Push button, make toast. Push button, kill man. Part 2.

Games are exciting, invigorating and fun. Many Games can also become mundane to those who play a great deal of them. In part 1 i talked about the difference between game-mechanics and actual actions and the misinterpretation this brings on. In this section I'm going to tackle one of the biggest criticisms leveled at games. Desensitization.

The word is banded about a huge amount in many forms of media. The idea is psychology is that exposure to viewed violence makes the viewer more comfortable with violence making violent acts seem less extreme to the viewer. Now i could debate the idea of catharsis, that is a violent games providing a safe violent release, but I'm not psychologist. I am however a videogames enthusiast and i can talk from my own extensive experience. What seems scary to many watching footage of games is that what they see as disturbing we see as entertainment. To the uninitiated outside observer barbarism is not only routine but desirable but the reality is that the player related VERY differently to playing a game than actually performing an action. It's hard to explain to those who don't really game but the experience is different to what non-players assume.

Now I'm not saying that videogames don't have an affect, games that deliberately set out to offend  should be weeded out, in a clever way, some games will be 'offensive' to some people simply because they are misinterpreted. There is also the issue of exposure to children, when experiments were done on the effects of watching violence children's developing minds were especially susceptible. Games have a ratings system for a reason and young children should be protected from ultra-violent content no matter what media. Lets just say be smart people. If everyone calms the fuck down and is sensible everything will be all fine and dandy. I don't want this to turn into a deconstruction of the critics of the industry (that will come at another point) but many who make claims about the dangers of vidoegames don't even bother to go as far as watching footage, most of out critics rely on third-hand reports or simply dismiss the industry off-hand

But this is a little off track. "Videogame violence" is a phrase that has come to mean sanitised or almost cartoony violence.  This is how even the OTT violence that seen in games like "Deadspace 2" is experienced by the player, there is a detachment from the violence that means at many levels it doesn't feel like violence. As an industry gaming does not set out to train people to be violent. You could argue that games should be MORE graphic, showing the consequences of violence and making the payer more connected to the actions he performs is a vital part of enhancing the emotional impact games can have and immersing us in their world. Shooting people in the face should not feel as comfortable as it does and much of the limiting side of the coin, I'm talking about your mum again, i feel is stunting many gamers relationship with their actions, most notably firearms.

But we will have to wait for part three to expand on this and some of it's more interesting implications in the areas of player relationships and moral choice.

Push button, make toast. Push button, kill man. Part 1.

Hello my name is scrumpmonkey and today i killed a man. I also made some delightful toast. The thing is both actions were relatively the same. Ok, ok I'll back up. I didn't really kill someone i was playing me some TF2 but i did kill a representation of a person without any hesitation, thought or ambiguity.

The thing is with most modern games the act of digital murder is indistinguishable from the act of say, truing on a digital microwave to ruin a scientist's lunch. They are both game mechanics and they both require identical button presses for the player. If you own a modern system or are into any variant of FPS, TPS, Action games, military RTS, Tactical shooters etc etc. you will likely kill many people at a time without a single thought.

This of course troubles your mum. Not your mum obviously because she's too busy with me (we'll talk later, maybe get some ice-cream, play some catch.) but thousands of self-proclaimed moral voices. The idea that someone could be slaughtering an entire legion of digital people deeply troubles them. But why should you feel uncomfortable? You could replace the people with toast and the bullets with jam and you have pretty much the same experience .Moral panic about games shows first and foremost a total misunderstanding of game mechanics.

If yo mama took a break from being so fat and actually got into some video games she would realise that the thought-process involved has more to do with applying yourself to the rules of a game world than the conscious act of killing, we have an urge to beat the game not to beat in real-live heads. For long-time players the guns and soldiers are just a mask to identifying and best exploiting the underlying game mechanics. It can feel as simply as making toast. Because it is not killing a man, it is pushing a button.

Socially Awkward; a Quick Follow up.

I almost forgot this technicolour hell vision of the future of PC gaming Microsoft conjured up. Who knew the distopian future would be so... colourful? When we are all working in the off world Microsoft mines spending our meager credits on avatar clothing just know i fucking called it

Perhaps they don't realise that people bought i-pods because their Friends bough i-pods? This is how trends come about, the reason people play facebook games is because those games are on facebook.A lot of people are on facebook, it's a simple equation. The audience came before the games did. GFWL has no existing mass of people, people play facebook games because they are bored and on facebook. People don't actively seek out shit like farmville it's just THERE and that's why it can get away with being so shite. Their audience would just be looking up pictures of amusing cats or typing "Im bored" into google if they weren't playing frontier-ville or whatever sudo-game Zynga have recently excreted. People mainly play social games because they are already plugged into the social network they exist in. They are something sprung on a captive audience, in this distopian PC-Gaming future there is no hook to get people to use this GFWL mutation. The service has to be forced on begrudging people as it is, many PC gamers actively AVOID anything with GFWL because on many people's PCs (including my own) the service simply won't let them play the games they paid for. But microsoft seems to want to jump on the choo-hoo trian stright to Zynga-Ville with all that delicous microtransaction money.

As Kutz once said "The Horror... The Horror..."

Socially Awkward

The games industry has been getting a little jittery of late. Or should i say the 'AAA industry' since modern gaming has become so heavily splintered. Something has been growing in the dark recesses of the Internet that seems to make all their traditional models of revenue seem out of touch. Something entirely new. Something called Social Gaming. At it was expanding at an alarming rate. Analysts have lined up to instill the virtues of social gaming, there have even been words like "the future of gaming" used. It certainly makes a butt-load of money but i think many both on the inside and the outside of the games industry misunderstand exactly what's going on or how it is effecting the industry.

Social games have grown significantly in a very short space of time but their growth at this pace is unsustainable. EA recently payed over the odds to buy social gaming company "Playfish" and will probably never see a return on that investment. The company had already peaked in terms of price. Social games are not some magic money-printing bullet and projections of their expected profits may be unrealistic.

The great envy tinged with fear at which established players like Activision and EA look at the social gaming sector might not be justified. Even recently there have been murmurings that the 'traditional' companies are getting left behind as we charge into the grand future of gaming. But how much can we really project the future of the industry? Or even if we can is the vision of gaming's future companies like Zynga provide really desirable?

A young man clings to the back of a great, towering stone monster. His grip weakens with every passing moment as the great shape tries to throw him off. These serene ancient beings have been wondering harmlessly for eons untold but his intent is to kill all of them to bring back the soul of someone he loves. It may cost his humanity but his grief is such that he is willing to endure the trails and pay the great price. 

3 miles away someone just bought an in browser cartoon cow for £3.50. 
 
Going from a crafted narrative, characters and world that are capable of affecting the player to something that requires loose-change to progress is not what i would call progression. At this point in the history of the medium where we are on the verge of some really great experiences that may rival the best of film for narrative and character and surpass it for immersion, having the creative efforts of an entire industry shift focus from crafting involving experiences to making browser interfaces that try and hoover money from you would be simply depressing. 

The second problem is one of quality. Social games, facebook games especially, are utterly devoid of new ideas. Every time there is a facebook hit we see hundreds of clones, the social game arena is filled with clones desperately trying to emulate each other success. This problem exists is most areas of gaming to the extent to which it is pervasive in the social games arena in  is pretty astounding. The ideas of the market leaders themselves are also gimped versions of earlier, superior titles. Management sim knock-offs like farmville have lesser gameplay chops than many titles of 15 years ago. Mafia Wars rips off a much older tradition of text-based mobster adventures that have existed for around a decade. Copying game-mechanics is also nothing new but the lack of any addition to outdated formulas is also a trope of the Social game genre. There is no hunger for ideas, no spark of creation. There are only colour-vomit graphics and microtransactions.


This is partly caused by the issue of the intent of social games. traditional games aim to succeed through the improvement of their mechanics and giving enough reason to a consumer to buy it. The best games aim simply to be the best games they can be with the main intent of many involved being enjoyment of their Audience. Social games, at their worst, are openly exploitative towards the player. Their intention is not to be a good game (or i would argue sometimes not even a game at all) their intention is to provide just enough content to entice the maximum amount of money from the player. Their progression is not based on traditional ideas of mission completion or Exp, their progression is geared towards the maximum investment of capital. They border on a miss-use of game mechanics to force as many people as possible 


Words like "Advertainment" and "new revenue models" probably make a marketing executive somewhere need to change their shorts but all it means to you is that the focus of many in this emerging industry is shifting towards the monetisation of EVERY aspect of your games. I don't mind saying i have an almost visceral reaction to the ideas that games could and in the eyes of some should be an extension of your accounting/marketing model. In the eyes of Zynga you are not a customer but a cash-cow to be exploited at even available opportunity. Many stereotype the 'core' gamer as a giant, sweaty man-child greedily keeping the industry to himself but the picture is more that long time games enthusiasts are the ones who are most open to new ideas, new experiences and actively seek out the best content. Social gamers are being taken for a ride with stunted, 'addictive' games short-changing them in terms of experience. The founding principles of the industry deserve more than the vision of ultimate monistisation social games provide.