By Sam Coles:
There is always something within the video game industry
that stirs the boiling pot that is the mainstream media and out of touch people
who do not understand the medium. With the recent release of the trailer for David
Cage’s upcoming interactive novel Detroit: Become Human has caused alarm to
certain MPs and the head of the charity Childline. They have said this is not
entertainment, when they miss the point entirely, as it is within context of a
story. This brings up the question of why are video games off limits when it
comes to certain subject matters.
Video games as medium have been catered for a wide selection
of ages since the early 90’s, when Sega decided to market their new consoles
the Mega Drive or Genesis if you’re American to an older audience. At the same
time Mortal Kombat had hit the scene which caused a stir in America creating
the ESRB, which age rate games in the US, this wasn’t an issue here in the UK
as we had the BBFC to age rate games. When Mortal Kombat came out a lot of
people were worried about their kids, but if you look at the content now you
would say yes that game is clearly aimed at adults without hesitation. You have
to realise that this was the early 90’s and video games were still seen as
children’s toys, it wasn’t really until the mid to late 90’s where the medium
started to evolve to a new story telling tool.
In 1998 games started to focus more on their stories with
scenes with voice acting that had weight and emotion for the most part. The game
that start this was Hideo Kojima’s smash hit Metal Gear Solid, this was a game
with a story about political conspiracies and nuclear war, which was very heavy
stuff for a video game at the time, yes it’s standard fair now, but you have to
remember back then stories consisted of save the girl and kill the bad guy.
Metal Gear Solid set the standard of how most singleplayer story focused games
would be made in the future, this opened a new gateway to explore darker and
more adult themes.
The early 2000’s came around and we got new consoles in the
form of the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, what came are new slew of singleplayer
games with new and darker stories. The game that comes to mind from this period
is Max Payne; this game got a lot attention when it came out due to its dark
story with Max’s wife and new born son being murdered by drug addicts. The
story saw Max fall into the void of whiskey and painkillers, parents at the
time were not use to seeing a story like this in a video game and were not
happy despite the game being rated a 15+ here and M for mature in the US. The PS2
and Xbox were heavily marketed to the more mature audience from 16 all the way
up to 30+, Max Payne solidified this with its dark tale it showed it is a new way
to convey a story.
Once we got to the Xbox 360 and PS3 technology began to
evolve at a rapid rate and game developers where able to utilise motion capture
and facial animations to convey convincing emotions. Games that really standout
from this period are Metal Gear Solid 4, The Last of Us and Red Dead
Redemption, these are games that had weight and emotion touching on taboo
subjects like human trafficking in war, coping with the loss of a child and
redemption from a life crime to only to be betrayed. These games have weight to
them with gameplay to back up the context with sharp writing and excellent
acting from veterans of the industry or people who new to video game acting.
No one said a word about these games when they came out
because they were clearly aimed adults, at the time of Red Dead’s release I was
17 so I wasn’t old enough to buy the game but my parents were very liberal and
never censored me from art. I’m not saying that you should let kids play any
game but maybe have a discussion about the themes as that is what my parents
did, which they would then judge if I was mature enough to handle the themes,
you should never try to hide these things from younger audiences.
Here we are in the current generation of gaming, which
honestly we have pushed the boat out with certain subjects such as Mafia III
which had the courage to explore the racism of the Deep South during the 60’s
as they did not shy away from the language used at the time. Even the latest Wolfenstein
game explored domestic violence with B.J’s past with his horrible and racist
father, so why should Detroit Become Human be an exception and off limits? I
think it’s a medium that the older generation still don’t understand, as it is
still relatively young, it was the same thing with movies, books and comics.
Should David Cage change the scene in the game? Absolutely not, it is a
horrible thing that happens in real life, this game does not glorify it, it
brings awareness to the situation, Childline should be praising this not
condemning it, and it is well acted and is done in a tasteful manner.
This is just the latest example of the out of touch ninnies
trying to say that video games are corrupting youth despite their being
evidence countering this. Video games are new medium of telling stories, these
can be dark tales of revenge, violence and drugs or it can be more cheerful no
matter the subject it’s a medium that is starting to surpass films with storytelling
to the younger generation.
Completely agree. Films have been able to tackle these subjects for along time. In fact films generally get praised for doing so, for example Nil by mouth. I think the issue is lack of understanding (or wilfully misunderstanding) and agency. In games the uninitiated will assume that you take the part of the abuser and that the point of the game is to ‘score points’. Most people will not understand that a game can treat these subjects just as sensitively as films do. In fact games have even more impact because of agency, where you or a character you care about are the subject of the violence (The Last of Us in particular does this very well).
ReplyDeleteGreat article. Btw you missed out a ‘not’ in the first sentence :-)
Thanks and I've updated it, thanks for pointing it out. You know how it is when you write long editorials. haha
ReplyDelete