CD Projekt Red purposely designed the economy in Witcher 3 so that Geralt can never get stinking rich. For a game built for a paltry 15 million, what does a poor protagonist mean in a multi-billion dollar industry?
Recently, we've seen a large influx of hero-brawler games from all corners of the industry, from Ironclad Games' Sins of a Dark Age to Valve's/Blizzard's/The Modding Community's/whoever's Defense of The Ancients, to Blizzard's poorly-named Heroes of the Storm (c'mon, guys, you just released an expansion pack with exactly the same acronym!). It has gotten to the point where many people within the industry have become absolutely sick of everything to do with them. What is it about wizard murdering simulators that makes them so popular with developers, and why can't anyone come up with a name for the genre that actually makes sense?
Treatment of women in movies has received a lot of attention in the past 40 years. The treatment of women video games however has not received the same critical attention. What is the effect on the player who victimizes women for entertainment? How has a game like GTA moved with the mainstream with its potential for zealous and unmitigated aggression towards women?
This is an article which is begging to be written. I think video games have a more potent impact because the player is invested in the actions of the character, that seems slightly different that watching the 'other' in a movie. – Jeff MacLeod9 years ago
I think to an extent GTA acts somewhat as a parody to this subject. The depictions of women are highly exaggerated in terms of appearance, personalities and actions. That's not to say that misogyny and objectification of women isn't true in the game series, but it should at least be mentioned that the games act as parodies and social commentaries as much as anything. – Jamie9 years ago
It would be interesting to look at the culture that has developed around the game itself - like Jamie said, a lot of the misogyny in the games is intended to be satire of American culture. A lot of players of the game LOVE to talk about killing sex workers (and the media then criticizes this) but the presence of that ability is far from being a focal point of the games. It's essentially a case of the GTA community inviting these criticisms through their actions, and perhaps proving the satire's point. – Grace Maich9 years ago
I had a friend talk to me about lucid dreaming lately. He was going on about consequence-free aggression. "You can do anything you want," he tried to tell me. I started thinking that rather than start to keep a dream journal and develop my lucid dream-scape, I could just play GTA if I wanted to do something without consequences. Ultimately, isn't that what we want from GTA? Freedom? But then, isn't there something terrifying about how easily we shrug off the mantel of morality? Ever show GTA to someone who has never played it before? What is the first thing they do? In my experience, the newbie will invariably punch the nearest person in the face. Then they want a gun. What does that say about us? Or is it more about the power of infrastructure and societal expectation to keep us from tearing each other apart? #randomthoughts – 12jm99 years ago
When I play GTA, I just drive around! I haven't played GTA properly, but the b-freind played GTA 5 in the background. With that one, there seemed to be more emphasis on the POV character saving women from crazy exes etc. In fact, I don't think you had to kill any women as part of the story - lots of men though. The main thing now seems to be that, unless you make your own avatar online, there are no female POV characters in GTA. I mean, true equality is accepting that women can be as equally violent and messed up as men, am i right? – Francesca Turauskis9 years ago
Games have been keeping track of player morality in games more and more frequently. Fallout's karma system and Mass Effect's "Paragon/Renegade" system are two well-known examples. However there are many games, such as those in the Elder Scrolls series, where player morality is not tracked. What are the benefits of tracking player morality in games, and what are the drawbacks? Are players guided to do good or bad things because they want to achieve a moral standing, or because they have a planned personality for their player?
I would definitely say some of us have a planned personality for a character! In skyrim I have one "bad character" and one "good character." I can't complete all aspects of the game while sticking to one moral code of a character and it would feel inconsistent to do many good things in a row then suddenly kill someone for a daedric prince out of the nowhere. It is my own drive to stick to one value set and not because the game will track it like when I played Fable. Nerd problems... – Slaidey9 years ago
For the potential writer of this topic, I would also look at how as videogames are increasingly integrated into our lives, morality measures should be included in our conception of virtual "play." – 12jm99 years ago
@Slaidey: I completey agree with you. I don't feel that tracking morality is as effective as the player's drive to create a character with a real personality. – LiamCollins9 years ago
Have you played Metro 2033? There's a morality system in that game that doesn't present itself in an obvious way until the end. The player isn't even aware that they're /making/ moral choices or not until then. I think that's an effective way to run things. Players should be allowed to build their own characters based on what they want to do, not based on what colour they want their lightning to be. – Snowskeeper9 years ago
A discussion on the increased production of so called "walking simulators" like Dear Esther or Proteus.
While they are certainly videogames in the most basic sense of the word they lack much of what we have come to expect in terms of traditional gameplay. Simultaneously they are being released in more high profile forms with the upcoming Everybody's Gone to the Rapture set for release on the PS4.
I'm less interested in the debate on whether or not they are video game (I believe they clearly are) but rather the responses among the gaming community towards them. In my experience there are many who prefer to deride them rather than accept them as videogames, as if they threaten them somehow. Why is this?
I think something worth looking into is where these games come from. Mostly indie, a lot of people against them have fears about the market being flooded with games that are easier to make and may not be up to the same standard as the rest. – DullahanLi9 years ago
I don't think they are video-games; I just don't think that's a bad thing. It's difficult for me to think of Gone Home, for example, as something that you "play." You don't "play" a book or a movie. Gone Home is a very, very effective game at what it does; it just doesn't do what most video-games do. I think it would be a mistake to completely ignore this position in favour of focusing on the, unfortunately, large number of people who feel threatened by the genre. It might be better to split this topic into two separate articles, though. "Are 'Walking Simulators' games?" and "Why the Hell is the games industry so threatened by narrative-driven exploratory things? Like, seriously, guys, this was an indie game; nobody's taking away Call of Duty or Battlefield or whatever it is you think this sort of thing endangers. God."* *Working title – Snowskeeper9 years ago
"I don't think they are video-games"
"Gone Home is a very, very effective game at what it does"
I r gud riter – Snowskeeper9 years ago
With the next batch of consoles becoming foregrounded in the gaming market, it would nice to see the old RPGs of the past given a nod towards. Titles such as Legend of Dragoon, Final Fantasy Tactics, Chrono Cross, and Lunar: Silver Star Harmony. All the titles that people may have never had the chance to see or grow up with, but should absolutely be made aware of them. There are tons of videos dedicated to this topic and they could serve as good guides for anyone interested but finding their memory to be foggy.
Forgive me for being a nostalgic creep, but Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Trigger... Did I forget anything? – Austin9 years ago
Don't forget to include Suikoden! Or at least Suikoden II. – PhoenixS9 years ago
EtherOne is a recently released indie game which addresses themes of dementia and mental degradation through a sci-fi lens. It utilizes unusual sound cues, a emotive art style, and an intentionally counter-intuitive inventory system to create open worlds with overlapping puzzles. What effect does all of this have on the player? How do all of the artistic and gameplay choices contribute to the thematic whole? And, of course, what does this all mean in terms of the narrative and theme?
Many complain that "choose your own adventure games" like "Heavy Rain", "Mass Effect", and TellTale's "The Walking Dead" are superficial and give the player little to no control over the game's unfolding events. The player is given the illusion of choice, but the web of decisions will eventually lead all gamers to the same point.
Does the gamer really have free will in these games or is it all a ploy? Or perhaps more interestingly, does it even matter? If these games are about uncovering our deepest fears, and eliciting our innermost psyche, then should it really matter that all these decisions lead to one unified place for all players? Are these games more about the players, rather than the story?
Does the gamer have all that choice in other games where everything leads to a single ending with no variation in te story? Compare Arkham Asylum to Heavy Rain for example; yes the player has to complete missions in each, but AA has no variation to the storyline or side missions, if you play the game again, it'll be exactly the same. But with Heavy Rain there are about 20 different combinations of endings depending on the PLAYERS CHOICE. this is less so in Telltales games where everything comes to a head in pretty much the same fashion, but there are still choices the player is given on important narrative matters (eg killing/not killing a character) and if the player waits too long then they have no choice and the game chooses an option for them. – Jamie9 years ago
If you haven't checked it out yet I highly recommend giving "Life is Strange" a look. I've found that most TellTale games are really just window dressing and what you choose to do in them doesn't really matter. It was pretty obvious in "The Wolf Among Us" and while I actually enjoyed that game immensely I did feel a little bit cheated. "Life is Strange" is not finished yet but I'm already very invested and I'm hoping that the choices have a very large impact on the story itself. – Insinto9 years ago
