Halo, Halo! I don't know why you say goodbye I say Halo

The story is simple. You are the “protagonist,” and your aim is to rain destruction upon a foreign land, destroying everything in sight, brutally murdering the local wildlife, and stealing a copious amount of loot while you’re at it. At the end of every stage, you break into someone’s house and claim it as your own. Every so often you will come upon a castle, which you storm, killing everything inside and propel the master of the castle into a pit of molten lava.
This game is Super Mario Bros., and it is a danger to our children and everyone in contact with them. Or if you prefer, we could look into the dangerous subtext of Pac Man, which teaches our children that drugs are the best ways to combat their troubles. (The “power pellets” are an obvious a metaphor for drugs, giving Pac Man super powers which allow him to eat the ghosts. This in turn obviously symbolises the plight of the common man, battling his inner demons and finding solace only in the escapism provided to him by drugs; allowing, though only temporarily, his ghosts to go away.)
But it’s easy to extend an argument to ridiculous proportions in a bid to weaken its credibility; especially when the argument is: violent videogames cause violence in real life. This is a theory that has been rejected on multiple occasions but has been repeatedly brought up for several reasons:
A defence for child offenders, who had a warped sense of reality due to an obsession with a game: violent games desensitise them to murder and make them more inclined to commit such a crime; or they mimic a crime they see on a video game because it was “kewl.”
A scapegoat for those unwilling to believe that maybe they’re the ones responsible for their children growing up to perform acts of unspeakable evil: a mother buys her 13-year-old son an 18+ rated game and then he commits a violent crime; it is the videogames fault.
Or maybe it’s just a way for the media to create a story where previously there wasn’t one. A man commits a violent crime in which someone dies or policemen are injured; that won’t spark a debate, or interest the people, and it won’t sell papers. However, a man recreates a scene he saw in Grand Theft Auto 4 and as a result policemen were injured. Suddenly the government is involved, parents are screaming for a ban on violent videogames and everyone is worried little Jimmy down the street who also owns a copy of this game will unexpectedly snap, steal a car and endanger the lives of millions.
A good example is the story of Daniel Petric, a 17-year old boy who shot his parents in the head after they took the game Halo 3 away from him believing that he had developed an obsession with it. His case contained the defence that his view on reality was warped due to this addiction, and therefore, upon shooting his parents, he did not understand that they would stay dead. The line between reality and fiction being blurred created a belief that the respawn element of the game in question, where players come back to life, applied to the real world. This defence was rejected.
And of course, we have the proven link between violent videogames and violent behaviour. Now, we can all agree that statistics are fun. This comes from an ease of manipulation. Statistics enable us to use absurd statements that are in fact true for comedic effect. Nearly 100% of the population have more legs than the average. But we can also put maybe not so true statements in a way that sounds like they are true. There is a proven link between violent videogames and violent behaviour. For some this is enough to condemn videogames. However, Pastafarians have proven a link between the decline of pirates and increase in global warming; they have graphs and everything. With no causal link between the two, that argument holds as much water as the Pastafarians.
Studies show that boys who play violent videogames are more inclined to aggressive behaviour than those who don’t. Now, combine this piece of data with another from a popular study: violent video games cause abnormal activity in the amygdale of the brain. So violent videogames affect the brain and those who play them are more aggressive. What other conclusion can you draw other than these types of games do actually cause violence in youths? Well, it could easily be assumed that youths with violent tendencies are more inclined to play violent videogames – that would cause such a statistic – and another study recorded the same abnormal behaviour of the amygdale in the same percentage of test subjects. Now a logical conclusion is harder to draw.
But what exactly is the crux of this controversy? Most of the arguments placed against violent videogames rely on the fact that young people, who are more impressionable than adults, are playing such games, and as such are being affected in negative ways; and ergo, these games should be withdrawn from public reach. However, from my research I have found very little stating that these 18-certificate or M rated games that are causing the biggest uproars are not supposed to be played by young people, that is the whole reason we have age classifications on games. Rather, they work under the assumption that there is no way to stop young people playing these games. This isn’t true; my mother confiscated Mortal Kombat when I was young because she felt it was too violent. She did it with relative ease.
The enforcement of these ratings has been strengthened by retailers due to the fuss kicked up; and that is nothing but a good thing. If a child gets a hold on Super Ultra Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000, then it is the fault of the retailer who sold it or the person who bought it for them, not the videogame industry. If parents were to just pay more attention to what their child is playing and maybe spend some time enjoying games with them, hopefully that would result in a better understanding of the medium and stop them playing games that they shouldn’t be playing. Maybe then we can stop the fruitless studies into the supposed links between videogames and violence, the failsafe scapegoat and gross hyperbole of media spinning and concentrate on the reason videogames were made in the first place; to have fun.

Want to work for the 2012 Olympics?...

Having a gap year or not sure on your next steps?

The London 2012 Get Ahead School Leavers' Programme is a fantastic opportunity to get a job on one of the most exciting projects around.

Successful applicants will firstly enjoy a thorough two week induction, followed by the chance to try out different work areas aimed at giving you a taste of at least two different aspects of what we do. Once you have found out what goes on in departments such as Commercial Sponsorship, Technology, Games Services, Culture, Ceremonies and Education, Human Resources, and Brand and Marketing, we will help you choose the one that suits you best.
As well as learning new skills from world-class people you will study with a local college, so you can gain a recognized NVQ qualification.



SIMPLY RIGHT CLICK ON THE LOGO HYPERLINK BELOW REGISTER AND FILL IN THE ONLINE APPLICATION

Takes around 20 mins to apply – got to be worth a go FOLKS once in a lifetime opportunity to say you helped organise the Olympics!


Deadline is 3rd May so don’t delay.

Good luck!

Toffee
Dave Stephens
Further Education Sport Co-ordinator

WORLD CUP SWEEPSTAKE...

Join in with the fun of the football world cup by entering our sweepstake. The money raised will be used to help organise coaching events we will be hosting for primary school children and disabled participants in early June.

For only £2 you get your choice of the teams in the hat, will you be the lucky one?

If you pick the winning team you will get a £10 voucher and if you pick the runner up you will get a £5 voucher. You can choose from the choices below:
· iTunes
· Boots
· Next
· Halfords
· DW Sports(JJB)/Sportsworld
· Primark
· Others available on request

If you would like to enter we will be situated around the college. The sooner you enter, the more choice of teams and more chance you will pick one of the favourites.

Thanks
Dan Cole

An invitation to join the Student I.D Team

Hi Folks!

I hope that you all had a super Easter Holidays and are now back up to full speed with work.... Here, at Studnt I.D we're busy preparing this term's articles for your delectation and Dan Maestri is stepping into Jayne's shoes as Editor this time around. Expect some great reports and exciting links...

If you have something you'd like to share, an event you'd like to publicize or just some great photos...please contact us via email. Likewise, we're always on the lookout for reviews of gigs, shows and trips and invite you to write something for the team. It's always a great thing on your CV or UCAS form to say you've been on the team for the Student Mag in college!

That's All for now...

Vicki

Editor's Message Spring 2010

Welcome to the first online issue of Student ID!

We've decided to go electronic for this issue and hope to set up a brand new web-site after Easter... so keep an eye out for us from the College's front-page.

Many thanks to all the contributors in this issue, you know who you are... Dan, Immy, Ollie, Katy U, Rhi and Rob.

and vicki who lurks around in the background (apparently) ...

Happy Easter ! & Happy reading!

Traffic Sign Story

To Swede or not to Swede...

To swede or not to swede, that is the question. For those of you unfamiliar with the word, to swede is to make a low (or no) budget version of a popular film. A sweded film is a lot shorter than the original and due to the zero budget it can a lot more imaginative, for example: Terminator 2: Judgement Day swede set fire to amushroom to represent the mushroom cloud explosion of the apocalyptic vision depicted in Sarah Conner’s dream sequence. That’s just one piece of fried gold I have stumbled upon.
The term comes from the 2008 film “Be Kind Rewind” in which Jack Black’s brain gets magnetised and as a result he wipes all of the videotapes in his friend’s, played by Mos Def, video store. Due to a lack of funds they cannot buy new stock, instead they recreate the films on a zero budget and this happens to be very popular. They create the term “sweding” to describe their endeavours and since it has taken the internet by storm.
There are as many bad swedes as there are good, and some of the good ones are brilliant. And the beauty of sweding is anyone can do it, as long as you have a camera and the innovation to turn a roll of tinfoil into a badass Robocop costume! Also the ability to completely disregard how stupid you will look in said roll of tinfoil. Acting talent not necessary.

Here are some good swedes to be found on YouTube;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FeDpy3IUHA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5smBcpS9kc&feature=related

Air Cadets

Fiction Feast

Musical Munchies

Reviews of Gigs and Film

The Boy Friend

Focus on Chlamydia & Sports Relief

OSCARS & RAZZIES

London trip, (click to enlarge) and zoom

Ludlow College HUSTINGS

On 17th December 2009, around 150 students had a taste of what is to come of the upcoming election early this year by taking part in our very own Hustings event. If, like me, you did not know what on earth a Hustings was, it is a gathering of representatives (well, they are MPs, so that’s debateable) on a platform to present their views prior to an election. This gave politicians the chance to get some [much-needed] practice in before the election in either March or May. The drama studio took the form of a Question Time styled platform with a panel of seven people, me included, nervously sitting next to Emma Reynolds.

Each parliamentary candidate pitched their “vote for me” speech for a couple minutes each, before Roy (as people who know Dr Perry call him) took charge and moved everyone on to the main bulk of the Hustings. There were pre-agreed questions, suggested to Roy by everyone who wished to do so via Moodle (mostly sociology students!) which covered the Economy, Tuition fees, transport, government cuts and other subjects that our students were concerned with. Roy exerted his power over the parliamentary candidates and soon stopped them in their tracks if they went off topic (which they did a lot).

There were some amusing and incompetent answers to some questions during the two hours of discussion: Jacqui Morrish thought it was perfectly reasonable to solve Britain’s debt crisis by not building any more roads, which got a laugh from both me and people within the crowd. At this point I turned to Emma, who was next to me, and quietly said “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll help”. Generally, a lot of Morrish’s answers were put down by the other candidates as they already held the same policies and effectively rendered the Green Party useless.

Christopher Gill got a lot of cheers and applause from the crowd for some controversial views on immigration. I clapped too, but I got some odd frowns from Emma and Heather on my side of the table so I slowly stopped and pretended to be professional.

In general, all the participants seemed to make deliberate plays for votes to the audience with a slightly patronising tone which didn’t really work on any of us. As politicians often do, they spoke at length using as much complicated language as possible to baffle us – my response, when asked to pitch my views, was to say exactly what I meant without the confusing political frills. If I wanted something cut, I was straight to the point. However, the others, Phillip Dunne in particular seemed to dance around the issues of cuts and attempted to change the topic to his rehearsed spiel.

At one point, Emma Reynolds, who came on behalf of Labour as we did not have a parliamentary candidate for them at the time, was challenged. Some brave girl from the audience stood up and challenged her presence there as she was not local and therefore could not answer a question on local transport. This resulted in a slightly fiery response, but reliable Roy came through and stopped it to continue with the event.

I have to say, it was one of the most nerve racking things I have ever done and wouldn’t recommend doing it unless you would like shaky hands for a couple of hours. If you were there and saw me constantly drinking water, that was because it steadied my hands!

All in all, the Hustings was a success, being extremely lively at times and having regular audience questions fired at us. I was asked whether I would drop EMA for tuition fees – which I would do, considering tuition fees are worth much more. I hope everyone who was there enjoyed themselves and thanks for taking part.