I did a Top 10, How Crazy is That.

So yeah, I did a Top 10 over at Bitmob for a monthly writing challenge. Pretty nice. It was also the first time I did a Top 10 -- I honestly don't really love those things but it was a nice exercise. Had to use 50 words or less for each entries. Makes you get to the point a lot faster.

Didn't want to post the Top 10 here before I had the Go from Micheal Rousseau to put it up on Bitmob. Still not gonna put it up here, just click the link the see it. I'm also gonna write about XBox Live Arcade Summer of Arcade's first born Limbo early this week. There's a generally positive buzz about that game around twitter and the blogoshpere.

Oh and Starcraft 2 comes out on the 27th. Don't expect anything from me till the month of August. My soul will be busy being eaten by this game.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly about Blizzard's RealID

A lot of people out there must feel like they just dodged a bullet. Blizzard, under the pressure of its angry and disapproving fans, decided to back up on its plan for RealID. The system is optional in games but would have been mandatory when posting on the forum, exposing your real identity to other forum users. As of right now, RealID is entirely optional.

Maybe it’s the social scientist in me that is talking, but I'm kind of sad to see Blizzard back up on this one. Could have been a nice social experiment to see if lifting the veil on anonymity that is currently covering every Blizzard forums posters would have changed the posting environment.

Nonetheless, this whole debate surrounding the discussion, and its retraction some days later, at least brought to light some problems that are plaguing not only Blizzard's forums, but any big gaming forums (or any big non-gaming forums for that matter). Let's take a look at the pros and cons of RealID's use and what this debacle taught us.


*The Good*

I believe this came with the best of intention: toning down the awful trolling taking place on the Blizzard forums. I’m pretty nobody, except trolls, would disagree that this issue needs to be looked after. RealID as a whole would also puts Blizzard on the same level as Facebook. By using their real names, player can integrate all of their social networking needs under one roof, and Blizzard sure hopes it’s theirs you’ll choose as a gamer.

*The Bad*

 The loss of anonymity on the Internet is something a lot of Internet goers are sensible about and I can understand that, especially on a gaming forum. If you are anything else than a white teenage male, the loss of anonymity will leave you open to potential harassment from, let’s say it simply, douchebags. They’ll laugh at you if your name is slightly different from the norm or sound foreign (ironic when you think it’s the World Wide Web) like it’s some kind of high school courtyard. If you are a girl, get prepared to receive a mailbox full of “show me you tits”. That and apparently people will come to your house and punch you.

*The Ugly*

Call me innocent, foolish, or just plain ignorant, but are gaming forums that bad? Why is gaming culture so attracting to unbalanced individuals? It’s pretty scary to think that you cannot have a discussion about a game on a forum without fearing for your life if you dare disagree with xXX_Blazer645_XXx on the best sword because he might use your real name to find your house and kick your ass. At this point, whether he is xXX_Blazer645_XXx or Jim Johnson, you don’t really care. So I’m throwing this almost philosophical question to the world: what would it take to make gaming forums friendlier and safer environments? One where you could say what you want to say, be accountable for what you say, but not fear for your privacy or safety.

Elephant In the Room: Violence and Games

When you look at what was announced during this year’s E3, you can see how much each developers and publishers try to push their next big franchise. Good portions of those new, or returning, franchises are first-person shooters. Halo: Reach, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Killzone 3 and Crysis 2 are making their way toward our consoles and personal computers with their big guns, big (space) boots and their big wars. Those damn commies/aliens/Talibans/ better watch out!

Cool right?

Not always.

 

Look, there is nothing wrong with violence for entertainment, but can we start to wonder why it is the only kind of violence our industry is capable of tackling? Could a video game shock me with its violence not by its amount or gruesomeness (see: Manhunt 2), but by its impact on the characters and the world? Let’s look at an other medium for inspiration.

Gus Van Sant’s movie Elephant is shocking not because the violence is plentiful, quite the opposite. The violence is short and brutal. One second you're alive and enjoying life (or not) and the next you are bleeding to death in a corridor.

Van Sant lets his characters live their life on screen for a short period of time. He gives the viewer time to get to know these people: their dreams, hopes, strength and weaknesses. He does not discriminate between the victims and killers. They both get time to live before they are pulled out of their world in a brutal way. Each death is affecting because Van Sant never lets you forget that the people being killed are not anonymous members of a mass, they are individuals.

What about games?

You kill so many people and get killed so many times in first-person shooters that violence and death start to loose their meaning. Your enemies are plentiful and anonymous; you are often a one-man army blessed by the power of spawning. Violence is the currency and death (yours or theirs) is what’s being traded. You never feel like something is taken out of the game. At worse, death is about as annoying in game as traffic is in real life.

One effective way video games made death matter is by making it permanent. Sadly, there are quite few examples of such uses of death and they are often removed from gameplay and placed within the embedded narrative. The game will kill someone permanently for you but won’t let you kill or get killed in the same fashion. Aeris died not because you didn’t have any potions left, she died because the game decided to remove her from the game to create dramatic tension. Still, games have been getting better at creating permanent deaths that matter because you caused them or are affected by them.

A good example of a first-person shooter that made death and violence matter more than your average war simulator is Far Cry 2. Not so much because of the unlimited number of mercenaries waiting to be shot, set on fire or rolled over but because of your “buddies”. You meet them, do some small talk, and even though they could have been developed a bit more as characters, learn about them. At the exception of one or two sequences in the game, their life or death relies entirely in your hands. Play with fire by accepting their little offer and you will put their life in danger. If you fail to save them, they will die in your arms, and sometimes by your hands. Once they are dead, they’re not coming back.

Another good look at permanent death in this game was the self-imposed “permadeath” challenge Ben Abraham took last December. The constant threat of death makes you appreciate the little details of the world and makes you question the use of violence as an effective approach to every given situation.

What do I want? I’m not even sure. It's not about "banning violent games" like some over-reacting hormones-fuelled gamer might say. It's just about having a balance between entertaining violence and affecting violence. Maybe I just want more developers to think about violence in other terms than number of enemies on screen or cooler explosions. Maybe I just don't want 14 first-person shooters with 14 different ways of showing us how cool their fictional (or non-fictional) war is. Maybe I just want people to be able to talk about violence, games and what is between them without being called an alarmist or worse, being told it’s “just a game”.

It won't cause gamers to go into the streets and shoot people up, but maybe it causes them to be strangely apathetic to such stories. Violence, war and death is not only about sick graphics and kill streaks, it’s about the Human experience.