(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

[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!)