About two/three weeks ago I watched the documentary Love Child (Veatch, 2014) in the course of the Copenhagen Dox Festival. The location was uniquely chosen for the screening - we were in the Let's Play Netcafé, the audience sitting on individual PC's, watching the film together alone with headphones on their respective screens. While the organisers of the festival did a good job with choosing this location and enabling the audience to self-reflect, the documentary failed to do the same.
It tells the story of a couple in South Korea who fail to look after their child because of their gaming habit. The child dies of malnutrition while the parents are out playing an online massive multiplayer role-playing game all night long.
Besides the narrator the story and the issues connected to it are presented and discussed by people involved in the case or in any way close to the couple. The police officer dealing with the case, a western journalist covering the incident, the owner of the game center they played in, some other gamers, researchers, the attorney and a games developer are asked to either tell their version of the case or specific questions to clarify some issues and get some insight.
Since the creater Valerie Veatch and the majority of her team have a US American perspective on gaming and the documentary is shot in the conventions of western film, they do a great job in explaining how the South Korean society differs in terms of technology and the peoples approach to it. What is only slowly happening in Europe and the USA, is already standard in South Korea. Gaming is a respected and widespread leisure activity and even a way to make money. Professional gamers are celebrated and known just like athletes. Therefore gaming has another stand within the Southern Korean society. However, while watching the film it becomes apparent that in terms of problematic gaming, they do not seem to be any closer than researchers elsewhere - at least they do not show that.
The problem with this documentary is that it poses more questions than it answers. Instead of searching for a way to understand the phenomenon of problematic gaming, they portray the various ways gaming can be problematic without questioning how this could have happened or looking at the broader context. The instances where something similar to a bigger picture shines through it is not discussed critically. For instance it is mentioned that the couple used the online game as a source of income and playing all night for a bargain enabled them to get some money. Hence the economic situation plays a role but is not discussed any further as to why they had no social security or job or possibilty of making money elsewhere.
Additionally the terminology used is questionable since game addiction, internet addiction and problematic and excessive gaming are used interchangeably.
The film takes the viewer from the game centre, to the research facilities (where the researchers seem to have a slight problem with their design choices - have you ever seen full blown pink Hello Kitty computers? not pretty!) where other gamers who knew the couple get treated for game addiction with, in my opinion, rather questionable methods. They see pretty pictures and hear nice music as a positive input, then they will see game scenes and afterwards negative pictures and sounds (such as screams) as negative input in order to establish a negative feeling towards games. I am not sure if this is helpful or effective, but then again I am not a psychologist.
A main concern of the film seems to be the fact that the game contains the feature of a companion the player character has to take care of. It is not possible to play the game successfully without the little child-like creature. It seems fitting to use it to juxtapose the real life inability to care for a child while in game being able to take care of another being. This, however, does in my opinion not make sense. An in game compagnion can not be compared to the feelings a parent has for its child. The responsibilities and implications are extremely different and it is folly to make this comparison. It just seems to fit the story nicely and makes what happened all the more dramatic.
I could go on for some length but I want you to take a look yourself and form your own opinion. I still think it is an interesting documentary and especially for researchers and gamers like us worth taking a look at to also learn what should not be left out when covering a story like this.
References
Veatch, (2014). Love Child. HBO.
On Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Child_%282014_film%29
Copenhagens Let's Play Centre: http://letsplay2000.dk/
The Game they played:
CJI, (2008). Prius Online (retitled: Arcane Saga Online). CJI.
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