It’s good no one is keeping count of the people I have killed in video games because I’d likely be institutionalized in some dark cell.
You can shoot characters, stab them, strangle them, vaporize them, chuck grenades at them, kamikaze them with a jet, toss them off a 20-story building, poison them, burn them to a crisp, and so on.You get the idea.
Video games are extremely violent, but this editorial is not about violent video games corrupting our youth. Rather, the infatuation with violence limits the creative imagination of developers and, consequently, the ways players have fun.
Violence is not new to video games. Since 1993’s “Doom,” the first popular shooter game, it has virtually been married to the industry. As technology has evolved, games have gotten better at immersion, as they will again when couch potatoes get their hands on the Playstation 4 or Xbox One.
The advancements made to violent game-play far outstrip those made in other areas, like storytelling. “Grand Theft Auto V” lets you buddy up with friends to rob banks online. “Assassin’s Creed 4” is expanding players’ methods to butcher pixelated chumps with naval warfare. And “Battlefield 4” lets you topple skyscrapers on people while riding the crumbling debris down in style.
Too often games rely on placing players in the shoes of adrenaline-infused macho men who speak with baritone voices and ooze of “badassery.” This has led the industry into a creative bubble that’s conditioned consumers to expect a certain amount of violence in their games. When a game fails to meet the expected violence quota, we think that something is wrong with the game. That mentality has prevented developers from being more daring.
Some games, though, have tried to break the mold. “Mass Effect,” “Heavy Rain,” and Telltale’s “The Walking Dead” are all ripe with rich narratives that force players to make moral decisions that influence the outcome of the plot. The best parts of these games are not shooting or stabbing people but rather talking to them and watching their characters develop as a result of your choices.
But even those games succumb to sneaking in the obligatory shooting gallery here and there, and that’s where theyusually suffer. A notable culprit of this habit is “LA Noire,” a game that puts you in the shoes of a police detective from the 1940s. For most of the game, you gather clues on murder suspects and interview people. Whether you crack a case or not depends on your thoroughness, attention to detail, and judgment.
This is a breath of fresh air because you don’t have to kill anyone, excepting a few moments where the game suddenly turns your character into someone resembling the Terminator. Those shootouts, rare as they are, leave inexplicable dissonance between story and game-play.
This isn’t conscious laziness by the developers. It’s evidence of the thoughtless production of games created by blindly following an old trend.
A few games such as “Minecraft” are more successful at innovating. But why do so many people love “Minecraft”? It has no violence and, from a visual standpoint, it has the type of retro-80s look that will trigger many gag reflexes. Yet it succeeded by pushing creative boundaries. It left millions of players with a simple creative dilemma: “What should I build today? Perhaps the Starship U.S.S. Enterprise? Or maybe the Death Star?”
In order for video games to burst the bubble they’re in, developers need to use technology to create new types of experiences that cater to wider audiences, instead of constantly stooping to Michael Bay-esque action. It won’t be an easy journey but exiting the creative struggle bus is worth it.
I suppose the opposite extreme is just as bad, though. Imagine a game industry infested with millions of copies of “Hello Kitty Online.”
