So, after all of the controversy they stirred up, Konami has backed out of publishing 6 Days in Fallujah. Obviously, they incurred a heaping dose of wrath for what many considered insensitive and ill timed considering the conflict in Iraq continues at this very moment (my brother just returned from his second stint in Iraq, which was his third to the middle east). It is unfortunate that the very vocal minority will get their way in the short run and will have seemingly stopped the release of this game unless developer Atomic Games can find a brave new publisher.It sad that the dichotomy of our industry is that we want the creative freedom to make "art" but can't stomach the potential financial loss if that backfires. But the scary thought of industry execs self censoring is not the only issue here.Without knowing much more than the game existed, it's hard to say if we'll be missing anything at all. Would it have been just another shooter or would it have brought to new light what happened in those six bloody days? Would it have transcended above a "game" and deliver an experience that a documentary could not? That what the developer's proposed as they said that "games are not just toys."I'm afraid I'm skeptical. It seems to me that they set out to create a linear, but vivid and accurate, recreation of the battle. It that sense they would most likely be very successful at telling the story they want but miss the point of what games can bring to the table. Games allow us to solve problems and make our own choices. Players are not led by a director through a scene but create their own story through play. Instead of going down the alley to the left, maybe the player leads his squad down the right and they are all ambushed and captured. Maybe the player successfully neutralizes the threat in Fallujah with minimal casualties and the skirmish is no longer as historically significant. Maybe the player decides the threat is too great (or not great enough) and never enters the city at all. These divergent paths change the course of history and take away from the developer's attempts to create "game-amentary."There have been many, many war games. It is a popular setting as it lends itself easily to good versus evil, right versus wrong. But the Iraq war is not that black and white. Could Atomic Games create a game where there are no winners and the "good guys" die a lot? Sure, I like to think we could progress our medium to that level.But it probably wouldn't be much fun. And it most likely wouldn't sell as well as the new Call of Duty.
While I normally hate on everything Wii related, I have been drawn to the games that take a chance on the system. Games such as Zack and WIki and No More Heroes. I would have picked up Okami if I hadn't already played it on the PS2. So it should come as no surprise that I have been drawn to MadWorld, and not only because of its stark color palette and its graphic violence. This month's Nintendo Power offers some more information about the game straight from the game's producer, Atsushi Inaba. See, while the game is ultra violent, it should not be taken seriously. We don't want this game to be dark and serious. One of the games that I played to better understand what constitutes "serious" violence was Manhunt 2. And although I personally like that type of game, when violence is portrayed so simply, that's when it becomes more serious and dark. When it's over the top and extravagant, it feels much more acceptable. That over-the-top expression is what makes it funny. That's why people laugh when they see violence in this game. It's not realistic. Nothing like this would ever happen in real life, which is what games should be offering to the audience.
Awesome quote. While I agree that over the top violence can be funny, for a while, something strikes me as odd about that quote. I'm sure people smarter than me could articulate that sentiment better than I could but the best I can come up with is that it seems shallow. Is this the mentality that is holding back games from achieving art status? Extreme violence has its place in movies and books but reflecting on what "does" happen in the real world is what lifts it to cinema and literature. But like many have argued, that probably does not make a good game. And that is our challenge.
Roger Ebert brought the wrath of an entire industry down on himself by declaring that video games are not art. Well, after author Clive Barker called him out on it, Mr. Ebert clarified his statement. Video games will never be high art was the new mantra from the man who reviews movies. Knowing the people who make up the video game fan base, this was never going to fly either. Who will step up next to defend our medium from the realm of art mediocrity? N'gai Croal, Newsweek superblogger, to the rescue of gamers everywhere. Wow. Only two paragraphs into his column, Ebert proceeds to dismiss an entire medium in just five sentences--two rhetorical questions; a list; and an assertion--none of which display much familiarity with the subject. Ebert knows roughly how many games he's played; were the number high enough for him to speak authoritatively, he'd have said so. It's no accident that the one game he cites by name is Myst, because that 13-year-old title--whose reputation is somewhat tattered as befits its stature as one of this emerging medium's evolutionary dead ends--is probably the last game that he played for any meaningful length of time.
If someone went on a jeremiad about the current state of movies, but the last movie they'd seen was the 1994 flick "The Specialist," I doubt that Ebert would take them seriously. Similarly, if someone were to attack the entire medium of film on the grounds that they tend to involve (1) romance and comedy, (2) action and suspense and (3) don't do a good job of portraying characters' interior lives, Ebert would likely be dismissive. Yet he feels quite comfortable making pronouncements about videogames whose sweep is matched only by their ignorance.
Oh, and he's just getting started.
