GamesTM - Issue 75

[Eight Rooks]

I mean that while pedantically speaking it's true, people seem to take that to mean it can't happen ever until Development X comes to pass, Development X usually being something they're working on. There is no reason why it couldn't be done other than financial constraints (nothing other than various flavours of "it won't sell", basically). Get decent writers in (no, contrary to popular belief, we don't have to wait another decade or two for writers to get used to the strictures of game design), stop thinking in terms of how many 15-year-old wannabe Spec Ops you're attempting to sell to, get a good development team who's really behind your general... artistic direction or whatever. Just because I'm being vague doesn't mean this is pie-in-the-sky thinking; there really is no reason with any merit (because the industry needs to stop thinking every high-profile release has to shift Michael Bay numbers) to explain why we couldn't see Stalingrad: The Video Game and have it turn out as something that'd leave players rocked to their very core.

[Kaladron]

I was playing devil's advocate, TBH.

As far as maturation is concerned: have you seen a game that dealt successfully with moral issues or grand political narratives in an interesting way? I haven't. As you say, there's no technical reason why it would be impossible, but it doesn't seem to me that it's likely to happen any time soon.

I don't think you'll EVER see that from a commercial game. Just like cinema, you'll have to look to the indies for anything meaningfully subversive.

[prinnysquad]

It's not really moral or political per se, but I thought that the Holocaust game due for the DS - Imagination Is The Only Escape - was going to deal with empathy and educate players about the historical facts.

It's a shame if it doesn't get released, it reminded me a bit of Maus for some reason.

[MattyD]

oh, and I think you could make a relatively good argument along those lines for WWII (people dragging their feet until the last minute on whether or not to do anything about the Nazi regime)

I agree, it would be nice if, just for once, a game came out admitting that the seeds of WWII were sown by the rest of Europe when it wrote the Treaty of Versailles, which left Germany utterly destitute. Even more 'advanced' mediums like film and even documentaries rarely touch on such things unfortunately.

Or, alternately, did anyone expect IW to alienate one of it's biggest markets - namely, America - by critiquing their alleged Imperialist credentials directly?

I think the truth is that CoD4 makes no kind of political argument whatsoever.

Which is precisely why I consider it propaganda. In place of any firm statement on the matter it simply repeats a very establishment-friendly version of events. I'm not going to start claiming it's intentional - that's tin-hat brigade territory - but at the very least it shows IW didn't spend much time really thinking critically about their chosen subject matter, which IMO precludes the possiblity of artistic merit. It expresses little more than a desire to profit, even if it means trivialising the real suffering and real problems of the world today. No Western government could get away with putting out a game like this. Rather conveniently, they don't need to. It seems the private sector is only too willing to oblige.

Jesus christ, rock-and-roll and hippies and punk were all supposed to be bringing about the destruction of civilisation at the time they were around, but all we have these days is empty spectacle. It's about time videogames developers developed some moral fibre and started to say something in their games. (thumbs up to Bioshock BTW).

I can't believe how OT this thread has gone!

[Eight Rooks]

But it's the kind of OT the industry, creators, fans, everyone, needs more of.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be "meaningfully" subversive... nor doggedly independent (shoestring budget, "classic" gameplay et al). Like I said, I'll take a WWII FPS where you play as the Nazis and everyone dies. Jesus, it wouldn't be that much of a stretch - yes, okay, I admit, probably too much of a stretch for the industry right now but you've had successful games where the protagonist is doomed from the outset, you've had playing as the anti-hero... if you really flat out couldn't sell that I think I'd just curl up and cry. I'd swear it could be done. It'd just mean not making quite so much money and (possibly? Definitely?) taking ill-informed critical flak (Ban This Sick Filth and suchlike).

[Kaladron]

Like I said, I'll take a WWII FPS where you play as the Nazis and everyone dies.

I'd like to see something along those lines too, but I think that really is something we'll never see from the big publishers, if only because they wouldn't know how to market it. That and it would probably be banned in Germany, a big market where they're strangely eager to buy WWII games as much as anyone else from what I hear.

[anephric]

I think I could live without a game like that, to be honest. I don't see what could possibly be gained by such an exercise unless you're talking playing as a heer soldier, rather than Waffen SS or whatever, and even then, the common perception that the run-of-the-mill wehrmacht soldier was a regular joe quite often completely removed from the rabid schutz stuffelites isn't something I necessarily subscribe to. It was bad enough in Call of Duty multiplayer being the Germans and having teammates with tags like Dachau1945.

Of course, I completely acknowledge the hypocrisy in my being happy to play Vietnam FPSes and hence endorsing a military venture predicated on a dubious political ideology that ruined entire countries for generations, brought about genocide in a country that it wasn't even at war with, and which used illegal nerve agents quite merrily, along with a pick 'n' mix of various other atrocities. Which is why something like Shellshock was such a disappointment to me (and, no doubt, CoD: World at War will be too) because it had such ample opportunity - and, indeed, sold itself on the idea of being extremely provocative - to really slap people in the face about what such warfare is like. But no, we got a sub-par piece of crap with appallingly comedic "gore" that was like something out of a really lame Peter Jackson clone and juvenile references to making boom-boom.

If you want to do something like that, how about a WWI sim where you hunker in a trench in realtime for two days before some toff blows a whistle and you get your leg shot off in no-man's land, and have to spend another ten hours shouting for help until you die. There are plenty of jingoistic WWI flight sims and RTSes. How about an FPS? There have been a few in the works but none released, as far as I know. There's a US civil war FPS, fer christ's sake, which I've never played and which thoroughly intrigues me.

[Eight Rooks]

So, out of curiosity, what would be your rationale for movies being allowed to wallow in "the horror, the horror" tropes but games not? I'm aware that's (possibly) simplifying what you just said, but it's an honest question. I mean, I see it as on the one hand, gameplay-wise, being little different from Shadow of the Colossus' slow realisation All Is Not Well, and story-wise little different from watching any of the films that deal in similar narratives. But then I stubbornly insist games are/can be far closer to other creative media than most of the big figures in the industry would like to believe.

Ditto on Shellshock, though, certainly. I couldn't get more than a few levels in. Horrendous game in just about every respect, and a stupefyingly pathetic wasted opportunity.

[anephric]

It's not the depiction of the reality of war in games that I would have a problem with - indeed, I'm all for making it as realistic as possible (within the confines of it still being playable as a game, in the generally perceived sense of the word). Sure, I want to play a game where you're fully expected to have to deal with killing civilians; where you have weapon failures that result in you dying; where the arena of combat is filled with people with various limbs blown off begging to be saved; where your AI buddies might be complete arseholes who shoot kids in the distance for fun or out of boredom; where friendly fire is just matter of fact.

I'm not sure many people would want to play that game, mind.

The objection I have to playing a game as a German soldier is that it intrinsically identifies you in the first-person as being part of that regime. I just don't see what purpose that serves. You might as well make Khmer Rouge: Hot for Killing Teacher while you're at it.

I exaggerate slightly, but... well.

[Eight Rooks]

I take your point, I suppose. I haven't studied enough WWII history to have a considered opinion as to whether one Nazi was as bloodthirsty as the next from the top all the way down through the hierarchy. Let's just say I'm basing my hypothetical Medal Of Iron Cross on the idea they weren't, or that some who were ended up thinking "Jesus Christ, what the hell am I doing" etc., etc. I'm a big, big believer that games do not necessarily have to be fun, or at least not all the way through or even for most of their running time. Fair enough, some people wouldn't want to play those games; too bad for them. Some people don't want to watch Come And See. Therefore I suppose I do subscribe to some kind of nebulous idea of games as... not Edutainment, but learnin' you something in the same way a book or movie can, no matter how unpalatable the subject matter.

(I'm prepared to accept this might be in large part blatant naivete, though.)

[averybluemonkey]

WW2 games seem to cut out all the atocities the Allied forces wreaked on the German populace, so not sure why a game depicting the other side of the conflict would be any different.

[Asura]

There are some good points here about COD4's pro-Western attitude. I remember when BF2 came out; I felt somewhat that the way the non-Western factions "Win" screen was accompanied by "evil" music was quite insensitive, considering that the other faction's music was a triumphant fanfare.

This is probably going to be an ever-present issue though with games being set during modern-day wars. I remember also that some people complained about last-gen's "Vietnam Explosion" (Vietcong, Shellshock, BF:V, there were others too) and how the games flattened to issues of the real, historic war into a simpler good vs. evil conflict.

WW2 games seem to cut out all the atocities the Allied forces wreaked on the German populace, so not sure why a game depicting the other side of the conflict would be any different.

True, but then again history in general often leaves that out. In a post-Vietnam world we're more aware of the ambiguous morality of any major war. Videogames, as the medium of our time should attempt to reflect that.

I haven't played COD4, but if it also shares this problem then that'll really put me off.

[anephric]

WW2 games seem to cut out all the atocities the Allied forces wreaked on the German populace, so not sure why a game depicting the other side of the conflict would be any different.

Because it depends on your definition of atrocity - sure, Dresden and the US firebombing/atom bombing of Japan were atrocities, by any measure, and obviously the Russians wreaked a terrible revenge on the Germans they encountered, but I can't subscribe to the notion, in the main, that US/British/Canadian/Free French troops committed the same sort of casual slaughter against civilians (and many regular army units were used to round up jews and undesirables and committed as many war crimes as the more notorious, dedicated SS units).

Of course, just because the Allies committed most of their slaughter of soft targets from the air doesn't make it any more palatable - indeed, US propaganda featured posters depicting German factory workers with targets on them, underlining that they were de facto soldiers, and the stuff they produced to foment hatred amongst an apathetic population against the Japanese is some of the most racist material you can imagine, as strong as Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda.

The point being - pretty much anything goes in war: it's the state where nations get to do whatever they like that they can't get away with in peacetime and pay lip service to Hague/Geneva accords. The difference between Allied and Axis troops in WWII being the Allied campaign was not based on a sickening and completely manufactured notion of racial superiority to those being vanquished. And hence, I don'twannaplayasanazi.

[DeathAdder]

I haven't played COD4, but if it also shares this problem then that'll really put me off.

That would be a pity. It's great fun to play. Which is all I care about.

[MattyD]

WW2 games seem to cut out all the atocities the Allied forces wreaked on the German populace, so not sure why a game depicting the other side of the conflict would be any different.

Something they never told you in the 'shocking' Normandy landing scenes in Medal of Honor is that Allied bombers and naval artillery pretty much levelled various towns and villages, civilians and all, before a single soldier set foot on the beaches.

It's an unfortunate fact in war that you can't not bomb enemy fortifications, artillery batteries and AA guns simply because they might happen to be in the grounds of a school or the roof of a factory. As Anaphric says, it's hard to call such incidents 'atrocities' when there was a greater purpose to them (i.e. liberating Europe from an invading tyrant). Regardless, unpleasant little details like these are always glossed over and not just by videogames.