Shrapnel Games Blog

Egad, I must be getting old. And how did I reach this conclusion? Perhaps it’s the fact that now if I twist my back the wrong way (and unfortunately the rules for right and wrong change every day) I end up feeling like someone took a barbed short sword and skewered my spinal column. Or maybe it’s the fact that when I’m stocking up on booze and porn the feelings of getting away with something I had as a youth are no longer there. Maybe it’s the greater feeling of responsibility—ha ha ha, just kidding!! No, I think what has me really feeling like I’m getting up there in age is my *gasp* disdain for some of the subject matter now beginning to appear in games.

And what type of game could have me disgusted? After all, this is me we’re talking about. Anyone who knows me personally or has any knowledge of my past articles on the world of gaming over the years knows that I’m a staunch believer in the fact that games are just games, not so-called “murder simulators”, nor are they responsible for the downfall of Western Civilization. Little Johnny playing “God of War”, with its dismemberments, decapitations, and titty laced gameplay won’t turn him into the next Adolf Hitler. On the flipside I have my doubts that by playing “The Political Machine” Johnny will be primed to be the next President of the United States. Games are games, not Orwellian mind control programs.

Yet personally I’m feeling rather disgusted at the “urban crime” genre. I just came across the site for a game called, well, I don’t see the point in providing them with free advertising so the game will go unmentioned. The gameplay is essentially cops versus robbers, the robbers of course being street thugs and ‘hood rats.

Now I don’t have a problem with the general idea itself. There’s nothing wrong with a game that allows you to play the bad guy (although I’m guessing a game in which you play an SS trooper smashing infant skulls with your rifle butt would cross the line, as would any game that allowed you to play as Al Gore; there are lines that man were not meant to cross after all) and when you boil it down it is nothing more than a cops versus robbers game, something kids have been playing ever since there were cops and criminals.

The problem I have is games are meant to be escapist by nature. Just as you watch movies, listen to MP3s, read books, or go to the art museum, you play games to escape from your mundane ordinary life. Why are action movies, fantasy novels, and sci-fi so popular? Because they give people a chance to “participate” in a world that they will probably never, ever know.

Hmm, I already hear those wheels turning out there in ‘Netland. “Okay Scott, can’t you say the same thing about the urban crime games? After all, these pasty white corpulent gamers will never go gangbanging in Compton, so what’s wrong with a little 187 fantasy play?”

The problem? Why in God’s name is anyone looking to escape by becoming a modern day criminal? That’s what I don’t get, and that’s what ticks me off about the whole affair. I can understand your typical gamer wanting to become a Rambo like soldier kicking Taliban ass for a couple of hours. I can understand them wanting to be a WWII fighter pilot over the Pacific, or even a barbaric orc looking to smash a few dwarven skulls open. But a contemporary criminal?

I remember one time being arrested and sitting in a holding cell while being processed. The cell was full, it was summer, there was no AC, and the one toilet was a maggot infested breeding pit. You had a couple of drunks who were busy redecorating the floor in semi-solid chunks. As you can imagine it wasn’t a heck of a lot of fun. And don’t even get me started on what a syphilis test is like! And people want to experience this kind of life? Hunh?

So what is it? Is it the typical case of glamorizing the lifestyle without thinking about the low points? Or is it that today’s youth are so bored and unchallenged with suburban life that playing a street gangster who answers to no one is somehow more appealing than playing Gandalf or Chuck Yeager? Me, I’m happy to continue to escape to worlds of intergalactic starships, deep dwarven halls, and the battlefields of the Eastern Front. You can keep your real-world criminal games, I can’t see any reason to have the least amount of interest.

Guess I’m old now, eh?

-Scott

Eagerly Awaiting: A Feast for Crows. C’mon Martin, hurry up!!!

Sorta Awaiting: Star Wars Episode III. Please don’t let it suck.

Not Awaiting: Summer. No folks, it’s both the heat and the humidity.