Killergames, slightly differently seen

[Skybird]

Sorry, unfortunately this is in German only, a mainstream media article that reflects on Egoshooters, but looking at them slightly different, from a pespective that reminds me a bit on the way Romero's Zombie-movies could be interpreted as social-critique of the anonymous mass culture etc etc. The usual debate on whether or not these games do damage to the players, is almost completely bypassed. Good read.


http://www.welt.de/spiele/article13549437/Ego-Shooter-sind-mehr-als-nur-brutale-Killerspiele.html

[Penguin]

Good article - damned, this doesn't fit into my "Die Welt"-is-always-only-60%-right-doctrine :03:

Regarding zombie-movies: especially "Night Of The Living Dead" can be interpreted as so much more than just critizism of the mass-culture, it goes much deeper into human nature.

If someone wants to refresh the German zombie movie debate of the early 80s, look for Mama, Papa, Zombie on YouTube - hillarious :rotfl2:
Notice how much the arguments remain the same, the same way comic books were discussed 20 years before.
So this led that my generation got especially interested into zombie flicks, and we watched them at an earlier age than most people even do today. :arrgh!:

Interesting is also how well the lower-class kids in the youth center speak: clearly, quite eloquent and in whole sentences...

[Skybird]

"Die Welt" is extremely diverse in quality. They publish much garbage and many examples for bad journalistic work, but occasionally they also have real highlights on offer (with this article not even being one of them). It seems to me that some external authors deloiver most fo their good, with their in-office writers mostly representing what is bad. Usually labelled as "conservative", I would disagree with that and even see them as slightly left-leaning, again with outside writers occasionally marking opposite opinions indeed.

[Feuer Frei!]

A question to both of you. What is THE most respected German media outlet in the World at the moment?
If I want to keep abreast of the situation in Germany, and it's dealings throughout the world stage, what is the definitive unbiased and most concise outlet available to me? I read The Economist and Deutsche Welle.

[Penguin]

:hmmm: for the best newspaper, which tries to stay neutral and cover facts in deep, I would go with "die Zeit" - a weekly paper. Frankfurter Rundschau and Frankfurter Allgemeine are good daily papers, the first more left leaning, the second more conservative. The FAZ feuilleton has the best reputation in cultural articles.

The Süddeutsche used to be good, but went down in quality. Same with "der Spiegel" - but occasionally you find some good writing in both.
The good thing about Der Spiegel is that they have all articles in their archives, it is pretty good for research purposes of past events.

Deutsche Welle is good - and they pay well ;) They also try to be unbiased, as an alternative you could check out tagesthemen, a daily 30 minute tv news show, which tries to focus on the topics of the day, their website is ok, you can find much coverage there.

Personally I like the "Jungle World" :DL - which is an undogmatic leftist weekly paper. All articles are online after a week.

regarding German news on English, you might want to check out thelocal.de, a site for english-speaking immigrants, they have quite short coverage, but may be a good start to see what's up in Deutschland.

[Skybird]

A question to both of you. What is THE most respected German media outlet in the World at the moment?
There ain't no such thing.

I quote Der Spiegel very often only for one reason: it is the only major heavyweight amongst the German newspapers that maintains a huge English-written section.

I daily skim over the headlines of these:

- FOCUS (balacning in the middle between left and right, but also being quite populistic)
- FAZ (conservative, PC mainstream)
- Spiegel (both German and international edition) (sometimes quite conservative, sometimes left-leaning)
- Der Tagespiegel (conservative, but cheesy covering of Berlin city issues)
- Die Welt (sometimes left, sometimes more right, sometimes good, sometimes dilletantic, sometimes opportunistic)
- IP Global (published by the German Council for Foreign Relations)
and rarely: - Die Zeit (covering the ground from centre to slight left, but often giving in-depth essays)

Bad jobs of just paste&copy you would get from -Frankfurter Rundschau, -erliner Morgenpost, and many others.

Bad and ideologicially heavily biased (extreme left) are -Die Tageszeitung (TAZ) and the -Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Deutsche Welle has had a solid reputation (the German BBC World Service, so to speak)in the past, but I just never used it, so I cannot really comment.

Nice also is this: -Die Achse des Guten. Plenty of political queer-thinking and subversive commenting against political correctness. My much liked Henryk Broder is a major contributor and co-founder there.

FAZ and Die Zeit are imagined to be the traditional papers for the conservative and business people. Sueddeutsche is associated with being the traditional paper of the left-leaning academic soft sciences: teachers, philosophers, pedagogues, social scientists, psychologists etc.

Unfortunately, the most influential and indeed policy-making paper is Bild. It is not just reporting, but it is manipulating by inention. Alskmostr all mpoliticians cannot afford to ignore it. It'S also the biggest daily paper in all Europe, with Der Spiegel being the biggest weekly magazine.

One of the worst papers there is, at the same time is the biggest and most powerful. That says something about our societies, and our people.

[Thomen]

I used to read 'Rheinische Post' which, imho was quite good back in the days. And of course the Bild and Express for kicks and giggles. :D

But yea.. as it was said above, I'd go with FAZ, Die Zeit, maybe Focus.. and Spiegel only if they have something that I am really interested in.

[Penguin]

I used to read 'Rheinische Post' which, imho was quite good back in the days. And of course the Bild and Express for kicks and giggles. :D


The Rheinische Post made a rapid decline. While I never like their conservative stance, they used to have extensive articles. I think they made some deep budget cuts. Today they mostly only parrot dpa-articles.
Their website is a medium catastrophy, written by analphabets.
They still have a kind of monopoly here on the regional news, that's why they still do ok in print.
For NRW news, you can check out derwesten.de, unfortunately they focus mainly on the Pott, and less on D'town.

And Express still is, as it always was, a great paper for giggles! :D They lack Bild's malignance, which makes it the better yellow paper.

[Feuer Frei!]

Vielen Dank for the tips, meine Herr'n!

[Growler]

First person shooters don't make "better killers" any more than sports video games make better athletes.

There's a reason simulator training doesn't allow pilots to recertify.