Where Do Game Subjects Cross The Line?

Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Spy Vs. Spy' editorial discussing whether any reality-based subject should be made into a game, referencing games like Kuma:War, which offers "the hunt for Uday and Qusay Hussein in Iraq and their eventual deaths in a shootout with U.S. forces" as a scenario. The first editor suggests that " I believe that such 'ripped from the headlines' titles are disrespectful to the soldiers in combat and the issues involved", whereas another editor presents a different view, arguing: "I'm all in favor of games working in contemporary events... one way for games to be more relevant to people is to bring current events to an interactive medium."

Comments

There is no line

[Apreche]

I say freedom all the way. If you want to make a game about something, no matter what it is, go right ahead. And if some sicko wants to play that game, that's fine too. If you dont' like it, you don't have to play it. And if you don't think your children should play it, don't let them. And until someone infringes upon my rights, they can do as they please. You know the saying about swinging fists and noses.

If I made a flight sim where you try to hit buildings to score points, that's ok. If you think there's something wrong with that, then it's perfectly within your right to be that way. But you can't stop me from playing it or making it.

That's the way it should be.

Re:There is no line

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd agree with you except for one point: real people should not be used as in-game characters without their permission. It's not a matter of taste or decency, but rather a question of whether you should be able to be secure in your person. If I was making a "kill the kiddy-fiddler" game, and just went out and took photos of people in the street to use as targets in the game, I'm sure they wouldn't be very pleased about it, and I don't think that is acceptable; people should have a right to be left alone.

Re:There is no line

[sporty]

I say freedom all the way.

Until you see tastless games like, "Abortion by coathangar!" or "Rape that chick!"

There's some behaviors you don't even want to demonstrate much less promote.

Re:There is no line

[missing000]

Until you see tastless games like, "Abortion by coathangar!" or "Rape that chick!"

Kind of like this?

Re:There is no line

[cgranade]

Until you see tastless games like, "Abortion by coathangar!" or "Rape that chick!"
There's some behaviors you don't even want to demonstrate much less promote.
That's nice. Now, who is going to decide where this line is? Who is going to say "this game is good, not that game." What about BMX XXX and GTA:VC? Are they too crude for you? More importantly, are they too crude for a censor? While it may sound all well and good to censor tastless games, it can be and often is a pitfall into a whole can of worms you don't want to open.

Re:There is no line

[PainKilleR-CE]

Only to a point. There is a line, though, when it comes to violating certain laws. I don't think you'd have the "freedom" to create a kiddie pr0n game, which other paedophiles could download and play at their leisure. Sure you could do it, but law enforcement would be on its way pretty quick. Flying planes into a building, while certainly murderous, is in an entirely different category.

In many places you do have the freedom to create a kiddie porn game, as long as you don't use actual images/video of real children. In some states and countries even the simulation is illegal, but definitely not in all. In fact, some states have the somewhat arbitrary definition of child pornography as anything that depicts something that looks like a child in a sexual manner, even if it's demonstrable that the person in the images was over 18 at the time they were taken (or if it's not even a person at all).

Many of the games that are fairly commonly available in Japan would be illegal to ship into many states of the US because of these types of laws.

One title I would like to see

[missing000]

World conquest through deception.

You start out as a lowly president's kid, only endowed with a small oil company and a baseball team.
The object of the game is to use deception and underground systems such as skull and bones to achieve world domination.

Pitfalls could include alcohol addiction, being bad at Political Science, and getting caught lying to your country.

Your objective could be a success however if you just talk to the right people

Re:Only one kind of appropriate violence

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Why? Games like Battlefield 1942 have you fighting against low-level grunts who were poor Germans that were drafted into war as part of Hitler's plan. They weren't directly responsible for executing Jews (and if you are going to start indicting people for making uninformed decisions in a democracy, you're going to have a lot of people to go after) and towards the end of the war, were poorly outfitted and starving.

And if you are happy to fight Nazis, why not fight against those responsible for genocide in Rwanda during the 90's? Or perhaps Pol Pot? Hitler didn't exactly invent genocide.

I wish you had expanded on your thought a little bit - I just don't understand why you limit games to just Nazis. There have been plenty of very cruel military regimes in the history of humankind (the Nazi party ranking right up there at the top) but I don't think that in comparison people like Stalin and Pol Pot are saints.

love it or leave it; this is the way to maturity

[*weasel]

...artistically.

does anyone claim that steven spielberg shouldn't have made Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's list? Was he making light, or 'making a buck' on the idea of americans dying overseas, on the idea of jews being tortured and executed?

yet everyone in the industry aknowledges that the way to grow gaming is to drive for more cinematic, more interactive, more film-like experiences.

Games may very well be considered 'art' the way people consider film 'art' in 10 years.

or, they can be relegated to childish whimsy like comics.

Asking game developers to ignore certain topics, regardless of context, because they might offend someone is very much akin to the self-imposed 'Comic Code' of the 60s-80s. It nearly killed the industry as a legitimate artistic medium. Every american comic became trapped by the restrictive code and fell into a niche as a childish diversion.

within the code american comic creators could only explore child-safe content as defined by the broadest possible american social definition of 'safe'.

compare this with the evolution of anime in japan. Sure, we all make derisive remarks about 'tentacle porn' - but anime in japan is -accepted-. it isn't just for kids. the culture treats it on par with film or literature. why? precisely because only a certain subset of anime is devoted to children and child-safe topics (yu gi oh, pokemon, etc) - the larger segment covers mature subjects one might find in a TV drama or film (ghost in the shell, akira). american comics have no parallel (no mainstream parallel, though the underground is growing, but the social stigma will take time to erode). evern american animated movies suffer from this, and are relegated to insistance on 'child safe'.

visceral emotional response is the key to allowing people to realize that games need not -only- be about mindlessly pulling a trigger. not that there is anything wrong with some twitch play - just as there is nothing wrong with shallow action flicks.

a game simulating the Uday/Qusay vs USAF shootout would certainly have poor timing, if particularly identifying the subjects by name; but shouldn't be labelled in poor taste so because of its content, but rather depending upon its -context-.

if the simulation of that situation was created to educate people about the difficulties and human life risk associated in breach/clear/capture operations against a fully dedicated opponent in an urban setting - that strikes me as possibly reasonable. if the purpose of the game is simply to allow people to pump round after round into from-the-headlines political figures, then that is certainly tasteless.

notice it is the -gameplay-, the context, that indicates tastelessness. people always seem to forget to include context in their discussions of whether it is 'right' or not.

here is where we decide people. are games to be forever treated as an interactive extension of film? or an interactive extension of american comics?

(keep in mind i use 'art', and 'artistic' loosely to indicate mature expression, as in sculpture or painting - not to indicate it as being capital-A Art, being hoity toity or 'correct'.)

newsgaming - decide for yourself

[Draigon]

http://newsgaming.com/

So far they only have one game, but there will be more.

I think the game itself is amusing whether you agree with the point or not. To me games (and programming) are art. Art should have no boundries. Some won't agree with me on that, some will, but that's even another reason I believe it. Because some will disagree and they're entitled to their opinion just as I am.

Oh no, the slippery slope fallacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if content may potentially be disrespectful to somebody somewhere who probably needs a hobby, let's ban it out of hand. We'll start with Uday and Qusay. Well, after that comes the "we can't have anyone of X, Y or Z race as a hero or villain because it is racist and discrimnatory" argument... then comes the "we can't have violence because what of the children and their darling minds" argument... ditto sex, profanity and adult situations...

So pretty soon the only game allowed is Mario Kart... oh no, wait, he's an offensive Italian stereotype and car crashes are violent... I mean Atari 2600 Combat... oh, no, that's offensive to the brave soldiers who flew pixellated bombers maintaining plausible deniability over Cambodia. Pong anyone? (If the paddles aren't too phallic for children, that is.)

I would be interested in knowing how any actual soldiers -- not some Gamespy blowhard who can't do any better than slinging stereotypes of his own ("jackasses in Montana compounds") -- feels about his actions being emulated by thousands.

Inappropriate and tacky? Bringing the hobby down to the level of tabloid newspapers? This IS the same Web site that ranked Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior among the best / most underrated games of all time, right? Did they ever play either of those? No, they weren't "ripped from today's headlines," but they're full of inappropriate and tacky subject matter -- as are a whole lot of games.

let's not pretend

[sbma44]

that there isn't a fundamental difference between videogames and the art forms that came before them. In virtually every non-abstract game (eg not Tetris) You control the actions of some sort of avatar. Movies, books, plays -- sure, you can and frequently do identify with the characters. But it's not guaranteed. If a character in a work of fiction does something detestable, you can just watch in amazement. I would suggest that it's not the same in a videogame. As Raskolnikov's plunge into insanity unfolds I just keep reading, horrified. If I've just loaded the landlady's apartment level, selected "equip axe" and made sure the directX blood settings are turned up to maximum splatter -- well, it somehow feels a lot less like art.

I guess it boils down to this: people consume media because they're seeking entertainment. Before, media were entertaining because you *experienced* them -- that experience didn't necessarily have to be fun, just affecting (see also: Requiem for a Dream). Games, on the other hand, are fun because of what you're *doing*. And, as far as I can tell, people don't do things for any reason other than "they're fun".

Sure, there are gray areas -- emerging from a night of playing Doom full of adrenaline, having spent the evening worried about demons popping out from behind every corner: I wouldn't say that's fun exactly, but it was invigorating, and enjoyable. But I have yet to see a game experience that can be emotionally harrowing, a game from which the player emerges a little shaken but feeling like the art they've experienced has changed them in a meaningful way.

These are not generation's wars. I do not want to take them from the people who fought them without knowing that I'm doing so for a better reason than a justification for simple, stupid, slaughterhouse entertainment.

Of course I agree there should not be censorship of such games. But I do think we should consider officially bestowing "scum of the earth" status on those who redistill the horrors of war into fun action romps. It's not much different than the japanese rape fantasy mangas mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Do they mean the whole manage artform must be condemned? Obviously not -- manga is clearly can be an art form that really conveys meaning and ideas.

But how many non-despicable rape-related manga are there? I'd say the same could be said for war videogames. I'm sure it's possible to make one; but that's not why people turn to the war genre. They do so as an excuse for violence.

Re:let's not pretend

[cgenman]

but how many non-despicable rape-related manga are there?

Mainstream manga explores the theme of rape as often as mainstreem American literature, often times written by women for women. To point out a popular example, The Wings of Honneamise featured a disturbing but mature look at rape as an aspect of hero worship.

I agree with the fundamental precept that the "avatar effect" of gaming is very different from the "voyeur effect" of the written word. I disagree that this creates a fundamental disjunction with deeper sensations. Celes's suicide attempt in Final Fantasy 3 had a tremendous emotional impact upon a generation of gamers. The avatar was used to make a player deeply care about the character, and the difference between the player's choices and the avatar's actions lead to deep emotional distress. Final Fantasy 7 took this disjoint even deeper, flipping between what the player thought they did and what really happened, as they watch their character first acknowledge then slowly emerge from their madness.

The problem with gaming in general as the previous poster pointed out is that most of it is pulp fiction: 50% of games released on the computer are a First Person Shooter with no underlying emotional pull besides that which you would find at a basketball game. But that doesn't mean they all are, and that doesn't mean that Metal Gear Solid should be afforded any less artistic license than Full Metal Jacket.

For ever crappy war-based videogame the industry puts out, the movie studios put out a Courage Under Fire. For some reason this leads people to yell at the movie studios to raise their quality level, and to yell at the gaming industry to not make war games.

If we are going to prove ourselves as a viable medium, we need to continue to make games of all subject matters, need to continue to push the emotional and storytelling boundaries of the medium, and we need to release quality. Only then will people stop assuming that anything done in a videogame will be immature garbage. Only then will no subject be taboo.

Re:love it or leave it; this is the way to maturit

[h0mer]

I haven't been reading comics for quite a few years, although I do still buy two series, PVP and Liberty Meadows.

There was mature comics even a long time ago though. Don't you remember DC's Vertigo line? Titles like Sandman, Preacher, I remember in the back of some Sandman book, Death teaches you how to put on a condom using a banana to demonstrate. I think Marvel had a mature line too, don't recall the name but it had the mature book by Peter David called Sachs & Violens.

Fast forward to today, imagine my surprised when I picked up some title by Image (a mainstream comic company at this point) and found T&A, gratuitous use of "fuck", and other things that would probably garner an M rating in a video game. Mind you there was no warning of any kind on the cover, and it was sitting there right next to Superman and Hulk.

I'm coming to a point here. If you haven't noticed, the mainstream tolerance of "offensive" material has been growing rapidly over the last 5-10 years. How else could Eminem be one of the biggest musical acts today?

Games are slowly but surely getting to the same "art" level as other media, and I don't think extremely offensive content will change that. If the movie Kill Bill can open in nearly every theatre and be #1 at the box office, then video games will be no different.

What's the BFD?

[NanoGator]

" I believe that such 'ripped from the headlines' titles are disrespectful to the soldiers in combat and the issues involved"

Funny, I think imitation was a form of flattery.

I mean, seriously, what's so disrepectful about it? It raises awareness of what soldiers have done to protect our country. If anything, it helps us appreciate their work even more. So what if a game is made of it? Would they rather hear snoring as that event goes by in history class?

I hope they make it ultra-realistic

[gothrus]

In the case of Uday and Qusay, I hope they include over a hundred U.S. troops using heavy weapons including 10 TOW missiles, attempting to kill (not capture and interrogate) 4 people in a house . The best part will be when they storm the building and kill a 14 year old child. I hope they include the large number of murdered and maimed civilians (infants, elderly, etc.)in every one of the military campaigns. Perhaps then people will realize that our escapades abroad do not have the glamour of a Quake style shoot em' up.

Re:Sick, Offensive Games

[ymgve]

If I was a programmer, I would create games where you try to kill the President or a game where you get points for each nun you rape. Why? Because it would offend people.

I think Running With Scissors has a job opening for you.

Ender's Game?

[Rand310]

Anyone read Ender's game?

Give 50 million teenagers the new US Military game, where you launch a missile with a camera on its nose and tell them they get "points" for hitting targets...

When does the game become real?