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Can Games Address Serious Social Issues?
Thanks to AVault.com for its editorial ruminating on whether games can or should reference the more serious social issues of today. The piece starts by noting: "Only a very few computer offerings have anything resembling any form of probing social critique... In contrast, other entertainment media - including movies, music and books - all address these issues on a regular basis without raising eyebrows." The author concludes by suggesting it's "conceivable that games would reap greater societal acceptance and more legitimacy as a medium for presenting important concerns of our times", although mentioning the worry that "increasing the respectability of gaming might reduce the pleasure of the pastime" if done in the wrong way.
increasing the respectability of gaming might reduce the pleasure of the pastime
There's a simple answer to this: for the people who would be negatively affected by this, simply play less respectable games. Just like not all books printed are respectable, there is something for everyone.
Books have been lucky though. After the awful things that people have done to suppress thought (expressed in book form) books now enjoy a special place in our culture. To burn a book is seen as a very bad thing all over the Western world.
Computer games, in comparison, are relatively new, and don't have the stigma of free speech attached to them so much. Some would argue that they don't qualify as free speech at all. Perhaps enjoyably inappropriate games such as the Grand Theft Auto series might eventually allow games as a whole to enjoy the same protected status as books? Time will tell.
I don't know if anyone even remebers this game, but here we go..... The game "I have no mouth and I must scream" based on the Harlan Ellison short story of the same name, actually addressed several hardcore social issues. The game was played through the eyes of several people, all who lived in different dimensions, and all of them facing their own inner demons. I vividly remeber playing the game as a german camp doctor, who has to decide wether or not to rescue several jews, and not making it into a bland shooter. And there was the misformed monkey man Benny, who although beautiful in real life, was a misformed man in this reality and his only way out was suicide. The game dealt with religion, alcoholism and several other issues and it did it in a very mature, and levelheaded fashion. No glorifying or blunt statements, the game had several outcomes, based on how "compassionate" you had played the game. Can games address serious social issues? Hell YES! But is there a big market for this sort of game? Do I really want a game that confronts me with "the real world" when all I want to do is escape that real world by playing a game? I think that is the question that needs to be asked and the answer to that is that games are a form of relaxation (for me anyways) and a way to escape real life for a while. Therefor addressing the real life issues in a virtual environment that I enter for my enjoyment is a concept that is interesting, but ultimately flawed. Yes I enjoyed "I have no mouth and I must scream" immensely, but I played it once and never again. I can't even count how many times I've played wing commander.
"Only a very few sport offerings have anything resembling any form of probing social critique... In contrast, other entertainment media - including movies, music and books - all address these issues on a regular basis without raising eyebrows." The author concludes by suggesting it's "conceivable that sports would reap greater societal acceptance and more legitimacy as a medium for presenting important concerns of our times", although mentioning the worry that "increasing the respectability of sports might reduce the pleasure of the pastime" if done in the wrong way.
I think there is a problem with target mass markets. The big money-making movies rarely crack the surface of important issues. And frankly, Joe and Josette movie-goer rarely WANT to be alerted to social/economic/global issues. At the end of a long work week, most people want to escape to an air-conditioned megaplex to see Senator Arnie nuke some aliens (a guilty pleasure we almost all want).
But I agree that we need to balance such popcorn ventures with thought-provoking movies about global issues, told not just from a North American standpoint. Perhaps European game companies should pushing their industry the same way European movie houses do the movie industry. I imagine the global market would like to see games that improve the human condition.
The upcoming NARC update may have some of this included, but I'd like to see a RPG or survival horror game including a heroin addiction. It would probably work like the sanity meter in Eternal Darkness, where a lower meter makes the graphics and control all wonky.
One of the reasons that games haven't dealt with more serious subjects is that they are not based in reality a lot of the time. GTA/Shenmue are some of the only recent games that are someone grounded. If a game was based in NYC without supernatural stuff happening, and with real character development, it could address some of these social issues. Any city would fine, really.
I'm on top of my game like I'm standin' on Xbox.
Mostly the games reflect society rather than address serious social issues. The best they can do is poke fun at stupidity ("Backyard Wrestling" for example). But games have already tried in the past.
Games like Ms. Pacman recognize the need to appeal to both genders back in the 80's. Clothing styles of characters also show this. In fact, the abstract games of the 80's showed great creativity and artistic flair of sorts. Today, the rise of the music game is demonstrating the digital age of music and remixing.
Games have tried to tackle serious social issues. Time Traveller and N.A.R.C. (apologetically) had "Winners Don't Use Drugs" messages overtly in them. And more recently, the ratings system with good intentions while paving the road to Hell attempts to match content to the appropriate age group as a guideline.
So it's there, but it's always been a sort of background thing. I believe the nature of games being entertainment, it'll be hard to put a serious message in.
(I also felt there were a lot of big psycho-babble words in the article that made it a little too unreadable.)
Oh wait. You don't like social criticism when it isn't politically correct?
Try killing animals in Windwaker... after a certain number of swipes with your sword, they gain superstrength and charge you until you're dead or forced into the ocean. While it isn't a public service announcement about fuzzy bunny getting more hair 'down there', it is, in fact, social commentary. And in my opinion, it is the best kind.
Why are there people in the world that insist on trying to push their ideals on to the rest of the population? I'm a firm believer in the fact that if a person doesn't want to feel a certain way, they won't. And pushing harder will only push them farther away from your viewpoint. The only solution is to provide examples of your viewpoint and hope that people agree.
And back to my original example... Windwaker did just that. It doesn't force the view upon you, it just makes it's point and carries on.
http://www.paxwarrior.com
Pax Warrior is not really a game as such, but an "interactive multimedia documentary". It is marketted as, and plays like an interactive Social Studies game. Users (students) are presented with a first-person interaction taking them through the experiences and decisions faced by a UN Commander on a peace keeping mission to Rwanda.
Pax Warrior is very interesting in that, like many games, it presents users with choices that must be made, and consequences that arise from those decisions. In this case, the choices and consequences are very closely modelled on what actually happended in Rwanda.
And yes, for those who are wondering, it has a fixed ending. It's a pretty emotionally connected, moving one at that.
1. Game X has done this successfully
2. I play games to escape => this shouldn't be done
3. This is just a whiny, Liberal, politically-correct issue.
As a mature (read: over 30) gamer who has played a lot of games, my general position is that, in the right genre, done correctly, socially-relevant games can showcase some of the best ideas and talent in the medium. I'm not talking about arcade games with the FBI's "stay away from drugs" splashscreen or making the blood in Mortal Combat green for the kids at home.
I *am* talking about some of the most emotionally powerful moments in gaming, such as the child-abuse cutscenes that explain character motivation in The Longest Journey, or the brilliant handling of a variety of social issues in Planescape: Torment (IMHO the best CPRG of all time), or the socially-relevant and mind-blowing puzzles in IF such as Infocom's classic A Mind Forever Voyaging. In games like these, the social commentary was relevant and important to plot and character, and did not distract from the escapism in any way. Moreover, the player does not come away from games of this sort feeling like s/he has been lectured at.
Remember, one of the things that makes novels, films, and, yes, games, great is there ability to engage the viewer/player emotionally. Ultimately, it is the games of this sort that will be remembered in the gaming "canon" as the steps that moved the gaming from a "fad" in the post-Atari '80s to a "fine art" in the future.
And how are games not considered a form of free speech? Just because politicians try to make a few speeches about the issue and a few watchdog groups make a fuss does not mean anyone is having their rights violated. Show me a law that the United States has passed that has limited someone's free speech in the form of a video game. You can't because there's no law. The fact is that video games are already headed in the direction of being a complex media that can span multiple target generations, just as movies do, and that the government isn't even close to censoring video games at all.
If Nintendo, MS, or Sony want to be taken seriously they have to let porn games come out? That's hogwash. All three of those companies make truckloads of money and are multi-national. They're not viewed as mom-and-pop operations by anyone. The release of a "porn game" [you still haven't outlined exactly what that is] would not help these companies at all.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I agree about RPGs being the best form of gaming for conveying both plot progression and social commentary. For example, Morrowind has gotten wonderful reviews from everyone. Most of the people I know say it's a great hack'n'slash game, it's visual candy & the plot is original & thick enough to keep them interested. However, if you take the time to read many of the books that are in the game, you will run across a lot of content that can be taken as commentary on today's society (Although it could be taken as commentary on ANY society as well). Books are not the only thing in RPGs that make them a better medium for this. In a quality RPG you will have major and minor plot lines. If you lose interest in a certain story arc, you can always find another one. This is perfect for conveying social commentary because it doesn't FORCE the story to become a commentary. Several of the story arcs can convey moral/social issues without making the game boring for those of us whom enjoy killing some data-structures. :)
I'd like to add that the inclusion of weighty issues in games need not come at a sacrifice of escapist and recreational qualities. I just finished playing the remake of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, and it was interesting to be reminded how the plot dealt with political issues that, IMO, made for a more interesting game. One one level, the game has your basic "Terrorists have a nuclear weapon; stop them" plot, but it then goes on to say how they got the nuclear weapon, why it's easy in a post-cold-war environment to do so, why someone like Solid Snake may find himself in a building full of nuclear weapons lying around, and discusses the general problems that arms reduction had in the 90's. Furthermore, despite the sci-fi quality of the genetically-enhanced soldiers, some of the basic concepts are rooted in real work related to the Human Genome Project, and though the game is clearly a worse-case-scenario fantasy, I'd argue that the game is more exciting because of the plausibility and relevance to real issues. If nothing else, I'm glad the designers put some research and thought into why the characters are fighting instead of presenting an entirely fantastical story that might have once existed as a fiction-writing assignment in their high-school days.
Clearly, the game still has flaws, even in the remake. They're pretty guilty of the 'hit you over the head' method of storytelling, whether it's talking about arms reduction, love, or maniacal bosses that you have to kill. Still, I'm not going to begrudge them for trying, and a lot of people seem to have enjoyed the oiriginal or the remake. I feel that games like Metal Gear Solid and Deus Ex are engaging because they take some current issue and try to take it to its logical extreme, when the stakes are high.
True, most of them discuss political rather than social issues, but nowadays the overlap between the two can't be entirely ignored.
It was also very interesting playing that game in 2003. My wife, who hates video games with a passion, was actually interested in the game's plot and actually started studying in my office so she could hear the dialog whenever it happened. This usually led to me pausing the game and discussing politics with her, because often some aspect of the game directly related to current political goings-on.
So, yes, I think that games can address social issues. Games can be used to tell stories. Some of them are interesting and thought-provoking, like Deus Ex. Other games tell entertaining stories, or no story at all. Games are an avenue for expression, just like painting, music, writing, or film. What creators (be they painters, composers, or game designers) chose to do with their medium is entirely up to them. Can they "address serious social concerns?" Sure. Can they be purely for entertainment and fun? Absolutely.
Xenogears: On one hand, it has the technology-destroying-mankind undertones that Squaresoft put into every game they made, but at the same time, it's pretty suggestive on the religious plane too. The basic backstory: Very ancient civilization makes giant robots for war. The largest of these robots ends the war, and destroys most of said civilization. Less ancient civilization discovers this robot centuries later, and worships it, calling it God. God and man live together in paradise, and God provides everything man could ever desire. Then, man creates "giants" (more robots) in mimicry of God. God is angered, and war breaks out. When God fears man will destroy him, he hides man's giants from him and flees into the sea. Modern civilization finds the giants, remembers stories about God from the past, and starts fighting over access to the ruins where God sealed the giants, trying to find and control God. And don't think it's an accident that they include numerous references from the bible. Fallout II: It doesn't do a great job of handling slavery and prostitution, which are major themes in the game, but it does an impressive job with addiction. A major part of the game is a drug called Jet. When you use it, you get a brief boost to your character. However, when it wears off, your stats drop below their normal levels, and you need another dose to attain normal levels. When that wears off, they drop furthur. If you ignore the withdrawal for too long, your stats continue to drop until your character becomes useless, so you need to keep getting more and more jet the longer you're addicted. There are others, but most handle serious issues in a very child-like way. While they're not bad games because of this, in my opinion, they can't be considered serious handlings of real problems.
After playing Sanitarium and Beyond Good and Evil my wife and I discussed quite a few of the social and political aspects of the games. I think Sanitarium touched on a number of issues in a way that wasn't heavy handed or shoved down your throat.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.