Thanks to surges in technology, increased realism and the awareness of a previously untapped "casual" market, video games have seen a tremendous surge in popularity over the past few years. No longer are they associated with the bespectacled, acne ridden face of the high-school geek as he hangs from the coat peg by his underwear, toying meekly with a 12 sided die. It has become a respectable, popular, multi-million dollar industry associated with Hollywood movie stars, celebrities and the kids that put the geek on that coat peg in the first place. In short, games are cool. And like all mis-understood elements of pop-culture, it has been chastised and blamed by parts of the community for being responsible for the loss of innocence, increased violence and de-sensitivity of today's youth. But is this merited? Are video games to blame for random school shootings and other indefensible acts, as people like Jack Thompson claim? And if they are not, what is?
The recently released (and highly controversial) "Modern Warfare 2" (MW2) from critically acclaimed developers Infinity Ward (IW) has garnered so much attention, and created so much hype, that it has scared almost all other games into next year. It has almost doubled the record for first day sales in the UK and looks set to become the biggest selling game of all time by a wide margin. It is a well designed, entertaining and heavily lauded game that deserves every column-inch of praise that has been heaped upon it. The developers have achieved all the things that any creative force should attempt to do in their chosen medium; it is an enjoyable experience, it is worth your time and money, it has raised the bar for it's genre and is innovative, it will influence future games and, crucially, it has pushed the envelope. It is over this final point that the game has raised controversy to rival that of Grand Theft Auto (GTA), which has become something of a buzzword for the right-wing conservatism tireless in their campaign against violence in games. The focal point is a mission where the player steps into the shoes of an American solider working undercover with Russian terrorist group who storm a Russian Airport and kill innocent civilians, framing the American and inciting a huge war. It is clear why it has been condemned, in fact such a furor was caused that the publishers, Activision, were forced to release a press statement explaining it when grainy footage was leaked onto the internet. Killing innocents in the real world is deplorable and the near photo-realism of IW's latest creation blurs further the line between the real world and the virtual one. While discharging your weapon is optional (you can play through the mission without firing a single shot) and you are presented with the choice to skip the mission altogether, this is not the point. It's in the game, some people think it is wrong and upsetting, they express this. They are entitled too, it is a free country - but it is when they start blaming the game (and others) for violence in the real world that anger begins to rise in it's army of fans. Part of it is because they don't like to hear something they like insulted, part of it is because no-one likes being spoken for or being told that they are more likely to walk into a crowded room with a shotgun because they played a video game, they find it insulting too their intelligence, and part of it is because nine times out of ten, the condemning critics of the game never played it in the first place and haven't got the full picture. Anyone who played the now infamous "Airport Level" will probably agree that it was awkward, unnverving and (importantly) was handled with a mature eye. The entire game itself preaches a message that war is bad and to avoid it at all costs, but the crowds of people burning copies of the game (I'm sure there are some out there somewhere) won't be aware of this. Many of them will hear about it through the radio, a magazine or the internet without experiencing it first hand - and this ignorance of the full story irritates those who understand better the message of the game.
It is in this way that it distances itself from the likes of GTA, in which the violence is handled in a light and conscience-free way. As Niko Bellic, the protagonist of Rockstar's 2008 release Grand Theft Auto IV, there was no specific remorse felt for those unlucky pedestrians who caught some lead when you went on a killing spree, got shredded with shrapnel when you tossed a grenade out of a car window, or got mowed down as you sped through Liberty City - the game didn't make an effort to apply weight to such actions, it was part of the fun, it's a game, it's not meant to be real life. But in other respects it did provide gravity, to great effect. The story line of GTA IV tells of an illegal immigrant, Nico Bellic, just off the boat who has come to the New York-inspired Liberty City, tired and world weary to find a man who betrayed him in his past. As the plot progresses, Niko ends up doing terrible things (of which he is aware) in the hope that the people he is working for might help him track down his "special someone". Some moments called for the gamer to pick the lesser of two evils and kill one of two characters, people who you had got to know throughout your time with the game, things that would effect plot lines and you future experience. Neither man had excuse to live, but does that mean you have the right to decide their deaths? These are deep, philosophical questions for games that have been described as "base, simplistic and dumbing-down" and players wrangled with themselves as they gazed down from a skyscraper though a sniper scope at two men sitting on a park bench, aiming at one, then the other, and finally deciding which to kill. Not all games are as morally complex as this, or handle ideas such as death and violence with as much weight. Games like Postal, for example, which consists of running around killing people for no reason other than to kill them, are far worse. But why don't we hear about them as much from campaigners against violence in video games? I suspect that sales figures may have something to do with it and this is another sore point for gamers. It is only the well know games that are targeted and this increases the feeling that the critics are not as all knowing as they pretend to be as the rain hell on AAA titles, but let smaller, lesser known and far more violent games slip by undetected.
As I said earlier, these games have pushed the envelope and have dealt with violence in a light that does not flatter it. Both of these actions, in order to be effective, must be severe, and therefore will, inevitably generate controversy. Firstly, pushing the envelope. When the original Grand Theft Auto was released in 1997, it was the ability to highjack cars that pushed the envelope and it was that that offended people, it was seen at the time to be unacceptable. Just over ten years later with the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, no-one paid attention to the abilty to highjack cars, it was, by then, commonplace. This raises one point and one question; the point is that pushing the envelope is necessary for the evolution of culture (though some would say that highjacking virtual cars is the antithesis of culture); the question is whether or not it is possible to push the envelope too far, allow too much in, and if so where is that line? This raises the issue of desensitisation, and the possible dangers it may cause, if any. It also allows us to compare video games with other mediums of entertainment, for example: film.
Frances Ford Coppolla's "The Godfather" is consistently singled out as one of the greatest films of all time, it also happens to be extremely violent - a man is strangled on screen, a decapitated horses head is discovered by a man when he wakes up and finds it lying next to him, people are assassinated in cold blood and it was one of the first films to sympathise with the remorseless criminal underworld of Italian-American organised crime, unlike games like GTAIV and MW2 which are unsympathetic. Why wasn't The Godfather the target of controversy? By the time it was made, the film industry had proved itself to be worthy and critically reputable and the obvious artistic strengths that flowed from the film made critics realise its brilliance. The cast was excellent, the story was compelling and it broke new ground in the film-making business. GTA IV was the same, the voice talent was excellent, the story was compelling, it broke new ground in the game-making business and the artistic strength that flowed from the game made critics realise the brilliance of Rockstar's creation. So, why was treated differently? The first thing to note is that many of it's opposers have probably not played it, whereas most people will have watched The Godfather at some point in their life. The other difference is that the violence is seen by the viewer in a film, they are passive in it's existence, whereas in video games the player actively takes part, some people believe this is more damaging. The key difference, I believe, is that The Godfather was coming out of an artistically credible industry, whereas the video-game industry is still striving for the masses to take it more seriously. This change is not far off, and is noticeable when you compare the controversy generated by the previous GTA game, San Andreas with the lesser attention GTAIV received. Granted, the discovery of the "Hot Coffee" mini-game in GTA:SA (where you could take your in-game girlfriend back to her house and have simulated intercourse with her) was the cause for a significant portion of the uproar and no such thing was present in GTAIV, but there is still a sense that video-games are starting to be seen with more artistic credibility.
The other thing, that I mentioned is the fact that they do not flatter or glorify violence or war. MF2, and it's predecessor, Call Of Duty 4 are excellent examples of this. Over the course of the game, despite the actions taken - usually instinctive, reactive and violent - the world that we are left with at the end is no better (and perhaps much worse) than it was at the beginning. They preach of lesson that violence is not the answer - but in order to fully convey this message, the true horror of war must be fully realised in the game universe. One of the reasons that IW have become so successful in the power of their storytelling has come from the visceral experience they provide. If anything, they do not glorify the war, but rather the courage of the soldiers that fight in them. While this may not be true of all games, it is not true of all films or art either, or of any medium that deals with violence. Films like Die Hard show the killing of innocents (take the plane crash in Die Hard 2), Saving Private Ryan highlight the individual's struggle in a sea of hell and Call Of Duty is comparable to this, though that won't be what you hear when people discuss it on the radio. Why is it that films can be accepted for what they are, fun and gloriously violent or dark and powerfully heavy, and not interactive entertainment? The key point here is that just because something has a gun, knife or another deadly weapon involved, does not mean it promotes violence - it is the use of these things that define the message. If MW2 is gamers answer to Saving Private Ryan, then Gears of War is their very own Rambo, the 3rd person, sci-fi shooter that revolves around a small group of men fighting in Earth's last stand against an underground, homo-sapien-like alien force; The Locust. It is simple, light, fun and gloriously bloody - chainsaw bayonets carve up enemies, explosive darts embed themselves into the bodies of victims before explolding bits of arm, leg and torso all over the walls, and the story-line never attempts to complicate things further than the next soon-to-be-atomised Locust. Video game culture has it's fair share of violence, some grisly and simple, others deep and thoughtful. I believe that, if used correctly, violence in video games is capable of inciting a positive, meaningful reaction in those who play the game.
But, regardless of how effective and beneficial violence can be, does that still mean it can't be damaging? If I demonstrate to a child (with terrifying realism) why not being careful with scissors is dangerous, by cutting off one of my fingers, the message with never be forgotten by the child, but that does not mean it will not be a negative experience. How can it be determined whether something goes too far in its depiction of evil? The (fairly) recently released -and government funded- Byron report in the UK stated (among many other things) that further efforts need to be taken to regulate a child's freedom on the internet and control their exposure to video games. Over the last few years anger, panic and outrage has risen against video games as stories in the newspaper tell of children who have walked into a classroom and gunned down fellow students and teachers before shooting themselves, the fact that a vast majority of these children have played games like GTA has provided people with a solution as to why it happened. This is a weak argument, GTAIV has already sold 13 million copies as March '09 and in comparison to that, the percentage of people who have gone on a killing spree is small. You hear about the handful of people that played a violent game and killed someone, but you never hear about the hundreds of millions of people that played a violent video game and did not kill someone. The simple fact is games are not the sole cause for these tragic events. I do not even believe that children have the maturity to realise what they see before them and not in a negative, damaging sense of incomprehension, but in an oblivious one. A seven year-old watching Titanic does not understand why it is so sad, they haven't yet developed the skill sets to understand it, it just goes over their head. The world in general has become a much more desensitised place over the last few decades and this has been caused not by video games, but by a general shift in perceptions across all aspects in life. In any case, all these things are not real, they are imaginary and people know this. When the television was created, people where sat down and shown footage of a train coming towards the camera - they all jumped out of the way, now we know better than to think it is a real train and by an extension of that though, we know better to think that it's real violence. While we may be desensitised to virtual violence, war and suffering, mankind is still effected by real-world war, 9/11 still shocked people, despite countless video games and films showing the destruction of American landmarks. No matter how many people we have seen killed in films or games we were still horrified by the people who jumped from the top of those towers. Innocents were killed that day, and it wasn't virtual, of cinematic, it was real life - but still it is shown it to children, though God alone knows why.
Always will you have people opposing strongly things they find offensive, there will forever be a hardcore of anti-video games, anti-violence, anti-sex. But to confine what damages people to one thing, or a specific group of things is as stupid, as weak and as blind as the arguments they use. There is a growing awareness of computer games as "art", as something that can create a positive message and go beyond the base and the pointless. And I hope that one day there will come a time when artistic credibility in games reaches an equal plane with film, literature and art.
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