(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

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've heard a little about Haze playing with that issue. I will be curious to see how the designers deal with it once you get to the endgame: is the only solution still to spurt hot death from your gun? Or will there be a transformation of the game mechanic from 'first-person shooter' to 'first-person something else'?

Games look and sound a lot better than they used to, but in terms of the fundamental interactions between the player and the environment there's been no change since the 80s. Non-violent interactions are relegated to 'casual' games or even slower-moving games; I really think there's a ton of unexplored play mechanics out there that can be fast-moving, fun, and about something besides death. So many of our big-budget games are programming us to reflexively hurt, and that can't be good in the long run.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

Probably the biggest, best selling single genre for video games is non-violent: sports games. And racing games are non-violent as well, you have an entire generation of kids raised on Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. Football, baseball, and golf games continue to be the killer apps for the "non-geek" console owner set. Wii sports alone has sold millions and millions of Nintendo's system, and it looks like Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games will be similarly huge.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Sports games aren't on my radar at all. They require something I just don't have: knowledge of the sport. The rules are never explained anywhere; you just know how the game goes.

Which is pretty annoying for someone like me who's never played any of them:

"What the fuck is going on?" I bitched, playing Wii Golf. "Why does it keep skipping me?" "That's the way golf works!" I was told. "The player furthest from the hole gets to go next." "Oh, so I'm penalized for doing the best by being bored? This is crap." "That's golf."

After watching everyone else flail around in the sand trap for a while, I sat down. I was bored. People were mildly pissed when it finally came to my turn and I had to stop drawing, scrounge around for the controller, and take my shot.

I may dislike FPSs and beat-em-ups but at least they tell you their goddamn rules. Sports games just tell you what button to push to smack the ball and expect you to already know the rules.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

Sports games aren't on my radar at all. They require something I just don't have: knowledge of the sport. The rules are never explained anywhere; you just know how the game goes.

For the most part, they're not on mine either, but they are non-violent, late hits in football games aside. I know of more than a couple gamer friends of mine with children who lean heavily towards buying sports games and all-ages titles because they want to game with their kids, but know that GTA and Resident Evil are inappropriate. On the other hand, a lot of sports games do require some knowledge of the sport, but about everyone can get into Mario Kart! I wish there were more pseudo-sports games in the vein of Speedball/Cyberball. More action/grit than a board game or a casual game, not as violent as an FPS. And there's always skateboarding games, which are abstract enough that they're fairly self-explanatory with instant feedback.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I'm in the small set of not 'about everyone' - I played Mario Kart once, with my animation school roomie, and found it to be a really painful, awkward control experience. But I am obviously not normal.

I was in the kitchen putting together a pizza pondering a reply that went into the fact that pretty much any sports game I've encountered lacks a narrative, and a meta-narrative, beyond '[sport] is fun!'. Which was sort of part of my objection to Bioshock in the first place - that its message, as embodied in what remains after you play it for the third time and skip all the cut-scenes, is 'violently destroying semi-human things in the nastiest fashion possible is fun!'.

Also there would have been something about my disinterest for sports/simulation games coming from the fact that they model activities well within the reach of anyone, as opposed to activities firmly in the realm of imagination.

Also there probably would have been a rambling bit about the two narratives found on the surface of any game with a 'story': the story found in cut-scenes, and the story embedded in the actions the user is allowed and encouraged to take in the game - there may be a subplot of 'if you kill little girls you get the bad ending' in Bioshock, but the meat of the game is sure still about killin'. Also there might've been something about the values communicated underneath a game's narratives in the conditions for success - go grab that install you have lying around of Virtual Villagers, for instance: what does that game tell you is Good for the Tribe by dint of success/failure conditions? Consider Lemmings as a communist parable, consider Sonic the Hedgehog as a parable about both the joy and danger of moving so fast you lose control.

But I'm too tired of talking about video games, after yesterday, to go into any detail on this. So I'll leave expanding it as an exercise for the reader. With the implied suggestion of reading Bioshock and/or its demo on this level to understand my reaction to it.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

Also there would have been something about my disinterest for sports/simulation games coming from the fact that they model activities well within the reach of anyone, as opposed to activities firmly in the realm of imagination.

Well, sure, but the scope is different, and that makes all the difference. I can go outside and shoot baskets, but I'm not a coach in the NBA, and I don't have access to a race track or a McLaren F1. And for people who are invested in sports, that's something fantastical that they can relate to, whereas they wouldn't necessarily relate to a game like Okami or Katamari.

go grab that install you have lying around of Virtual Villagers, for instance: what does that game tell you is Good for the Tribe by dint of success/failure conditions?

Making more tribe members, mostly! And making sure you have sustainable food sources. Cooperation. It's a non-violent game, that's its intent. It's an extension of the "virtual pet". And it's aimed at people who don't sit down and play the game for an hour, because you can't accomplish anything without waiting 8 hours. But trust me, my employer loves his hard-core FPSes as well.

I don't think that a game whose mechanic is violence is a bad thing: people like pretend violence, they've always been attracted to it, I think it's healthy. Our classics are filled with violence. Great art is often violent. The real thing isn't healthy, but there would be a great gulf in my life if I were told that I could no longer play a game with violence or war as its central theme. Because that's 95% of what I play, and I play more games than I watch television or movies.

Also there might've been something about the values communicated underneath a game's narratives in the conditions for success

Right, but I don't think we're meant to take the core values of a lot of darker games THAT seriously. I think the designers of Thief would rather we treat the game as a great story and a fun mechanic that inspires tension in a way most games don't (Thief makes waiting an art form, as you hear footsteps and agonize over the right moment to make a break for it), rather than taking the notion of stealing everything, having no loyalties, and trusting nobody to heart.

Bioshock's meat is of course about killing, it's a horror game about a destroyed utopia, but it's a horror game that knows that you need some contrast to the horror (saving little girls, beautiful art deco interiors, optimistic utopian ideals) to bring the horror home. That amidst all the mayhem and bloodshed, you can elect to rescue this person. Maybe too much has been made of that choice, either because it was sold as something bigger than it was in previews, or whatever, but I think it's there because it's effective storytelling. It's not Bertold Brecht: the game, it's just a shooter with a higher level of art than most. Ken Levine used to be a screenwriter, and it shows in his game plots.

With games played by young people, I think the values of a game's setting and mechanic are significant, since impressionable minds are at play. You don't want your 3rd grader playing GTA. Then we get into games as potential K-6 teaching tools, and I'm out of my depth.