This post is all about violence in videogames – and the responsibilties designers bear.
A few years back, players would get rewarded when they killed pedestrians in GTA 1 and 2. I even remember myself, running over rows of joggers to gain extrapoints. Back then, I did not realize that this could be a problem, simply because GTA was clearly a videogame and seemed somewhat comedic in nature. And to me, games did not have any ethical prentense. They were just sources of fun.
Today, I look quite differntly at games. Designing them has taught me a lesson. Everything I design has to meet certain standards in terms of ethics. Now, what concerns me, is that apparently not everyone realizes this responsibility.
These mechanics in GTA were eliminated in respective successors, possibly because the desigerns started to grow awareness of the underlying ethical problems. And as a whole, games moved away from specifically rewarding people for cruelties. Today, things are quite different.
In the last few years, games (or their respective designers) have reacquainted themselves with the idea of rewarding people for excessive violence. [I am not sure if this is a problem that is exclusive to games, since movies too got more violent over the last years. Even sports, with the advent of UFC, significantly increased their display of violence.] What to me is most problematic, is HOW players will be rewarded for violent acts. The games delve into the depiction of horrific acts and use these depictions as rewards. How fucked up is that?
This is the system at play in Gears of War: AI meleeattacks the player -> this creates incentive for the player to use the chainsaw -> player uses the chainsaw -> reward the player with a bloody depiction of cutting up a living creature
This is a gameloop that is repeated over and over again. I know, this is a shooter. And I know that most of the time, the symbols shooters employ are shooting at living creatures that will die as a reward. But is this really necessary? Isn’t there another way to get across that the player has resolved a conflict successfully? I mean, if you choose to use aesthetics of a gun shoot-out, do you really have to go this far to get your point across? Wouldn’t it be sufficient to depict a dying person the way the TV-series A-team did?
What frightens me most, I think, is that players accept a bloody animation as reward. That they do – in fact – feel rewarded after cutting up a person and seeing the bloody mess they left behind. We, as designers, should not feed into those fantasies. We should carefully choose when we want players to feel rewarded. Not only, because we have a responsibility, but because it tells something about yourself as a person (not a designer!), what rules you set.
Arcade
Arshak Ardeshir
Gustav Ziolkowski
Severin Brettmeister
Andre Beccu
“What frightens me most, I think, is that players accept a bloody animation as reward. That they do – in fact – feel rewarded after cutting up a person and seeing the bloody mess they left behind.”
That’s actually a really good point!
But it really is an effective form of emotional reward the same way that hearing Duke say something like “Hell yeah!” when he picks up a power up.
“We, as designers, should not feed into those fantasies.”
Actually, I’m not sure I agree with this. Playing games is a lot about being able to live out fantasies, and even if a bloody one might seem weird I don’t think we should judge.
But then again, if you were to use something else than gore with the same positive (player) effect, I’d say go with the new one as I also think that it shouldn’t be “needed”.
“Actually, I’m not sure I agree with this. Playing games is a lot about being able to live out fantasies, and even if a bloody one might seem weird I don’t think we should judge.”
I don’t agree that videogames (specifically!!) are so much about living out your (the players) fantasy but more living the fantasy of the desigerns. You (as the player) can express yourself in that fantasy, but you cannot live out your own, if you know what I mean.
The problem is that after playing a game like Gears of War you as the player associate bloody mess with reward, which in reality it is not (or should not be). This is something I, as a designer, do not want people to learn. In fact, why should anybody would want people to make that association? What currently games lack, is an awareness over the symbols they choose.
Take flower for example. Blossoming the flowers almost feels as intense and visceral as killing somebody in Gears of War. The effect is almost the same, but the symbols are quite different.
“I don’t agree that videogames (specifically!!) are so much about living out your (the players) fantasy but more living the fantasy of the desigerns.”
Okay, to an extent I agree with you, because the designer creates the setting and rules, but I still think that you’re playing with your own imagination, but yes, using the designers tools.
Gears of War is very strict when it comes to characters etc. What your imagination “can do”. But when you look at RPG’s when you get to create your own character, I really think it’s my own imagination.
Even with the most open-world RPGs, most of the time you’re doing what the designer wants you to do, simply because your actionset is so limited and clearly defined. If you completely defy the rules of the game, you may start to come into “expression” territory.
Your reasoning lacks one thing; what the real-life implications are of rewarding violence (because I guess that is why you have a problem with it). The answer may seem obvious, we don’t want people to start thinking that it’s awesome to kill people…but will that really happen?
There are studies that say violent games will cause violent behaviour and there are at least as many that say they don’t. Can people differentiate between reality and fiction enough to not transfer their feelings from video games to real-life? I’d like to think that most can, but I also think that a few people may not.
I’m not an advocate for violence, I actually feel uneasy when killing in some games (a few places in cod4 single-player for example). But I’m not yet convinced that it will mean anything beyond the game.
I don’t think that real-life implication matter in this case. It is a responsibility you as a designer have to bear. You have to decide what you want to reward the player for – and if you want to reward him for cruelties it tells a lot about you.
My argument is not that rewarding violence will trigger violence in real life. My argument is that presenting extreme violence as reward is ethically unsound.