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Are Game Industry Pros Failing To Fight for Freedom?
Gamasutra's most recent Question of the Week feature deals with the extremely quotable final speech given by Doug Lowenstein at D.I.C.E.. The article queries individuals within the games industry for their opinions on the 'freedom' that the industry allows itself, and its convictions on fighting for that freedom. The article prompted numerous, polarized comments. Many of them followed the gist of this Anonymous submission: "With regards to censorship the biggest worry for me is developers and publishers self-censoring and avoiding any kind of contentious issue or subject matter in case they offend anyone. Video games for me are a powerful medium capable of equaling the emotive and informative weight of cinema if used correctly, but they rarely are. If we refuse to tackle issues and remain purely a thing of fluff and fizz then interactive entertainment will never have the gravitas of its cousins."
We need a game on abortion, where you can choose to either be a pro-life activist blowing up clinics or a pro-choice activist force aborting fetuses!!
Seriously, people play video games to get away from all the horseshit of real life. No one is censoring controvertial issue from video games, they were never put there to begin with. People plays games to have fun, not digest a hyperbole laden message.
About the closest video games ever get to addressing real world issues is by metaphor and allegory. The Gulliver's Travel's model works well in the game setting, but again the primary purpose of games is to play them, not get a poor mans plot along the way. Developers should stick to addressing real world issues by subsituting aliens and fantasy realms for real world events. The moment some explicit moral message begins flashing on screen to a dramatic score, is the moment I regret the hours of play I've put in.
There is one exception to this. If your game is really, really, really good, and you can integrate the concept without fundamentally altering the setting, then you can start to preach. Just not too much thanks. A game that did this rather well was the original Metal Gear Solid, which had a very clear anti-nuclear proliferation message that fitted smoothly into the entire game.
The real issue of censorship in video games is not the messages they convey, but the actions they still consider taboo. The greatest addition that could be made to a game like GTA would be to put children in as pedestrians, because we've all felt that urge to strangle some screaming brat at least once in our lives. This will never happen because if it did, exaggerated public outrage would quickly follow from people who've never even seen the game.
Let's face it. Taboos still exist in our society and moreover we still do not have the freedom to challenge them. We've let our fear and other people's outrage, continue to keep the status quo.
May the Maths Be with you!