(no subject)

[egypturnash]

As a side note, since some people seem to want to convince me that Bioshock is actually a really good game - an opinion you're welcome to have; it's clearly a finely-crafted instance of an experience I simply don't care to have - I would like to note that so far, the only FPS I've actually enjoyed as a game is Thief, which I've been playing on and off the past week via Rik's machine. I had fun with System Shock 2 a couple years back but by the end, I was sick and tired of the basic game mechanics and just wanted to find out what happened to SHODAN. I really don't like FPSs.

As I've gotten older, I've slowly learnt how to see people as, well, people. I'm not very good at it; I never was. As video-game technology marches on, the creatures the games pit you against have gotten more like people. When I play some games made in the last decade or so, I can feel them training me to see people as just things. I'm still working out what factors make this happen; it's only a handful of games that do this so far.

I really think that the increasing drive for 'realism' in video games means that the game industry has a big moral quandry coming up. The forty-year-long focus on the hurt button as the core mechanic becomes creepier as the things you hurt become more and more like people. What happens when the project lead on a game focused on killing and blood plays his game and feels that weird sense that it's gnawing away at something in his soul? What happens when this is a regular occurrence?

A few major choice-points over, there's another me who went into video games. Is she (or he; I might never have transitioned in that life-path) getting ever more uncomfortable with these themes, or has it been completely burnt out of her by this point?

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

Okay, so you've got an increasing level of opponants who have AI to "think," and you've got an increasing level of opponants who look like people, right, because those are both valued bits of development.

I figure that at some future point development hits the uncanny valley where the critters you're beating up act and look like people, like you said, and then you have several stylistic issues emerging;
1.) It's not escape anymore, so the critters are made to look more stylized.
2.) More realistic characters are saved for lower key games. For instance, you might have a game about being a gangster of the '20s, and being able to inflict violence on someone would be an important choice - but only as important as negotiation and purchasing. The violence would fit into the greater scheme of things.
3.) The Army would eagerly welcome this as a method for training.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

3: bingo.

One of the reasons I avoid FPSs in general is that they feel like dehumanization training. Like the kind of stuff I read about being put through in boot camp so that when they say 'shoot', you shoot, and your moral qualms come after.

I have a low enough Humanity score to start with.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, "America's Army" doesn't exactly help matters in this regard. >_>

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

At PAX this year, I was seriously creeped out by the Army-sponsored immersive FPS experience thingy. (Disclaimer: I didn't play it. I just saw the 50-foot-cube curtained-off thing with a humvee (or however the hell you spell the original military incarnation of that vehicle), and the huge sounds of explosions from within, and the wide-eyed line of teenagers waiting to get into the coolest thing ever.) There was a vibe coming off the whole thing that the Army is the ultimate in real-life FPSes, and it's the most superreallistic game ever, and the implications were too painful to think about for long.

(Gratifying, though, was that the lines to play Rock Band were longer. I approve of games that glorify music.)

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

yeah, America's Army gives me the willies. Selling kids on the military as a video game, I suppose it's inevitable, but man, it makes me feel like scrubbing myself in the shower with steel wool.

I will be buying Rock Band on the day of its release for the drum functionality alone. ^_^

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

Something about the big immersive experience with smiling recruiter-soldiers at a gaming con just kind of pushed me over the top. That, and the lines of mostly-teenagers waiting for a chance to "play." (Somehow, I feel the need for scare-quotes on that one.)

In happier news, Rock Band is entirely as cool as it needs to be to pull off its premise, and I have no qualms recommending it after two songs worth of trying it out. (Releasing real songs in a rhythm game? Building a game around a social co-op experience? Allowing you to play with friends at multiple skill levels? Brilliant!)

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

You've seen the commercial (http://youtube.com/watch?v=XkKF4ZcqW14), then?

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

The Army already uses FPSes for training. :P