In response to “The Best of All Possible Worlds” from The Escapist Forum: Wait, I may have misunderstood, but I got from this article, “Games shouldn’t be realistic, because realistic games aren’t fun.”
Which just makes me say, “Games can be whatever the developer wants them to be, even if it’s realistic, because some people think that realistic games are fun.”
Seriously, I would like to play a gritty game set in the Civil War or something. Very, very few games ever actually try to take on important, real-world issues like movies or books do, and I think it’s time. Why does no one try to make a game that sends an important, real-life message to the player? If books can change people’s lives, games should be able to, also. Games should be able to motivate players to take action in their own lives, not just their virtual ones. If people did more of this, I think that most of society would see gamers with more respect.
It’s not ‘critics’ who want more ambiguity in games – it’s gamers. Anyway, why can’t there be room for both simplistic ‘good guy vs bad world’ tales and more complex ones where the player’s character has more of a choice about the morality of his character?
Besides, it’s not the ambiguity that’s the point – it’s having a choice.
– Beery
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In response to “That’s Entertainment?” from The Escapist Forum: There’s a lot of nostalgia clouding this review, particularly towards film.
There has never – never been a time in the film industry where everyone was daring, everything was fresh, or everything was a gem except maybe in the very early years of film, when it was a brand-new medium.
There will always be games that do nothing special, that follow the formula, that stick to the beaten path. That will never change. The thing that makes games like Braid or World of Goo great is that they are different and fresh.
If all games were different and fresh, none of them would be. If you get my meaning. You can’t break the mold with a mold already in place.
And for its purposes, genre-movies and “genre-games” are good for what they are. There’s a kind of comfort in knowing exactly what you’re going to get. And both game developers and filmmakers are counting on that when they make movies or video games.
For every David Lynch, there are a hundred Michael Bays – and it’s just not true that films used to be different, “back in the day”. It’s just that back then, maybe the films weren’t car-chase-gunfight-films. They were westerns. How many westerns were released in the “golden age of film”?
How many were special?
– zoozilla
Yeah, I’m gonna side with the folks arguing there never was a Golden Age. Not in film, even Pauline Kael in the 1960’s devoted mountains of paper to bitching about movies back then. And not in games, even during the 90’s.
For every Gabriel Knight there was a cheesy live action adventure or an Altered Destiny. For every Warcraft II there was an RTS knock-off.
Sturgeon’s Law is just as true as ever, 90% of everything is crap. Always has been, always will be. And every year, a few gems rise to the top and prove that they were the ones that broke the trend.
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In response to “Violently Happy” from The Escapist Forum:
Happiness is fleeting. Contentment can be lasting, if you are lucky. But the human emotional barometer is for the most part set to okay-ness. If some computer game did somehow make us happy, great, they just invented the new electronic smack addiction and we could all drool in front of our monitors forevermore.
Generally when I play against an AI it’s to kill time. For the most part I’m enjoying myself, but I wouldn’t call it happy. Now, after a particularly challenging game against a human player(s) in whatever milieu, sometimes then I truly am happy, and smiling, for a half-hour or so. It passes.
I take what I can get. It’s all good.
– Fearzone
What about Team Fortress 2? Never before have I seen such glee on the faces of people doing so much killing (and dying). Who cares if you become one of the fallen? The very next moment, you’ll be spinning up your minigun again and yelling “CRY COWARDS! BOO HOO HOO!”
And don’t tell me that it’s ultimately sad because no one can rest in peace or truly kill their enemy, because they live forever in a neverending cycle of violence, death and renewal. The ancient Vikings considered that to be Paradise.
Good article. It doesn’t make a gamer happy to see his character happy. It makes a gamer happy to make things dead.
– ender214
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In response to “The Hardcore Persuasion” from The Escapist Forum:
Well done.
You’re wise.
We (those who do) play the darker, the deeper, the epic and the free-er games because we crave that kind of freedom – to change the world for the better, or to deliver what we see as justice to enemies presented or half-imagined.
We are powerless, bound by legalities and tradition, and so many want more. Adventurelust is hardly new, but virtual worlds outside of lonely imagination -are-.
When millions are starting to show more interest in their virtual worlds, their MMOs, than in their real lives, you might start to suspect something is wrong in Wonderland.
– Jack
– Jakkar
Solid article, and some very interesting points. But i would disagree that for a game to qualify your interest in any serious way (Circa; being worth an all nighter) that it has to be a doom and gloom affair, i’ve quite happily sat up to the wee hours more than once on games like Super Paper Mario, Little Big Planet, Saints Row 2 and yes, these are slightly different from the diner dash example, but it’s not about survival against great oppressive force.
I feel that it’s the IMMERSION that keeps you going, as you mentioned earlier about the external purpose giving way to the “immediate here-and-now of the game’s internal objective” that can make a game keep you playing. But maybe it’s just me. violently oppressive games often don’t keep me going till the wee hours. I liked your article as a whole, but the whole, “gaming must be oppressive” bit i feel is just unjustified.
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In response to “Videogames: Are Your Children Safe?” from The Escapist Forum: I’ve been pointing out the long, long list of other media accused of “corrupting the youth of Athens” er… well, I’ll say that people over the millennia have blamed a lot of forms of recreation for a lot of sins, but prohibition of those diversions doesn’t seem to stop youth from acting like youth.
Yet when you point out that the ’50s TV show Davy Crockett killed a lot more people with a lot fewer consequences over its run than anyone ever did in Manhunt, people think you’re crazy to compare the two because Crockett was a kid’s show. At least in the game violent death isn’t balletically elegant and neat.
Humans are weird.
— Steve
PS: If Mortal Kombat weirds folks out, why are they okay with “Punch and Judy” shows?
Really well written article. I always enjoy reading the ones that debate both for and against video game violence, it’s a subject that lies close to a lot of people and yet there is no definite answer.
I’ve considered a few of these myself, especially the ones about competition, quality gaming and role playing. Though there are very valid arguments as to why video game violence inspires real life violence one should look at it from other angles as well.
Two thumbs up.
– Littaly
