Given the amount of controversy surrounding that scene in Modern Warfare 2 it is unsurprising that the mainstream media have been debating its merits. On radio, television, and print, even touching the establishment that is Parliament, the suitability of the medium handling topics such as terrorism was discussed. Unsurprisingly the topic of children playing violent games also came to the fore but in all cases I was remarkable pleased with just how these debates were handled.
On previous occasions, with the furore over GTA, Manhunt and associated “games linked with violence”, Ali has had to turn off the radio/TV because of just how wound up I got with the seemingly one-sided barrage the industry received. This time, however, The Byron Report on the digital world seems to have made a real difference and ministers came out defending videogames’ right to express and show adult and possibly controversial issues.
When questioned by the infamous Keith Vaz in Parliament, Tom Watson (former defence minister) stated “I’ve seen the content in this videogame, it is unpleasant, though no worse than in many films and books, it is an 18-plus game and carries the BBFC 18-plus rating as well.” Furthermore, and even more pleasingly, speaking on 5 live Breakfast he went on to say that whilst he did not like or agree with what MW2 depicted he defended it and the industry’s right to release it.
Whilst it may take the controversial events for gaming and its boundaries to be debated in a wider forum I feel that the corner has now been turned. With high profile support from with Westminster there is a legitimacy that I felt was lacking in yesteryear.
I make my living as a programmer at a British games developer. In my spare time I try and spread myself between writing, gaming, goalkeeping, rolling dice and keeping my hair blue. Somewhere around that my wife and rabbits fit in.
Disclaimer: the views expressed are my own and do not neccessarily reflect those of my employer
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is all very well, but I think there’s an important point being missed. Games can depict controversy all right, that’s not denied, but controversy is easy and isn’t the same thing as saying something important or meaningful. The children shouting in the playground can be controversial, but that doesn’t mean that their worth listening to.
What does the MW2 scene say? What’s it’s meaning? That killing people is bad? That terrorists are bad people? If a player didn’t already know that then they have problems. Furthermore, in what way is this furthering the way games tell a story, it’s fundamentally no different to Manhunt.
Compare this to Planescape: Torment, an overused example I know, which asks “What can change the nature of a man?” and proceeds to give examples of people who’s lives have been changed by the PC in different ways. This isn’t a controversial, high profile storyline but arguable it means more than GTA4, MW2 and all the other games that have shown unpleasant images.
We’re getting on to a separate point here, one about the actual scene itself and we’re going to address in a Pause for Thought tomorrow, but I here what you’re saying. The point I was attempting to make was more that no matter what the scene itself, the debate surrounding it was at least balanced. No more, no less.
With Manhunt, from there was no defence in my mind as to what it did. It didn’t try and tell a story or weave a political yarn; it was just violence for violence sake (but isn’t that like SAW?) and whilst I believe what Infinity Ward has done is produce a very powerful and dramatic scene I also believe that it was not in the right game. It doesn’t fit the rest of CoD’s ethos, in my mind, and the story overall is as mediocre as most game scripts meaning it stood out further.
What I do think we should praise is that a mainstream game is attempting something different, to try and test our emotional response other than “like/hate”. They didn’t do it well given the rest of the package but there are bound to be false starts before someone comes across with a serious political set piece or heart tugging take on child poverty in an interactive package. What some foget is that we may live in a media savvy age but games are only a fledging medium when compared to film, TV and literature and so they can’t be expected to instantly be able to depict issues outside of people’s safety zones first time.
So, whilst I don’t think they fully succeeded in implementing their vision, I’ll defend to the death their right to say it for if we stifle attempts to push the boundaries we’ll be left with bland husks forever more.
Sheep, sorry about that, I guess I got a little carried away. I take issue with a few of your points, but I’ll wait ’till tomorrow then. Don’t think you’ve got away yet
It is nice to see Tom Watson defending the game in Parliament, although to some extent I’d argue that games will only have come of age when they don’t get debated in Parliament at all. You don’t see Parliamentry debate over the book Wetlands, so why a game?
I would also say that if games are being given a chance to prove themselves, this means that the industry does have to start actually living up to the medium’s promise and finally producing meaningful games which can reasonably be termed ‘non-linear art’ or whatever you wish to call it.
So I want to see Fable 3 provoking an actual discussion over democracy, monarchy and the politics between them. Uncharted 3 should provoke a discussion about archeology and respecting the wishes of indigenous peoples. And I want to see Don Quixote an RPG undermining the values of progession and perception, a co-op game where both players have to entirely different views of the world.
No need to apologise, debate is healthy.
I agree that when MPs don’t need to get involved then we’ll have made progress but I’m sure Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Elvis’ hips were still a source of public outcry long after they probably should have been. It just takes the generation that embraces them to seize power (through time, not a coup) and then it will simply be considered the norm, as with every new “dangerous” trend.
I completely agree with your last couple of paragraphs, though. People like myself who try and defend them in times such as these are going to look incredibly foolish if in five years down the line we’re still at a stage where we’re trying to compare ourselves to cinema but have done nothing to make the medium stand proud on its own. My eye’s on Heavy Rain as our next great hope of advancing the cause.
I’m not sure about Heavy Rain. I do occasionally let myself get carried away with thoughts of it becoming the holy grail for interactive storytelling; but after the batshit-crazy final third of Fahrenheit, I think David Cage has shown that he doesn’t necessarily know when to reign things in.
Hopefully lessons have been learned, as I can’t see much else on the horizon that’ll test the water. Fable III, I’m guessing, will be much the same as the second iteration.
Maybe Cliff Blezinski has a masterplan to actually turn Gears 3 into a fully-fledged bromance, recycle all that homophobia into the largest social experiment ever crafted in interactive form. Or maybe not.
I’m guessing there must be a lot of Indy stuff on the PC that has explored boundaries such as these though, I might have a bit of a research at the weekend.
Another thing to remember about Heavy Rain is that Fahrenheit wasn’t entirely a masterpiece of assured story telling. The disco-sex scene with Miles and the some of the fairly clumsy sexism mean that I’m not yet hailing the next David Cage game as the inevitable moment mature story-telling makes it’s games debut. The jury is still out I think.
After Fable 3 I was really struggling for non-RPG franchises that could even begin to explore interesting stories. Unless someone unveils a surprising new game soon, I’m honestly not sure where to expect the next iteration of story-telling.
I was initially thinking of indy-gaming as the proof that gaming can do interesting stuff. But after having a think about Passage and other art games, I’m not so sure. I’m probably being really unfair, but the art-game scene seems to be long on art and short on game. Games can certainly explore interesting topics, but I’m really curious as to how they’ll make their own way to do this.
That’s the tricky line they tread because the more they try and express art or a cinematic narrative then it either loses the game component all together or becomes a mindless series of quick time events essentially playing over a CG movie.
Fahrenheit was goddamn awful towards the end when it turned into a sub-standard episode of the X Files but early on what it tried with the various ways you could “complete” each scene was pretty impressive at the time.
I’m hoping Heavy Rain tries more of that than takling voodoo in the inner city but it is the topics that it will try and cover that could be interesting. I think in theory (I may be wrong) but each character can effectively die; where does the story go from there? Also it seems to skirt some moral issues with the female lead and a mob boss. Let’s see what comes of that. Sleazy or assured story telling? We’ll have to wait and see.