Backwards Thinking

Ok, someone really needs to explain this country’s [the U.S.] ongoing adversity toward sexuality to me. I realize we were established from Puritan roots, but that was well over 200 years ago. Isn’t it about time we grew up?

Here’s what’s tripped today’s tirade. Earlier today, I was browsing some forums for an upcoming video game. There has been speculation as to whether the game’s ESRB rating will be T or M. I came across this post:

“i hope its not Teen, teen means no blood no swearing, which means its almost fake”

That’s all fine and dandy, aside from the question of why blood and swearing are so important, but I’ll get to that in a moment. The thing that pissed me off was this reply to the above:

“Yeah thats true. i just hope it goes M with swearing and blood but no sexual stuff. I really will not buy any game that has a lot of sexual **bleep** in it.”

There is a very serious issue with this response: the fact that the guy actively desires blood (and general violence, by implication), but wants nothing to do with sexual content.

Are we so fucked up that we prefer human suffering to human pleasure?

Let’s consider a few case studies. Last summer, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was re-rated to AO and pulled from some store shelves over a poorly-detailed, tongue-in-cheek sex mini-game. A few months later, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was re-rated from T to M after the release of an end-user mod that allowed female characters in the game to appear topless. Both received significant [negative] media coverage, and both triggered the predictable critical rhetoric.

Contrast that with the recently-released film Hostel, which contains intensely detailed and graphic depictions of violence, torture, gore, and general human suffering. The film is rated R, and rightfully so. But there’s no political backlash. I certainly don’t hear soccer moms blaming the collapse of society on this film.

How about this:

• Sex is about pleasure, while violence is about suffering.
• We have sex with people we love (or at least like), and we’re violent with people we hate.
• People generally feel good and content after sex, but feel stressed and frightened after committing an act of violence.
• Sex is associated with comfort and happiness, while violence is associated with pain and fear.
• Sex is rejuvenating, but violence is destructive.

Seeing a pattern here?

I’d really like to hear a good reason why we accept brutality but demonize eroticism. Anyone?

The difference between games and movies

By now it’s become fairly apparent that the video game industry is trying to be more like Hollywood. It all started with the introduction of optical storage media back on the original Playstation, enabling the inclusion of pre-rendered cinematics, made famous by the ever-popular “Final Fantasy VII”. As technology has evolved to the point where real-time, in-game rendering became feasible, we’ve seen a decline in pre-rendered cinematics and a dramatic rise in real-time, non-interactive sequences like those peppering best-seller “Halo 2″. It seems the industry’s next goal is to create that Hollywood feel in a fully-interactive setting, as seen in Bioware’s upcoming “Mass Effect”.

This is all very interesting, but I think we’re gradually losing the thing that sets games apart from films. It’s not interactivity, though that’s certainly important. It’s the way in which the media conveys emotion, and the way in which the viewer/player feels that emotion.

Film is an empathetic medium; that is, emotion is felt through the viewer’s empathy with the characters on-screen. The most powerful films are the ones to which we can relate some personal experience, by means of which we can “feel” what a character is feeling. But the viewer’s emotional response is not an independent one: it’s a mimicked one.

In a horror film, when the viewer feels fear, there is also at least one character currently expressing fear. In a romance, when the viewer feels desire, there is a character expressing desire. In an adventure, when the viewer feels triumphant exultation, there is a character expressing victory. There is no room for independent emotion: the viewer will not generally feel fear while the characters are expressing mirth, for example.

This works in film because the viewer is an observer, watching someone else’s story unfold. But in games, the viewer is a participant – generally the principal participant – and thus can (and should) generate independent emotional responses.

However, the current Hollywood-emulation trend in games minimizes or removes opportunities to generate that independent emotional response by providing the player with scenes and characters that tell him how to emote. The principal participant is relegated to the role of observer, and we end up with nothing more than a film that requires you to complete various tasks to continue watching.

This is primarily a problem in games that make heavy use of non-interactive sequences, whether pre-rendered like “Final Fantasy VII” or in-game like “Halo 2″. But it’s also becoming an issue in interactive gameplay. The “Call of Duty” series is a good example: the player is robbed of the opportunity to generate independent emotional responses because he’s constantly bombarded by other characters showing him how to emote, how to respond to the situation. Moreover, even if the player does manage his own emotional response to a situation, said response has no impact on the game because there is no mechanism through which to receive and process it.

Perhaps the best current example of putting the player at the center of the emotional experience comes from the survival horror genre. Games like “Fatal Frame” make the player feel genuine fear, not through the observed responses of other characters, but via his own independent response. The game almost seems to emerge from the TV and envelop the player in his physical world. (Think about playing such a game in a dark room, alone and late at night, and how you’re always looking over your shoulder to make sure nothing’s sneaking up on you.)

That’s where the magic of games lies. We’ve managed a few emotions: fear, tension, triumph, frustration. But there’s a broad palette of emotional responses we have yet to touch: embarrassment, desire, love, despair, confidence, vengefulness… Some of these we’ve managed to portray through the actions of in-game characters, but then the player is only “feeling” these emotions through empathy with those characters, i.e. second-hand.

When games can instill the full range of emotion in players via independent response, only then will they truly carve out their place in history.

"Prey" Xbox 360 Demo

The Prey Xbox 360 demo was released on Xbox Live earlier this week, and having just finished it, I’m inspired to share a few comments.

First up, the game looks fantastic. If I recall correctly, it’s built on a modified Doom 3 engine. Visually, it bears strong resemblances to Doom 3: high-contrast dynamic lighting, strong shadows, and great shader work (especially on the organic stuff).

The major gameplay hook is the use of player disorientation. While that sounds like the cardinal sin of game design – and I have to admit, I was skeptical about it at first – the environments and puzzles are so well-designed throughout the demo that I always knew where to go and what to do, making the journey feel less like a frustrating maze and more like a wild, psychotic mind trip.

Specifically, the game uses three major elements: gravity, portals, and spirit-walking. The direction of gravity can be changed on-the-fly. At first this only occurs as a result of scripted events, but later in the demo you’ll encounter odd glowing glyphs that, when shot, rotate gravity to the glyph’s plane. One memorable room has these glyphs on almost every surface, with the exit portal suspended in mid-air, creating a cool 3D maze which is both challenging and immediately accessible. There are also special gravity walkways in various areas which snake across floors, walls, and ceilings alike.

Portals are much simpler: they can only be entered from one side, through which you can see into the area the portal transports you into. Portals are used creatively throughout the demo, as in the aforementioned “gravity room”.

Spirit-walking taps into your main character’s Native American heritage to create out-of-body experiences. As a spirit, you can move through environmental hazards (like fire) without dying, and you can phase through certain barriers. Your body is vulnerable, however, so you can’t leave it in a dangerous location.

The integration of these three elements is extremely strong. Not to give anything away, but there’s one puzzle about halfway through the demo that integrates all three in brilliant fashion. You’ll know it when you see it.

My only reservations about the game thus far are twofold. First, it can be difficult to make out enemies against their environments. This is a problem I’ve encountered in numerous recent games as worlds have become more detailed. Second, the weapons aren’t particularly compelling. None of the demo weapons feel significantly powerful, with their odd appearances, weak sound effects, and almost-nonexistent kickback. The problem extends to the way enemies die as well, in that most tend to just lamely crumple in place rather than flying back and slamming into a wall.

Still, this game is definitely something different, which we’ve been sorely lacking in recent years, and I’m looking forward to picking up the full version when it releases next week.

How to be a talentless hack

This article is brilliant, funny, and oh-so-true. A must-read for all writers, aspiring and otherwise.

Experimental gameplay project – postmortem

Here is one of the best articles on game design and development I’ve read in a looong time. It’s a postmortem of sorts for the Carnegie-Mellon experimental gameplay project:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml