ORONO – The harsh graphic violence in so many of today’s computer video games may seem impersonal as players wind their characters’ way through tunnels, fortresses and dangerous city streets, but a University of Maine new media professor believes there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.

“What people call entertainment is actually doing a lot of ideological work,” says professor Joline Blais. “If people work out all kinds of things as they play, they can be unconsciously acting out social and political conflicts in an attempt to understand them.”

The burgeoning billion-dollar computer game industry generates more cash than Hollywood and Blais, along with her New Media 398 students, recently studied what goes on and what drives our cultural fascination with violent, gender-biased, doom-predicting computer games.

The third conference in Still Water’s Code and Creativity series, titled “War Games: Making and Unmaking the World,” Sept. 17-24, featured some of the world’s leading computer game artists whose works reveal and re-create for players the parallels between computer games and power, politics and life.

Six national computer artists visited the Orono campus to deliver presentations, demonstrate new games and meet with students and the public to explore the art, theory and philosophy of computer games that place players in conflict simulations for military and entertainment purposes.

They discussed whether we are temporarily captured or freed by the magnetism of computer games. It’s a deeper discussion than wondering why Johnny remains glued to his PC or Game Boy on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

“We’re rethinking what games do to us,” says Blais, “For instance, why are millions of players thrilled about killing ‘bosses’ – the standard game term for villains?”

Substitute “corporate power” for “boss” and you begin to see where Blais is coming from.

Beneath the aggressive manipulation of speeding cars and high-powered weaponry to defeat enemies is an often overlooked layer of political and psychological role-playing serving as an outlet for the frustration felt in a big world with little power for the individual, according to Blais.

“I think that games, at least violent games, are satisfying a need for resistance in our culture,” she says, “but are we really conscious of what we’re doing when we play? It is really a paradoxical thing. I don’t think you can say violent games are all bad.”

Though not all games are violent, most involve conflict, and many are based on the military and war scenarios. Blais hoped the events helped raise awareness of social, political, economic and philosophical issues addressed by gaming.

“Games can often be just a cathartic release, and that worries me,” Blais said. “If there’s something wrong with the culture, you ought to be working it out in the culture. Games could help us work these things out. We ought to be using games not just to experience these tensions but to act on them outside the game world.”

That’s what the visiting game designers are exploring, Blais adds.

“This conference tackles the tensions at the heart of war-gaming and explores alternative design strategies in the company of some of today’s top game design artists,” Blais said on the Still Water Web site, which she runs with fellow new media professor Jon Ippolito. Many of the games are a plea for an end to violence and war, she said, “clever game worlds designed to help us play out scenarios for peace.”