Games are supposed to draw the player in, and immerse them in an experience very far and distant from their own. In the 1980's and 1990's, people could use their gaming devices to pretend to be a plumber stomping on turtles. But as graphics become more and more lifelike, games will continue to aim at more and more lifelike situations.
As video game design begins to be more satirical and story based, they often touch on sensitive areas of politics or ethics. A recent example is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 where there is a mission that "lets people kill civilians in terror attacks". The game features a mission where the player, in an attempt to infiltrate a Russian terrorist group, takes part in the slaughtering of hundreds of civilians in an airport. As would be expected, this has caused outrage among many parents and people across the world. So, when is too much realism a bad thing?
I recently listened to a podcast about a one-of-a-kind game (not a video game, but board game) called Train by Brenda Brathwaite. The game was created as an experiment to see if a game could be made about the Holocaust. As game design goes, Train is very interesting and draws an eerie symbolism with regards to the parallels between the Holocaust and ending of the game. The design has players attempting to collect as many people in their train cars as possible, and uses drawn "action cards" as the random element of the game. Some cards help the player progress to the end, or collect people in their train, while others impede their progress. The punch-line of the game occurs when one of the players reach the end of the track and "win" the game, only to realize that they successfully delivered their train full of people to Auschwitz, and ultimately "lose" the game anyway. Train was revered as a piece of art, and received praise as being revolutionary and sensational.
A video game that sells millions of copies and includes a realistic scene of terrorism, similar to those experienced by real people around the world, can be seen as "crossing the line" with respect to comfort boundaries, while a board game that subverts its players to pack trains with people bound for concentration camps is considered a revolutionary artistic piece. Both pieces attempt to draw realities to real life through the playing of the game, and both demonstrate pitfalls and reflections of the darker side of warfare. However, the video game was marketed to a large general audience and was therefore much more visible, and as a result crossed the "too much realism" boundary. Train in contrast, only one copy made, and was viewed as something unique and special. As a result, the message was viewed as something special before people thought to blast it with criticism.
i know that in the study of video games, there is a big difference between realism and reality. i am kind of confused on the difference between the two terms, especially as they apply to video games. is realism, then, a representation of reality that is realistic but not necessarily real?
ReplyDeleteI think the Call of Duty game is just fine. My theory is, if you don't like it, then don't buy it. However that Holocaust game sort of caught my interest. I realized that you can turn almost anything into a "wow" piece by changing the back story into one that is personal to many people. For example i can take the game battle chess and replace the pieces for figures of the Rwanda genocide and probably get a good number of hits. Do i think it's artistic. not really, but it's always fun to capture the interest of people just for the sake of gaining public acknowledgment. and sometimes we just want to be the virtual bad guy.
ReplyDeleteI think realism would be things in the "magic circle" that want to imitate events or situations in real life but aren't real life, where as reality would be the actual events or situations occurring in real life outside of the "magic circle."
ReplyDeleteI really don't like people complaining about violent video games, and bad language. There is an obvious ESRB notice on the game with a "Mature" rating. If parents don't want their kids to play this, then they shouldn't be purchasing games with ratings beyond the kid's level.
I found it interesting that video games do tend to included the moments where the gamer has to pause and think what just happened. I feel like these moments should not be considered as a demerit to a game and people simply should understand that those scenes might have been put into the game for the reason of raising awareness about the horrors of war in the specific case of Call of Duty. The violence does occur in the world and it is on display in large number of media outlets from news to movies. The degree of the violence varies of course. However, movies still can be very graphical depicting very violent scenes. So what makes video games being scrutinized for being violent while movies can get away with almost the same if not greater level of violence?
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