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.

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

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'.)

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.