An extremely popular and successful franchise, the Batman Arkham series is yet another universe added to the Batman canon. However, the latest addition to the series brought in the controversial role of Jason Todd — the former "second" Robin who had been murdered by the Joker — as the "Arkham Knight" and main antagonist of the game. Most fans expressed their outrage for the use of Todd's character and the way it was conveyed within the Arkham Verse, along with (yet again) using the over saturated Joker trope, and Batman's decision with the "Knightfall Protocol". Was this addition to the gaming series poorly plotted out? And most importantly: was the characterization of these iconic characters destroyed by the Arkham verse canon?
I would argue that another reason there was disappointment with the "Arkham Knight" was not just that he was Jason Todd, but that it was so painfully obvious that he was Jason Todd. I think a lot of people were hoping for a brand new baddie to add to the Batman franchise but received a variation of the Red Hood instead. – Logan8 years ago
While playing video games some people tend to get emotionally invested in the world and attached to certain characters. Why is it that we form these bonds with people and places that we know aren't real? How deep do these attachments go and why do some games evoke these emotions more than others? What does a game have to do to bring out emotions in the players?
Addiction is a sore topic surrounding games these days, and tests to prove or disprove this notion are a dime a dozen. But what about the positive effects of videogames? I want an author to write about something deeper than "Games Improve Reflexes" however. I want an author to explore how games can help someone cope with death.
The death of a loved one, mortality as a whole, and the representation of death in videogames. Does a game help a player cope with death by drawing them away from thinking about their own mortality with a compelling story? Or can it convince players that death is just another part of life? Can it convince players that the death of a loved one can help us appreciate those that are still alive? Can it even show us what it means to live?
I think alternative gaming could be useful in this discussion. See The Graveyard and Bientôt l'été. – chandlerwp8 years ago
Telltale Games like "The Walking Dead" and the "The Wolf Among Us" encourage players to learn to live with the consequences of their actions by autosaving after every decision, thus making it harder to reset and make a "better" decision. This could be seen as a way of learning to deal with real life issues -such as the death of a loved one - head on. – troble8 years ago
the obvious work to reference here is "that dragon, cancer." radiolab did a great podcast on it that could be useful: http://www.radiolab.org/story/cathedral/.
– weebil8 years ago
While playing Uncharted 4, a big concern I've had is how the treasure hunter trope affects the places he visits. At one point in the game, Nate practically demolishes a cathedral and centuries-old architecture to get to a clue – not the full treasure, just a clue. He exits to see hundreds of locals going about their business, unaware that their local monument was just destroyed by a greedy visitor.
What does the genre say about cultural imperialism? What do we do about the first-world explorer venturing to exotic locales to plunder, leaving nothing but rubble in his wake?
I like this idea a lot. Another interesting aspect of these games you might want to tie in is the realization that Nathan Drake is functionally a mass-murderer. It's very strange and almost comical to see his casually mowing down endless security guards and locals with machine guns and cracking jokes all the way through with a complete disregard for human life. He never seems to deal with any of the emotional repercussions of his murders (a common occurrence in shooter games, addressed very powerfully in Spec Ops: The Line). One aspect of the Uncharted games to note is their intensely cinematic nature. They play like action movies, a genre that also largely disregards human life as well, so perhaps that is where this brazen attitude comes from. – Michael8 years ago
This is so interesting. I've yet to play Uncharted 4, but when I do I'll defiantly be keeping this topic in mind. – Lexzie8 years ago
Pre-order bonuses have always been a topic of heavy debate. When the rewards for pre-ordering Deus-Ex: Mankind Divided were announced, there was an uproar. The concept of locking off content until a certain amount of people pre-ordered was certainly appalling, but could this ever happen again? Are there any benefits to the consumer with this system?
Farcry is a game that is known for following a pattern of doing the exact same thing in everyone of its games. Primal was another one of these examples, it was a game where the developers promised more from what gamers had previously experienced but what they buyers seemed to get was a better and bigger map. Analyze and explain what the developers could have done to actually achieve what they promised.
Examine the rise in popularity of hyper critical video game reviewers and whether or not they are simply contributing to public discourse or if they are hurting the medium as a whole by always taking an aggressively antagonistic role in their reviews. Also, if a controversial review leads to more views, does that give the reviewer a higher incentive to always release hyper critical reviews.
Controversy certainly leads to more views. There are plenty of channels that have proven that. The one thing to remember is that while "hyper critical" reviews can be potentially seen as detrimental, a lot of these channels aim for a more comedic approach; they want people to laugh as much as possible. It's very, VERY hard to make people laugh while also being nice. Maybe you could expand on that: do reviewers act more critical in an effort to be funnier and therefore help their channel grow, thus giving games poorer scores than they deserve, potentially damaging the game? Geez, that sentence was a mouthful. tl;dr: Might wanna investigate the motives as to why content creators would be hyper critical. Very interesting topic! – MrMuffin8 years ago
Something to add to this article now would be the Uncharted 4 controversy. – TGoutos8 years ago
I might angle an article from the "backlash of successful marketing" or, less formally, "hipster syndrome". It isn't enough to love games, you have to love the right games, you have to shame others for loving the wrong games, and it's essential that you disparage anything outside of your wheelhouse as lesser, along with their users. Why is it that something is only good if everything else is bad? Do we need to prove that one series/company/format is illegitimate to justify our own indulgences? – PiperCJ8 years ago
It's a recurring trend in games that clearly touch upon very important issues such as racism, religious discrimination, etc. for them to obfuscate their commentary by having humans in general being racist towards an invented race or group, such as in Dragon Age: Origins where humans are racist towards elves. It creates a situation where the writers want to say "Look! Here's racism! Isn't it terrible?", without actually tackling the issue in a helpful or interesting way. Given that games are an interactive medium, where the player has choice, has agency, there is a lot of opportunity for engaging the player in the issue in a way that non-interactive media cannot.
As an example, in Fallout: New Vegas, the player can choose the gender of their character. There is a particularly sexist faction in the game called Caesar's Legion, and if you chose to play as a female character, they react negatively towards you. Even a minor part of their camp is restricted from you on the basis of your gender. I personally found this to be a very powerful way to make a statement about sexism, but things like this are all but unheard of in games. Why is this? How can it be avoided? How do we talk about these issues using the strengths of the medium?
Skyrim, which is made by the same producers as Fallout, is a good place to look at for this. In the game you can choose to be an elf and a group called the Stormcloaks are racist towards elves. The game also takes place in a middle of a civil war in which one side oppresses religious freedom and the other side (the Stormcloaks) is extremely racist. You can choose which side you want to fight for. – LaRose8 years ago
That's a good point. I've played Skyrim (quite a while ago), and I'd forgotten about those aspects. It's a similar situation to Dragon Age really, though in skyrim the there are a good few variations on "stock human" that parallel real-life ethnicity, so that does add more weight. On religion, Bethesda invented the discriminated beliefs, which I think mitigates the effectiveness of any points made (that said, they don't have much of a choice, given it's clearly a very different world). I think Dragon Age: Origins actually did a good job of presenting religion, mainly due to how familiar the ideas are the real world. There were a few points in that game that made me question my own thoughts and beliefs, and that makes me really happy. I want to see more of this in games. Other media don't need to invent a race or religion to talk about discrimination, why should games? Also, I think it's worth pointing out that New Vegas was developed by Obsidian, though it was still published by Bethesda. Obsidian, I would say are better writers than Bethesda, and I've noticed their games tend to have more adventurous writing. I've yet to play a Bethesda-developed game that's in the same league of writing as New Vegas. – Seakibble8 years ago
I completely agree with these points. Because of the immersion aspect of games, there's the potential to tackle real life issues head-on in impactful ways. Also, at least in the version I played, without mods the main character in DA:O can't have dark skin, which is pretty damning when the exploration of race is limited to non-human, fantastic races. I love Dragon Age, and luckily it became more inclusive in later games. F:NV is my favorite Fallout game, and I thought it did a great job tackling misogyny and rape trauma with the depiction of Caesar's Legion. I do get a bit annoyed by "fantasy racism" where the issue of race is only tackled with fictional races, which removes it from real life context because "Oh, it's fantasy! Not real!" It seems like a cushion. This also happens a bit in the Warcraft universe with the enslavement of different races and humans vs. orcs, and there's this weird aspect where the main humans are mostly white and Western European-ish, whereas other real life cultures are depicted by non-humans. – Emily Deibler8 years ago
I never knew skin colour was so restricted in Origins! I'm actually very surprised at that. I guess it's because the player needs to look vaguely like their family for the origin stories, and they didn't think to go down the Fallout 3 route of just changing the family's looks to match the player. It's possible that it didn't occur to them that it was an issue, but Bioware usually have their heads screwed on straight. I've little experience with Warcraft, but I do remember that one race has a Jamaican accent (trolls?). To be honest, while that sort of thing is certainly a result of the world being created mainly by white western people for mainly white western people, on some level there's not much of way around it entirely. Presenting a culture that is original (ie. does not exist in the real world) and exotic without incorporating traits of real world exotic (relative to the creators and the audience) culture. Using accents does seem a tad too overt though, at least to me. – Seakibble8 years ago
It is interesting how this new discrimination is taking over our daily activities - Felsite – Felsite8 years ago
Kudos to you for suggesting a fresh topic. Impressive! I would love to learn about this and I hope someone picks this up. – Munjeera8 years ago
