(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

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know Bioshock is an FPS. I watched my roommate play it... sat and watched for a couple good hour-plus sessions, I think. I've played plenty of FPSes – DOOM II, Duke 3D, the first couple Quakes, the Half-Lifes (Half-lives?), the Metroid Primes, a few more, and my favourite, TRON 2.0 – so I know that there can be story and pretty and music and action but the last is really what makes the game worth playing. (It's why Halo sucked. I kept getting bored by the level design.)

My point is entirely that the "moral choices" that keep coming up as a selling point for the game are really thin at best, a curiosity but not nearly strong enough to even bear mention. I suppose it's frustration from two angles: on one hand, there are so many games which had so much opportunity for interesting philosophical play that instead were quite happily plowed through with some sort of projectile weapon. On the other, I've heard so much tell of the richness of morality in the Ultima series and a few other things that I know it can indeed be done, and done well. I know they're different genres, and that's why I don't want anyone mistaking Bioshock for the latter, so the next person who says, "It's great, you even have moral choices!" gets stabbed in the face with my death ray.

Oh, and I certainly would consider it moral to plunder a vending machine for something to help me take on a threat to my well-being. I'm quite cpable of role-play, however, and it's a point of pride that I can consistently play characters with whom I vehemently disagree. So I do ask them whether it was right for them to steal that weapon or hit that person or upload that virus or whatever. I put the RP back in the single MMORPG I play.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

I would say the plight of the Little Sisters bear mention as an artistic statement (people seem to react viscerally to the notion of killing them) but the selling point of the game is the presentation, and freedom to use the environment against your enemies, and your enemies against each other.

Real moral choices are done well in Ultima, and done excellently in Planescape Torment and Jade Empire, but like ultraken said, the more freedom you have, the thinner the resources of the developers are spread.