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Industry Leaders Frustrated With Game Culture
Well known designer Warren Spector let his opinions fly in a keynote at the Montreal Game Summit, reports Edge Online. From the article: "While admitting that the largest part of the criticism stemmed from general ignorance and misunderstanding of videogaming by the 'cultural gate-keepers,' he noted that simply staying the course and waiting for mainstream acceptance to catch up could lead not only to political intervention, but a 'coarsening of our culture,' and 'eventual cultural irrelevance.' Instead, he joined a growing chorus in the development community by strongly advocating the diversification of games to be more inclusive of women, older gamers, and traditionally excluded ethnicities." Next Generation is covering a similar statement by ESA President Doug Lowenstein about his views on the gaming industry's image. Unfortunately, societal parasite Jack Thompson took Spector's remarks to be validation of his viewpoint. GamePolitics has that story.
...I'd never heard of Jack Thompson until Zonk stated namechecking him every single day. It's not like you have to give him free publicity every time he opens his mouth.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This is a huge issue for the industry, and it's good to see some notable people bringing attention to it.
We know that games don't cause crime (people cause crime!) and that they can't affect people's mental state more than a movie or book. (As an aside - anyone ever compare the effect of _Catcher In The Rye_ to Doom?)
But what *we* know isn't important - it's the wider public's perception of the gaming industry that really matters here. We see the great variety of fun games because we're close to the industry. The wider public see only the games that make the news, and for so long now the sort of games that make the news are associated with school shootings, suicides and on-screen sex (Hot Coffee - I'm looking at you!)
Does it matter if the general public get the wrong idea? Absolutely! They vote, they vastly outnumber gamers and they can be mobilised by people like Jack Thompson to force games to be banned from sale or to force the government to step in and regulate the industry.
Governments around the world show great desire to be seen to be tough on crime, and many are now pandering to religion in a cynical effort to woo voters. Think for a moment what an industry regulated by them would be. Imagine (for those of you in the US) if Jack Thompson was on the regulatory board.
That's what is at stake.
The perception of video games is awful. The rise in realism, combined with the media's need for a quick image or soundbite means that it's simple to grab a scene that makes just about any game look like a blood-fest. Well, maybe not Pikmin or Golf.
The way to turn this around is both simple and hard.
The simple part is to stop portraying characters as easy stereotypes - muscle-bound heroic men or stick-thin women with cavernous cleavage. The visual element is incredibly important and it's often used to make quick judgements about a game. The average age of gamers is rising, so the industry isn't targeting 13-year-old boys any more - it's men and women nearing their 30s. Get realistic and make games that look good *and* appeal to both men and women. This is just a matter of 3D models - trivial stuff.
The hard part is to promote the more positive aspects of gameplay. It's not all about killing - there's fantasy, escapism, exploration, strategy, problem-solving and so on. There are so many good things in gaming, and it is critical to make the general public see them rather than the continual violence that they're told games are all about.
Perception is reality.
That's how I'd mod his statements. They make no sense whatsoever. Well they do...if you've not really played any of the games in question here. But if you've actually played the games, and think about it for a few minutes..you'd be thinking whaa?
See..what Spector is saying, is that the gameplay of GTA is great...pity about the content however. What Spector SHOULD realize, but doesn't, is that without the content of GTA, the gameplay would either be nosensical, or wouldn't exist in the first place. What Spector is talking about, the greatest part of GTA, is the "sandbox" appeal of it. But in order to remove the content, and really most of the controversy, you remove the sandbox element FIRST.
I would go a step further, and argue that ALL sandbox games fall into the same trap, and if people were really concerned about the content of video games, and not just about suing for money/scoring cheap and easy political and moral points, then we'd be talking about a much broader swath of gaming.
Because is the real controversy about GTA is that you're driving around a city, whacking mobsters and the like? Uhhh. No. The real controversy is that GTA gives you a living city that you can drive around in, and do basically whatever you want in. The gameplay that Spector lauds IS the controversy.
How ironic.
How quaint.
How dumb.
I would argue that any sufficently designed sandbox game comes with some potentially contraversial content. Be it the ability to be a facsist in the Civ games, to have gay relationships in the Sims games, or to create slums in the SimCity games, as a few examples. Spector himself, helped create a game where you can act like a pirate...hardly a socially redeemable activity.
Either be for or against these games. Period. But to try and play both sides, because playing the side you WANT to play limits your creative options in the future..well tough. Because when you're playing censorship, it usually boomerangs back to hit you in the head.
Yes, sandbox games come with some POTENTIALLY contraversy the issue is HOW you go about presenting this.
Yes in the Civilization games you could rule as a fascist and purposely kill of the entire civilian population of a race/culture/city/nation. The difference between the Civilization games and the GTA series is the fact that YOU CANNOT PROGRESS THROUGH THE GAME as a "good guy". There will be missions where you MUST kill someone, you MUST steal something, where you MUST break the law in someway, shape or form. Yes you can do the vigilante or do the ambulance side-missions, but lets face it, they're basicly nothing more than mini-games. You're not gonna get a tank or access to all the cars just for doing those mission.
Same with the Sim games, you COULD have a gay couple, but the game doesn't jam it down your throat saying 'if you want to progress, you MUST cheat on your husband with another woman.' There is no 'you MUST start a fire while cooking and kill the husband in order to access a bigger piece of land' mission. Contraversial content in those games are artifically created BY THE PLAYERS.
GTA breaks the traditional rules by making it IMPOSSIBLE to be 'the good guy'. Unless you SERIOUSLY twist the context, its impossible to justify any missions that goes on within the game as legal.
Go under? Take2 has exclusive rights for a major US sports league... that alone will keep them in the black.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai