Comments on: The Real Hitler Problem

By: Kad

Kad — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:31:39 +0000

I find it so funny that many videogames, be they fps, rpg or any other genre, can depict the most disgusting and horrible things (games like the Grand Theft Auto series) without displaying any real consequences for the player or those who made the game, and yet when a good game with a well-written storyline displays even the smallest amount of completely-explainable and justified violence in even a single scene it will be swarmed by angry consumers and those annoying idiots in the government who blame school shootings and the like on videogames (Case in point, the debate caused by the infamous “No Russian” level on Infinity Ward’s Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2).

By: 0173

0173 — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:39:25 +0000

I guess the question to ask is: “How far is too far?”

By: Trife

Trife — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:49:19 +0000

RadarTrap : @Einherjer Try publishing something that even mentions New York’s twin towers and you’ll soon find out that there are so many whiney Americans around that your game will be pulled from shelves and your blog will fill with death threats…

Sad, but true, considering that some people made a website protesting The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers movie based on it's name, claiming it was capitalizing on the events. If so... damn they had good intel, 50 years in advance, the movie industry has that, but not the government. Their website is down now, but still I found this incredibly amusing back then.

By: Trife

Trife — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:35:28 +0000

J. : Now you’re making me think you really do want to do a Schindler’s List video game, Scott.

And would you be Schindler, a jew, or the nazis? (Can fairly assume 3rd least likely of all)

By: RadarTrap

RadarTrap — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:08:13 +0000

@Einherjer
“No subject is untouchable in my opinion and, provided that there are good regulation on how the product is sold and presented, people should be allowed to create (book, film, game) what they want regardless of the message’s morality.”
Try publishing something that even mentions New York’s twin towers and you’ll soon find out that there are so many whiney Americans around that your game will be pulled from shelves and your blog will fill with death threats…

Case in point: Invaders! from Leipzig games convention. http://www.abstractmachine.net/blog/30-years-of-invasions/

By: Moorgard

Moorgard — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:27:59 +0000

J. :
Stating such a definition is a common excuse made by the creators about why their audience doesn’t enjoy the experience. “It’s art. You obviously don’t understand.”

I can agree it would be lame to use such a response as an excuse for sucky gameplay, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

What I was getting at was something like this: While in the midst of playing a really fun game in which you are merrily blasting the hell out of the bad guys, you are put into a situation where the bad guys were actually doing good things and hey, maybe you don’t want to wipe them out after all. And you could find yourself at a crossroads where you get to make a choice, and there are actual implications in the game based on the choice you make.

This is a really vague example, and depending on context it can be extremely simple or pack a surprising amount of depth. Executed well, this kind of gameplay could provide a moral exploration on par with forms of storytelling more generally considered to be worthy of the label “Art.”

I don’t think games need to be afraid of this level of sophistication, so long as it is presented in a manner that is consistent with the medium.

That is, you don’t yank a player out of a hectic FPS to hit them over the head with morality–you make it fit the play experience. And maybe the majority of players wouldn’t even give it much thought, but that doesn’t take away from the potential of the experience for those who appreciate it.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:32:05 +0000

The trouble with the “action-reward” mentality of games is that it doesn’t map well to evil actions. That’s why the GTA games are so popular; you dodge the repercussions of acting in evil ways. A trip to the electric chair wouldn’t be “fun”.

By: Viz

Viz — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:21:10 +0000

The trouble for FPS makers is that it’s really quite difficult to make a shooter set in a historical war when all small arms were basically the same kind of rifle, or worse, when you were expected to march in a square and fire volleys at each other. WW2 ends up being “ideal” for those companies because it has a sufficient variety of combat environments and weapons to make for interesting gameplay, while being (relatively) free of the ethical greyness that plagues more modern conflicts. You can make up your own environments, of course, but then you’d actually be responsible for figuring out what kind of weapons and terrain everyone would be using and balancing them all. So the game subject has a tendency to default to WW2.

By: J.

J. — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:18:23 +0000

“One of the common definitions of Art is that it’s something that makes you think.”

Stating such a definition is a common excuse made by the creators about why their audience doesn’t enjoy the experience. “It’s art. You obviously don’t understand.”

I see a lot of “interactive art exhibits” that seem a lot like game ideas that in implementation just aren’t any fun, but are on display anyway because the creators were just so in love with their ugly mutant children that they figure they ought to show them to the world.

By: JuJutsu

JuJutsu — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:43:27 +0000

“Given that making mistakes is one of the ways we learn, I think letting people make “bad” choices in a video game and then showing them the implications of those choices can be a positive thing.”

Hmm. Puts the revamping of classes in MMOs in a whole new light. EQ2 could nerf the crap out of ‘assassins’ and ‘brigands’ to show them the error of their ways.