by Daniel Bullard-Bates
Fair warning: the following post contains descriptions of brutal violence, as well as spoilers for God of War 3 and the movie Irreversible.
We return, time and time again, to the problem of violence in video games and other media. Does watching a gory movie make the viewer more comfortable with gore? Does murdering countless innocents in a fictional airport inspire real-life terrorism? Can a bit of the old ultraviolence permanently scar society?
When the media turns its gaze to the violence in video games, it is usually the acts themselves which are labeled as disturbing, gratuitous, and unfit for public consumption. What is most disturbing and potentially harmful, however, is the way that violence is treated by the individual characters in the games. Mostly it is not seriously considered by the characters at all. Enemies are merely there to be killed, and their deaths mean nothing. This may have been suitable in the time of Space Invaders or even Wolfenstein 3D, but as video game characters and graphics become more realistic, our response to violence must become more realistic as well. Attempts at censorship in video games have frequently been misguided. Manhunt 2 was given an Adults-Only rating due to its extreme violence, but allowed to be published as a Mature-rated game after a filter was applied to the game’s brutal execution scenes. While these scenes were extreme in nature, perhaps the most disturbing element of the game remained: The player was rewarded for skill in the stealth portion of the game with more elaborate execution animations. A player who presses the attack button at the first opportunity might merely hold a bag over someone’s face until they die of suffocation, whereas a more skilled player who spends longer lurking in the shadows is treated to a more elaborate murder.
This element of rewarding players with gore is not new; a headshot in most shooters is considered a sign of skill, and usually results in an impressive spray of blood or an exploding skull. Extreme violence is even a selling point for franchises such as Gears of War and God of War. Despite their similar appellations, neither of these franchises have much to say about the nature of war and none of the protagonists seem affected by the things they do. Quite the opposite: Dom and Marcus congratulate one another on headshots and the creative use of chainsaw bayonets. These men should be riddled with PTSD and guilt; instead they joke and congratulate.
Visually speaking, the murder of Hercules in God of War 3 is one of the most gruesome acts of violence I have ever seen in a video game, being reminiscent of an infamous scene from the film Irreversible in which a man is murdered by repeated blows to the face with a fire extinguisher. Irreversible is a profoundly disturbing film, but this scene is not played for the enjoyment of the viewer; I have never met someone who finds violence of that caliber amusing, nor would I want to. The witnesses, both in the film and without, scream, run, and panic.
While the destruction of Hercules’s face and skull is the most gratuitous act of violence in the game, the most disturbing is a simple moment in which Kratos allows an innocent woman to be torn to shreds by a machine simply because he needs to open a door. Do we really want our protagonists to be monsters like Kratos and Marcus, who think nothing of the violence they perpetrate?
Similarly, Nathan Drake of the Uncharted series would be one of the most likeable characters of all time if it were not for the fact that he is also a mass murderer.
I don’t think it is too much to ask for realistic characters in video games, and part of that is coming to terms with violence, shell shock, and post traumatic stress. There is a moment in the opening portion of Alan Wake where he mentions his fear that he may have just killed a man for the first time in his life, but it is merely narration. He doesn’t pause. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t sit and cry. Where are the characters who understand what they are doing? Where are the men and women who wonder whether their enemies had families or futures?
And yet here comes Bulletstorm, a game which promises to take itself even less seriously than most modern shooters and to reward players with points for particularly gruesome kills. How long can we fall back on the excuse that only unbalanced minds turn to violence as a result of video games? Are we ready to completely discount the idea that praising the player for causing violence might harm the psyche? Can we really put all of the blame on the parents? All of it?
I've not yet played any game with the type of violence you describe here (and I can't imagine I would want to) - but it's even been niggling at me while playing Final Fantasy XIII that killing the random monsters is treated the same as killing soldiers, especially when one of your characters was one of those soldiers up to the day before the game starts and another one of the characters is at some vague pre-or-early-teen age. Some semblance of psychological realism in some game somewhere would be nice.
ReplyDeleteHi Lynette, and thanks for commenting!
ReplyDeleteThat's a great point about Final Fantasy XIII. The characters, especially the younger ones, come to terms with the fact that they are going to have to kill people at an alarming rate. FFXIII does make a few attempts at dealing with the psychological ramifications, but they are few and far between.
I'm a big fan of the idea that human beings in video games (and movies, novels, etc.) should act something like actual human beings. How can we possibly sympathize with characters we can't understand? Psychological realism doesn't require that the rest of the game be realistic at all: Many of the most enduring stories are about realistic characters responding to unrealistic situations.
Very well-said, Daniel, and an angle I hadn't considered. A lot of games use the trick of dehumanizing the standard enemy (like the Locust) in order to make the post-headshot high-fives more palatable. And sometimes extreme gore can fit a game; for example, the gore in Dead Space is extreme, but it fit with the horror theme and works just fine, at least for me.
ReplyDeleteBut dehumanizing is dicy - it was something that kept coming back all the way through Alan Wake (even though I totally enjoyed the game). But how, exactly, did Alan know that the hundreds of loggers and hunters he was killing were beyond saving? His narration makes the excuse that they're too far gone, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of that in the game, no scene in which he traps a "taken" prisoner only to realize that they really are zombies, soulless and gone.
So how come they're still evil after he burns the darkness off of them? Given the nightmarish quality of the game, it would've been easy to explain them as spectres, not real people, but the game never goes that route. It seems pretty clear that they're missing people, possessed by the darkness. And then killed by Alan Wake.
I think it has been proved that violent videogames are only a trigger for people who are already violent. Since you mention Wolfenstein, I must say I returned my copy of the remake because it was very much insane killing non-stop. Id Software just doesn't bother anymore.
ReplyDeleteHey -- interesting article, especially your refreshing observations of Kratos: I always thought that guy was a bit too batty to be worshipped!
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you played Crysis: Warhead, but there's a cutscene towards the end of the game where Sykes, the player character, does exactly what you describe in the Alan Wake paragraph: flying off in a rage, Sykes brutally murders a Korean soldier, the likes of which you've been killing with nonchalance during the course of the game. After killing the soldier, though, Sykes sits down and puts his head in his hands, sighs, and visibly thinks about what he's done. The animation and timing of the scene are pitch-perfect, and it's easily one of the best cut-scenes I've ever seen in a game -- and nails exactly the thoughts you described in the aforementioned paragraph.
It's good to see at least some games with an inkling of conscience, eh?
There's a strong case to be made for the silent protagonist in violent video games, since they allow the player to decide how to react instead of taking cues from the speech and response of the character.
ReplyDeleteKirk's Dead Space example is a good one: The violence is extreme, but it's a horror game, the enemies are aggressively evil and inhuman, and Isaac Clarke doesn't weigh in on the situation. All of these factors serve to ameliorate the disturbing images and explain them, making the game both more believable and more responsible in its treatment of gore and violence. The player decides how much this is affecting Isaac, though the writers guide the player to believe that the results are psychologically catastrophic by the end.
Similarly, Gordon Freeman of Half-Life is every one who's ever played him. Maybe for you he's in love with Alyx and fighting for humanity's freedom because he believes in the goodness of his cause, while my Gordon Freeman is a shell-shocked survivor barely clinging to his sanity with the help of a few close friends and familiar faces. He helps them because they're all he's got.
As soon as the protagonist is given a defined, consistent personality in an action game, that personality immediately becomes suspect. After all, what kind of person can keep it together in any action (or horror) game scenario? Most of these games involve the systematic killing of a hundred or more enemies.
Which character is more believable: Ripley, who is permanently mentally scarred from her initial encounter with a single, horrifying alien, or John McClane, who kills human beings left and right and keeps his cool no matter what?
dfa - The "remake" of Wolfenstein was done by Raven(though they have been in the shadow of Id Software for years).
ReplyDeleteI'm actually excited about Bulletstorm exactly because it's takes itself less seriously than modern shooters. It looks quite fun, and reminds me of my days of playing DOOM and Quake as a kid. I never needed to sympathize with the characters or even have a very good reason to kill the enemies of these games (that's not entirely true. DOOM wouldn't have been the same if you're not the sole survivor of a demonic invasion trying to get the hell out of the moon base and get revenge on the demons the killed your buddies).
And then there's the new Medal of Honor, where several people are talking about the new trailer where we hear a soldier calling his family back at home. How it shows that games are getting closer to Art. How it'll elevate shooters to something higher. What a fucking joke. I just know you'll be killing hundreds of generic modern terrorists with generic modern weapons in generic modern setting before you're thrown a "touching" scripted event before you go on killing hundreds of more generic modern terrorists until the end. After you think about that event for a minute or two, you'll jump online and kill your friends thousands of times.
But it won't matter that you're killing just as many people as you did in past games, because plenty of gaming blog posts will mention that one time in the game when you felt sympathy for your character. And that'll make it a little better than those games where you *didn't* feel any sympathy.
But you are right - Violence is Not the Problem. But neither is it the characters of violent games. I'm confident Bulletstorm won't make me desensitized to violence any more than all the games I've played as a child just because the character doesn't stop for a manly shoulder to cry on when he kicks people into flesh-eating plants.
ghost4,
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned two comments before yours, John McClane is another excellent example of an unrealistic, dull character. That doesn't mean his movies aren't fun, but I definitely consider him in the same category of characters we are discussing here.
I thought that I made my opinion fairly clear, but let me summarize:
Most video games and video game characters do not deal with violence realistically.
I don't think that every game needs to be realistic.
I do think that more games should be realistic. Realistic characters are more interesting than unrealistic ones.
I don't think that society will go crazy with bloodlust if we don't make more realistic games, but I do think that on some level extreme violence with no narrative purpose damages the psyche.
For the future: We much prefer comments intended to spur discussion, not end it. You're welcome to be as ornery as you like, of course, but it is more interesting to discuss an idea that is well-supported and thoroughly articulated than one that is intended to refute an argument point-by-point.
For example, I would be interested to hear more about why you think that considerations of an enemy's family or future is immaterial or out of place. Do you really require scientific proof to make observations about society? Why should video games not aspire to be something greater than they are, with more societal commentary and relevance? Tell me more!
Video games are also not a very effective platform for "art."
ReplyDeleteIt was nice meeting you! I don't think we're going to be good friends, but that's okay. Just because your opinions are different from mine doesn't make them unwarranted and pointless, but it is difficult to talk about a complicated, important topic if you can't even agree on a few basic assumptions.
Hi Ghost. I just wanted to weigh in on the article you quoted. It seems to be saying that the need for frivolity (shallowness, etc) is created when someone has not studied or engaged his/her mind in deeper thoughts (history, literature, etc). I find this logic flawed. Personally, the need to "play" and be frivolous came back to me when I was in college - studying, examining, theorizing. I needed a break from that. So my need to be frivolous often stems from needing a pause from seriousness and profundity. But I say "often;" I don't think it's always a causal relationship. Maybe I just go through spurts in which I want to be frivolous and spurts in which I want to be profound.
ReplyDeleteIn college, I learned about history, literature, philosophy, etc - but I also learned how to learn. In order to learn and grow, I need to have an inquisitive mind. Therefore, there is always merit in examining life around us, especially in examining an activity that takes up hours of our lives. I can see that many people would find this important, although you may not.
As the Quakers say:
ReplyDeleteFriend speaks my mind.
Now you're just being rude. Please take your negative attitude elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't even have to be violent. I played Aion recently, and one of the quests is to kill Mosbear cubs for leather to make some guy gloves. The Mosbear cub hangs around with an older mosbear. Kill the older one, and the cub just runs away for a bit while you beat on it. I got the sense I was killing kittens to make someone a fur coat, and I avoided mosbear cubs whenever I could after that.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you can go from this to damaging society because of it: we've always killed in fantasy, being shooting other kids as cowboys and indians. It's just more graphic now. But I do agree very much that we need heroes in game to act like heroes, and to not feel our sole purpose in games is to pile corpses like stacks of wood.