I don’t really like the vibe of this article, mainly because it feels (to me at least) motivated by modern neo-puritanical thinking.
Having said that, I do resonate with some of what it’s saying. In recent years with those bodycam-FPS games specifically, I’ve found myself disturbed by the fidelity of violence, at times. I grew up playing shooters like Titanfall, Halo 3, Battlefield 4 - realistic in their own right, but no matter how often the adults in my life would tell me that they were too violent, they were always cartoonish and comfortably distanced from reality in my mind.
We are now hitting the era where photoreal gameplay is becoming feasible, and I don’t think I’m comfortable engaging with violence on that graphical level, at least not for mindless entertainment. That’s just my personal preference, and I understand others can choose what they’re comfortable with. I do however think that we’re gonna be seeing a lot more crackdowns and censorship in gaming in the near future - I think that’s already started with adult/sexual indie games being banned from sites like itch.io, and I wouldn’t be surprised if anything labeled “violent” will be the next target.
Pfff I’ve been playing video games for 30+ years, this dumb “debate” always comes back like clockwork every election cycle, it seems. Doom was the root of all evil. Then it was Postal. Then Doom again. Then, GTA. Cue many headlines with “hot coffee” in them. Now it’s GTA again, apparently. Dudes it’s a sandbox, it’s just as twisted as the player. Just ignore and move on.
I remember the “are the Doom developers Satanists” era. Oh, and there was Night Trap, when CD-ROMs came out and games incorporating full-motion video had their brief time in the sun. IIRC Congress had a fit about that for a while too.
Thompson charged that the group placed “homosexual-education tapes” in public schools.
Thompson has heavily criticized a number of video games and campaigned against their producers and distributors. His basic argument is that violent video games have repeatedly been used by teenagers as “murder simulators” to rehearse violent plans.
Yeah, it’s all pretty ridiculous. It’s catharsis, not planning. Just like violent movies. Did you know that in Flight Simulator, you can crash in the World Trade Center!?? Also, did you know that in literal sand boxes, they “allow” you to bash other kids with a shovel??
I think that there should be realistic video games. Not all video games, certainly, but I don’t think that we should avoid ever trying to make video games with a high level of graphical realism.
I don’t particularly have any issue specific to violence. Like, I don’t particularly subscribe to past concerns over the years in various countries that no realistic violence should be portrayed in video games, and humans should be replaced by zombies or blood should be green or whatever.
Whether or not specifically the Grand Theft Auto series should use realistic characters or stick with the more-cartoony representations that it used in the past is, I think, a harder question. I don’t have a hard opinion on it, though personally I enjoyed and played through Grand Theft Auto 3 and never bothered to get through the more-realistic, gritty, Grand Theft Auto 5. Certainly I think that it’s quite possible to make very good games that are not photorealistic. And given the current RAM shortages, if there’s ever been a good time to maybe pull back a bit on more-photorealistic graphics in order to reduce RAM requirements, this seems like a good time.
Yesterday, I was playing Carrier Command 2. That uses mostly untextured polygons for its graphics, and it’s a perfectly fine game. I have other, many more photorealistic, games available, and the hardware to run them, but that happened to be more appealing.
EDIT: I just opened it, and with it running, it increased the VRAM usage on my video card by 1.1 GB. Not very VRAM-dependent. And it is pretty, at least in my eyes.
My take has more to do with how accessible the methods of violence are. Most kids playing GTA aren’t (dog willing) going to have access to an arsenal of fully automatic weapons or sporty cars. At that point, they might as well be using wizard magic. I think even a young kid can recognize that it’s fantasy.
But I remember in GTA3 (or maybe Vice City?), you could use a screwdriver as a stabbing weapon. That’s kinda fucked.
I personally remember trying a move from Mortal Kombat on one of my friends when we were rough housing when I was like 7. While he was on his back, I jumped (off his bed I think?) and landed with my full body weight on my knee on his sternum. Probably could have cracked a rib. Certainly knocked the wind out of him. Learned that day that even the non-stabby bits of MK should stay in the pretend realm.
To some degree, I know kids will try to emulate what they see. If what they see is fantasy, nobody gets hurt.
So I just looked at screenshots for Carrier Command, and from the short description and pictures, it looks kinda like you take the role of a Halo battleship captain yet you can also personally pilot any of the vehicles and such?
I don’t know what a Halo battleship is (like…a spaceship in the Halo series?), but basically an amphibious assault ship — can deploy amphibious craft and aircraft — with a deck gun, cruise missiles, SAM array, CIWS, and torpedoes, so kinda an agglomeration of multiple modern-day real-world ship types. Yeah, and then you can either have AI control with you giving orders or you directly control the vehicles.
There have been a couple games in the line. Carrier Command, a very old game, which I’ve never played. Hostile Waters: Anteus Rising, which is a spiritual successor and is oriented around a single-player campaign. Carrier Command 2, which is really principally a multi-player game, but can be played single-player if you can manage the workload and handle all the roles concurrently; I play it single-player. I like both, though I wish that the last games had a more-sophisticated single-player setup. Not a lot of “fleet command” games out there.
But in this context, it’s one of the games I can think of, like Race the Sun or some older games, Avara, Spectre, Star Fox, AV-8B Harrier Assault/Flying Nightmares that use untextured polygons as a major element of the game’s graphics. Rez wasn’t untextured, but it made a lot of use of untextured polygons and wireframe. Just saying that one can make a decent 3D game, and one that has an attractive aesthetic, without spending memory on textures at all.
The only thing I’d ever want analyzed in gaming is the messages that developers convey. And, there should be no “overbearing head agency” be it the government or publisher, that controls that message. Take it just as a suggestion between artists:
We should encourage good morals and themes in the messages our games convey. I know it’s typical for gamers to say they don’t care about story or premise in games, but even if one isn’t laden with cutscenes, they often communicate a concept even just with level and character design, providing objectives like rescuing hostages, collecting loot, or getting stronger.
I don’t necessarily think violence, on its own, makes a message. Showing scenes of World War 2 can convey a lot of things. It can tell you that war is horrible, or it can erroneously tell you it’s fun. I think if you’re expecting maturity from your audience, you can acknowledge that while the game is fun, it’s not trying to foster that feeling in players.
The main thing that leads to violence in the real world is anger. Media can teach us violence is a form of communication, a tool, but anyone using it has a message, one rooted in a lot of hatred. I might even argue there’s some cases where that anger is both deserved and needed, but potentially misdirected; and other cases where both the anger and the action - violence - is 100% needed. A Ukrainian soldier fighting Russian invaders that are trying to kill innocent people does not need to be taught that “violence is bad”.
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Get this puritanical alarmist shit out of here.
If you don’t like the game. Don’t fucking play it
I don’t really like the vibe of this article, mainly because it feels (to me at least) motivated by modern neo-puritanical thinking.
Having said that, I do resonate with some of what it’s saying. In recent years with those bodycam-FPS games specifically, I’ve found myself disturbed by the fidelity of violence, at times. I grew up playing shooters like Titanfall, Halo 3, Battlefield 4 - realistic in their own right, but no matter how often the adults in my life would tell me that they were too violent, they were always cartoonish and comfortably distanced from reality in my mind.
We are now hitting the era where photoreal gameplay is becoming feasible, and I don’t think I’m comfortable engaging with violence on that graphical level, at least not for mindless entertainment. That’s just my personal preference, and I understand others can choose what they’re comfortable with. I do however think that we’re gonna be seeing a lot more crackdowns and censorship in gaming in the near future - I think that’s already started with adult/sexual indie games being banned from sites like itch.io, and I wouldn’t be surprised if anything labeled “violent” will be the next target.
Pfff I’ve been playing video games for 30+ years, this dumb “debate” always comes back like clockwork every election cycle, it seems. Doom was the root of all evil. Then it was Postal. Then Doom again. Then, GTA. Cue many headlines with “hot coffee” in them. Now it’s GTA again, apparently. Dudes it’s a sandbox, it’s just as twisted as the player. Just ignore and move on.
I remember the “are the Doom developers Satanists” era. Oh, and there was Night Trap, when CD-ROMs came out and games incorporating full-motion video had their brief time in the sun. IIRC Congress had a fit about that for a while too.
EDIT: And Mortal Kombat.
EDIT2: And Jack Thompson.
EDIT3: Clips from 1993 Congressional hearings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhwM3ZMTCR0
Yeah, it’s all pretty ridiculous. It’s catharsis, not planning. Just like violent movies. Did you know that in Flight Simulator, you can crash in the World Trade Center!?? Also, did you know that in literal sand boxes, they “allow” you to bash other kids with a shovel??
I think that there should be realistic video games. Not all video games, certainly, but I don’t think that we should avoid ever trying to make video games with a high level of graphical realism.
I don’t particularly have any issue specific to violence. Like, I don’t particularly subscribe to past concerns over the years in various countries that no realistic violence should be portrayed in video games, and humans should be replaced by zombies or blood should be green or whatever.
Whether or not specifically the Grand Theft Auto series should use realistic characters or stick with the more-cartoony representations that it used in the past is, I think, a harder question. I don’t have a hard opinion on it, though personally I enjoyed and played through Grand Theft Auto 3 and never bothered to get through the more-realistic, gritty, Grand Theft Auto 5. Certainly I think that it’s quite possible to make very good games that are not photorealistic. And given the current RAM shortages, if there’s ever been a good time to maybe pull back a bit on more-photorealistic graphics in order to reduce RAM requirements, this seems like a good time.
Yesterday, I was playing Carrier Command 2. That uses mostly untextured polygons for its graphics, and it’s a perfectly fine game. I have other, many more photorealistic, games available, and the hardware to run them, but that happened to be more appealing.
EDIT: I just opened it, and with it running, it increased the VRAM usage on my video card by 1.1 GB. Not very VRAM-dependent. And it is pretty, at least in my eyes.
My take has more to do with how accessible the methods of violence are. Most kids playing GTA aren’t (dog willing) going to have access to an arsenal of fully automatic weapons or sporty cars. At that point, they might as well be using wizard magic. I think even a young kid can recognize that it’s fantasy.
But I remember in GTA3 (or maybe Vice City?), you could use a screwdriver as a stabbing weapon. That’s kinda fucked.
I personally remember trying a move from Mortal Kombat on one of my friends when we were rough housing when I was like 7. While he was on his back, I jumped (off his bed I think?) and landed with my full body weight on my knee on his sternum. Probably could have cracked a rib. Certainly knocked the wind out of him. Learned that day that even the non-stabby bits of MK should stay in the pretend realm.
To some degree, I know kids will try to emulate what they see. If what they see is fantasy, nobody gets hurt.
So I just looked at screenshots for Carrier Command, and from the short description and pictures, it looks kinda like you take the role of a Halo battleship captain yet you can also personally pilot any of the vehicles and such?
That sounds badass.
I don’t know what a Halo battleship is (like…a spaceship in the Halo series?), but basically an amphibious assault ship — can deploy amphibious craft and aircraft — with a deck gun, cruise missiles, SAM array, CIWS, and torpedoes, so kinda an agglomeration of multiple modern-day real-world ship types. Yeah, and then you can either have AI control with you giving orders or you directly control the vehicles.
There have been a couple games in the line. Carrier Command, a very old game, which I’ve never played. Hostile Waters: Anteus Rising, which is a spiritual successor and is oriented around a single-player campaign. Carrier Command 2, which is really principally a multi-player game, but can be played single-player if you can manage the workload and handle all the roles concurrently; I play it single-player. I like both, though I wish that the last games had a more-sophisticated single-player setup. Not a lot of “fleet command” games out there.
But in this context, it’s one of the games I can think of, like Race the Sun or some older games, Avara, Spectre, Star Fox, AV-8B Harrier Assault/Flying Nightmares that use untextured polygons as a major element of the game’s graphics. Rez wasn’t untextured, but it made a lot of use of untextured polygons and wireframe. Just saying that one can make a decent 3D game, and one that has an attractive aesthetic, without spending memory on textures at all.
The only thing I’d ever want analyzed in gaming is the messages that developers convey. And, there should be no “overbearing head agency” be it the government or publisher, that controls that message. Take it just as a suggestion between artists:
We should encourage good morals and themes in the messages our games convey. I know it’s typical for gamers to say they don’t care about story or premise in games, but even if one isn’t laden with cutscenes, they often communicate a concept even just with level and character design, providing objectives like rescuing hostages, collecting loot, or getting stronger.
I don’t necessarily think violence, on its own, makes a message. Showing scenes of World War 2 can convey a lot of things. It can tell you that war is horrible, or it can erroneously tell you it’s fun. I think if you’re expecting maturity from your audience, you can acknowledge that while the game is fun, it’s not trying to foster that feeling in players.
The main thing that leads to violence in the real world is anger. Media can teach us violence is a form of communication, a tool, but anyone using it has a message, one rooted in a lot of hatred. I might even argue there’s some cases where that anger is both deserved and needed, but potentially misdirected; and other cases where both the anger and the action - violence - is 100% needed. A Ukrainian soldier fighting Russian invaders that are trying to kill innocent people does not need to be taught that “violence is bad”.