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Call of duty Character select:
-Sex: M or F?
F
-Sorry, the United States military does not permit females to serve on the front lines nor do British SAS units induct women into their ranks. Return and select male.
Jade, you were right, that was easy!
:P
Joking aside, she is correct in that games could always use a lot more depth emotionally. Frankly I prefer gameplay depth first, but emotional depth and the use of real world issues seem to be frequently lacking from games and could really be used to expand the medium.
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Even games which most people praise for their story like Mass Effect have really shallow stories that rarely touch into controversial issues. While you don't need to strike a nerve to make a good story, the best stories I've ever read tried to make you feel uncomfortable about what was being portrayed. A game would be even more immersive than the best movie or book could ever be because you could at least shape the experience a little. I really wish someone would make a story-based game that tried to be gray-and-gray.
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Several games have allowed you to run mercenary companies, or act as mercenaries yourself. Seems like that is an excellent opportunity to portray a wide variety of uncomfortable topics while remaining entertaining as a game and providing a deeper story.
However few utilize the inherently gray nature of mercenary organizations to really do anything with it.
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But Mass Effect has gay and alien sex!!!!
Except Bioware has the sexual maturity of a 13 year old.
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In my opinion, we can only reach a level of maturity when we can once again include civilians in games without the constant fear that the player is going to use them for target practice.
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I was interested in this until I saw the whole "let's make call of duty but with hobos and sexism!" as the strategy.
It's not making the industry grow up (Hey guys, remember that time five or ten years ago when 20 socially awkward geniuses could come out with a friggin' jewel of gaming?) It's pulling it out of the money-driven shithole the AAA industry is currently in.
Nobody's gonna want to buy a game about "how war affects society" nowadays because the industry has already dumbed them down to love those Michael Bay Movie Simulators. It's evidenced by games like Deus Ex HR, and comparing them to their old originals. HR had a trailer that promised to touch on important, current matters from a sci-fi perspective, and it failed to deliver gameplay wise. Dead Island showed the dark, sad side of a zombie apocalypse in it's trailer, and it failed to deliver gameplay wise.
GTA IV tried to cram a sad, mature story into the game, but you can't quite do that in a game where you can beat people to death in alleys repeatedly without any repercussions.
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hey, better they blow off steam on virtual people than real ones.
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Those reluctant about video games should understand that games are simply another medium of entertainment and telling stories. I don't see why a franchise like Call of Duty cannot add deeper characters and stories to their formula which seems to equate to 'bombastic set-pieces' as the primary focus. Instead of trying to make 'the most badass soldier ever' why not make a character that the player can bond with, taking in some slower moments where characters simply talk with one another without bolstering testosterone everywhere. Even Gears of War had its moments in doing stuff like that well enough.
Furthermore, on the subject of homelessness, Call of Duty could easily put some focus on the displacement of civilians during wartime and the struggles they have to go through (and not just using them as shock value like in Modern Warfare 2 and 3).
I feel the 'mindless action games' like the modern Call of Duty games are somewhat a dying breed, at least for me, and I believe games under utilize the ability to tell interesting stories for an interactive audience. Perhaps it's even time for a new franchise similar to Call of Duty and Medal of Honor but with these values in mind. That's not to say it's just a snap of the fingers and its all fine and dandy, but developers should bear in mind that these aspects could benefit their games.
Having a game that follows a group of racially, ethnically, and sexually diverse PMCs or mercenaries would be a good way to address the gray nature of not only those organizations, but also people fighting battles in general showing that all sides of conflict suffer and inflict some grim shit on one another.
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Everyone appears to be getting sick of them, even the more casual audience. They key now is to be able to create something that while it can still accomodate casual players such as those who Call of Duty favoured, it also has the ability to deliver a message and provide something meaningful.
I think that Games are different from mediums such as Books or TV in that it has actual positive and negative feedback. This means that it's more difficult to give higher concepts without tangential learning but more basic subconscious skills are gained significantly easier. If we're going to have some value in these systems, they have to give some subconscious skill. Even Battlefield and TF2 are better than Call of Duty because they encourage teamwork to a degree.
As much as I agree and would love to see something like that, even introducing story elements such as sexual abuse in PMCs, I really don't trust the gaming industry to make it without shitting all over everything. There are too many examples where getting the wrong writer or have someone shitting on it from production turns it into a mess and almost parodies the message it was trying to tell. Racially and sexually diverse is just an excuse to stick stereotypical black man, stereotypical muslim man, and stereotypical sassy woman onto the team.
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I don't think that the actions you make in the game affect you, if the game is linear and you aren't given a choice, whatever you do will not have an impact on you, you know you had to do it to advance.
If you are given a choice, you will most likely choose the "good" path.
If you choose the "evil" path it's most likely to see what will happen if you choose it (While replaying for example) or for the possible cool factor (Evil is cool in pop culture) or for the rewards of it (You're required to do something bad to get the best ending or you will just get a cash or neat stuff).
Games aren't really the medium to "get a message accross".
If bad things are implied about real world nations or organisations in games, people might even be offended, then are the people like me who are probably numbed to all these choices in videogames, it's just a game.
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But they do. You might not have much of a choice or the right choice might be painfully obvious, but it is still a matter of keeping to a set of actions with positive and negative reinforcement. The repurcusions of a bad decision can be easily shown, but even if it just gives you a game over you quickly learn. This is at a subconscious level and just doing the action, even if it is on a linear path is enough.
And for that matter, having a choice of paths between good and evil is a problem to be solved, not a limitation. The Witcher 2 does this well as each path has good elements and bad elements, things for you to think on. Even then, it shows the consequences of your actions with a bad decision here resulting in shit later on. Early on, helping a guerrilla in a fight later on results in a pogrom in a nearby town. Having shades of grey is another key part of the process, because it shows action and consequence rather than just shooty bang I win.
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Oh, Ms. Raymond, I'd let you kick me in the balls anytime you want!
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I feel like a tool mentioning Mother 3 (or Earthbound 2 if you will), but I'd say it does a pretty good job at bringing some controversial topics in perspective. Animal abuse, the possible dangers of money, and possibly other topics I haven't discovered yet because I'm just at chapter 4. For 'just' an RPG, it made me think. A friendly town that doesn't know a thing about money turns into a small liberal city, introducing several problems our current society has. Monkeys get treated like shit constantly, and so on and forth.
Mother 3 isn't a linear shooter anyway, but it's still a game. Most games I've played don't shine light on those topics. Deus Ex: HR is (afaik) the most recent game with a very sinister undertone, mainly poverty. You're just a security agent, you're killing people, but the game still has a very sinister undertone, like Mother 3. I'd really like more developers to put those in their games.
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oh boy
giygas
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their idea of edgy is trying to use cod as a metaphor for teenage angst and pain
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16th May 2012 Last edited by Groat; 19th May 2012 at 03:22PM. (how the fuck did i fuck up my grammar that bad?)
Post #56
Why don't they just pretend nothing after Assassin's Creed II happened, and make a third one with a different character and a good storyline dealing with the ethical and moral issues they want to?
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Actually not really. That was Mother 2.
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Goddamit, I knew this post was inevitable, but seriously people?
Oh, Ms. Raymond, I'd let you kick me in the balls anytime you want!
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anyone that tthinks "passage" is a powerful game or whatever the fuck prob is a boring man
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I watched the whole thing and I agree with him 100%. Thanks for posting this.
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Seriously.
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huhSeriously.
well isn't that interesting
Edited:
you're boring!
don't say that about my friend!!
Funny x 3
Agree x 1
Disagree x 4
Dumb x 1
