to concrete reality.
The video games seem an out of control phenomenon. Shooters were initially created by the U.S. Army who tried to attract more young people to “voluntarily” enroll. Meanwhile they became the evidence that something is very wrong with our society. Somehow this is understandable. Human civilization lives still in infancy. The contemporary human being is closer to animal, regarding the perpetual search of food and shelter, than a true “homo sapiens” that acts with wisedoom. Those who have provided this small skin of civilization and do not need to take care of tomorrow are a minority compared to the rest of the people. Although they use community resources to further enslave the poor, thus frustrating them some more and creating even more and more aggressiveness and resentful among. But, meanwhile, the aggressive video games satisfy not only the interests of the companies that produce them but also they somehow cover the interests of the social overprivileged by diverting the potential rebels’ attention away from them. So, rather than risking a confrontation with police and order forces, that have superior weapons, the slaves prefer a fair war inside the virtual space realized with a computers network connected to a server.
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