Shrapnel Games Blog

As everyone is aware of by now the game industry is once again under fire, this time for sexual content. Poor, innocent grandmothers who bought GTA: San Andreas for their teenage grandchildren are suing for the unknown trauma they have inflicted on their favorite grandsons (ya know, because the fact that they were buying a game that featured home invasions and carjacking was okay). Everyone’s favorite ambulance chaser, Jack Thompson, who I once interviewed and in that questioning called all readers of ‘Wired’ insane, has been let out of the nuthouse and is on the prowl. And let’s not forget the the real power behind the nightmare years of the Clinton administration, she-wolf Hillary Clinton herself is getting into the act. Yep, the three-ringed circus has set up in town. And to that?

Ho-hum. Wake me when it’s over.

Like every single time before this is just another frenzy of lawyers and lawmakers trying to look like they’re doing something to earn their paychecks. It’ll blow over, become old news, and vanish. At least until some kid mows down his classmates with a rifle, or some sort of secret perverse mini-game is found in Bejeweled. Then the baying of the hounds will begin anew.

At some point though some new cultural experience will enter into our collective consciousness, and that will become the new target. Television, rock’n'roll, comic books, XXX movies, metal music, Dungeons & Dragons, rap music…they’ve all been blamed on the decline of Western civilization at one point, at corrupted the impressionable youth of the day. In the end people grew bored and moved on to the next item to be angry at. The attacks on videogames have lasted longer than most, but I think that’s probably because people really have too much free time now. Boredom + 15 minutes of fame = pointless litigation and legislation.

But this has got me thinking in the past couple of days about the content of games. What exactly are the limits on games? Should there be limits? And why?

For example, is it the actual depiction of violence or can it be the mere suggestion? What is worse, a first person shooter where the targets fall down with ragdoll physics with a puff of blood when shot, or an interactive fiction game that describes in great detail the savage rape and evisceration of a young girl? Is it blood and guts that creates the line to cross, or is it death itself? If it is simply death then isn’t every single wargame hundreds of times more violent than Grand Theft Auto?

Isn’t it all about graphics? Load up the most violent game from the eras of 286 and tell me it would get a second glance today. “Hey, look, that blue blob of pixels just did something to that yellow blob of pixels and now there are some red pixels onscreen…”

So is it about taste? In movies, was the violence in “Saving Private Ryan” more acceptable because it was historical violence, as opposed to some splatterpunk horror movie? If so, does that mean if you were to have heads exploding in red mist and limbs being shattered in Call of Duty 2 that would be okay, but if you did that in Office Shooter 666 that would be wrong?

And what about sex? Haven’t games always sold the lure of sex. It’s not like many games feature women with anything less than a C cup after all. So where’s the line? How much worse is it if in one game you stare at the ass of the female protagonist throughout the game while she wears a leather g-string, or she actually does something sexual?

What made games like movies? Why not books? You can be of any age and pick up the most vile, reprehensible book you could want and read it to your heart’s content without anyone telling you that you shouldn’t, or you can’t. But not a movie. Movies have ratings, and a movie will never, ever equal what a book is producing in terms of setting the imagination alive. Games have ratings. Games used to not have ratings though, games were once upon a time like books. No one thought twice about them. So what changed?

The almighty dollar. That’s it, isn’t it? Games moved from becoming a hobby to an industry (anyone remember the good ol’ days of EA, when their games came in those small LP like packages and they weren’t a bunch of corporate whores?) and like everything else that becomes big it lost the magic. Now that it was acceptable to play games it was now important to protect the children. Funny though how they’re trying to protect the children, who by all rights shouldn’t be able to afford these games anyway, so really shouldn’t the parents be the ones responsible for deciding what comes into their homes? Oh no, guess that would demand parental responsibility. Something else lost in the ’90s…

What’s done is done though and at this point we have to live with it. The line for sex and violence has not yet been fully drawn, and will constantly be pushed, and at some point folks will finally realize what the line is. And as long as there are people out there who will spend money on it, it will be there, and there will always be someone out there decrying the horror of it all.

In the end gamers are a smart bunch, and quality will always rule the day. If that quality title just happens to have a little bit of the ultra-violence and the in and out, so be it. If it doesn’t, but it’s a blast to play, people will play. And this is something people like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton will never understand. Games don’t need violence to be fun, and if they have it it doesn’t automatically mean they’re good. A game just needs to be good.

-Scott

Now playing: Wrapping up a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, wrapping up Europe Engulfed, and looking to finally get time to play the new Arkham Horror.

Now listening: Wishmaster - Nightwish, Killers - Iron Maiden, A Night At The Opera - Blind Guardian.