So for those who have never heard of it, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a point-and-click adventure game that came out in 1995 and is based on a short story by Harlan Ellison.
The premise is apocalyptic and brutal: humanity has been destroyed by nuclear warfare instigated by the sentient AIs of the Americans, Russians, and Chinese. Everyone is dead except for 5 individuals who have been kept alive for 109 years so that the Allied Mastercomputer, due to insanity and boredom, can torture them. He doesn't stop at physical torment, but also preys on their psychological weaknesses. However, the computer offers them a chance at redemption and potentially freedom if they play a "little game" he has devised for them. The setting/puzzles of the game reflect the psychological traumas of each character: Gorrister feels guilty for his wife having been institutionalised, Benny fought in Vietnam and was responsible for the deaths of some of the soldiers serving under him, Ellen is a traumatised rape victim, Nimdok is a Nazi doctor and also a Jew, and Ted is just paranoid and sleazy. In addition, the game has an interesting mechanic called the 'Spiritual Barometer' - similarly to the pthnisychological meter in Indigo Prophecy, if it drops too low it could potentially end in game over, but its increase represents the character having resolved the issues of his/her past.
Due to the way it skillfully uses dialogue, characterisation, mechanics, and the graphics/music to create a thematic whole, this is amongst the best if not the best adventure game I've ever played. Perhaps because it is an adaptation, the characters struggles feel more believable and their emotions less artificial. As one might guess from the summary of each character above, the game pushes into uncomfortable and dark territory that games barely if ever come close to broaching in present times. For example, Heavy Rain squanders some of its emotional impact with questionable thematic elements (the incorporation of SF was a bad idea) and an awful twist, even though I appreciated many aspects of it. I would consider the Silent Hill series one of the few exceptions to the rule in uncompromisingly dealing with difficult subject matter, but other than that I cannot think of many other contemporary examples-increased swearing, sexual content, and gore is baditude rather than something that genuinely challenges us.
Not that all games need to be dark and difficult, but it seems that this kind of quirky, challenging game had its heyday in the 90s on the PC. My hypothesis would be it was easier to get away with these kinds of games before extreme regulation and scrutiny from cultural conservatives. Now we cannot even include the name 'Taliban' in a game for fear of someone being offended. Not to mention the Australian censorship of Left 4 Dead 2, which is a disgrace that weakens the game greatly. With these kinds of pressures, it's hard to imagine a game like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream being made in 2010.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Game » consists of 2 releases. Released Oct 31, 1995
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a point-and-click adventure game, based on a short story by Harlan Ellison.
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and the Decline of Adult Gaming
So for those who have never heard of it, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a point-and-click adventure game that came out in 1995 and is based on a short story by Harlan Ellison.
The premise is apocalyptic and brutal: humanity has been destroyed by nuclear warfare instigated by the sentient AIs of the Americans, Russians, and Chinese. Everyone is dead except for 5 individuals who have been kept alive for 109 years so that the Allied Mastercomputer, due to insanity and boredom, can torture them. He doesn't stop at physical torment, but also preys on their psychological weaknesses. However, the computer offers them a chance at redemption and potentially freedom if they play a "little game" he has devised for them. The setting/puzzles of the game reflect the psychological traumas of each character: Gorrister feels guilty for his wife having been institutionalised, Benny fought in Vietnam and was responsible for the deaths of some of the soldiers serving under him, Ellen is a traumatised rape victim, Nimdok is a Nazi doctor and also a Jew, and Ted is just paranoid and sleazy. In addition, the game has an interesting mechanic called the 'Spiritual Barometer' - similarly to the pthnisychological meter in Indigo Prophecy, if it drops too low it could potentially end in game over, but its increase represents the character having resolved the issues of his/her past.
Due to the way it skillfully uses dialogue, characterisation, mechanics, and the graphics/music to create a thematic whole, this is amongst the best if not the best adventure game I've ever played. Perhaps because it is an adaptation, the characters struggles feel more believable and their emotions less artificial. As one might guess from the summary of each character above, the game pushes into uncomfortable and dark territory that games barely if ever come close to broaching in present times. For example, Heavy Rain squanders some of its emotional impact with questionable thematic elements (the incorporation of SF was a bad idea) and an awful twist, even though I appreciated many aspects of it. I would consider the Silent Hill series one of the few exceptions to the rule in uncompromisingly dealing with difficult subject matter, but other than that I cannot think of many other contemporary examples-increased swearing, sexual content, and gore is baditude rather than something that genuinely challenges us.
Not that all games need to be dark and difficult, but it seems that this kind of quirky, challenging game had its heyday in the 90s on the PC. My hypothesis would be it was easier to get away with these kinds of games before extreme regulation and scrutiny from cultural conservatives. Now we cannot even include the name 'Taliban' in a game for fear of someone being offended. Not to mention the Australian censorship of Left 4 Dead 2, which is a disgrace that weakens the game greatly. With these kinds of pressures, it's hard to imagine a game like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream being made in 2010.
I don't think I want to read this because I haven't played the game yet, but I desperately want to. It sounded like it approached adventure gaming from a unique angle, due in part to HE's influence no doubt. You read any of HE's stuff?
Censorship in specific regions like Australia is really a separate matter from overall censorship, just because a country like Australia or Germany may clamp down heavily on explicit content in games doesn't mean that certain games can't be made. That being said you've raised some interesting points and there probably are many barriers to games such as I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream being released today. It's not as if there weren't outcries over video game censorship in the mid-90s because there sure as hell were but it was a time when there would have been less pressure from publishers and investors on developers and as a non-mainstream game (as I understand it) I'm sure this title flew under the radar without a problem. These days making a game with a traumatised rape victim and a Jewish Nazi doctor in it? I can almost see the investors recoiling in horror at the thought of it.
Sure we can add buckets of blood and gore to today's games, have an 18+ slapped on it and in most cases little will be said about it but that's not to say that some violent video games still don't cause major controversy in certain situations and things are only the way they are to begin with because violence has become such a mainstay of video games. Video games needed violence to do what they did, one of the most easy and action-oriented ways to depict competition between two players in a virtual world is through physical combat and it's taken years of publishers putting out violent video games in the face of so much objection to get where we are today. However, while violence is an integral part of many game genres difficult topics like sex and terrorism aren't. If video games are to truly stand alongside all other art forms in terms of narrative then it's essential that we see these controversial topics being tackled but as has been said time and time again, investors don't like risk, investors like what they know already works.
Even to those who play video games regularly it may seem that video games receive little censorship from the people who make them, after all we've seen nudity, violence, racism and other such topics in video games but look at your mainstream games and look at everything they could do, then look at what they are doing. Remember the controversy not just from Fox but from the BBC over the shootout in the airport in Modern Warfare 2? Infinity Ward left the section in the game but it remains one of the most controversial video games scenes of the last decade and yet there are so many films out there where we could see far worse. I was also replying to another thread not too long ago which was discussing how after the Fox News backlash the nudity in Mass Effect 2 seemed a lot more toned down than in the original Mass Effect. If we're going to see people up in arms about 2 seconds of tasteful alien side boob what hope is there for controversial topics in modern mainstream games?
It's easy to understand why people are scared to put out games discussing the more difficult issues of life and history and part of the problem is also to do with the way mass media has depicted video games and the stigma attached with video games in the public eye in general. When too many still see video games (especially violent video games) as purely vulgar, mindless activities there are going to be misunderstandings when they try to tackle more serious issues. I believe we will see video games break through the opposition and depict the same things art, books and films can but I think it's going to take a long time to get there.
To me these sort of decisions (like anything else) seem purely economical / business decisions.
It's the same reason we don't get another Tie Fighter and another Jumping Flash and another Under a Killing Moon and another Roadblasters. Publishers and many developers feel they can get the most money doing what everyone else is doing, variety has decreased. Playing it safe is the name of the game, but it certainly won't help the games industry in the long run.
I don't think the content has very much to do with it at all. It's the gameplay / visual style / genres.
When you see plenty of people agreeing that fun is what every game should be aiming for, it's no wonder that games like this don't exist anymore.
The problem when people talk about the issue of 'mature' or 'adult' games, which I sought to avoid, is the tendency to attribute it unfairly to games developers or just to assume that gaming has inevitably 'declined' from the 90s golden age. It's much more useful to see it in terms of the limits imposed by various institutions and groups that determine how games are made and received. As gamers, that's really what need to mobilise against.
I Have No Mouth is definitely one of those arty and obscure titles that would not have attracted much attention in those days of looser gaming regulations, although of course the Nazi doctor storyline was cut for the German release, making the game unwinnable.
With books, you could publish a challenging novel in the hopes that it will become a classic and continue to accrue profits from a small initial outlay of capital. With games, that kind of strategy would be an absurdity.
This is a game that I just didn't want to play because it just feels too bleak for me. I loved HE's story though, mainly because it was short but if it would have been a long novel I wouldn't have been able to take the tone and its setting you know? This is my main problem with the game, I doubt I could play this twisted game for a long period of time and I guess in that aspect I'm sort of missing out. Also I have a huge problem with adventure games where you can die, specially in a game like this which seems that anything can kill you straight away so you have to save constantly before you try clicking on something.
And a question about Heavy Rain:
And the twist? I haven't seen a better twist in a videogame in years, what was wrong about it? What I loved is that I was playing so that everyone was super good and nice to everyone and one of the characters I most sympathized with was the guy involved in the twist. So I was basically playing the bad guy, even rooting for him without even realising. I thought that was cool but maybe you had a different experience.
RE: Heavy Rain
What you liked about the twist is what I didn't like about it. Shelby was my favourite character and I played him as the good guy, in fact he's the character who's put in the most situations where you can help people out and alleviate some of the misery of the game world. But then the game tells me "no, he's a serial killer actually" which then renders what I had invested into the character a deception, my contribution to the game narrative superfluous, etc. Also, it's just a cheap trick from a narrative standpoint, because the character beforehand gives nothing away to sugges that he's the serial killer.
Don't get me wrong, I think Heavy Rain is a great and memorable game, but the structure of its narrative is probably its weakest element. To be a truly incredible game, it needed to be much better written.
With books, you could publish a challenging novel in the hopes that it will become a classic and continue to accrue profits from a small initial outlay of capital. With games, that kind of strategy would be an absurdity.That's exactly why I'm getting into writing and not games development.
" @Gamer_152: An excellent rejoinder, that's a very astute reading of the situation. I just wanted to give a few examples of structural problems that confront games developers - outcry from interest groups and censorship by government bodies, as I confront yearly living in Australia, etc. I should've mentioned publishers and investors, that was an oversight - it's largely up to them if or when they want to push the medium forward against the inevitable opposition from anti-gaming crusaders. Games have become a massive industry, so it is likely we will see diversification, but as you say this could take a long time.I feel a little sorry for anyone living in Australia or Germany because the censorship of electronic entertainment is not only a lot stronger in countries like those but explicit content in video games is often censored by the government and not just interest groups and self-appointed video game experts. I don't think there's a perception that gaming has declined since the 90s though, every piece of evidence seems to provide people with the impression that video games are becoming more and more popular, something that is reflected by the capitalistic nature of investors and publishers censoring the creative works of the developers in the industry.
The problem when people talk about the issue of 'mature' or 'adult' games, which I sought to avoid, is the tendency to attribute it unfairly to games developers or just to assume that gaming has inevitably 'declined' from the 90s golden age. It's much more useful to see it in terms of the limits imposed by various institutions and groups that determine how games are made and received. As gamers, that's really what need to mobilise against.
I Have No Mouth is definitely one of those arty and obscure titles that would not have attracted much attention in those days of looser gaming regulations, although of course the Nazi doctor storyline was cut for the German release, making the game unwinnable. "
As was the case when I Have No Mouth was made, in the modern industry smaller and more obscure games run much less of a risk of receiving outcry from the general public than mainstream games but for true adult issues to become general subject matter in games we have to see mainstream games tackling these serious issues. As I aimed to show in my points earlier if mainstream video games make even the slightest venture into elicit content which goes beyond simple violence they seem to be met with very strong objection from some. I think to a large extent the problem is not just people actively opposing games but also people who aren't educated on the true nature of video games.
Before we can even begin to see any real increase in the numbers of people opposing unjustified censorship of video games we're going to have to see a larger number of people aware of unjustified censorship of video games and that means more people must be educated about electronic entertainment. A lot of the time it seems to be the people who are the most ignorant about video games who get to have their say against them and even if their protests or court cases prove primarily unsuccessful the point is that the fact we even know such things happen means that they do have an influence on some level. Meanwhile the average person who knows little or nothing about video games either gets A. Incentivised to act against "the evil of video games" or B. Much more likely remains relatively neutral on the issue, meaning that there is often not enough people to properly reverse the tide of negative outcry against games. The problem is also exacerbated by the fact that "core gamers" are too often seen as socially inept, backwards, violence-loving individuals, not the kind of group that people would think could put across a justified and non-biased argument.
I feel that with mass media causing so many problems we could see a lot of good done if mainstream television started educating people on the true nature of games, imagine the impact even a single news channel speaking out against this kind of ignorance could have. Much like with the public in general the problem with television networks is that a few of them (although one of them in particular immediately springs to mind) will give negative commentary on video games and the rest will remain relatively neutral on the issue, not wanting to rock the boat. Again, this ironically comes back to that all too familiar concept for us video game enthusiasts, risk/reward. Just as the investor should not risk putting controversial content in their game if they want to make it likely they'll get a good profit from it, why should the television networks try to push radical, controversial opinions when they know they have a greater chance of getting a solid viewer count by shutting up and just letting everybody else say what they want to say? It's no easy issue.
I first heard of it on Talkradar and was fucking enthralled. I still haven't read it though, because it's not in my local libraries and I have a shit ton of reading to do anyways. Still, I would very much like to both read it and play it.
I've seen a few Youtube videos of it, and it is fucked up.
I like your thoughts on this game even though I will likely never play it, and I just wanted to throw out Eternal Darkness as a game that is similarly messed up in subtle ways. Don't know if you've played it or have access to a GC/Wii, but it is an example of how to do this stuff in something other than the point and click format.
Re: Re:"RE: Heavy Rain
"In regards to the incorporation of SF, it's very difficult to blend it with 'realism' or 'crime story' because those genres have very different characteristics and presuppositions: a crime story is based on the uncovering of events that have already happened, whereas SF is based on the consideration of imagined societies, technologies, or universes bound by logical and physical plausibility. To combine a future-oriented and past-oriented genre, one based on what we take to be real and the other what might in the future be real, has been considered to be an impossible genre blending. Isaac Asimov tried it, with some success, but if it's hard to do in a novel then it's going to be even harder to do in a video game without threatening the coherence of the story. In my opinion the SF element has no reason to be there and distracts from the human drama. Why couldn't Jayden be an alcoholic or a drug addict based on some kind of psychological trauma that ties in with the main themes of the game?
What you liked about the twist is what I didn't like about it. Shelby was my favourite character and I played him as the good guy, in fact he's the character who's put in the most situations where you can help people out and alleviate some of the misery of the game world. But then the game tells me "no, he's a serial killer actually" which then renders what I had invested into the character a deception, my contribution to the game narrative superfluous, etc. Also, it's just a cheap trick from a narrative standpoint, because the character beforehand gives nothing away to sugges that he's the serial killer.
Don't get me wrong, I think Heavy Rain is a great and memorable game, but the structure of its narrative is probably its weakest element. To be a truly incredible game, it needed to be much better written.
Him being so good, is what made me suspect that he was the killer. About the time he saved a suicide victim, and then was changing her baby's diaper, it just seemed like he was TOO good.
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.
- AM
Classic.
@Fattony12000: It cannot be overstated how good the introduction is, and people should youtube it if they want a sense of why this game is worth playing.
Your objective in IHNMAIMS wasn't to go around and kill Jews( games that did that were outlawed) or nazies so comparing it to a modern day FPS isn't really fair.
That being said, I think what you really meant is that modern-day games don't really have that human-drama element that older games had. You no longer can get mind-fucked by a game like you did back in the 90's.
Unfortunately nowadays making a game requires millions of dollars and gargantuan dev teams. Games sell by the millions rather than by the thousands, so appealing to a vast majority is a must.
I don't believe quality adult gaming is dead you just have to search harder for good titles, the indie scene is a great place to start. Also, Sanitarium.
Now about Heavy Rain (SPOILERS)
What I can admit though is that they could have given a bit more clues on Scott being the murderer. Now it's just a matter of opinion, and I thought this extreme duality between the character you've been playing being so nice and the abrupt twist just adds more to the psychotic nature of the murderer, and it's so damn confusing I can't help but love it. If it hadn't been such a brutal change it would have been different and I would have guessed him being the killer from the first clue they would have given me. But that's just me I would love to know what other people thought about it.
I wouldn't say that adult gaming is dead either, but it's not exactly thriving. What indie titles would you name as examples? Also, Sanitarium came out in 1998, the same time-frame as IHNMAIMS.
"Because if they don't, video game retailers refuse to carry their games.Correction: The government doesn't censor in Germany or Australia. Publishers censor their games to achieve lower ratings. "but explicit content in video games is often censored by the government
The publishers are just making sure they don't go bankrupt. You can hardly blame them.
As for "adult" gaming: it'll happen in time. Video games are still learning how to walk, so to speak. Once they've gotten the basics down (I'm talking about things like mechanics, controls, technology), then they can move on to storytelling -- and when they do, we'll get "adult" games.
If you try to rush the process, all you end up with is junk (see virtually every single video game people praise for its narrative).
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