When Will Games Disturb Us?

Game Girl Advance brings up the subject of emotion in games, again, by going to the dark places. Jane talks about movies that are just plain uncomfortable to watch (shades of Donnie Darko), and wonders why when games will have the same effect. From the article: "Yet you could argue that Manhunt used a cheap trick - it set up the situation in order to exploit it for someone's idea of 'fun.' You could say that the developers did not mean to convey any message beyond entertainment. City of God was entertaining, in the broadest sense of the word, but it was also a portrait of hopelessness and a cycle that trapped its inhabitants; it was also in some ways a social history of gang violence in the slums from the seventies to the eighties. Manhunt does not have enough external references to be about anything other than what it is."

Comments

Re:Disturbing games

[Reality Master 101]

Long story short, he shot a stripper, felt like a sick, sick man, then decided that the guilt wasn't his fault, it was the fault of some even sicker programmer because they allowed him to do it.

Actually, I didn't shoot the stripper. I read about what happens when you do, and then I tried it. But nice try. To tell you the truth, I had a feeling the majority of Slashdotters weren't going to get what I'm driving at. This is the wrong demographic.

The most disturbing thing I ever loaded.

[krell]

I remember this one piece of software. At random, stark blue screens fill the desktop with ominous messages about illegalities and other such. Damn near jump out of my chair every time. Dire monsters with names like Bonzo Buddy and X-10 Camera crowd the screen, defying all attempts to get rid of them. Tens of thousands of virtual entities called "viruses" haunt you at every turn. Grisly scenarios like "shock the monkey and win a free iPod" are common. The more you play, the less secure you feel.

I don't play this game anymore. I'm not sure I even miss it, although it gave me the most frights I ever had on a computer. I ended up loading Red Hat Linux on the box, and the scary game software (with the innocuous name of "Windows ME"...made me think of the plant monster saying FEED ME!!!") does not seem to be Linux compatible, so I could not load it. Oh well, on to other things.