Those of you with the steel stomach to listen to my drunk Rock Paper Shotgun appearance with Kieron Gillen heard me blabber on at some length about adult games and mature content. Coincidentally, my Kotaku feature for this month is also up today, wherein I treat a similar topic with hopefully at least slightly more clarity.
Talked to Dangerous High School Girls' Keith Nemitz and Bethesda's Erik Caponi for the story, both of whom were amazingly insightful on the key question: What will it take for "mature" to be more than a rating?
Also, vaguely related, I said I was finished talking about RapeLay, but when I was invited to write for an audience of parents at What They Play, I thought it was an important thing to do. Information's our best weapon, you know?
So yeah, I've been super busy in the past week, hence SVGL updates getting a little slower -- Team Gamasutra is ramping up for GDC next week, probably the busiest time of year for us as trade journos. I also have to give a presentation, which kind of terrifies me -- so if you'll be at GDC and see me, say hi, but please don't heckle me!
I'll try to post brief updates on GDC during the week, but don't be surprised if I'm too busy!
Thursday, March 19, 2009
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11 comments:
I agree that the audience is there. As much as some people want a mature treatment of these themes in their games, I think a lot of them realize that they'll fall flat if they're not well-integrated into an interactive system.
It would be trivial to add cutscenes that mimic mature movies (we could just steal scenes if we wanted), but actually modeling realistic emotional--or intellectual--responses is extremely difficult. You have made some promising comments about eroges, but I remain skeptical.
Someone will probably describe this challenge as one of "ludonarrative dissonance."
Great article, as always.
My friend Ross over at the Weekly Geek wrote an article on similar themes a while back. His ultimate conclusion was that we won't have a genuinely mature game until we have one that a child simply would have no interest in playing. I think we are starting to get there -- Jason Rohrer's games certainly come to mind, but are of course not very high profile.
As far as more mainstream games go, I think there are a few games that are, at least, partway there. Braid and Killer7 both have deceptively populist facades ("find princess, who is in a castle, while manipulating time" and "an assassin with multiple personality disorder hired to take down a terrorist organization" respectively), when they are in fact both dense, difficult, and completely incomprehensible without serious thought. Killer7's plot analysis is more than twice the length of any walkthroughs of the game; and we're all aware of the volumes of blog posts speculating over what Braid might actually be talking about, all of which were met with a resounding "nope!" from the game's creator.
So, yeah, mature games do exist. They're few and far between, and even when a major studio and major names put them out, they tend not do to too well (Braid's successes certainly would not be such if it was not made by a single man). What we really need, at this point, is more Braids, more Killer7s, and for one of them to actually worm it's way into the public consciousness, saying "hey. I'm here. I'm legitimate."
I think one thing that needs to be dealt with is that many video games depend on motion of some sort. Kinetic energy being splashed on the screen doesn't lend itself to delving into deep philosophical questions ( I said deep, so Bioshock dismantling Objectivism doesn't count). Video games ape Micheal Bay not Ingmar Bergman. There is a reason why adventure games and RPGs tend to take on weightier issues if only in sometimes superficial ways. As games tend more and more to action though, this will becoem more difficult not less.
Video games ape Micheal Bay not Ingmar Bergman.
This doesn't always have to be the case. Tale of Tales' (tale-of-tales.com) The Graveyard, for instance.
And even dynamic kineticism need not be antithetical to something deeper. As an example, there's immortal defense (http://studioeres.com/immortal/) which, admittedly, succeeds in this regard on the strength of passive narrative passages rather than gameplay, but it can be done and done well.
Come now. There's plenty of art games, and games with good stories out there.
While the push for maturity is there, it's still a vocal minority. That won't change until kids are no longer the biggest market.
But it's coming. I suspect the nextgen of consoles will have suitable mature content for its aging audience. I also suspect that single player games will become less numerous, as online multiplayer becomes the norm. Who knows, maybe we'll find maturity not in games themselves from from each other. And then there's still Stephenson's ractives, which we have yet to see.
Of course, it's Nintendo's world currently, and it's their vision of games that dominates.
I thought it was a great post, but I think you took too long to get to the purely semantic issue of "Mature" meaning "sexy times and cursing" and "Mature" meaning "post-adolescent," since that double-meaning seems to be the main stumbling block of any conversation of this sort. As you say, the former can often be a signifier of the latter, but no one would ever call "Leisure Suit Larry" a mature game.
What made Mass Effect a mature game for me was not so much the sexy times (though I was happy to see that handled in such an adult manner), but the serious choices you occasionally had make, which usually had no good answer.
I think a game approaches maturity when it makes you think about things besides just "how do I progress through the game?"
Just finished listening to your RPS Podcast. Seeing that I'm going to graduate school to explore questions of sexuality and gender within Video Games in a very serious way in about six months, I find your drunken "blabber" actually pretty spot on. And also extremely hilarious.
Responding to your Kotaku piece, I'd say that there's actually plenty of maturity both past and present within the various ways video games have spoken to us, although yes, its true that the problem of sex is still a big one. Planescape: Torment, Shadow of the Colossus, A lot of indie game experiments and the Tale of Tales game company all are in my mind examples of games tackling narrative, personal exploration, reflection, and mature themes in an honest and reflective way. As you said, part of the problem really is there not being a set language of being able to express the simplest experiences. I think one great example of this problem is to look at the game "Lost Odyssey", where the main game is to an extent derivative with cheesy voice acting that doesn't really doesn't feet mature to me, yet the "Thousand Years of Dreams" sequences are simple text pieces that pop up and are more of an experience to me than the rest of the game.
Finally, the word verification for this post right now (the little thing we have to type in so blogger knows we aren't a bot) is "horinest". Appropriate when talking about sexuality and maturity, no?
Long time reader, first time caller... just wanted to say that, while the podcast was hilarious and your blog always thought-provoking, your What they Play article was unusually exquisite. If more writers addressed themes and controversies involving video games like you did, we'd be a lot better off. Thanks!
I enjoyed the Kotaku piece. The statements on the fundamentals of sex and Nemwitz’s terse statements weren’t what I expected to read.
~sLs~
Can't we just go on being 30 something year old man-children that just keep playing games with big guns, big explosions, and big boobies? ;P
I say that only half-jokingly. I think part of what is fun about videogames is that they are one of the only venues where it is still kinda-sorta socially acceptable for you, as an adult, to PLAY. And not playing to better yourself as a human being, or improve your hand-eye coordination, or to enrich your understanding of art culture, or any of that other crap you're supposed to care about as an adult, but simply to play because you want to play. Who cares if you learn anything or were productive or made good use of your time? It was fun.
I worry that if games become too mature and grown up, that they might also lose their childish wonder and fun.
Nevertheless, I see videogames as having the potential to make great art and as long is there is ample diversity in gaming and some stay in Neverneverland while others grow up, then I'm all for some more complex themes.
I think the main thing required for games to grow up though, is to decide how play-control factors into the overall artistic concept of the work. As it stands, many games that try to deal with more mature content (i.e. moral ambiguity, complex relationships, religious questioning, etc.) actually are just the same kind of kid games you played when you were young, only now with a break at the end of each level to show you some melodramatic cut scene.
For games to grow up, we need some real creativity in game design to figure out how do you play the broken marriage of a "Revolutionary Road" or "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf"? How do you play the psychological awakening and spiritual liberation of a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? How do you play the sexual tension of a "Last Tango in Paris"?
Osamu Tezuka, who made manga popular, worked for years to be taken seriously, beatings from school bullies and World War II Japanese factory foremen aside, he gave up medicine, a more "mature" and acceptable profession, to draw manga, at the time considered a children's medium in Japan, but as the times changed, so did Tezuka's manga, which contains incredibly powerful mature themes. The lack of fanservice in his works is astounding, because the only fanservice there is cameos from characters from his other manga, not sexual fanservice.
In video games it's different, because you're interacting with the story, and your dodgy motor skills/game play abilities limit how far the story progresses. However, if the game confronts you with disturbing moral choices to pick between, the consequences of such actions should be shown in the game to really hit you, and show you that violence leads to destruction and death, instead of gore for gain. Even children's games like Professor Layton and the Curious Village have a very mature storyline, without being too over the top.
The Sims 2 is an example of one of my favorite mature theme games of all time, because it is, essentially, a simulator of what happens when you play God or the Master of Puppets that's pulling your strings... (TWISTING YOUR MIND AND SLASHING YOUR DREEEAAAMS... BLINDED BY ME YOU CAN'T SEE A THING... ok I'll stop now LOL). Forget Watchmen: The End is Nigh, The Sims 2 is a much better exploration in gaming of the human condition, and we learn as much about our own nature by playing it/deleting the ladder/burning our creation's world/playing matchmaker like a crazed Jane Austen given a computer. It's a solid game play experience that's mature and one I'll never forget.
Anyway, Leigh, I gotta get something off my Aussie chest. We know our country was instituted as a colony designed to keep convicts away from the more desirable elements of the Empire/society, but the Kotaku AU ghetto our comments get segregated into makes it difficult for Australians to get where the action is in the American comments feed and get our opinions noticed. I hope you with your new media goddess powers could try and sort something out so Australian commenters get noticed with the rest of the world on your Kotaku articles.
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