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Area 51 To Deal With Tense Political Issues
Since the days of the arcades, the Area 51 games have been brainless bughunts: find the aliens, shoot the aliens. When game designer Harvey Smith was hired a few years ago to work on the next iteration of the franchise, he began to despair at the lackluster story elements in the game. As he put it: "Area 51 just bored the sh-- out of me, and I was like, 'How can we make this interesting?'" As MTV News reports, frustrations with politics both in the United States and abroad led to a solution that required months of convincing executives to see implemented. Blacksite: Area 51 will feature a new and more poignant story, as the aliens become poor American citizens put in harm's way. "Wait, what if they are terrorists we helped create? What if the people supporting us in our fight against the terrorists aren't completely clean either? What if they're sending us after them now, but what if 10 years ago it was safe for them to create them?' ... So what we have in 'BlackSite' is a delta-force assassination squad hunting down and killing members of an Army training program. So on American soil, Americans are fighting Americans, basically." The game is intended to be enjoyed regardless of subject matter, but Smith hopes that gamers will accept a title that even touches on some of the issues that popular television shows deal with on a regular basis. What do you think about this? Is there room for politics in gaming, or do you just want to shoot stuff?
Fallout 2's explanation of how the holocaust happened blamed American politics. :)
I am all for having some story to games. It's generally a plus.
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Just like there was in earlier wartime cartoons.
I think there's room for politics in the sense of relevant issues with today's politics, but I don't want polemics in my video games. I think a lot of people who want to inject "politics" really mean "polemics". They have an axe to grind. Even if it's someone who shares my general political outlook (which I highly doubt, coming from a video game designer) I would really hate to have basically propoganda in a game I'm playing.
I mean bad story and bad dialogue and bad characterization aren't horrible enough? Now we're going to get stupid 8th-grade reading level political treatises as well? When game designers figure out how to write a script that doesn't suck maybe I'll trust them to inject politics.
Until that day this can only end in tears. Frustrated tears of tortured gamers crying out for entertainment that doesn't suck.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Lame - who cares? Halo is a bug hunt too. Sure the story is ok, it never really drove me to finish the game. The game play did (and needing to practice to dominate in multiplayer)
You want story read a book or watch a movie.
..."is there room for storyline in gaming?"
And the answer is 'yes'. I seem to recall the KOTOR titles, as well as Deus Ex and System Shock 2, being regularly held up as examples of engaging storytelling as well as good gameplay.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
The guy thinks the game "story" is mindless drivel, so he adds in left-wing conspiracy theories and pedestrian moral ambiguity.
And that changes what, exactly?
From no story to totally stupid story. Look, your game is based on aliens at Area 51. If you don't know how to search the internet for all juicy conspiracy theories that kept the kooks enthralled for the 90s then you shouldn't be making this game.
Here's a good place to start: http://www.crank.net/usenet.html
Swi
Secret Military Project Goes Bad And Now You Must Clean It Up!
Yeah, I've never heard of that concept before. Very original. That's bound to add a lot of depth to the game.
Clear, Dark Skies
With apologies to South Park...
"There's the girl that I like....
Now it appears that she likes another guy...
it must be because he's political and stuff....
I bet I can be political too!"
Is there room for politics in gaming, or do you just want to shoot stuff?
Is there room for politics in art, or do you just want to listen/watch/taste/sense it?
Of course there is place for politics in gaming: It's not as if there -haven't- been any 'political' games around yet, some might be more upfront about it (random example: www.powerpolitics.us), while others still give out a political message, but are very clever in hiding it (see americasarmy.com).
For myself, I don't mind if a game has 'politics' in it: But I think that the game from the article is a lame attempt at trying to intermix all the popular elements of today, together with some hot mix of controversial sauce. Trying to pass it off as anything more than that, is ridicilous.
Shoot stuff. Sorry.
In real life, I'm a left-leaning SOB, but I completely enjoy smacking people over the head with a hammer and jacking their ambulances in GTA. I also enjoy squashing other cultures under my heel in any number of RTS games and generally being a dick in MMORPGs. Do you know why? Of course you do: it's not real.
Is this new game really political? I'm not sure. Remember in Warcraft III you had all these random "stories" behind why battle 1 is humans vs. humans, battle 2 is humans vs. elves, etc.? I think what this guy's done is similar to that rather than being political.
If you want political treatment, write a sim where you're an arms contractor and you need to pay off your local congresspeople in a legal or at least hidden way. Or, write a sim where you get send to a base in Cuba with no hope for escape, rescue or legal representation. There's plenty of dirt to really dig into without making up crap about spec.ops. vs. spec.ops.
Guy 1: What a crash.
Guy 2: Hey! You got political viewpoints in my video game!
Guy 1: You got video games in my political viewpoint!
Both: Eeew.
Really, who cares? Area 51 was about shooting aliens. So the new one is shooting rogue agents. It doesn't matter if it's that or terrorists or what. How many people do you REALLY think this game is going to make stop and think "Wow, our government's actions could have serious implications in the future." It's a simple shoot-em-up. It's not going to happen.
Get over yourself. A shoot-em-up is not a genre that makes getting a viewpoint across easy or natural (like an RPG or even FPS might).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I for one was hugely offended and disgusted when the mayor told me "My dear Mr. Firefly, we are at war with the SPANISH."
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Release the game with state-of-the-art graphics, a few unique gameplay elements, and quality online/multiplayer elements and you will be a success.
99% of the people purchasing this game will not pay attention to (or care about) the politics.
Has Slashdot really got to the point where we use that "Wonderfully reliable for accuracy" news network MTV? Give me a break. There doesn't need to be politics in video games unless it has an Adult only ESRB rating. We don't want to be indoctrinating our children with a "reason" to kill. I think killing just for killing is good enough.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Yes, even though he claims there are some Republicans around the office, there's no doubt where his sympathies lay.
... So what we have in 'BlackSite' is a delta-force assassination squad hunting down and killing members of an Army training program."
However, I'd hope that this isn't just a one-sided treatment. It sounds interesting, certainly more thoughtful than killing 1000 more ghosts/vampires/terrorists/bad guys of whatever sort.
His comment "'Wait, what if they are terrorists we helped create? What if the people supporting us in our fight against the terrorists aren't completely clean either? What if they're sending us after them now, but what if 10 years ago it was safe for them to create them?'
What one can't see - and what then allows the most ridiculous Monday-morning quarterbacking - what WOULD have happened, if that decision hadn't been made 10 years ago? That's what I'd like to see.
In real life, it's rarely 'good choices' vs 'bad choices' - that's the sort of Manichaean superficial crap that all games are built on. Sometimes it's bad choice vs worse choice, or bad choice now vs bad choice later. In their new game, the first time someone cries "why did they create this unit in the first place?" do you get a flashback of what life would have been like if they hadn't been created? It's conceivable that the unhappy current situation - BlackSite hunting down members of this Army-created team - is still the BEST possible outcome.
How about giving the player other moral/ethical dilemmas - they have to decide if they are going to shoot through a crowd of children to kill the insane guy with an automatic weapon approaching the playground? And then have it turn out that the guy has no more ammunition, so the local police, politicians, and newspeople can second guess the player until he dies?
-Styopa
reminds me of the Onion article entitled "New Archie Graphic Novel Explores Rich Inner Life Of Jughead"
So on American soil, Americans are fighting Americans, basically."
Ah. A Civil War sim.
the logical sequel, has become yet another game industry conquered by Blizzard...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Even if I just want to shoot stuff I can still acknowledge there is room for politics in gaming.
My own personal opinion is that games are too large of a time commitment to support politics. Sure, if the message is easily ignored and does not affect enjoyment of the game, no problem. But games are longer than movies by a factor of 15x or more, so... If the game is the equivalent of Fahrenheit 9/11, forget it. I'll sit for two hours watching a political movie in order to challenge or reaffirm my own views, but a 30+hour game? No thanks, even if it agrees with my politics.
So, basically, yes, there is room for politics in gaming. But, just like movies, the politics can have an affect on your demographic and sales. Unlike with movies, I don't fall into the 'political' demographic for games and I seriously doubt most other people do either.
You're shooting at American soldiers. Ooh, edgy. It's not like we haven't been gunning virtual marines down since Half-Life.
"aliens become poor American citizens put in harm's way."
God spoke to me.
Seiously I found these games mildly entertaining in an arcade somewhere about 7 years ago. Shoot anything that moves except your team members and insert quarters until you beat it. Once your done playing it, I doubt anyone gave it a second thought.
Now that I'm older, storylines mean so much more because now that I'm no longer young enough just to play enything in front of me. HL2 was incredible mainly cause they came up with a great original storyline along with a great play mechanic. I wanted to play cause it was a solid game. I wanted to KEEP playing cause the storyline was great.
Area 51 has had and apparently still has a horrible 1 dimensional storyline. It ranks up there with that horrible Aerosmith Revolution game. Why it ever became a series that needs careful development, I will never know.
If you want political treatment, write a sim where you're an arms contractor and you need to pay off your local congresspeople in a legal or at least hidden way. Or, write a sim where you get send to a base in Cuba with no hope for escape, rescue or legal representation. There's plenty of dirt to really dig into without making up crap about spec.ops. vs. spec.ops.
Nah, by writing the spec.ops. vs. spec.ops. the general public gets paranoid and thinks of that movie Enemy of the State. When they look for that, they don't find it. All the issues that you state, make a boring game so they won't play that or blow those issues off as they know that the government only engages in spec.ops. vs. spec.ops warfare with itself and that's obviously not going on so everything is perfectly normal except for those few crazies. Sort of makies you think of MegaTokyo and how Largo views all the scifi stuff going on in the background while to Piro and almost every other major character its just a normal day. We don't see the government acting badly out in public so those that scream at the top of their lungs that some thing is wrong that Miho is the zombie queen are looked at like absolutely crazy people and ignored.
I think what would make a great game would be to start off with something like SimCity or the Sims as a backdrop and everything is normal except for your team of either magic users, super heroes, scifi hightech good guys, or covert gov. looking out for the bad guys. You raid random Sim's home for evidence that they are an "evil" doer however you define "evil" be it drinking, drugs, alien contacts, terrorist contacts, unlicensed magical use, being a general villian, or just being someone our team doesn't like today. I guess some one could make Police Sate the game and see how people like playing as Nazis or KGB agents. Nah, that's predictable. Police State the game with legit terror, disease, alien, and anti-government targets to search out and destory. Don't ask why that guy was a terrorist or bad guy, you are just in the swat team and taking his whole family out and take it as a given that he was a bad guy.
Does that mean you're opposed to political content in videogames when it doesn't interfere with shooting stuff?
Yeah, werd to that. Like just about everyone else's my girlfriend hates GTA. Says she's worried about me.
But of course you realize that the GTA games are themselves political statements, right? And I'm not talking about the freedom of speech issue of getting the game out in the first place. I'm talking about the world you can see that (for example) Carl lives in in GTA:SA. Now THAT is a political statement...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is there room for politics in gaming, or do you just want to shoot stuff?
America's Army
'nuff said?
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I would love a game where I can hunt down this elusive Haliburton Weather Machine and put a stop to it!
Shooting stuff is fun. If I get to shoot americans, that's even better :p
in the first one you are an alien in the 50's fighting traveling across america fighting police, soldiers, and "men in black" agents called majestic. the game is full of sarcasm about how cold war americans in the "golden age" were all secretly gay, or on drugs, or worse.
in the second one you are an alien in the 60's fighting the KGB for world domination in america, britain, japan, and russia. the game is full of jokes about cultural stereotypes.
in both games, the governments hate you and want to destroy you, but harvest your technology and stuff to use against you and their enemies.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
first post!!
"If you want political treatment, write a sim where you're an arms contractor and you need to pay off your local congresspeople in a legal or at least hidden way. Or, write a sim where you get send to a base in Cuba with no hope for escape, rescue or legal representation. There's plenty of dirt to really dig into without making up crap about spec.ops. vs. spec.ops."
Or you could play the latest splinter cell, torn between two organizations. One good, one bad, but the answer isn't as simple as taking sides.
Hasn't Michael Moore been saying that all along? Honestly, this guys sounds like another leftist moonbat to me.
I have to say that political or socially conscious messages in video games aren't new. The whole Metal Gear Solid mythos (and Kojima's other games like Zone of the Enders) deal with everything from the threat of nuclear proliferation, to censorship, to the futility and tragedy of war, to how the allies of today can become the enemies of tomorrow and vice versa. Some of the themes are a bit too blatant for my tastes (though that may be a function of the translation from Japanese to Western culture), but I still think they added depth to the story, and help make MGS a classic. To hear the description of this story idea, I think the writer may be barking up the wrong tree if he's going to take such a blatant "blame America for terrorism" tack. It's one thing to express your opinion in a story, but I tend to prefer art that's left up to interpretation (which I think the MGS games did, even as they made clear Kojima's perspective).
generally being a dick in MMORPGs. Do you know why? Of course you do: it's not real.
Umm, no. Those people you're being a dick to *are* real. You are aware that MMORPGs aren't entirely populated by AI characters, right? Maybe you lack the empathy to understand when you're causing grief to someone who you can't see, but that doesn't make you any less of a tool.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
There's obviously a market for games with political elements. Fallout and Deus Ex are both widely hailed as amongst the best games ever released for the PC. Both depicted an artistic vision of how life could be if certain negative aspects of modern culture are not challenged, and it was the storyline that engrossed it's players.
this plot line has been used so many times it's got stretch marks.
Clear, Dark Skies
Oh WOW!
Yet Another First-Person-Shooter!
Let me guess:
Guys running around with guns, shooting other guys running around with guns.
'F'n Brilliant!' So original. NOT.
Anyone,
and I mean Anyone?
Got an original idea for a computer game that doesn't involve blowing stuff up and killing?
Just wondering...
Anyone?
Ultima 6 is a prime example. That fictional universe was probably a prime reason in me becoming pro-multicultural at the time. Looking back on it, the propaganda aspects are obvious.
All these Gargoyles have invaded Britannia. You start off killing them, encouraged by your king, Lord British. Of course, part way through you discover that they are only coming through to your world because their world is falling into a void and they need you to rectify it. And they aren't evil, they in fact mean you no harm and are a very cultured and learned race. As an added bonus, you will pick up a gargoyle character who has better stats than anyone in the entire game. And of course, the only way you can finish the game is to help them out. (I'm somewhat surprised that the game didn't have you lobby Lord British to give amnesty for undocumented Gargoyles or go on a quest to get the local bards to put on a Live Aid show.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_6
As the audience in games has grown larger and recognition has dawned on people that you can buy tens to hundreds of hours of influence with a game compared to 2 hours with a movie, it's no accident that anyone with the desire to manipulate public opinion and the means to create video games decides who is cast as villain or hero in games, what the quests shall be, and what assumptions will be challenged by the protagonist in the game.
Propaganda in art is as old as art itself. I'm not sure why this is news.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
"... aliens become poor American citizens put in harm's way."
Is it just me or does this sound like an elaborate excuse?
(Let's skip making aliens and just release another run-of-the-mill fps...humans killing humans, but we'll call it 'Area 51!!!'
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Their choice was America, or some other nation yet to be named, (post soviet oppoisition problem) which fallout was not set in. (remember, the original was set in the American west.)
-GiH
How is this a "left-wing" conspiracy theory?
This sounds more like the ruby ridge / OK city "the government is out to get my guns and kill my family" conspiracy.. you know.. a far right wing nut-job invention.
Left wing conspiracy theories tend to be about crazy economic domination theories and Bush family members.
-GiH
Outside of a-51, some people make moral mistakes while doing complicating professional level stuff along the way and don't even notice them. Take for instance them building that 5 million $ seed shack up in svalbardslush: it's really complicating to make, but there are people dying right now from curable illnesses, and it won't even guarentee saving a single person in the future because there's never going to be doomsday on earth in the foreseeable future if world leaders don't goof off and nuke the entire world, there's never been a comet that has hit the earth to cause annihilation that I have witnessed and I don't understand that there ever will be.
From my reading of Ayn Rand's books (objectivist epistemology, anthem, the fountainhead) I know that she rights about moral problems, which address many issues that are missed by the people I mentioned in the first sentence of the second paragraph, and ideals. A lot of parts of Ayn Rand's books I burn and request editing from the editors, such as the garbage silly woman stuff, improper use of metaphors (badly, probably unintentionally, used some metaphors in past and present respect to write poetically rather than a future respect to describe something that there simply isn't a word on (i.e. If there is a primitive person who has never seen a plane before, the person would probably not call it a plane)), and some of it is morally wrong itself, but then there is the stuff on focus, the meaning of life, risk, and cynicism that gives a person knowledge.
From my perspective, hopefully parts of Anna Nicole Smith's movie "illegal aliens" are accurate representations of some life's technology in outer space and other planets somewhere because they would give those non-earthlings one reason to not offer to abduct some of us. That is if Area-51 invents volumetric display technology like in the
http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1526/BlackSand politics in gaming? anyone heard of metal gear solid? sons of liberty?
oh yeah, this guy is breaking new ground. Not.
i disable sigs
Previous posts have mentioned that a political spin on a game can make it a propaganda of sorts, and hence, damages the integrity of gaming. But, moral and ethical choices have appeared in games (KOTOR was used as an example) and those too are propaganda. Just because a game says something doesn't make it evil. Someone said earlier that when the game "asks a question" it retains its integrity, but when it tries to "force an answer," it destroys what it set out to do. If games take a more "applicable to life" stance content-wise with the intent of making people think and confront issues, as opposed to making people take their side, then there is a great potential for success. Its a fine line, yes, but games, like all other forms of media, can be used to open peoples eyes. If gamemakers set out with this purpose, they have my approval.
Maybe if this sig is witty or clever enough, someone will love me...