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Well thought out article imo:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Murderous Mess
Editorial: Sometimes, gaming means killing a whole lot of people.
by Rus McLaughlin
November 2, 2009 -
This is your official Spoiler Warning for every game ever. No crying about it later, fanboy. But seriously, we discuss the opening plot of Modern Warfare 2 in this article.
Way back when I started my first IGN column, I did a piece on the growing trend of morality-based gameplay. Those were the days when Splinter Cell: Double Agent asked if you'd like to waste long-standing amigo Lambert, and we were just getting early word on a little game called BioShock, with its option to destroy or save children for fun and profit. Exciting times. More freedom of choice meant making tougher choices, and that made for interesting gaming.
Three years later, the biggest game on the horizon is Activision and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and they're playing by harder rules.
A video of the campaign's opening sequence recently leaked in France, and it puts You The Player in the shoes of an undercover C.I.A. agent embedded with a terrorist cell. These terrorists - and you - are shooting up an airport, mowing down civilians left and right. Civilians cowering in fear, civilians trying to run away. And you're right there, killing those innocent people, too, to maintain your cover.
It took Activision about five minutes to vanish that clip from the internets. The questions are still lingering.
Every story, every game, absolutely requires conflict of some kind to work. The easiest brand of conflict in the world for juicing up your narrative is good ol' violence. It's visual, it's physical, it's immediate, it's exciting. Violence amps up the stakes considerably, as opposed to whether or not Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are finally going to hook up. Sure, we're all pulling for those kids to work it out, but at no point are they threatened by anything more lethal than a few minor misunderstandings.
Video games, on the other hand, generally don't play the romance card because they aren't usually given to that kind of internal conflict. Post-PONG and excepting Sims, sports, puzzle and rhythm games, video games have historically been based on the idea of either destroying the enemy or avoiding an enemy sent to destroy you.
Never forget.
So yes, in video games, we kill. We kill by the truckload, we kill by the ton. We win Achievements and Trophies for killing in spectacular numbers, in spectacular ways. Even Mario, whom we generally think of as the G-rated, family friendly poster boy, kills. He crushes bad mushroom people into oblivion and knocks evil turtles into bottomless chasms that would certainly croak him. We kill to reach an objective; we kill because that is the objective. Developers usually soften the blow by presenting to us things that are okay to kill: terrorists, Nazis, zombies, aliens, mercenaries, demonic forces, fantasy creatures, criminals, supernatural entities, ninja, hostile soldiers, invading hordes, mutants and monsters of every size. And they're all trying to kill us, so it's not just fun, but also self defense. Right?
At least for this short opener, Modern Warfare 2 doesn't fall back on any of those convenient removes. These are unarmed, human victims simply trying to hide or get away, and if you're not implicitly expected to shoot them in the back or execute someone cowering on the ground, certainly you'll be allowed to. That's not simply killing; that's plain murder.
Activision claims there will be a warning prior to this sequence, an opt-out for those who don't care to run it, and players can supposedly elect "not to engage in the gameplay" at all, making it sound like this will be MW2's credit sequence, similar to the previous Modern Warfare. Oh, but Activision claims it's all a non-issue anyway because the ESRB rated the game M for Mature and "the rating is prominently displayed on the front and back of the packaging, as well as in all advertising." Well, never mind, then. Might as well throw a few children and puppies into the shooting gallery, so long as there's an M on both sides of the box.
But here's the thing that's really going to twist this up. It's not simply that gamers can murder normal, unarmed people as they attempt to flee. It's that they'll have the option not to, and they'll do it anyway.
I can name a dozen games where that's already possible, if not a highly likely scenario. At least half of them would probably include the words "Grand," "Theft," and "Auto." The rest would probably all be GTA clones. The difference is that jumping into GTA wraps you in a sort of forced morality, where you can essentially do crime or not play the game. There are no opportunities for helping little old ladies cross the street. You can't just be a nice, law abiding citizen in GTA for long, no matter how hard you try. When you fail, there are consequences: the police show up. Even if you want to exclusively target other criminals, you've got to steal a police car first. Play through the missions, and I guarantee multiple shootouts where you're obliged to smoke a few cops. There's no avoiding it.
Other games put the blame squarely on you. Like Modern Warfare 2's opener, BioShock and its upcoming sequel make you decide whether to murder the Little Sisters for immediate gain or take the tougher road and rescue them. Of course, Bioshock didn't actually show you killing 8-year-old girls (that's done off-screen), but at the risk of sounding ghoulish, I rather wish they had.
The impact of seeing what you'd just done - murdering an innocent, helpless child - could have served as a deeper, harsher consequence than GTA's habit of merely docking your weapons and cash once you're busted. Being forced to see a lifeless body in your arms might've been enough to give you pause and made you consider why you would choose to commit such a horrible act. One thing video game killing is fairly light on is true consequence. Another is regret. Believe me, I've committed galactic genocide many times over in any number of virtual worlds and enjoyed myself doing it. I'm all for escapism, but it might be interesting, healthy even, if I'm called to account for all that death and suffering from time to time.
I'll admit, part of me is impressed at Infinity Ward's boldness here. They're inviting a controversy their game doesn't actually need. You have to figure it's either a total bonehead move or an artistic gamble, designed to put a player in a horrific situation and make them feel the crunch of it like a brass knuckle punch to the face. I hope that's the case. I'm hoping it's a grim, sickening, not-fun sequence that genuinely makes people feel uncomfortable while playing it.
If so, this sequence won't just be acceptable, it'll be fully justified and an amazing demonstration of brilliant game design. It will make you feel bad about killing. In a video game.
Not that it'll stop loony Jack Thompson, politicians up for re-election, and boneheaded cable news anchors from sounding the Save Our Children alarm. I'd refer them to Grand Theft Childhood, a book published last year by Dr. Lawrence Kutner and his wife, Dr. Cheryl Olson, co-directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. Gaming didn't get a total pass, but their study (funded by the Bush-era Department of Justice) found that for the general population of teenagers, there's no connection between playing violent video games and committing seriously violent acts. In fact, statistically, youth crime has nose-dived since the mid-90's... right around the time the original PlayStation came out.
Curiously, as of this writing, I haven't seen anybody ask if Modern Warfare 2 lets you draw a line, blow your cover, and start shooting the terrorists. Can you break off the rails and make a doomed effort to rescue the civilians? Seems at least as important an option as simply choosing not to participate in the slaughter. But then, I still have to ask, why do they let you participate in the slaughter? We could get plenty of horror being helpless spectators. But no, they let us pull the trigger ourselves and add to the horror, if we want. What is the point of that? Why do we need that?
The response I see most is "It's just a game." That's a cop-out, as cheap and meaningless an argument as Activision's claim that an ESRB rubber stamp equals a seal of approval. Sure, it's fantasy violence, but what's that say about our fantasies? Is it really impossible to cross a line - or indeed, to have lines - in a video game because it's not real?
Warriors are not equipped well for ambiguity. Are you?
I haven't played Modern Warfare 2 yet, so I can't authoritatively say whether it crosses any lines, or subversively convinces a player not to, or neither, or both. I can say there's a grand storytelling tradition for making us sympathize with the devil, from Macbeth to Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter to Dexter Morgan. We can be fascinated by monsters without becoming them. Great books and great movies put us in a killer's shoes, a terrorist's shoes, but we still walk away as ourselves.
We watch those movies, read those books and play those games because they're entertaining and let us live vicariously, experiencing things we normally would never do. Regardless of the carnage we're dishing out, playing a game doesn't make us feel like monsters, even when we're playing as one. They make us feel like a righteous badass, and never more so than when we're annihilating the opposition. The thrill of the kill. But it's not real righteous or thrilling to prey on the weak.
Maybe that's the point Modern Warfare 2 wants to hammer home. We'll see. Whatever the intent, this game - which I am looking forward to - will make you decide what kind of gamer, what kind of a person, you are. You and you alone decide if you kill... who you kill... why you kill.
Hope you like the answers, friend.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Murderous Mess
Editorial: Sometimes, gaming means killing a whole lot of people.
by Rus McLaughlin
November 2, 2009 -
This is your official Spoiler Warning for every game ever. No crying about it later, fanboy. But seriously, we discuss the opening plot of Modern Warfare 2 in this article.
Way back when I started my first IGN column, I did a piece on the growing trend of morality-based gameplay. Those were the days when Splinter Cell: Double Agent asked if you'd like to waste long-standing amigo Lambert, and we were just getting early word on a little game called BioShock, with its option to destroy or save children for fun and profit. Exciting times. More freedom of choice meant making tougher choices, and that made for interesting gaming.
Three years later, the biggest game on the horizon is Activision and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and they're playing by harder rules.
A video of the campaign's opening sequence recently leaked in France, and it puts You The Player in the shoes of an undercover C.I.A. agent embedded with a terrorist cell. These terrorists - and you - are shooting up an airport, mowing down civilians left and right. Civilians cowering in fear, civilians trying to run away. And you're right there, killing those innocent people, too, to maintain your cover.
It took Activision about five minutes to vanish that clip from the internets. The questions are still lingering.
Every story, every game, absolutely requires conflict of some kind to work. The easiest brand of conflict in the world for juicing up your narrative is good ol' violence. It's visual, it's physical, it's immediate, it's exciting. Violence amps up the stakes considerably, as opposed to whether or not Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are finally going to hook up. Sure, we're all pulling for those kids to work it out, but at no point are they threatened by anything more lethal than a few minor misunderstandings.
Video games, on the other hand, generally don't play the romance card because they aren't usually given to that kind of internal conflict. Post-PONG and excepting Sims, sports, puzzle and rhythm games, video games have historically been based on the idea of either destroying the enemy or avoiding an enemy sent to destroy you.
Never forget.
So yes, in video games, we kill. We kill by the truckload, we kill by the ton. We win Achievements and Trophies for killing in spectacular numbers, in spectacular ways. Even Mario, whom we generally think of as the G-rated, family friendly poster boy, kills. He crushes bad mushroom people into oblivion and knocks evil turtles into bottomless chasms that would certainly croak him. We kill to reach an objective; we kill because that is the objective. Developers usually soften the blow by presenting to us things that are okay to kill: terrorists, Nazis, zombies, aliens, mercenaries, demonic forces, fantasy creatures, criminals, supernatural entities, ninja, hostile soldiers, invading hordes, mutants and monsters of every size. And they're all trying to kill us, so it's not just fun, but also self defense. Right?
At least for this short opener, Modern Warfare 2 doesn't fall back on any of those convenient removes. These are unarmed, human victims simply trying to hide or get away, and if you're not implicitly expected to shoot them in the back or execute someone cowering on the ground, certainly you'll be allowed to. That's not simply killing; that's plain murder.
Activision claims there will be a warning prior to this sequence, an opt-out for those who don't care to run it, and players can supposedly elect "not to engage in the gameplay" at all, making it sound like this will be MW2's credit sequence, similar to the previous Modern Warfare. Oh, but Activision claims it's all a non-issue anyway because the ESRB rated the game M for Mature and "the rating is prominently displayed on the front and back of the packaging, as well as in all advertising." Well, never mind, then. Might as well throw a few children and puppies into the shooting gallery, so long as there's an M on both sides of the box.
But here's the thing that's really going to twist this up. It's not simply that gamers can murder normal, unarmed people as they attempt to flee. It's that they'll have the option not to, and they'll do it anyway.
I can name a dozen games where that's already possible, if not a highly likely scenario. At least half of them would probably include the words "Grand," "Theft," and "Auto." The rest would probably all be GTA clones. The difference is that jumping into GTA wraps you in a sort of forced morality, where you can essentially do crime or not play the game. There are no opportunities for helping little old ladies cross the street. You can't just be a nice, law abiding citizen in GTA for long, no matter how hard you try. When you fail, there are consequences: the police show up. Even if you want to exclusively target other criminals, you've got to steal a police car first. Play through the missions, and I guarantee multiple shootouts where you're obliged to smoke a few cops. There's no avoiding it.
Other games put the blame squarely on you. Like Modern Warfare 2's opener, BioShock and its upcoming sequel make you decide whether to murder the Little Sisters for immediate gain or take the tougher road and rescue them. Of course, Bioshock didn't actually show you killing 8-year-old girls (that's done off-screen), but at the risk of sounding ghoulish, I rather wish they had.
The impact of seeing what you'd just done - murdering an innocent, helpless child - could have served as a deeper, harsher consequence than GTA's habit of merely docking your weapons and cash once you're busted. Being forced to see a lifeless body in your arms might've been enough to give you pause and made you consider why you would choose to commit such a horrible act. One thing video game killing is fairly light on is true consequence. Another is regret. Believe me, I've committed galactic genocide many times over in any number of virtual worlds and enjoyed myself doing it. I'm all for escapism, but it might be interesting, healthy even, if I'm called to account for all that death and suffering from time to time.
I'll admit, part of me is impressed at Infinity Ward's boldness here. They're inviting a controversy their game doesn't actually need. You have to figure it's either a total bonehead move or an artistic gamble, designed to put a player in a horrific situation and make them feel the crunch of it like a brass knuckle punch to the face. I hope that's the case. I'm hoping it's a grim, sickening, not-fun sequence that genuinely makes people feel uncomfortable while playing it.
If so, this sequence won't just be acceptable, it'll be fully justified and an amazing demonstration of brilliant game design. It will make you feel bad about killing. In a video game.
Not that it'll stop loony Jack Thompson, politicians up for re-election, and boneheaded cable news anchors from sounding the Save Our Children alarm. I'd refer them to Grand Theft Childhood, a book published last year by Dr. Lawrence Kutner and his wife, Dr. Cheryl Olson, co-directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. Gaming didn't get a total pass, but their study (funded by the Bush-era Department of Justice) found that for the general population of teenagers, there's no connection between playing violent video games and committing seriously violent acts. In fact, statistically, youth crime has nose-dived since the mid-90's... right around the time the original PlayStation came out.
Curiously, as of this writing, I haven't seen anybody ask if Modern Warfare 2 lets you draw a line, blow your cover, and start shooting the terrorists. Can you break off the rails and make a doomed effort to rescue the civilians? Seems at least as important an option as simply choosing not to participate in the slaughter. But then, I still have to ask, why do they let you participate in the slaughter? We could get plenty of horror being helpless spectators. But no, they let us pull the trigger ourselves and add to the horror, if we want. What is the point of that? Why do we need that?
The response I see most is "It's just a game." That's a cop-out, as cheap and meaningless an argument as Activision's claim that an ESRB rubber stamp equals a seal of approval. Sure, it's fantasy violence, but what's that say about our fantasies? Is it really impossible to cross a line - or indeed, to have lines - in a video game because it's not real?
Warriors are not equipped well for ambiguity. Are you?
I haven't played Modern Warfare 2 yet, so I can't authoritatively say whether it crosses any lines, or subversively convinces a player not to, or neither, or both. I can say there's a grand storytelling tradition for making us sympathize with the devil, from Macbeth to Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter to Dexter Morgan. We can be fascinated by monsters without becoming them. Great books and great movies put us in a killer's shoes, a terrorist's shoes, but we still walk away as ourselves.
We watch those movies, read those books and play those games because they're entertaining and let us live vicariously, experiencing things we normally would never do. Regardless of the carnage we're dishing out, playing a game doesn't make us feel like monsters, even when we're playing as one. They make us feel like a righteous badass, and never more so than when we're annihilating the opposition. The thrill of the kill. But it's not real righteous or thrilling to prey on the weak.
Maybe that's the point Modern Warfare 2 wants to hammer home. We'll see. Whatever the intent, this game - which I am looking forward to - will make you decide what kind of gamer, what kind of a person, you are. You and you alone decide if you kill... who you kill... why you kill.
Hope you like the answers, friend.
