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DID U KNO… KILLING IS BAD???
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SPECOPS: THE LINE probably spoilers if you care about that sort of thing
The Smart Shooter for those who have caught on to the FPS military shooter’s dark secret: oftentimes these wargames are hilariously unrealistic and glorify violence. Spec Ops: The Line is a bold, daring new title that teaches us all a valuable life lesson:
War is harsh and damages both civilians and soldiers alike.
Alternatively, if one prefers to restrict the lens to video games, ignoring Real Life lessons in a game that uses Real Life scenarios and Real Life controversial tactics and appeals to Realism(TM):
Game narratives sometimes force you to do terrible things in the name of “just playing a game.” How fucked up is that?
Both of these lessons are things that could be gleaned with half a brain and far less than $60.
If you take the stance that one can learn valuable things about war and the attitudes involved, then the nature of its gameplay requires the game to shoot itself in the foot. Why yes, war takes quite the toll on people! Now play this game where you can only kill and kill and kill and then feel bad when confronted with the idea that maybe all that killing wasn’t good for you. Enjoy your regen health and unrealistic combat.
It’s the equivalent of bullying robots. Even Walker himself calls attention to this right before the infamous White Phosphorus sequence – you don’t have a choice in the matter.
If you prefer to ignore Real Life implications, you’re still left with a linear narrative that forces you to commit violence you may or may not engage in if you knew the full details. The cutscenes and dialogue are often heavy-handed – this is not a subtle game. So… yeah, sometimes game narratives force you to do terrible things in the name of “just playing a game”. How fucked up is that? Simply highlighting this fact is neither new nor revolutionary,(even the shooters SpecOps supposedly deconstructs do it from time to time) and SpecOps fails to actually do anything about it or give the player a choice in the matter.
The plot revolves around subversion of expectations and “deconstructing” the shooter genre without radically changing the gameplay or challenging core assumptions, acknowledging the nature of violence in games while providing no alternatives. You expect your standard FPS and what do you get? A game reminding you what a terrible person you are for playing it.
Hey, I'll even toss in a free link to an article that talks about the white phosphorus sequence, specifically, although the game is much more than that.
Despite all the complaining, I think some things are entertaining. (And I emphasize some since most of the game just makes my eyes roll in my head like slot reels.) The twists and turns about "what's real" and watching Walker's group fall apart sure are neat to watch. But I don't consider it a very Smart, Intellectual game, nor is it daring or revolutionary in the genre.
I don't think anybody can appreciate what it means to kill until they've killed. It's interesting to see a game try to address the subject, though. I don't have anything more thought-provoking to say.
Shinan
4314
I got Spec Ops on some steam sale but I still haven't gotten to it. I got it because I've heard all of these things about how wonderfully subversive it is. So I only skimmed what you wrote because although I know that is is wonderfully subversive and I know more or less in what ways it is that I don't know if there are specific specifics lying around.
But I saw this video:
It might not say that killing is bad but it is saying that "damn, we should have less of it."
But I saw this video:
It might not say that killing is bad but it is saying that "damn, we should have less of it."
You know, i read this, and i must say that i completely agree.
So many games and rpgs use killing as the default option of "winning". It becomes the equivalent of how to be the victor, the hero, the good guy-- which is actually very disturbing when said that way. (lol)
I think its even more disturbing knowing that at least a quarter of these game makers are kids or minors. Or made for kids/ minors.
The fact that people accept and sometimes even glorify violence in entertainment, but then call it monstrous in real life is even more ironic.
I think Pokemon did a very good job of handling "defeat". Its the only RPG i can think of that resorts to the clever use of fainting actually.
Its a shame that so many games-- and even general media-- resort to killing, or the concept of war, in order to build an "interesting" story. Then again, context is important, however; someone can argue that killing is wrong, yes, but if the game is, say, a recreation of a historical event, or a game about police work, then its not so much the killing that is wrong, but the idea of the game itself that is questionable.
So many games and rpgs use killing as the default option of "winning". It becomes the equivalent of how to be the victor, the hero, the good guy-- which is actually very disturbing when said that way. (lol)
I think its even more disturbing knowing that at least a quarter of these game makers are kids or minors. Or made for kids/ minors.
The fact that people accept and sometimes even glorify violence in entertainment, but then call it monstrous in real life is even more ironic.
I think Pokemon did a very good job of handling "defeat". Its the only RPG i can think of that resorts to the clever use of fainting actually.
Its a shame that so many games-- and even general media-- resort to killing, or the concept of war, in order to build an "interesting" story. Then again, context is important, however; someone can argue that killing is wrong, yes, but if the game is, say, a recreation of a historical event, or a game about police work, then its not so much the killing that is wrong, but the idea of the game itself that is questionable.
I got nothing against killing enemies in a game. Npo problemo. The issue for me comes in the realism of that game. There's a huge difference between games like CoD and Chrono Trigger.
Monsters vs humanesque beings, but even then, I have no issue with something like FF9 where there are a lot of human 'monsters' because you can tell that they aren't real. They're set in a world that doesn't exist.
The shooters and games set in the real world with high-tech graphics that simulate real life then let you go off and kill everything? Yeah.
Monsters vs humanesque beings, but even then, I have no issue with something like FF9 where there are a lot of human 'monsters' because you can tell that they aren't real. They're set in a world that doesn't exist.
The shooters and games set in the real world with high-tech graphics that simulate real life then let you go off and kill everything? Yeah.
There isn't really a difference between killing monsters and humans. The difference comes from intent. As far as I'm concerned games aren't even close to being real enough that they would cause me to get used to killing in real life.
I don't think playing videogames can cause a person to become another school shooter like Pekka-Eric Auvinen. Or, well, does it make sense to you that a mentally-healthy and happy person would suddenly realize "oh shites i should kill everyone in my school HUEUHUEUHEUHEUHEUH" after playing Team Fortress 2?
If we're talking about a 6-year old kid, however, they would be more likely to express aggressive behaviour after playing CoD.
If we're talking about a 6-year old kid, however, they would be more likely to express aggressive behaviour after playing CoD.
author=Magical_RuNE_Knight200
The fact that people accept/glorify violence in entertainment, but then call it monstrous in real life is even more ironic.
Perhaps it's ironic. But isn't that an appropriate response? It sure is the best scenario we can realistically hope for... xP
I also like it so much when so-called "Christians" (special note, I actually attend church, and I still don't understand these people) like to use their religion to preach that violent video games corrupt people. Something along this line...
"I'm afraid of violent games, so let's ban them for every1. And playing roleplaying games must make you rotten to the core."
If ever you thought this way, remember, "All these evils come from inside and defile a person." That's right, the Christian's own leader said that. Watching violent games doesn't make you violent. A violent person wants to play violent war games. A nonviolent person thinks making a game just to have blood spew around is rather stupid (I neither avoid nor seek out such games, I have exactly one game that has gore in it, Castlevania: Lament of Sorrows, and it makes up for the ones that don't), war games have a rather trite and boring premise and/or are a tool the military uses to create recruits, and that shoujo anime characters on stuff like Atelier Iris are so much cuter.
"I'm afraid of violent games, so let's ban them for every1. And playing roleplaying games must make you rotten to the core."
If ever you thought this way, remember, "All these evils come from inside and defile a person." That's right, the Christian's own leader said that. Watching violent games doesn't make you violent. A violent person wants to play violent war games. A nonviolent person thinks making a game just to have blood spew around is rather stupid (I neither avoid nor seek out such games, I have exactly one game that has gore in it, Castlevania: Lament of Sorrows, and it makes up for the ones that don't), war games have a rather trite and boring premise and/or are a tool the military uses to create recruits, and that shoujo anime characters on stuff like Atelier Iris are so much cuter.
I was making fun of SpecOps: The Line as subversive commentary, really. I don't think it' as intellectual or profound as I've seen so many claim. But I guess to comment on violence in games in general... It shouldn't be that shocking or impressive to note that a lot of video games are violent? In general, most are terrible at communicating the realities of violence/war or even just mortality. Much like Liberty, I don't really care when they're not trying to.
You can learn more from books or movies - even the animes - about things like "war is harsh and damages both civilians and soldiers alike" better than what SpecOps (or most games that try) communicates.
You can learn more from books or movies - even the animes - about things like "war is harsh and damages both civilians and soldiers alike" better than what SpecOps (or most games that try) communicates.
Runekn
0
I can't think of many games that can take a no-killing view and make it usable. Metal Gear sort of does that with non-lethal weapons and higher ranks for not slaughtering people. Heck, the recent games with Big Boss lets you recruit enemy soldiers, so offing everyone is bad in the long run.
Iji had something like that too, although I never finished that.
Iji had something like that too, although I never finished that.
That's why I like games like Fallout, you can almost virtually kill NO ONE and still beat the game. Even if the emphasis is a FPS(like Fallout 3)
Shinan
4314
author=PentagonBuddy
You can learn more from books or movies - even the animes - about things like "war is harsh and damages both civilians and soldiers alike" better than what SpecOps (or most games that try) communicates.
Still though it's not like games shouldn't try. It's a pretty new medium in the end and a game like Spec Ops is a step in the right direction. Sure it's not insanely profound or anything but at least it shows that the desire exists to make something like this.
Still the tangentially related video I posted was about how sometimes that huge amount of violence can sort of detract from the game experience because it is not at all related to what the game is about. I bet Spec Ops falls into the same trap. Because although it apparently is all about the futility of war and whatnot in the end what you're doing in the game is shooting hundreds and hundreds of mooks. And no matter how profound someone tries to make that it's still hundreds and hundreds of mooks.
In any random video game you often kill a hundred times more people than in the most violent of action movies. It is what the gameplay is all about. And the video argues maybe a little bit (that's how I intrepreted it) that maybe games and their stories would be more affecting if the gameplay didn't actively contradict it.
It's the same in (at least the older) jRPGs. You walk around somewhere and suddenly you're killing hundreds and hundreds of wildlife/monsters/whatever and then some cutscene appears where the villain is killing two or three characters and that's supposed to mean something. When you've just emptied the world of wild wolves.
Personally the most ridiculous example of this was probably GTA4 where Bellic is all torn up about killing people in a war in the Balkans and you as a player have been killing people left and right throughout the game. Even if you tried to behave in the wonderfully rendered world you would still have killed at least twenty people before the cutscene appears where Bellic is all torn up over killing one gangster boss.
So the problem isn't really that killing is bad it's just that there's just so much of it. In the video the guy compares Sergio Leone westerns with Red Dead Redemption and how the tense buildup to gunfights in that movie and then compares it to the game (which was obviously inspired) where you are just killing mooks left and right exactly like in all the other games.
Of course I don't know how to fix this. Shooting mechanics are fun and make for great gameplay. But I'd like to see someone tackle fewer and more meaningful violent outbursts. An action game where you kill twenty or so people throughout the game and every encounter is "meaningful" and not thousands like in every corridor you go through in Mass Effect.
100% agree that yeah, games should try. I just don't think there are too many games I can say really communicate the reality of "hey you're killing people/people around you are dying" without having to tack on some kind of "yes, but..." or limiting the discussion to specific moments in games (Off the top of my head, the Sorrow's sequence from MGS3)rather than discussing an overall game. I will try and think of some games when it's not 2am.
Which is fine! I think making a game about that sort of thing wouldn't be fun, and most people expect games to be fun and entertaining.
I feel like I mentioned it elsewhere recently, but if a game wants the player to understand they're killing people... then enemies should act more like people in combat situations and you should have options other than killing them. They could surrender, you could opt for disarming over killing, they could just run away. Things like enemy chatter are good at humanizing enemies, but if in the end all they do is essentially run at you until they die and your default choice is killing them... WELP.
Making enemies act more like people is a much more natural way to communicate the consequences of killing than leaving that kind of info only in the realm of cutscenes.
I think it was Way of the Samurai 3 that had an apologize option for things like unsheathing your sword in inappropriate situations. My memory is fairly shoddy, but I'm pretty sure one of Tom Clancy's games (Might have been Rainbow Six?) had the option to try and get enemies to surrender. I guess a game I think handles death-related matters well is Mizzurna Falls which, to quote that long-ass article is "concerned with the notion of a small town tragedy involving the death (and disappearance) of a young girl". These kinds of things are alternatives to focusing on violence, but I agree that the problem isn't a matter of games being violent. However, I'm looping back into "I could probably think of other examples of stuff when less tired" so I'll edit this later or just write an article or something.
Which is fine! I think making a game about that sort of thing wouldn't be fun, and most people expect games to be fun and entertaining.
I feel like I mentioned it elsewhere recently, but if a game wants the player to understand they're killing people... then enemies should act more like people in combat situations and you should have options other than killing them. They could surrender, you could opt for disarming over killing, they could just run away. Things like enemy chatter are good at humanizing enemies, but if in the end all they do is essentially run at you until they die and your default choice is killing them... WELP.
Making enemies act more like people is a much more natural way to communicate the consequences of killing than leaving that kind of info only in the realm of cutscenes.
I think it was Way of the Samurai 3 that had an apologize option for things like unsheathing your sword in inappropriate situations. My memory is fairly shoddy, but I'm pretty sure one of Tom Clancy's games (Might have been Rainbow Six?) had the option to try and get enemies to surrender. I guess a game I think handles death-related matters well is Mizzurna Falls which, to quote that long-ass article is "concerned with the notion of a small town tragedy involving the death (and disappearance) of a young girl". These kinds of things are alternatives to focusing on violence, but I agree that the problem isn't a matter of games being violent. However, I'm looping back into "I could probably think of other examples of stuff when less tired" so I'll edit this later or just write an article or something.
Shinan
4314
I have to admit that The Walking Dead dealt fairly well with death. Since it was an adventure game where you the gameplay didn't facilitate random shooting. Instead it was mostly choice driven when to kill and when not to. And even killing the zombies was often very dirty work (for example the second zombie you meet in the game that takes five whacks with a hammer before it goes down).
I think that games that abstract the killing part of it tend to be "better" at this kind of commentary. I'm thinking of a game like DEFCON where you are killing millions and millions of people (if you are doing it right) and it's not like it's deep commentary or anything but it does have that slight feeling of "oh".
Of course these are not shooters and while shooters are fun they have a lot of the disconnect between gameplay and the story they are trying to tell. I've not played Bioshock Infinite yet but I imagine that while a lot of people talk about the wonderful worldbuilding and the themes and story it tells I have this feeling that in the end what you're doing in that game is shooting nameless mooks. And lots of them.
One of the problems with non-lethal takedowns in a lot of games is that they're no different from the lethal ones. In Deus Ex Human Revolution you get almost as many "non-lethal" weapons as lethal ones and they have very little practical difference.
Of course there's some games that are all about the non-lethality. Like SWAT4 where you are commanding a swat unit that tries to take down criminals and since it's semi-randomly generated you never know who is a mook and who is a civilian when you enter a level so you can't just shoot everyone you see. In this game (which is a shooter) the mechanics actually support the story and it also does not try to throw some heavy-handed moral message into it. But yeah I'm also rambling.
I guess it has something to do with the apparent realism of games nowadays. Especially with the big subgenre now of military shooters where things are exploding and people are pretending like everything matters. Yet by the end of any one level you've killed more people than most battlefield soldiers have done in their entire careers. Or something.
I think that games that abstract the killing part of it tend to be "better" at this kind of commentary. I'm thinking of a game like DEFCON where you are killing millions and millions of people (if you are doing it right) and it's not like it's deep commentary or anything but it does have that slight feeling of "oh".
Of course these are not shooters and while shooters are fun they have a lot of the disconnect between gameplay and the story they are trying to tell. I've not played Bioshock Infinite yet but I imagine that while a lot of people talk about the wonderful worldbuilding and the themes and story it tells I have this feeling that in the end what you're doing in that game is shooting nameless mooks. And lots of them.
One of the problems with non-lethal takedowns in a lot of games is that they're no different from the lethal ones. In Deus Ex Human Revolution you get almost as many "non-lethal" weapons as lethal ones and they have very little practical difference.
Of course there's some games that are all about the non-lethality. Like SWAT4 where you are commanding a swat unit that tries to take down criminals and since it's semi-randomly generated you never know who is a mook and who is a civilian when you enter a level so you can't just shoot everyone you see. In this game (which is a shooter) the mechanics actually support the story and it also does not try to throw some heavy-handed moral message into it. But yeah I'm also rambling.
I guess it has something to do with the apparent realism of games nowadays. Especially with the big subgenre now of military shooters where things are exploding and people are pretending like everything matters. Yet by the end of any one level you've killed more people than most battlefield soldiers have done in their entire careers. Or something.
I like it when games go the extra mile to make it clear that you're killing people and it's not cool. Everyone once in a while in Skyrim someone will go to their knees in battle and beg for mercy, and I can never bring myself to finish off someone begging for their life. Of course, then they just get back and keep fighting and I have to kill them anyway.
A better example might be in Langrisser 4, which is strategy RPG where you kill many thousands of enemies over the course of the game. But whenever you kill an enemy officer they'll usually lament their fate, wish they could see their families again, or talk about how much they love their country or respect their general or something to that effect. These aren't generic randomized lines either, every single enemy in the game has a unique one. It really humanizes your enemies, and does a really good job of making you feel like a prick whenever you kill someone.
A better example might be in Langrisser 4, which is strategy RPG where you kill many thousands of enemies over the course of the game. But whenever you kill an enemy officer they'll usually lament their fate, wish they could see their families again, or talk about how much they love their country or respect their general or something to that effect. These aren't generic randomized lines either, every single enemy in the game has a unique one. It really humanizes your enemies, and does a really good job of making you feel like a prick whenever you kill someone.
Darken
3952
Spec Ops: The Line is a bold, daring new title that teaches us all a valuable life lesson
Yet it's still another dumb shooter. I never understood the cult reception of that game but I guess everyone "get's it" when it comes to the story so it's in personal GOTYs everywhere. Metal Gear Solid communicates the vietnam era "war is bad" much better. Spec Ops just seems too late for the party. I realize the quote is facetious but people actually do think this.
It has nice art direction though. Maybe people were glad they weren't seeing brown for once.
Thief gives you a game over if you kill someone as I remember. Vanquish (a much more fun shooter) has you kill zero people interestingly, but all your allies are human.
In Live a Live (an RPG hey relevance) you can go through the entire Ninja chapter without killing anyone (you have to fight a demon boss which I think doesn't count). This means you're extremely under leveled and you don't get a great reward. The most you can possibly kill is 100 people (which requires bullshit NES secret knowledge) There's a part where you have to not kill any of the women in a certain room. Then later on you get rewarded by the head mistress or w/e for not killing them, but you kill her to get a kill you couldn't get before, and then kill the other women anyway. When fighting weak old rich people they spam a "Bribe" skill in the middle of battle.
I think my favorite aspect of killing people is Splinter Cell. In some missions you are not allowed to kill the "evil dictator" because although it makes sense in an action hero movie, killing an important figurehead outright would spark incidents especially if you are discovered. This makes the stealth elements much more stronger as the barrel of a gun is weaker than pictures of Sam Fisher in newspaper headlines the next day. Blacklist seems to have a lot more wub wub triple headshot slow mo kills though.
This topic interests me because I always do a no kill run in every stealth game I play. Not because I'm a pacifist but I guess it's just more difficult and makes sense that you're not a rambo killing machine if all you have is cigs and a pistol. A shame since MGS1 and 4 has its forced actiony parts.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=PentagonBuddyThis aspect of it is actually a pretty realistic representation of war, though, isn't it? Like a linear video game, the military doesn't give you a choice of what to do, nor does it give you the whole picture. It gives you orders, and you have to do them without necessarily understanding what they mean.
forces you to commit violence you may or may not engage in if you knew the full details
However my knowledge of the military is based on watching movies and NCIS and reading Tom Clancy novels, so maybe it's not like that to the degree I think it is
Here's the problem with trying to make a game "nonviolent." It's not realistic.
This is not to say nonviolence is an unrealistic option, or that the game portrayed it as something other than realistic. I mean literally, unrealistic. So, let's say you make a game that you've taken all the blood and guts from. We could use more violent games that have been censored for kid-friendliness but instead we'll use an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts. Now, granted most of what you're fighting are shadowy constructs, but you're basically whacking them over the head with a giant keyblade. Now, if you've not implications of violence, this is actually worse than the actual act itself, making a sort of pain-free death connection. Think about Earthbound's "became tame" then.
But as I said earlier, it really is the very people who crave violence who are likely to play violent games to begin with. Taking away the outlet just makes them spend more time at the rifle range.
Also, back to Kingdom Hearts. I remembered there are graphic (while also cartoonish) implications of killing heartless. They usually release hearts which darken and disappear, when they are destroyed. It's actually a bit creepy in a cute sort of way.
If you really want to send home the violence is bad message, you have a combat/noncombat pathways, with one making you a notably worse person. More paranoid, etc.
This is not to say nonviolence is an unrealistic option, or that the game portrayed it as something other than realistic. I mean literally, unrealistic. So, let's say you make a game that you've taken all the blood and guts from. We could use more violent games that have been censored for kid-friendliness but instead we'll use an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts. Now, granted most of what you're fighting are shadowy constructs, but you're basically whacking them over the head with a giant keyblade. Now, if you've not implications of violence, this is actually worse than the actual act itself, making a sort of pain-free death connection. Think about Earthbound's "became tame" then.
But as I said earlier, it really is the very people who crave violence who are likely to play violent games to begin with. Taking away the outlet just makes them spend more time at the rifle range.
Also, back to Kingdom Hearts. I remembered there are graphic (while also cartoonish) implications of killing heartless. They usually release hearts which darken and disappear, when they are destroyed. It's actually a bit creepy in a cute sort of way.
If you really want to send home the violence is bad message, you have a combat/noncombat pathways, with one making you a notably worse person. More paranoid, etc.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Well, no, the player is abstaining from violence just fine in real life, you don't need to simulate that possibility, it's already there. "Don't play the game" is always a path choice. The way to teach people that something is bad is to show them the results of it. That's what the army games try to do, as I understand it. They force you to take violent actions, and then they show you the horrible consequences of those actions, and those consequences become greatly amplified if you do things even slightly wrong.
The whole thing is irrelevant for players over the age of ten, though. Presumably anyone playing a game rated M is capable of distinguishing reality from fantasy, and knows that when you hit people over and over with a five foot long steel pole, they're going to explode into goo whether they're shadow monsters or not.
The whole thing is irrelevant for players over the age of ten, though. Presumably anyone playing a game rated M is capable of distinguishing reality from fantasy, and knows that when you hit people over and over with a five foot long steel pole, they're going to explode into goo whether they're shadow monsters or not.
