Why am I blogging twice on a Sunday? I almost never do that. Well, because there's just so much awesome stuff out there today, and I don't want you guys to miss any of it.
I just spent way too many words linking you to Tom Cross' Resident Evil 5 article. Now I guess it's touchy topics time, because I'd like you to read Nick Breckon's thoughts on Konami's Six Days In Fallujah over at Shacknews. He visited Konami's Gamer's Night to see the game, and apparently Konami is having genuine Marines speak to the project:
"The unique, controversial nature of the project was apparent in Ergo's speech. In the middle of a night headlined by cheap, exploitative fare like Saw: The Videogame, to suddenly be listening to someone's first-hand account of combat in Iraq was quite the about-face. At that point, I wasn't sure whether this was an indication of the inappropriateness of the stunt, or how unusual it was to be faced with a real person's dramatic struggle in the midst of a pre-planned marketing campaign for silly videogames. Maybe Six Days really would be a serious, mature take on war. Maybe we're just not used to this kind of thing."
Maybe. Maybe not:
But whereas Ridley Scott could get away with a movie that mostly glossed over the political and moral questions of that comparatively small conflict in favor of telling the on-the-ground storyline, pulling off that same trick with Fallujah--a battle from a war with an incomparable level of public awareness and charged political debate--will be far more difficult, and require a certain degree of dignity that was not demonstrated on Thursday.
Konami and Atomic have already contradicted themselves more than once, which isn't helping.
Read the whole post. I'm really happy we're having so many chances to discuss how games should treat difficult, ugly things, and with Six Days In Fallujah, we're dealing with the real world. I'm really interested in what we can learn from how it's executed, whether or not it's successful.
Is it possible for games to provide genuine and dignified portrayals of real war? Should they try? On a related topic, a friend of mine once explained why playing CoD4 helped him cope with his cousin's serious injury at war in Iraq.
Next up: remember when we were talking about RapeLay, and many commenters asked why mowing down endless humans in a hail of gunfire in video games is "OK" while rape isn't? At Resolution, Lewis Denby explores whether mowing down humans in games is so OK after all:
The issue here isn’t really the age-old debate about whether videogames desensitise us towards violence, but that they perhaps fail to acknowledge the seriousness of their common subject matter. And if the medium is going to be considered mature, something it so desperately wants to be, is this not something that’s going to severely hinder its claim?
Great, thought provoking discussion, and Denby collects input from others, too. Michaël Samyn of the Tale of Tales pair, who're making a name for themselves by being unafraid to confront these questions, weighs in, and so do Rock Paper Shotgun elite Kieron Gillen and John Walker. I tend to fall on Gillen's side of the argument:“It supposes an aesthetic purpose for the developer - that death should be treated like it is when your gran dies or whatever. A serious treatment of death can be powerful and moving, but it’s certainly not the only way to view it, and never has been throughout the history of human art and expression across all media. It’s like saying that being bankrupted in Monopoly trivialises the world’s financial downturn.”
But I also like that Denby asks whether we're ignoring a wider issue. Two years ago (wow, time flies!) I asked the same question in an Aberrant Gamer column that you might find worth revisiting in light of this discussion:
Haven’t you ever deliberately executed the most gratuitous combo to finish an enemy? Because you were frustrated, maybe? Furious? Or because dismemberment, skull crushing and mutilation killings are just fun?
Either way, I'm a hundred percent with Denby when he says we ought to at least be able to explain ourselves on these questions, whatever the answers are.
20 comments:
I think that there could be a chance to create something really profound with Six Days In Fallujah. Unfortunately, it seems that they're trying to dodge controversy by saying "Relax! It's just a game!" which bothers me on two levels.
One, as a human being -- this is a real event that has affected people living and recently dead and I find it crass to create something intended to be thoughtless entertainment based on it. And two, as someone who believe that games can create a profound and meaningful experiences through a game, I'm bothered that people with such a chance would use "It's only a game," to dismiss any artistic or meaningful potential of that very opportunity.
Haven’t you ever deliberately executed the most gratuitous combo to finish an enemy? Because you were frustrated, maybe? Furious? Or because dismemberment, skull crushing and mutilation killings are just fun?I've had a handful of notably emotional reactions to on-screen events in the time I've been gaming, but one in particular leapt out at me upon reading that: in Half-Life 2, after a (comparatively) long and tedious drive through nowhere in particular, I was pleased to arrive at a safehouse. I didn't need the safehouse per se, but at some point the boredom associated with the seemingly pointless, uneventful driving had begun to feel like loneliness. NPCs are real chatterboxes in HL2, and I was excited to stop in and "say hello," i.e. walk around without actually talking.
I arrived and found the remains of a fire pit with some errant bones lying around it; a moment later I saw Combine inside the safehouse. And I had time to think, or to act out thinking, "these people are dead, because they wanted to help me. The things in that house killed them because of me." And I proceeded to have the most incompetent, wasteful firefight I'd yet had in HL2, because I wasn't thinking about the operative range of the shotgun versus the SMG, or about how to avoid being flanked. I was...mad. And, while I never actually thought the game was "real," per se, in retrospect it was rather upsetting.
Then I saved and went to do something else, at which point that feeling lapsed entirely, and it felt like something I had seen on a TV show I'd been into. So, who knows.
Haven’t you ever deliberately executed the most gratuitous combo to finish an enemy?Absolutely. This is most noticeable when I play any sort of one on one fighting game (with wrestling and some action games coming into play here as well.) But I don't think it's because I'm "frustrated," "furious," or because I consciously connect gore with fun.
Instead I make the big mistake (?) that a lot of critics have been claiming gaming makes too. I'm trying my best to be cinematic. Leaning on cues from film, tv, comics, and even regular fiction I like it when my fight scenes to end with a climactic bang. The bad guy's blade gets parried and I end him with a riposte, or my uppercut sends him flying off the side of the building, or I use that super move I've been saving up all this time. I'm the director in a movie that only I am seeing.
Well, most of the time. If I'm playing in front of an audience, this sort of "end game" playing for the dramatic extends throughout the entire play session.
From a critic's standpoint, it's an interesting look at how I interact with games in a way that is similar to other media. From a gamer's standpoint, my dedication to aesthetic flair (over technically efficient play) is an annoying habit that causes me to lose lots of matches.
Why do so many people talk about how games "should" treat any given topic? Games should be whatever it is their developers want them to be. We can talk about how those expressions affect us, but there is never anything inappropriate about a creative expression. Who's going to be the first to stand up and say that games have a right to exploit real life situations, to be lewd, vulgar, broadly offensive, and whatever else may tickle the creative whims of their creators?
I'm excited that Konami and Atomic are pushing into this territory. I don't want any hand wringing or apologea about it. So many game writers get sidetracked apologizing in advance for potential offenses in games before stopping to think whether or not there's actually anything to really apologize for. The only obligation any developer has is to move the player in some way. Everything, absolutely everything, is fair game. I'd rather reward people who take a big gamble with something controversial than reward those who play it safe with a medium that is still mired in its cranky teenage years. All of FAllujah's fantastic elements are the same as COD4's. That game was equally, mechanical, one-sided, ruthless, and cruel. Adding a real world name to the battlefield shouldn't alter the impact of the experience. Assuming we're not overly-sensitive and cripplingly apologetic.
That's the thing, Six Days in Fallujah IS going to be an on-the-ground story. Atomic has said themselves that they're not even going to try to present an opinion on whether or not we should be over there. They said they think that even observing that would be offensive. According to interviews everything they're doing is based on testimony from Marines and Iraqis who were there.
As for RapeLay, that's a whole area of Japanese adult entertainment mentality that's probably quite difficult for Americans to even begin to understand. I'm sure that what we would consider some of the darkest and most "immoral" games ever made are Japanese adult games.
I'm pretty sure we kill without reservation in video games not because the game doesn't render death accurately, or because the game has failed to characterize our victim appropriately so we *feel* something by their death, but rather because the game has zero cost for killing.
Be it emotional cost, social cost, legal cost, political cost.
I've rarely seen a game other than MGS3 that makes you deal with your deadly actions. I just shot an "innocent" (unarmed) man in Far Cry 2 in the face. Not because I'm a horrible person, and not because he worked for the bad guys.
I shot him in the face because I knew there wouldn't be any repercussions for doing so.
'6 days is based on research' and then there's regenerating health ..
.. kinda reminds me of an old meme.
Of another game based on historical research,
and then there was the giant enemy crab where you hit the weak point for massive damage.
Konami might do well by acting quick and get the act together before this game becomes known in the same manner as that game did.
I think Konami missed a trick there with 6 Days, I'm kind of unsure whether they should use a current event to have an entertaining game but to be honest how is this any different then making entertainment out of WW2. The only difference is time, since if the public had a hold of these games in the 50s just after the war it would be condemned just like 6 days is being condemned now.
Anyway I feel that konami is missing a trick because yes "it's just a game2 works so far but i think we should have things that are not just a game but actually intelligently portray war. The good sides and the bad sides.
In fact the Vioetnam War should be used like this. Gte this you are an American Soldier that is gung-ho like the games but during the Vietnam war you see the horros that are in front of you, an army using tactics your not sure of, death from your own men and death of innocent civilians. You get knocked out until your basically only trying to survive and not really fighting a war. This would be very powerful message that would work well in a game.
I think it may actually be time for games that can deal with the serious matters of war and death in a non-glamourized way. If you think about games as an artistic medium, there have been many that confront issues of death, war, suffering, et cetera, with a certain amount of seriousness that is not commonly seen. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," for example, was very blunt about its portrayal of the holocaust, and COD4 let, neigh, MADE you walk though the shoes of not one, but two men as they were killed senselessly (the Marine in the nuke scene, and the leader of the Arab country that Al-Azad takes control of as he is publically executed). With an actual war going on now, as games are in the state of yerning to be taken seriously, the basic idea behind "Six Days in Fallujah" has incredible potential, to let us look at the war though the eyes of those who lived it. Time will tell if Konami and Atomic do a good enough job with the game, but I wonder if they really have it in them.
As for the gratuitous combo thing, I do go for those in games like Devil May Cry for bonus points and the like, but as for emotion, I would say that using Armageddon on the second fight with Takaya in Persona 3 was the big example. It's almost as if he was written specifically to get on my nerves. Given great power in exchange for much of his life, what does he do with that power? Kills people. For money. And the fun of it. All the while whining that the world dealt him a bad hand. Take any reasonable motivation out of him, and you end up with Persona 4's murderer. I enjoyed stomping both of them, and many characters like them in RPGs, as they are a common villain archtype, it seems.
@spitfire
You're wrong. The cost of not shooting baddies is game over. You shoot because the game demands you shoot in order to win.
Why make killing into some moral quandary when killing is a mere rule in the game design.
@Abraham
While I agree with your point, I think you misunderstood the meaning that spitfire was trying to get across. When faced with choice of killing someone without reward pr penalty being profered (I.e. no impact on success), many users will choose the most convenient or entertaining route. One need only look at games in which the user is penalised for shooting friendly targets to see that it is purely because there is nothing to be gained from doing so that the user stops themselves.
On a more general note, I have little interest in Six Days. Seems like cashing in on propaganda rather than a legitimate reason for a game to me.
Oh, and I'm not touching the RapeLay issue with a frickin' bargepoll. There's nothing good about that game.
@del
Sure, you have your GTA. But most games frame killing as either success (score points) or prevent penalty (game over).
Is death entertaining? Absolutely. There's a killer in all of us. Time to get in touch with your murderous-side.
But if you buy the whole violence & video games, then there is a loss: a spiritual one.
@ Abraham
I just shot an innocent unarmed man in the face. How would not shooting him result in death on my part?
Asking a player to kill or be killed in a war is easy. Asking a player not to kill when there's no penalty for ignoring the request (again, emotional, moral, legal, political) is bad game design.
It's easy to strawman my argument by calling everyone "baddies" when I clearly said "unarmed man." I was under no risk of death by not shooting him.
If we're asking why violence is okay and sexual themes aren't, we need to investigate why this is, and not just chalk things up to "this is how we've always done it so we should continue doing so."
A lot of videogame writers are so damn defensive about the medium that they use kneejerk phrases and arguments to shut down any kind of discussion about controversial elements in games. I understand the impulse; games and the people that play them come under a lot of fire.
But it really does a disservice to ourselves and the industry to not have these critical discussions about race, war, gender and politics. Or our fascination with digital murder. If games are really as important as we say they are, or capable of achieving similar goals as other art forms, then these critical discussions have to happen. Either the game can withstand the scrutiny or it can't, and then we move forward with what we've learned and make games that incorporate ideas generated through public conversation. It's a testimony to the current state of the medium that we have material dense enough to investigate these deeper questions. We should feel excited anytime a well developed game like Resident Evil 5 comes under scrutiny, or a game like Six Days in Fallujah gets developed. They could fall on their faces in their attempts to deal with these issues, but we'll definitely learn something along the way.
My favorite passage from John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty":
"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
Thanks for always helping bolster the discussion!
@spitfire
So do you think violent video games leads to violence?
If violence without cost is bad design, then what about Noby Noby Boy? Is fun and dicking around bad game design?
Just spotted this through our site referrals - cheers for the link, Leigh.
RE: people's comments about "death as game mechanics" not equalling "death as a state of (non)existence," well, yeah, absolutely. Someone on the comments thread over on Reso noted he'd heard people say they "died" in Tetris. But I think it's a pretty big step to make from that to - say - watching Marcus Fenix keel over in Gears of War. Just 'cause I can't think of another example. Because, y'know, that's pretty obviously supposed to simulate actual death. Which is where it becomes a slightly more complex issue.
Plus, if it's just a game mechanic, that means it's just an arbitrary way to punish the player - making it even more perplexing that we so willingly represent it as death, when surely there are a million other reasonings that could serve the same purpose.
All this said, I fucking love beating the shit out of everyone in Zeno Clash. Don't you?
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200904270177.html
Well, that solves one problem, eh? ;)
Great article thanks for the post!
Sorry to go back to rapelay, on which you have given your final word and so on. It's not about freedom of speech, it's about freedom of expression. Rapelay can be likened to an exploitation film, in which our base instincts are explored and, most importantly, punished, as the two endings lead to your death. It's like an amateur filmmaker trying to make a message picture, albeit with the talent of Ed Wood.
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Regard,
Stop Dreaming Start Action
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