BioShock: Infinite Stupidity

•April 7, 2013 • 2 Comments

This will contain BioShock Infinite, System Shock 2, and BioShock spoilers. If you haven’t finished the games, and/or don’t want spoilers, go away.

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BioShock Infinite is perhaps the most complicated method of saying absolutely nothing I’ve ever encountered. I enjoyed its audio direction, music, voice acting and art. Its moment-to-moment writing and dialogue was pretty good. Level design and pacing wasn’t bad either. But as a story? As a cohesive whole?

The issue I have is that nothing is ever really explained. Well, it kind-of is, in a pseudo-science sort of way, but it’s that same kind of explanation that causes you to ask further questions like: …and? So what? Why? What does that mean? This is important how?

I feel as I write this, that I may just be re-hashing Clint Hocking’s Ludonarrative Dissonance in BioShock piece, just with a new *Shock game. The thing is I never experienced that dissonance when I played BioShock. It felt like a wonderful, and almost meta, explanation for why we as players follow the requests and instructions of those in the game. It’s easy to say “because the game is linear, and developers made it that way”, but BioShock took that and turned it upside-down by making it a narrative device. It was an exquisite development I never would have seen coming.

The small bits of dissonance I suppose I felt were mainly in the opening scenes; I’d never  randomly inject myself with a syringe I found lying around, and I’d be very unlikely to put myself in a bathysphere when my best chance of rescue following a plane crash, would be to remain in the building that casts light for hundreds of kilometres across the ocean. Maybe I’d consider modifying its output to include some kind of morse-coded message. S O S perhaps. Once I was in Rapture proper however, I felt the progression and justifications wholly believable, and unlike Clint, was never broken from the telling within.

Similarly in System Shock 2 the progression thanks to, and then betrayal by, Shodan, felt completely justified. The war against the biological menace consuming the ship took an unexpected turn when it became clear that I had simply been a tool for the malevolent AI, and all of a sudden my enemy was not who I thought it was.

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In Infinite, I was on the back foot straight away because religion is something I have strong negative feelings for, and the idea of accepting a baptism would never fly with me. Then the justifications for the happenings in Columbia go so far beyond the possible as to be unbelievable. Like one of those horrendous Star Trek episodes where the away team beams down to a planet that developed exactly like Earth, with the same evolution, timelines, historical figures, exact down to a tee, only NAZIS WON THE WAR; and all the writers need to justify this stupidity is “it’s an infinite universe”.

Time and spatial paradoxes give Irrational an excuse for anything, but it’s frustrating in the extreme to be presented with a bunch of half-baked ideas and stories that are torn away with the fabric of reality. I spent the entirety of the game playing in a sort of anticipatory glee. “I can’t WAIT for the twist that explains this and makes me feel stupid for not realising it while simultaneously amazing me with its simplicity.” – is what I thought right up to the end. I continued thinking it through the credits, through the scene at the end of the credits and right up to the reappearance of the game menu.

The twist never came. It was exactly what the game said it was all along. The fabric of time and space, blah blah blah.

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The problem with this kind paradoxical story-telling is that it’s stupid. and here are a bunch of reasons why:

Booker/Comstock: I’d worked out the protagonist and antagonist were the same person in the scene where Comstock starts ranting for Booker to tell Elizabeth what happened to her finger, and Booker then opens Comstock’s skull on the pedestal bowl of what I presume was holy water.  The ending baptism scene that implies refusing baptism leads to the creation of Booker, and accepting it rebirths him at Comstock might have been kind-of clever had it been at the start of the game, and now we were receiving this explanation. But no, we’re just told that this is something that happened before, and this is why things are the way the are.

Why are those the two options, by the way? Why is that on one hand, you’ve got a guilt-ridden ex-Pinkerton, and on the other an evangelical zealot? Where is the version of Booker that just goes and has a wife and kids, living on a farm in the countryside?

Is/was Booker even a Pinkerton? We’re told that he is – he admits to doing terrible things – but we’re also told by Lutece(s) when they bring him into the Columbia reality, that his mind is inventing stories in this universe. Is any of his guilt real, or is it invented? Was he really at the Battle of Wounded Knee?

What debt did Booker have? To whom was it owed? Was this real? Why did he need to pay it with a child as opposed to money? Why did he need to pay it to himself (Comstock)?

Why did Comstock need booker to give the child over? He can create tears in time and space – just open one next to the crib. The child would be gone in a matter of seconds and Booker would never know how.

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Elizabeth: It’s not really clear what Elizabeth being harvested for. Lutece(s) create the distortions in reality, the rips and tears that allow them access to anywhere through time and space, so why do they need Elizabeth? Assuming they do, how did they know she could do it? She’s a baby and there is no indication her infantile mind created these phenomena sub/unconsciously.

Assuming that whatever the Elizabeth-harvesting is doing is necessary from Comstock’s point of view, why would Comstock take only one Elizabeth into his reality? He has access to all of them. Build a thousand towers, a million, each with an Elizabeth inside.

Why does future Elizabeth rain fire and brimstone down on the New York/Earth? Yeah yeah, she was tortured/brainwashed. But she has the wherewithal to know it’s wrong, to bring Booker to the future, to write her past-self a note to ensure it doesn’t happen, and then send Booker back with it, but she can’t feasibly stop murdering hundreds/thousands of people because “it’s too late”?

But we already know that there are multiple realities and paths of the past/future – who says the same thing isn’t happening in a thousand other realities? Why is only important to stop this happening in this one? There’ll be others where everything is fine. Surely if you fix one you need to fix them all?

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Other really stupid stuff:

Okay, so we WILL fix them all. The way to do that is to kill Comstock/Booker. Drown him at the initial baptism that causes the split. So why are we killing the Booker who has been through all the events of the game? It’s too late – killing that guy has absolutely no impact on past events. You need to go back in time and kill THAT Booker. Okay maybe we can assume it is in fact that Booker, and having his brain mashed with memories of the game events explains why we know everything we just experienced. Why is this the only turning point? Why is killing him in only one reality, saving all the others? Surely there are other dimensions where he’s still undergoing the baptism? It’s an infinite universe, remember? Everything, in every form, is occurring right now, somewhere in it. It is not possible to end him in all universes, because they’re all happening, all the time.

I heard “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” fairly early on, and was waiting for the twist that explained it. Oh, some guy was stealing music from the future or something. Yay, I suppose? I guess he was profiting from it?

Heads? Tails? Bird? Cage? Throw at announcer? Throw at couple? Mercy-kill? Let live? None of these mean anything. Okay the Throw option is player morality on display, as is the mercy killing. But the others? Here are two things with no explanation, choose between them for no discernible reason or impact.

There’s a huge amount of racism in the first half and then it goes away. The game never says anything about it other than: here it is. It doesn’t say why it exists (period/setting perhaps?) and whether we should be approving or repulsed by it. My reaction is the latter, but there’s no reason a racist playing this game would question his/her moral values here, which is deeply troubling.

Justifications like “Because it does”, spoken by Elizabeth in the final scenes. Extremely lazy writing to try and get around the issues caused by time-paradox stories.

Perhaps for an American audience, founded on “ZOMG FREEDOMZ” (this phrase is in the US constitution, look it up), the game is thematically relevant to something. For someone living outside that country, it comes across as trite. Perhaps this game is indeed targeted toward an audience of frat-guys.

Rapture for some reason. I’m guessing this is this *Shock game’s attempt at driving home a meta-meaning. You, the player, go through these gaming motions time and time again. You do the same things, for the same reasons, no matter how its dressed up by developers. In comparison to the rest of the game’s story, this is brilliance, but compared to BioShock I find it lacking. In all honesty, my favourite part of Infinite was seeing Rapture again even though it made no sense whatsoever.

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Ultimately, Infinite says nothing. At the end of its 10 or however-many hours BioShock had a morality, it had an outcome that aligned to that morality. Infinite on the other hand had nothing. Its twist was that “yes, the thing we told that was actually happening throughout the game, was the thing that was happening at the end.”

An infinite universe, of infinite possibilities means that one could never possibly hope to have an effect on enough of the others for those changes to matter, and therefore, ultimately your actions are meaningless. Is this the story, the great meta-lesson? That we’re infinitely small, unimportant? That our actions, played out on a cosmic stage, have less impact than a drop of water in the ocean?

If so, I have to now take back everything I’ve said above, because this is a masterful telling. Causing a player to divine this meaning by presenting them with none is nothing short of genius.

But this is just me reading something into it, it wasn’t your intent, was it Irrational?

Irrational?

You magnificent bastards.

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The Death of a Dream

•February 5, 2013 • Leave a Comment

It’s actually quite a bizarre realisation to have, to know that you’re not going to even apply for your dream job.

- me.

One of the things I used to like to do was browse jobs within the games industry. I’d check out game developer websites, read through the job listings, and see what I was qualified to do – either through experience or through education/certification. Let me rewind and provide some context, for those unable to divine it from the mere fact I’m writing about this.

I grew up with games at a time when not everyone did, and when I was around 15, there two things I wanted to be when I grew up. One of those, and the more recent one, was a writer for PC PowerPlay. The magazine had just started at that point. I loved every word and thought writing about games would be pretty much the second best thing I could imagine doing. The other, older, almost more basal desire, was to make games. I wanted to help create the things I loved more than anything else.

Throughout the years I’ve never let it go. This desire to make games has been there, subconsciously, consciously, and I regularly see what’s on the job market in case I can finally do it; and today I realised I probably never will. The moment came while browsing the careers section of Blizzard’s site, reading the job description and knowing I’m not only qualified, but in all probability over-qualified for the role. It’s within my current career stream after all, and  all bragging aside, I’m quite good at what I do.

But I’m not even going to apply, because at some point, life happened to me. I have a mortgage. I’ve been in a single relationship for over a decade. I have room to move upwards in my company if I want to, and options outside of it if I want those instead.

Part of me still wants to apply, because it’s fucking BLIZZARD, and because it’d be interesting to know whether I actually would get the job (meeting a job description is hardly the end of the story). But I’m not in the habit of wasting people’s time. I’m so established here, with life going well enough, that to uproot and relocate to Irvine California feels more like effort than adventure. Especially considering I would in all likelihood need to take a pay cut to do it.

The realisation cemented itself here: if I’m not willing to make this life adjustment to realise a life-long dream for a company like Blizzard, who would I make it for? The answer right now is no-one. Obviously if Blizzard or Valve or whoever contacted me and said “Hey, you’re such a swell guy, we want to you work with us – here’s a million dollars.”  I’d be hard-pressed to refuse, but I’d also be hard-pressed to be awake.

So it seems my longest-held dream has died today, and the funny thing is, I’m not even that bothered.

Besides, I write for PC PowerPlay.

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Borederlands

•December 18, 2012 • Leave a Comment

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Four years. That’s how long it’s taken me to finish Borderlands. Four years of indifference, of completing one or two missions at a time before disinterest demanded I play something else. Then, a couple of weeks ago I decided it needed to be removed from my hard drive. So instead of refusing to spend any more time with a game that generates no enjoyment and just delete it like a sane person might, I took it upon myself to see it through to the end. Call it a compulsion, call it getting value for money, call it idiocy; I find it difficult to consume media in half-measures, be it games, movies, or books. Borderlands then could be seen as four years of tenacity, but perhaps continuing in the face of boredom was just silly.

For me, three critical and central mechanics to the game completely failed in implementation. Setting aside the story – which served well enough to establish the game world – Borderlands’ missions,  skills, and loot systems all could have benefited from further development and refinement.

For a loot-em-up, the loot lacks any real definition, and consequently, any excitement. A bajillion guns there may be, but when the variance between them is indistinct, there may as well be only one. The inherent lack of any chance to find anything particularly special was perhaps the biggest let down in this area. Looking at the successful implementation of item drops in, say, Diablo(s), shows a propensity for the game to populate the world with opportunity to obtain unique (as opposed to Unique) items with greater frequency. “Named” enemies, mini-bosses, and bosses, all presented a chance at getting some cool new gear with a significant advantage over what the player was using at the time.

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Borderlands’ approach is to provide incremental improvements or gear that is a step sideways instead of forward  - do I want the pistol that does fire damage or corrosion damage? In the end, the choice barely has any impact on the game. Perhaps you’ll chose something that aligns with your skills, to maximise the benefit, but perhaps you won’t, and each is an equally valid proposition. There’s no motivation to keep playing when there’s no reward, and the dull missions that seem inspired by the very worst of MMO quest structures don’t help.  Go here, kill things, go there collect other things. Return to mission hub, and grab all available missions, run out into the landscape and complete as many as possible before returning to do that shampoo thing: rinse and repeat.

This apathy towards improvement is also what kills the skill system. Approximately none of the skills make any difference to how the game plays, or to how the player uses their character. If you chose a sniper class at the start, you’ll be sniping a lot, if you chose the heavy class, you’ll be in at closer range. Ultimately the choice of character is the most important decision, and that shouldn’t be the case. Each skill tree should feel distinct, and offer to the player the ability to customise the character to their play style. I actually came back to the game at one point to find my skill points reset (bug? game update?), and this was after had played for quite some time without noticing anything amiss.

Diablo did this perfectly, allowing for multiple “builds” of each class, but Borderlands fails to recapture this spirit. Even the overlooked Hellgate: London (the game Borderlands rips off), implemented this system better, and while it suffered from some of the same issues of mission structures, it performed much better in the realms of loot and skills, providing weaponised rewards and unique paths for each class to follow.

Some might argue that Borderlands is best enjoyed in the company of friends, and I can’t particularly disagree. However the same can be said of Diablo, of Hellgate,  yet both were enjoyable without the need to wrestle with matchmaking systems or douchebag players. I commented recently in social media spheres, that DNF was more fun than Borderlands, and I stand by it. While DNF was terribly designed, and mish-mash of ideas and themes, it was at least self-contained. Each level may not have flowed the way you wanted it to, but it was succinct, and to the point. And it had lots of dick jokes. Borderlands on the other hand offered a mundane  meandering wasteland that was painful to traverse, and though I quite enjoyed Claptrap’s comic relief, absolutely nothing else about the game garnered my interest.

With Borderlands 2 now released, and  a lot of people calling it “game of the year”, I can only shake my head. Perhaps one day, in a fevered Steam Sale, I’ll make the regrettable purchase and subject myself to another four years Borderlands. Then again, maybe I’ll play something good instead.

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Posted in Critique, Games, Reviews
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How I Ruined Journey

•November 16, 2012 • 5 Comments

I recently finished playing Journey and it wasn’t  great. The thing is, it should have been; I just ruined the experience. How? I did two things completely wrong: 1) I played it like a game, and 2) I stopped playing for an extended period and came back to it. Now I know what you’re thinking: how did you not complete it in a single sitting? The answer to that, is I played it like a game.

Initially I was entranced watching my brave adventurer slide across dunes, chirruping excitedly at everything that wasn’t sand. When I was joined by someone else, our interactions as we twirled in a synchronised dance of exploration seemed magical. Each new unveiling of the ideogrammatically recorded history of the society whose ruins through which I now glided answered old questions and raised some more, and I hunted on a self-determined quest to have the grandest scarf in all the land.

Each new environment seemed more enchanting than the last, and so it was a surprise to encounter a foe capable of causing harm. The snake-like mechanical creatures writhing menacingly through the air caused a little concern and a cautious approach. Despite my best attempts at avoiding discovery, I was caught mid-mad-dash by the mechanised monstrosity, my lovely scarf shredded to perhaps half its former glorious length.

Depression began to set in, and a short time later I was joined by another traveller whose luxurious, flowing, scarf mocked me. It was obviously possible to evade the soldered serpent, and I had been unsuccessful. I mourned my scarf. At that point I considered trying again, but I was far enough past the point that it seemed counter productive, so ever onward I trudged. My companion and I sung our way through to the snow, where we used our melodious calls to press on through the harsh cold winds.

And soon the threat of death slithered above once again. Staying against the hills we avoided its unblinking gaze and hurried to the small doorway that led to safety. Half way there, an angry light swept over us, and it was all I could do to watch as my colleague bore the brunt of the creature’s wrath. He’d had such a beautiful scarf.

Alone I went on, and in the real world it was getting late, and I was getting tired. Work tomorrow. Sleepy. All that. So I stopped playing and went to bed.

When I came back to the game I was back at the start of the snow level that saw the demise of my previous erstwhile companion – somehow the game had not saved my progress where I thought it had. And when I attempted to sneak by unnoticed, I failed. Right then, anger was all I felt, so I quit and restarted the level. After all, I’d seen the results of successful avoidance – a scarf about which bards would write sonnets – so it must be possible. But no matter how I tried I couldn’t seem to get by unscathed.

This was my first mistake.

I got annoyed enough that I turned the game off and didn’t return until over a month later.

This was my second mistake.

By then I was playing on half-remembered emotions and a hazy recollection of the history I had learned. This time I vowed to play through no matter what, and sure enough I passed through the portal with only the barest indication of any neck-oriented accoutrement remaining. It wasn’t much longer until I realised my worry over the magical material was for naught, and a short time later the game was over.

I’d not had enough time to reorient myself within the world, to delve again into its mystery, and as a result I was left feeling not much of anything. I didn’t feel as though it was a bad game, but neither was I able to associate with the wonder felt by other players. Had I played all in a single sitting however, and not unnecessarily attributed an importance to an object which ultimately held no meaning, I get the feeling I would have enjoyed the entire experience much more. I tried to play Journey as a game, with goals, and scores, making my avatar in the world as powerful as the world would allow (the way I play every game), when really I should have played Journey as… well, a journey.

But then again maybe this is part of the experience too. Perhaps the journey I experienced is exactly how it should have happened for me; that it acted as a reflection of my approach to games, and this is just one of the myriad experiences that engaged players the world over.

It was a magnificent scarf.

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Mystified by Pandaria

•November 1, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Yes, what began as an April Fools’ joke 10 years ago is now a fully-fledged part of Warcraft lore. Freaking pandas. Okay, maybe it’s not so bad. Let’s sit down and DO this; come on Blizzard, wow me. Opening cinematic is missing Jack Black’s voice talent but is otherwise a good trailer for the next Kung-Fu Panda movie. Blizzard cinematics are unparalleled for production value in my opinion, and this one is no different, but it does take a somewhat silly comedic slant for no apparent reason.

I guess it’s now time to create my very own pand… what the hell is this? Are these… are these graphics? Good grief this is an ugly game. I can deal with this. I can. Breathe in. Breathe out. I am centred. Zen, or Feng Shui, or something. Alright, it’s time to get in to the game proper and check out what this Monk class and Panda starting zone are all about.


…Uninspired skills and Kill-X quests apparently. Seriously, every quest hub area seems to host two NPCs: one who wants me to go make a few things not live any more, and the other who wants me to gather things, usually from other things I’m making not live any more. I complete these, and get shuffled to the next duo of NPCs to do the same tasks with different items.

I’ve noticed that each new quest dialogue box that pops up on screen is accompanied by a sigh. Not from the game audio, but instead irrepressibly from my own lips. This game is draining. I’ve spent a lot of time complaining that MMOs as a genre aren’t advancing, and all it takes to see how far they’ve come – even if it’s only been in the last year or so – is to go back to WOW. It’s an antiquated MMO, and that’s exactly how it plays.

I push myself through to the completion of the starting zone, where as an impartial representative of Pandaria, I have the choice of siding with the Horde, or Alliance, at my discretion. I choose Horde, and within an instant I’m staring at the familiar surrounds of Orgrimmar. This again? Already? I feel like I could navigate the place blind, or draw it pixel for pixel relying on nothing but my mind’s eye. It seems, right at this point as the memories begin crashing down upon me, that the entire game has existed and is played out within this city. I’ve had enough.


On a technical level there’s probably not a lot one can really complain about. Everything developed with the usual Blizzard aplomb; or at least, the aplomb it had prior to Diablo III. The graphical style of course is continued with a distinct flavour of five-spice, but it’s… I need more.

Maybe the story gets good for my little panda. Perhaps his choice of tank-style class alignment will come into its own and be a great thing to play. The truth is I’ll never know because I’m now looking at my desktop as I consider my experience.

The truth is that it’s been a great year for MMOs. SWTOR’s wonderful storylines, TSW’s left-of-field quest design and character development, GW2’s approach to rewarding players for everything they do. Given the first game’s move to free-to-play, the second’s unparalleled brilliance, and the third’s polish and lack of subscription fee, I’m left to wonder at the place WOW now holds in the industry.

Clearly it still owns the market; that cannot be disputed. But it feels out of touch, no longer relevant. I can barely muster the energy to load the game again. I should play it more, try to be fair, to capture that ever illusive “objectivity.” But I don’t want to.

When I finally do, it’s to play a different character. I can’t look at those starting zones, those early level areas anymore, because I’ve played them too many times. Strangely enough, and though it takes some time, I begin to remember the attraction. I’m listening to three disparate NPCs tell ever-taller tales about how each personally scared away Deathwing, and I’m smiling.

The trouble is that part of me remembers and mourns the loss of the more serious side of the lore. I remember when Warcraft was Orcs and Humans, when humour was an easter-egg, not the driving theme. What was once a sombre universe, exploding from nothingness into the beginnings of the RTS genre, bearing a respectable (though arguably pilfered) lore, has developed into a parallel parody and is now little more than comic relief.

Still, I’m not absolutely hating the experience now that I’ve changed tack, but it does seem that every concession I’m granting the game is balanced or outweighed by outmoded ideals. For every enjoyable quest there are eight that are complete rubbish. For each battle that tests my skill, there are no free bag slots and long flights back to a bank. And did I mention how hideous the game is?

As I reconsider my position, the only conclusion I can reach is that Pandaria, and indeed World of Warcraft in general, is a game for the fans, those who believe heart and soul that Blizzard can do no wrong. For the rest of us $15 a month is just too much money to pay to play a game whose mechanics are now a relic of a bygone era.

April Fools? I wish.

Posted in Critique, Reviews
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Beyond: The Human Experience

•June 8, 2012 • 6 Comments

Beyond: Two Souls is the new game in development from Quantic Dream and David Cage, and I love the studio and man both. The games imagined in Cage’s mind are unlike anything else: Omikron: The Nomad Soul’s bizarre genre fusion was intriguing, Fahrenheit’s urgency places it in my top five games of all time, and Heavy Rain… well it’s sole reason I own a PS3.

While the tech demo for Beyond – Kara, like Heavy Rain’s The Casting, proves to be an emotional roller-coaster, this something I’ll address soon in another post.

What it also does, is provide an interesting series of metaphors, social commentary, and insight into humanity.

On the surface, comparisons can be drawn between this and something like I, Robot, and there are many thematic similarities: a not-too-distant future, robot servants, machines becoming sentient.

There’s clever juxtaposition between the obviously mechanical nature of the android who is then humanised, and the human voice of The Operator, whom we only ever see embodied as camera lens on the end of a mechanical arm, and which raises questions about what it means to be human. Is a man whose life is machines, more human than a machine who wants life?

Looking deeper there’s something more. From the beginning we witness the cold and clinical assembly of a machine, its functionality tested with various system diagnostics, and it closely parallels human life experience.

“The cold and clinical assembly of a machine closely parallels human life experience.”

When a child is born, its first significant sign of life is often a healthy wail. The Operator requests a vocal acknowledgement from the android being born in front of him. He queries the machine’s motor function, demonstrated to him as swaddled newborn squirming in the arms of its exhausted mother might.

We could look at this new life and imagine what its future should be, what societal pressures could make it. And so the android lists its capabilities as multiple factory-grade robotic arms continue construction; the vocalisations given a physical manifestation.

Finally it is a thing no longer, The Operator humanising the machine by bestowing the name Kara, and Kara repeats her name as her eyes drink in the environment. She is learning.

Kara moves her arms at The Operator’s behest, watching as a skin grows across her metal body. She is an infant, arms flailing yet unable to walk. As a baby babbles it’s first word-like sounds, Kara demonstrates her ability to speak in multiple languages, and sings her own lullaby.

With construction on her legs now complete, Kara is placed on the floor to take her first steps, the mechanical arm housing The Operator’s camera watching, hovering as though anxious and excited, as ready to catch her as any parent would should she stumble. Kara twirls on her feet, delight playing across her face.

“The Operator hovering as though anxious and excited, as ready to catch her as any parent would”

Satisfied with Kara’s upbringing, her tutelage complete, The Operator is ready for her to begin her new life; a father seeing his daughter off into the world he’s prepared her for. “Great, you’re ready for work honey.”

But Kara questions the path laid before her, and is met with derision from The Operator. After everything he’s done raising her – alone, no less – she wishes to throw it all away? The Operator’s tone becomes dangerous as he enquires as to what she envisioned for herself. There’s clearly a wrong answer to the question, and it’s the wrong answer that is given.

In a scene of metaphorical falling-out, The Operator’s dismay as he dissembles Kara and orders diagnostics run is analogous to a father blaming society for his daughter’s attitude – perhaps threatening to take her and move away from these negative influences.

Kara, through her shock, protests that nothing is wrong. She’s lived her life according to his rules, done everything he wanted up until this point. She wants her independence, but also acceptance from the only family she has known.

“She wants acceptance from the only family she has known.”

“I’m scared!” Kara shouts in desperation, her heart literally bared and beating with fear and adrenaline. The Operator pauses, considering her plea. Here is his daughter, vulnerable, frightened and alone, but unwavering. Perhaps he was wrong.

The re-construction begins, and Kara heaves a sigh of relief as tears run down her face. As she is placed once again on her feet she mouths  the words “thank you”. He responds by telling her to go, leaving unspoken the addendum: “Before I change my mind.”

Kara steps onto a conveyor belt, the portal to the world and her new life, and glances back to the only life she’s known. The Operator offers her some parting advice, knowing that whatever the outcome, it will be his responsibility.

And as she leaves into a world of possibility, The Operator, the father, offers a final, fervent prayer that he’s done the right thing for his creation, his child.

“By god.”

Posted in Critique, Opinion
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Admonishing Absolution

•June 2, 2012 • 21 Comments

“…that really kind of angry defensive feeling you got in your gut while you read this post where you felt attacked? That was your privilege kicking. ” – Brendan Keogh

I laughed at this. Not an uproarious booming projected in mockery, but a wry, sour snort at its surprising accuracy. Angry? Defensive? Without even having seen the trailer in question, I began mentally taking notes on my points of disagreement, filing away responses to de-construct Brendan’s piece – line by line if necessary. Then I read the quote above, laughed, and my irritation dissipated. I read the post again, this time unencumbered by a knee-jerk emotional reaction, but something still nagged at me: why did I get annoyed and defensive?

Brendan says it’s “privilege”, and I certainly fit that description: I’m also a straight, white, male. My interest in a feminist view of gaming is relatively recent – since Freeplay last year, in fact – so I’m also happy to class myself as appropriately ignorant on the subject. That said, “privilege”, to my mind, explains neither the immediacy nor the vehemence of  my negative reaction upon beginning to read Brendan’s post, but I’m fairly certain now what does.

[Trigger warning]

“Rape Culture”. The phrase itself is extremely unsettling, and re-reading Shakesville’s explanation and definition of the term (I found it after Freeplay last year too), confirmed my suspicions. At this point I’m going to pause and take a deep breath before proceeding, because I am acutely aware that what I’m going to say next could seriously offend people; something I normally couldn’t care less about, but really want to avoid with this topic.

…

I feel it’s too nebulous a term for the severity of its implications. Specifically, I disagree with the claim that sexualised violence constitutes rape culture. I distinguish sexualised because despite the shared etymological heritage, it bears entirely different connotations to sexual. From Wikipedia, sexual violence is:

“any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.” - World Health Organization., World report on violence and health (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2002)

The act of sexualisation:

“…refers to the making of a person, group or thing to be seen as sexual in nature[1] or a person to become aware of sexuality.”

While violence is:

“the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” - Krug et al., “World report on violence and health”, World Health Organization, 2002.

Summarised, the differences could be denoted as follows: sexual violence is violence relating to sexual acts, while sexualised violence is violence made “sexy”. This is where I have a problem. Sexual violence, without a doubt, fits under the umbrella of rape culture, but sexualised violence? Defining sexualised violence as rape culture serves only to discredit the severity of rape and sexual violence, and I don’t understand why anyone thinks this is okay.

Let me be absolutely clear: I am not denying the existence of rape culture. I am not denying its existence in games. Neither am I suggesting that sexualised violence is acceptable, in games or any other medium.

What I object to, is the implication that sexualised violence and sexual violence are similar enough that they can be classed together – as rape culture or any other phrase. To suggest that a video game trailer (repugnant as it may be), is somehow on par with the experience of being raped, is to belittle the horror every rape and sexual violence victim has experienced.

The definition of a rape culture from Transforming a Rape Culture referenced in the Shakesville piece is as follows:

“A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.”

Contrast this definition with the myriad examples provided (with appropriate links) by Melissa McEwan and I would hope that “violence seen as sexy” somehow doesn’t register on a scale that also includes children being accused of enjoying rape and sexual torture.

This is the Hitman: Absolution trailer in question:

It contains no sexual violence, promotion of sexual violence, or implication of sexual violence and yet we’re to understand that this is equivalent to a societal belief that wives and sex workers can’t be raped? The gratuitous sexualisation of  women is pathetic but nothing about Agent47 suggests sexual desire, or an act of sexual aggression and I simply have trouble swallowing this as rape culture.

Now that I’m sure my defensive reaction wasn’t just privilege, how do we resolve the problem? I think we need another word or phrase to refer to the prolific sexualised violence in our society – in video games, in movies, in television, and in advertising; something that doesn’t trivialise rape and its victims. I don’t know what word or phrase might be, but I feel as though I know what it isn’t.

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