Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate scientists are thrilled they have found a way to bypass parents and schools, and talk directly to the children of strangers via the internet.
Scientists are playing Fortnite to talk to kids about climate change
POSTED TUE 30 OCT 2018, 6:45PM
Stephen StockwellAfter hearing an 11 year-old’s Fortnite video got more views than a climate change lecture, Henri Drake had an idea.
A red haired cowgirl grabs a submachine gun from a building and as she runs away from the oncoming storm, the player in control starts talking about the impact CFC emissions have on global warming.
“We basically have since banned those materials… but we found out last year that the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere is increasing again.”
The cowgirl is Henri Drake, a casual gamer and climate scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the game is Fortnite, a crazy popular multiplayer shooter game.
It’s a strange mix, but by creating the ClimateFortnite Twitch channel Henri is hoping to use the games popularity to explain global warming and climate policy to a wider audience.
He’s not going it alone, there’s other scientists either playing with him or just hanging around to answer the questions thrown out by viewers. Scientists like Chris, a masters student at Boston University, who is on hand to field a question about the Paris climate agreement thrown out at the start of one game.
…
Right place, right time.
This climate Q&A stream almost started by accident. A few months ago, when playing Fortnite in his PhD downtime, Henri Drake saw a tweet from climate scientist Katharine Heyhoe about how her son’s gaming vids were getting heaps more views than her lectures.
“I put two and two together and figured I could stream it on twitch,” Herni tells Hack.
Even though ClimateFortnite is still fresh it feels pretty well received.
“Part of the gaming community really likes it,” Henri said.
I get a lot of kids who are scared about what climate change means for their future, they come on and like being able to ask their question directly to an expert.”
…
Fornite is a massive first person shooter multiplayer game, where kids get to create 3D characters and interact with large numbers of other kids online.
What do you guys think? Personally I have a big problem with random adults deliberately seeking unsupervised access to the children of strangers so they can proselytise their climate faith without the permission of parents. I don’t think Henri Drake and his friends are intentionally doing anything wrong, but this violates my sense of boundaries, of appropriate behaviour in a big way.
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fight fire with fire. Create skeptic players. Ask them for data. Let the kids see that data matters.
Perhaps simply create your own fortnight character and begin killing off all those characters you run into who are spouting AGW/CACA nonsense or reporting them for spouting foul untruths and get them banned
Nothing should be allowed to get in the way of children learning to use automatic weapons and go getting involved in a rampage of mindless gratuitous violence. Trivializing killing of other human beings is an essential part of their preparation for future life.
Distracting them with BS about climate may cause them to loose their edge. This could affect their performance when they decide to shoot up a synagogue or a country festival , or massacre civilians as a drone pilot later in life.
/sarc
Maybe someone should start a character who teaches them weapon safety and explain why the second amendment is there.
As for these activist “experts” , let them waste their time. Then get them sacked for wasting public money doing online gaming instead of the scientific research they are being payed to do.
now thats a plan;-)
I doubt the kids playing to win are going to listen, the aim is to wipe out any opponents I gather
might be amusing to see how many zealots get wiped out in what time frame
Lol, this is basically what’s going to happen on its own. These kids are not going to want to hear a lecture while they are playing a video game. Add it to the list of ideas that will backfire.
I would assume your average 12 year old would have killed the average climate scientists in the first 5 seconds in a game of Fortnite.
Sounds like the fool proposing this was already playing games on work time and probably game addict himself. Not a newcomer.
“I get a lot of kids who are scared about what climate change means for their future”
… and the best idea he has is to scare them some more by indoctrinating them with even more alarmist BS.
“I get a lot of kids who are scared about what climate change means for their future”
Exactly. It’s alarmist’s fault they’re scared in the first place. And they say climate change is causing mental illness? No, it’s alarmists doing so. This is just plain sick.
Indeed – if those “kids” were told the TRUTH (about what a house of cards the whole “climate change” scare is based on – all the data (if you can even call it that) quality issues, the uncertainties, the doubts, and the total lack of any empirical evidence that more “greenhouse gases” will do what they SAY), the kids would quickly realized that there’s nothing to be “scared” OF.
Don’t worry, anyone trying to talk ‘climate change’ during the game will instantly identify themselves as a weirdo – and be blocked to prevent further communication. No one, not even kids, wants to hear that BS during their leisure time.
Yeah, anyone who starts a plonking sermon on such a site would not get a welcome reception.
“Get woke, go broke!”
Tom
I don’t play online games so I have no idea what kids think on there.
I rather like Eric’s approach that adults finding a way into influencing kids on anything online will be abused by some unsavoury members of our society like alarmists and paedophiles.
I was thinking of one of my nephews ten or twelve years ago who was an avid gamer rather than my own experiences.
I have played a couple of online games.Most players are somewhat more right than left in the first person RPGs
I thunk the Left doesn’t get past angry birds
My kids know not to talk to strangers, even in video games. They have their friend lists, and stick to that.
I’ll double check with them tonight to insure that they are still following the rules.
I would like to know if these “experts” are doing this ‘important’ work on their own time, or while being paid. I sure hope tax dollars are not paying these people to play Fortnight.
Jeff in Calgary
When kids are presented with an authority figure they frequently succumb to their persuasive manner. That’s how paedo’s work. Your kid’s might not be contacted directly by the alarmists but there’s no guarantee messages aren’t being relayed by children of less vigilant parents.
I do this on my own time and only do science during work hours. I am very thankfully for my grant funding from the National Science Foundation. Your tax dollars are being used to study deep ocean currents which, while also important in climate science, are of significant interest to other stakeholders like the Navy (submarine environments), internet infrastructure, deep sea mining, and the fishing industry.
When I worked with the world’s largest computer company, and was in charge of “Cool Things” on the website of the Olympic Games, one of my many functions was “Children’s Protection Advocate”. This basically consisted of preventing the company, and any one else, from capturing and storing the email addresses of children or trying to use children’s features for advertising or gain.
It is morally wrong for adults to be masquerading as children in order to propagandize them about anything. It is particularly wrong for them to use this propaganda to attempt to frighten the children even further about something that is not a threat to them in present time (if ever).
It is questionable if children should be playing multiplayer internet games which involve shooting and killing indiscriminately.
I am particularly worried about “adults who would be found playing online multi-player first person shooter games” giving our children advice or information about ANYTHING. Such persons are extremely unlikely to be the type of people I would ask to advise children.
(with apologies to players of online shooter games — my apology doesn’t change my opinion above, however.)
Well said Kip. I think it is disgusting of them to do this.
+10!
The left is indoctrinating the whole world…as if schools, magazines, media, everything on the internet
Try going to any online forum about anything….gardening…..10 people will come on and quote skeptical science word for word
Compared to those on the right, a higher percentage of lefties do not profess a religious faith. Instead, they adhere to their leftward ideology more fanatically than those on the right adhere to their conservative ideology. Thus the left feels a compelling need to proselytize others to their political “faith,” and their “religious” message is couched in PC talk and sociology jargon.
Kip;
My sons are 8 and 12. We don’t let them play hardly any first-person POV shooter games. We have recently relented for the Legend of Zelda, but currently we feel that smacking blobs with a sword is sufficiently removed from the real world that it won’t desensitize them to violence against their school mates. They also play Smash Brothers, which I’m not too keen on but Mom has given it the seal of approval, so…
Way back when I was an “impressionable” wee sprout – we ALL played Cowboys and Indians.
But the last “Indian Massacre” occurred FIFTY-NINE years before I was born. (Battle of Kelley Creek, 1911).
How is that? All of that pretend violence (mostly by white kids, although I knew a couple of Reservation kids that said they played it, too – except the “Indians” tended to win in their games…), and there are still more than five million “redskins” running around?
(“Cheaters” who didn’t fall down and “die” when they were shot were about as popular as “spawn campers” are these days. They apparently were easier to ban from the game, though, from what my kids tell me.)
Observer: Interesting bit about the Rez kids. In Alaska where I mostly grew up, it was a bit different. There was no rez. but us native families and the not so native families (mostly russkis and norskis) all knew who we were. The boys all played fighting games. The girls mostly didn’t unless our bothers co-opted us to even out the sides or something. They ran around chasing each other, shouting bang bang stuff except when the weather forced them indoors. Then out came the plastic army men.
Must be a guy thing regardless of ethnic background.
I suspect the popularity of westerns on TV back in the day contributed to the popularity of “Cowboys and Indians” in the playground. Cops and robbers is another “classic” playground game. Similarly, in the post-1977 era, playing “star wars” became popular on playgrounds. It all depends on what is culturally relevant to the kids as to which flavor of pretend battles they “fight” on the playgrounds.
Kip Hansen
Whilst I largely agree with you, my personal favourite ‘shoot em up game’ in the early 70’s was Action Man. My interaction with him never did me any harm, indeed, I think exposure to violence gives kids a perspective in later life rather than an influence.
However I read a disturbing report of a childhood friend of mine, a few years older than me, who was locked up for kiddy fiddling a few years ago. He exhibited no sexual interest in me or my friends at the time. He didn’t need the internet to pursue his predatory activities, indeed most paedophiles are family members or well known to the victims, and he was a Scout leader.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-31147355
In the early 70’s I used to play “army” with my cousins…in which we indiscriminately deployed tens of armed forces about the house, in the form of plastic army guys, cannons, tanks, airplanes, boats, etc., of various states of readiness to destroy the “enemy” with every viciousness of today’s modern online interpolations, only then we used our minds, bodies and the corner wall rather than a monitor/screen to exact our battle tolls.
Of course no one ever won a battle since neither of the opposing forces could ever decide who it was that shot whom first:
“I got you!”
“Nuh uh…I got you first!”
“Nuh uh, I got you…”
And then naturally this might often lead to actual “combat” between the gods of the plastic toys, which was quickly resolved with a few very slight bruise(s), a tear or two and maybe a few minutes in their respective corners, a punishment exacted by the gods of the gods, i.e., our parents.
From there it moved to sitting shoulder to shoulder, wide-eyed and laughing, watching cartoons of Bugs Bunny defeat an armed (and oft shooting) Elmer Fudd, and then poor Wile E. Coyote being constantly slaughtered by a silly bird with a speech impediment, who, though he possessed quite some exorbitant escape speed from the not-so-wily Canis, did nevertheless also choose to murder the poor dog with his (i.e., the dogs) own devices and did so regularly, I can only assume with some evil joy, since we never really did know what exactly the bird was saying, only that he appeared to be smiling contentedly as he left the wretched death scene in a cloud of success and accomplishment.
The point being, all and none of which appears to have resulted in our psychological well-being being affected in any marked way of which we can honestly track, e.g., becoming a mass murderer, killer, wanton murderer of animals for pleasure, etc. And back then we acted out the acts of destruction with mind, body and sometimes wooden/other implements of some hardness that could put a knot upon a moron’s head who failed to duck at the appropriate juncture. Not just a keyboard nor a controller.
What’s the difference between now and then?
Well…I can’t know for sure since I’m “then” rather than “now,” however, I suspect much of “then” is different than “now” in that we had no reason to question the morals we were taught on top of all the ruckus. There was respect for both our parents and other authorities, which included a desire to avoid the pitfalls of abusing one’s parents by disrespecting them with recalcitrance, resulting thereafter in the abuse of our behinds by those we’d abused, and who were having none of that nonsense from the ilks of we, who only just recently (at least in their minds) had proceeded from their respective loins.
Nay rather, there was a reason to be “good,” if not for the fact that disappointment of one’s parent was a shameful event, moreover, if we weren’t good, the discipline (and the hurt of the rod upon our backs) of our parents was enough to keep one in line, that is, given one was caught…and we always were damn the luck.
I’m not sure today that even the idea of being caught matters any longer to the hooligans of “now.”
Get out of my head!
Seriously, thank you – I wouldn’t be up to that much typing tonight. Absolutely perfect essay.
Many thanks!
sycomputing
I have a 37 year old son and 24 and 20 year old daughters. All have been brought up with internet access. Three more normally adjusted children I couldn’t hope for. Furthermore, their acquaintances and friends are also all quite normal with a healthy respect for their parents.
“I’m not sure today that even the idea of being caught matters any longer to the hooligans of “now.””
As an ex policeman, I can promise you the attitude of hooligans has never changed one bit.
As an ex policeman, I can promise you the attitude of hooligans has never changed one bit.
I’m with you, HS. I guess the question for many of us who are “then” is, “Why does it appear that there are so many more hooligans in the “now” than there were in the “then”?”
If the appearance is the reality, the internet with all its wares would not be my first point of blame. Anyway, not a question for this forum…
In Australia we have “Working with Kids” legislation. Do they have the necessary clearance? Are they “grooming” kids?
Lee
In respect to the main post, yes they are grooming kids, to believe in something that they cannot prove. They are coming into your house, talking to your kids.
Folks don’t quite get the fact that the perpetrators are coming into your house, talking to your kids without your concent, about matters that you have a different opinion on.
Regards
The “Working With Kids” screening requirements provide a false sense of security. As someone who has been through the process, all that is required is the police check the name you submit against a database of known offenders. It works on the assumption that all offenders are ‘known’ and that ‘known offenders’ submit the name under which they will be found in the database.
As an aside, when employed as a casual Childcare Worker, my ‘Working With Kids’ clearance arrived three (3) months after I had started working with the littlies.
Completely agree, Kip! Adults should not be sneaking into kiddo games, while pretending to be kiddos! It is hard enough to be a kiddo today without meddling adults trying to shape their thinking. Besides, how is this different from online predators attempting to lure these innocents into their lairs.
If Fortnite were marketed as being exclusively for minors I wouldn’t think this is appropriate. But is that really the case? Searching on-line I could only find demographics for adult Fortnite players, only 2/3rds of which are 18-24. What proportion of the total audience are minors?
Besides, isn’t the interaction really in the twitch channel, not in the game itself? Someone voluntarily seeking out a ClimateTwitch channel, even if under 18, should have an idea what they’re exposing themselves to.
I’m not sure there’s anything to be upset about here, other than thinking that the likes of Hayhoe are actually good sources for reliable information about AGW impacts and policies.
And what portion of those are lying about their age to be able to play without adult intervention?
Took a quick look this morning at the game website. This is one of those that are “free to play” – but to get the “cool” stuff, you have to spend game money.
Now, you can get that “money” by playing the game, for many arduous hours. But the fast way is to pay real money to the game company for game money. According to the gaming site I checked, the estimate is that they are raking in several hundred million a month from people wanting to level up quickly.
So, yes, it is targeted to adults in the main. Or at least teenagers with jobs and a bank account. Despite a few horror stories of younger kids getting hold of the parent’s credit cards, there really isn’t all that much company revenue coming from that. Hmm, wonder if the CCs being used by the “researchers” are government issued…
(I don’t look at these sites very often. They only remind me that I went into the wrong branch of computer programming!)
The scientist was inspired by his 11yr old son’s Fortnite activities, so I think its appropriate to say he is targeting children on Fortnite information service.
… on his Fortnite information service.
Eric, if I’m reading the article correctly the scientist was inspired by *Hayhoe’s* 11-year old son getting more views on his gaming video than Hayhoe did on her climate video. And he saw Hayhoe’s tweet *while playing Fortnite*. So Henri Drake was *already* playing Fortnite, and his idea was that talking about climate while live streaming himself playing Fortnite would be more compelling than him just talking about climate. He’s not preaching climate change to kids *playing* Fortnite, he’s preaching climate change to whoever wants to watch *him* play Fortnite.
Now is it true that the set of people who would want to watch Fortnite live-streamed while talking about climate is mostly kids? Maybe so, as such a person would have to be bored and have much time on their hands. But I can’t see where his clearly-named twitch channel does anything specific at all to target minors, unless the game itself is played mostly by minors. I couldn’t find that information online, but if only 2/3rds of the adult players are 24 and under, I doubt it — certainly Drake himself is not a minor, and he already plays it.
It also occurs to me that if any skeptics enjoy watching live-streamed Fortnite, they might enjoy asking uncomfortable questions in his twitch channel.
Hi Eric, I actually don’t have a son. We welcome all people on the Fortnite stream but in particular encourage young people as they will experience more climate impacts than older folk, just by virtue of living more years in a higher CO2 world. Cheers.
I don’t think Henri Drake and his friends are intentionally doing anything wrong…I do big time
If nothing else, they are using a kids game to push their agenda…without identifying themselves as adults pushing an agenda….
Ends.Justify.Means.
Ends.Justify.Memes.
Wot I meant to say.
What? The name of the channel is ClimateFortnite and my username is ClimateScientist. I am absolutely identifying myself as an adult who is advocating for better understanding of climate science.
Broken climate science is leaking into all forms of entertainment and education along with other broken concepts. I blame a heavily biased media that repeats the same lies over and over until people start to believe them. Alarmists of all stripes would have no traction whatsoever if not for this effective technique and lies that trigger a strong emotional response are very effective at convincing about half of the population. To be clear, the media isn’t to blame for the lies, just for propagating them without proper due diligence as their bias rationalizes proper due diligence as meaning to get information from only one side.
Diabolical: Defending an indefensible position is a core behavior of humankind. I remember an old WOR New York all night radio show by the Amazing Randi. Randi spent his off-stage time debunking fraudulent opportunistic mental spoon-bending magicians like Geller. His program consisted of describing confirmation bias as it related to the newly incorporated New York Mets. Seriously, Randi observed once a person takes a public position that person will defend it to the grave. We might as well quit if they get to the kids.
I arranged to speak to the Toronto District School Board about “An Inconvenient Truth” which was shown in all the schools. They put me off and delayed until they offered 3 minutes in their schedule 3 months ahead. I quit trying.
Take a look at what Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s Liberal leader responsible for that party losing its status in the last election said last week on why the Green Energy Act should not be repealed:
“It is impossible to explain to children what this government is doing. There is no rational way of saying that the health of the Earth is not important to the adults running the province. There’s no way to say that in a way that children can understand.”
The new government is fulfilling an election promise.
James Randi is a raving global warming alarmist; the gold-standard ‘reference case’ for irrational belief.
“James Randi is a raving global warming alarmist;”
I’m not sure about that. Back in 2009 (??) he expressed skepticism about CAGW and was roundly chided by his claque on his site. He backed off, but I’m sorry to hear he’s given in to peer pressure.
Those who advocate ruthless indoctrination will use any method and platform available to achieve their goals.
Desperate people do desperate things, no matter how silly they are.
The media, Disney for example, give our kids a warped vision of reality. link Some folks insist that video games have a pernicious effect. link
On the other hand … culture is very sticky. A study of CEO performance showed that CEOs with certain national backgrounds outperformed others. The Poles did better than the Irish for instance. The surprising thing is that the effect lasted as many as six generations after immigration to America. link
The media don’t have nearly the effect on our kids that some folks warn us about. Attempting to infiltrate a video game seems to me like a high effort low reward activity.
commieBob
Agreed.
I probably didn’t read a newspaper until I was in my 30’s. Politics didn’t interest me until my 50’s, climate change shortly thereafter.
Most of this stuff just goes over kids heads. Indeed, kids being kids, they are entirely likely to rebel against what they have been spoon fed when they get into their late teens/early twenties. Climate change and the ridiculous concept of AGW will be no different.
commieBob
It was Tom & Jerry that did it for me. My wife complains like hell when I dress up in a cat suit* and chase her round the house. I usually come off second best though. 🙂
* The thought doesn’t bear thinking about!
Sockpuppetry, creeping near children and being dull conversationalists.
These people fulfil every negative stereotype about scientists.
Which is OK as most climate scientists aren’t really doing science in the first place.
No Pressure!
https://youtu.be/FS5CH-Xc0co
The funniest thing about that video was reading the Granuid comments on the video.
The early comments were supportive, however as time went on more people chimed in to explain at length that “Blowing up people that question you” is not actually funny.
It simply demonstrated to all and sundry that a sizeable percentage of the granuid readership are howling psychopaths.
There is a problem with Fortnite
Add identity theft and cyber bullying to a search of this game.
The fact that this game is dealing will two groups of predators shows the mind set of these “climate scientist”
People who play games online are not there to be lectured.
In my view this is cyber bulling, it is no different then pursue someone from one room to another to force them to accept whatever their political or social views are. It is stalking.
michael
If the community is anything like that of World of Warcraft, whenever someone tries to start a serious conversation in Orgrimar about his pet peeve, everyone else starts to pile on and ridicule the person. It’s a great feeding frenzy of opinions and ridicule.
It’s probably a safer environment that you think, against those would-be prosthelytizers.
It sounds to me that the fake gamers are creating a video of their fake game play. Then posting that video amongst other Fortnite game videos.
I doubt any kid will watch the video for more than a few seconds. None will watch the entire video.
Deluded activists masquerading as kids do not count.
Once the word gets out, kids will avoid these videos just by spotting who made it or who posted it.
Yes, it is very creepy and definitively unethical.
His channel has 733 followers (this is nothing on twitch) People streaming the Fortnite game alone attracts 32,096,069 Followers on Twitch.
with only 3581 channel views it’s surprising the channel is “affiliated” (which activates monetisation i.e. paid for subscriptions & adverts) this is only usually given to streamers with much higher viewerships, indicating Twitch has given them some sort of preferential treatment.
Anyone streaming Fortnite who isn’t a) good at the game b) streaming it for the sole purpose of attracting followers, gets known as a click-bait streamer pretty quickly, and avoided. Twitch is primarily a gamers platform.
You can view a video of his latest stream on the channel link above, it’s rubbish, the few answers he gave to viewers seemed full of doom hubris to me.
I suspect it’ll be ignored, or eventually get trolled to death, i.e. so many people will be breaking Twitch terms of service in the chat it’ll become too much of a moderation burden.
Some streamers have been banned from twitch because they became a target of “swatting” i.e. viewers research the home address/location of the streamer, make up some ruse to get a SWAT team to visit them while live on air (search twitch swatting on youtube, it’s quite a big problem). If his stream becomes popular with trolls it’ll be something he will have to watch out for.
You’re right, I don’t have many followers. Being an “affiliate” at twitch is not very difficult and only requires 50+ followers and a few dozen hours of streaming under the belt. You might be thinking of “partner” status, which requires a sustained high view count, which I hope to achieve some day. I consider myself a gamer and while I’m not very good at Fortnite yet, I’ve played other games semi-competitively, certainly at a high enough level to warrant streaming. I hope I do not get swatted and if I do, I will press charges.
This will be as big a failure as the chappadoodle rescue in Fortnite.
No, No, No, this approach is ALL wrong, Ghesh! Repeat after me…’scared’ is GOOD…asking ‘questions’ is BAD. Gottit!!! We alarmists have worked diligently for decades to achieve both scared and uninformed. Now you have gone and wrecked everything!
Don’t fret, the information coming from those PHD students will be just as ill-informed as that coming out of the Guardian newspaper. It’s still a win-win for Climate Science. And they get hated by the next generation to boot, what’s not to like?
Like this?
http://media.ifunny.com/results/2014/04/23/fda55x9i59.jpg
Henri Drake plays a Cowgirl?… geez. Just what the world needs, another video game GIRL (Guy In Real Life). I wonder if he has gender identity issues.
Being that so many of the kid play are boys 10-15, I wonder how many called the climate scientists gay, their go to slur?
I seem to recall that when Obama ran the first time, there were Obama billboards showing up in console racing games.
They’re YOUR kids, not theirs.
Pay attention.
My instant and gut reaction was – this is ‘grooming’ children that have yet to develop the filtering skills of adults.
In a different context, this sort of thing would have the adult run out of town – figuratively speaking.
So, how is this approach, different?
The intentions may be seen as laudable on the perpetrators side – yet the manipulation of the young for specific ADULT values, is distasteful at best, sinister at worst.
If I were trying to brainwash a group of people, I’d get to them early – and covertly.
NOT happy with this approach in any way at all..
Yep, definitely creepy. I certainly wouldn’t have boasted about it, but then again academia isn’t noted for it’s grasp of simple common sense
David….grooming is the word I couldn’t think of….you’re exactly right
First of all Fortnight is a third person battle royal game not a first person shooter.
Second no kid playing fortnight would give a crap about what any moron spewing BS is saying to them, in fact I can guarantee they would mostly make fun of them.
What scares me is that these crazy’s think it’s OK to go online and indocuranate kids online. Where I come from they would call people like that predators.
Bob – I would hope your were correct in the players not paying attention to what they are being ‘feed’.
That however is our hope.
Nip away on this and other fronts, and eventually the ‘information’ seeps in.
Theres that old saying of ‘How do you eat an elephant?’
Simply answer is – ‘One mouthful at a time’
A red haired cowgirl grabs a submachine gun from a building and as she runs away from the oncoming storm, the player in control starts talking about the impact CFC emissions have on global warming.
And the last thing they hear are the words, “GET GOOD, NOOB!”
In all honestly the only thing to take out of this is just how out of touch the Australian ABC and their child ‘Triple J’ are with the rest of the universe.
First – Fortnite is a ‘BattleRoyale’ game. 100 players enter, 1 player leaves, start new game, repeat. There is no in game chat. So this ‘scientist’ is not talking to in game players like the article wants you to believe, but on his little twitch stream.
Twitch streams are, in real terms, nothing. If I could be bothered I could probably in the space of 30 minutes set up my own and talk about Jane Webb novels. Would that be news? “Random Australian Dude uses Fortnite to answer questions on Regency Era Sci Fi!”
The second point is the utter snobbery displayed by our Cultural Elite towards the concept of video games as entertainment.
The clear implication is that video games are aimed at and played by kids and hehehe, look at the children with their little games. Fact check people, the video industry is worth BILLIONS. Look at the ads on the sides of buses. Notice stuff like Fallout 76 and Red Dead Redemption 2 at the moment? Wonder why they are there? Because people who play games are willing to pay for those ads by buying and playing those games.
Games are real. People play them. Significant amounts of money is involved and there is an argument that gaming has or soon will replace cinema as the world’s primary form of entertainment.
You don’t have to take part in gaming yourself, but to dismiss it as just a little thing ‘kids’ do is really displaying both your ignorance and arrogance.
I haven’t got a problem with adults playing MMORPGs on which kids also play, I used to play WOW for a few years. I’m sure a lot of the other players were kids.
What I think is inappropriate is deliberately reaching out to kids like his 11yr old son, to promote a point of view, especially a point of view on a topic as politically charged as climate change, effectively bypassing parental supervision.
Hi Eric.
Probably didn’t word myself fully.
My issues are several. First is the concept of ‘educating’ via the media of online games. While I agree with and support the concern towards someone attempting to use the medium of online gaming to ‘answer questions’ from children, I feel the (Aust) ABC is attempting to claim non existing glory for a process that in all likelihood wont work in an industry the classic arts types are openly snobby about.
So, in point form;
– Is it remotely ethical for adults to pro-actively attempt to ‘answer questions’ to pre-teens? (regardless of topic and regardless of medium) No.
– Would the described method – narrating the topic via a Twitch channel whilst playing Fortnite – actually reach a significant precent of the intended audience? (regardless of the age and ethics involved). No. Anyone using in game chat during a BattleRoyale style PvP game to try and lecture is going to get owned. Noob. Attempting to use a Twitch channel is firstly education by deception – which I disagree with btw – and also attempting to bring a rubbish product into a very competitive and crowded market. In short it is a moronic idea that would only be promoted as ‘news’ by a network that is both massively bias towards Green politics AND has a condescending snob attitude towards gaming in general.
Which bring me to,
Are the Arty Elite arrogant snobs who completely dismiss video gaming as a quaint little thing that only children and basement dwellers engage in? Yes.
Let me put the scale of the industry into a bit of context. Solo – A Star Wars Flop apparently made about $180 million during opening week type sales. By comparison Fallout 4 is reported as making initial sales of $750 million. Gaming is a big industry with a big market who has a lot of money to spend. It is not just a few kids and unemployed acne factories. Yes kids DO play games but not only would I like to suggest that kids don’t have immediate access to $750 million, but also remind people that games have classification and not all games are suitable to all people.
(as a side note I have noted that many parents posting here have expressed views about what games they are willing to let their children play, to which I am completely supportive. A parent that does not take interest in what their children are doing is a parent that needs question marks raised over.)
So I am not as such disagreeing with the people who have concerns about adults attempting to ‘answer questions’ at children, I do have a broader range of displeasure at the entire process and the associated media reporting and apologise if I came over as dismissive earlier.