The RI Clusterfuck Video Game(s) of the Year

[AlanStrangis]

The institute showed gory scenes of sword, gun and knife violence from several video games. A scene from "Assassin's Creed" depicts an attacker plunging a knife into his victim's back several times. A man in "Manhunt 2" taunts a prisoner by urinating into the man's cell. A fallen victim's body is riddled with gunfire as blood spurts across the screen in "The Darkness."

I picked up Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4 as a special promo, and have to say that I found one mission in COD4 the most disturbing moment I've ever had in my gaming history. Much more disturbing than any of the scenes mentioned by the Family Media site.

One mission called "Death From Above" removes the player from the typical first person mode, to the gunner of an Apache helicopter (I think it was). Your POV is the grey-scale night-vision footage we're all familiar with from real life Fallujah mass murders, and the slaughter of the people in the field by the tractor. It's disturbingly realistic, down to the idle banter coming over the radio.

I did a google of the mission and found this gamer forum that already has all the links I was going to google myself.

(warning that the following links are all pretty graphic in a cold emotionless way)

COD4 footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgMc0Xv7mD8

Real http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAcElq1jfy4

Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyTTtNYa5cs

Atrocities http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeE6qoqWTso

I played through the mission, but as a 'good' soldier, I switched down to the 25s to not violate any international laws. (insert MASSIVELY ironic ) Honestly I wanted to hijack the plane while on playing that level, and crash it in a field somewhere.

I'll probably finish the game, but ever since that level, I really can't enjoy it on a certain level. Having to PLAY what feels like propaganda is much more disturbing than just being fed it passively, though now I'll be playing it with a much more critical eye. COD4 is the first 'real world type' military game I bought in a long time, based on the stellar reviews and the cheap price. I don't think I'll ever buy one again. I'll stick with the lone man fighting against corrupt power structure themes of games like Half Life, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed etc.

[FourthBase]

Wow, maybe part of what disturbed you was that if your console had been hooked up via telecommunication to a real thermalvision gunner and you were really killing people (who were running away for god knows what reason), you might not have been able to tell the difference. That's some serious virtualization there. Brought to you by the DoD, right?

I'll stick with the lone man fighting against corrupt power structure themes of games like Half Life, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed etc.

Those villainous premises are flimsy though, e.g., GTA is only supposed to be about killing other armed "bad guys" and occasionally carjacking an innocent bystander, and in the rampages you'll be asked to kill like 50 temporarily created bad guys but they're really just standing around like civilians and civilians were in their place moments before. Not even mentioning the open format ability to forgo the mission game play altogether and just go around on mayhem and killing sprees. One of the more "natural" tendencies during GTA (and probably many a open platform FPS) downtime is to play the part of Charles Joseph Whitman. It's not like those kill-them-all scenarios weren't imaginable/daydreamable before GTA. But I think there's a huge gap in lasting psychological impact between this:



and this:



Speaking of GTA rampages...
I specifically remember there being mall rampages.

Details released from Omaha mall rampage
Victims identified, teen apparently hid rifle in sweat shirt

[cc]

I was going to start a new thread, but I'll stick this here if no one minds:

I've mentioned that I've been playing a first-person shooter game lately. Well, this morning I was dreaming I was "in the game." And it wasn't chunks of actual game play or the animated images, either. I had become a fully fleshed character in a material world; a physical game world with real flesh and fire and guns (in this case, laser-rifles).

I half awoke into a hypnogogic state, and as I opened my eyes, one of the characters I had been shooting at was standing right there in my room. He was holding a grenade, ready to launch it at me, and he was saying "Oh really? Oh really?"

As I awoke a little further, I noticed his shape blurring around the edges. It was like his form was destabilizing. I actually willed him to disappear by saying out loud "poof" and he was gone. Standing where this fully realized dream figure had been in my room a moment ago was a lamp.

I enjoy dreaming like this.



The Assassin's Creed looks like a fabulous game. I think the main person behind it is a woman. If one looks at video games as immersive fiction, some of the problems of interpreting them go away.

And yes, Left Behind is disgusting. LaHaye was indeed an occult astrologer before he ingratiated himself with Christians.

i remember very vividly when Doom first dropped. i'd played wolfenstien 3d prior to that and loved it, but doom was the most immersive and striking game i'd ever seen. my friends felt the same way. we immeadiately played through the game, and then just played it again and again. it wasn't even the accomplishment of passing levels, it was just walking into hairy situations and shooting our way out like a movie. i was in the 7th grade. we would stay up late, reading comic books and lad magazines, listening to the angry teenaged musics of the day, watching mtv, and casually shooting monsters - yes all at once. it wasn't long before we were seeing that sprite rendered handgun in our sleep. i guess in many ways we were very average teenaged boys as our diet of sex and violence was clearly (based on the above description) on super-mega-overload. surprisingly one of us is a film maker, another is an artist in sanfran (and vegan), and then there's myself.

i've actually talked to a lot of people who have dreams of the games they're playing.

edit: i also remember when the original grand theft auto dropped. when it was a bird's eye view and everything was just dinky little sprites. that was another one that was played aimlessly for hours with friends (to say nothing of the GTA 3 when it became a "3d" enviroment), almost always abandoning missions in favor of random murder. maybe i have some issues to sort out...

[AlanStrangis]

Wow, maybe part of what disturbed you was that if your console had been hooked up via telecommunication to a real thermalvision gunner and you were really killing people (who were running away for god knows what reason), you might not have been able to tell the difference. That's some serious virtualization there. Brought to you by the DoD, right?

Yep... Ender's Game brought to you by Xbox Live.

As for the GTA series, though I started a couple of them (Vice City and III), I never found them appealing either. It's not that I don't enjoy sandbox games, but the premise of being a thug, fighting other thugs and beating up hookers for money is just unappealing.

Take a game like Crackdown for the Xbox. It's a sandbox game where you play a super cop cleaning up the city (and it's level up system is really good). I thoroughly enjoyed it, and although I didn't know in advance, it's theme was like that of Half Life or Bioshock... the people in power are not who you think they are...

Crackdown Spoiler.

Once the Agent has successfully defeated the kingpin of all three gangs, it is revealed in a cut-scene that the primary goal of The Agency was not, in fact, to restore law and order to Pacific City, but to control it themselves, as stated by the Agency Director:
“ Who do you think supplied Los Muertos? Who do you think turned a blind eye to the Volk's activities? Who do you think was Shai Gen's biggest supporter? Who do you think ran organized law... And ran it into the ground? The people had to experience first hand absolute anarchy before they would accept unconditional control. You are the portent of a new world order, Agent. Pacific City was only the beginning. ”

While this is said, security camera footage is shown of the Agency supplying weapons to the Los Muertos, a Volk Scud launcher driving through the Keep, and aiding Shai-Gen. It was the Agency's plan all along to create utter chaos in which the Agency would be requested to help bring down the gangs and earn the silent, unrelenting obedience of the populace. The final voice over suggests that the Agency plans to replicate this same approach in other cities as well.

From the wikipedia entry.

A LOT of very successful games seem to have the "you're being duped by The Man" theme in them. I'm still undecided as to whether in general it's the opinion of the game makers, or conditioning gamers to think that this kind of theme is nothing but fiction (a la X-Files). I lean towards the former given a couple of former game developers I know who share similar opinions as the majority of RI readers when it comes to parapolitics and corrupt gov'ts, but can't help but wonder if there's a net effect of complacency (if any effect at all).

[IanEye]

When I was young there was a game called “Choplifter” which was loosely based on the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The object of the game was to fly around the desert in your helicopter until you came across a US Embassy, blow a hole in the Embassy, land and board the hostages, then fly them back to a safe location. Each level of the game was essentially the same mission but it got harder and harder, more things shooting at you etc.

As a kid who didn’t have many quarters, my priority for a “fun” videogame was a game that I could play for quite a while before I died and had to feed it it more quarters. I could only get to about level four on Choplifter and then I would die.

Then I discovered an interesting aspect of the game. I could fly around, find an Embassy, blow a hole in it, land and wait for the hostages to come running to my chopper. Then if I shot all of the hostages as they came running toward me, I wouldn’t die and I also wouldn’t progress to a harder level. Thus, I could play a really long time at level three and get more “bang for my buck”. I always thought that was a really strange “lesson” to teach in a video game…..




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choplifter

[King_Mob]

I've mentioned that I've been playing a first-person shooter game lately. Well, this morning I was dreaming I was "in the game." And it wasn't chunks of actual game play or the animated images, either. I had become a fully fleshed character in a material world; a physical game world with real flesh and fire and guns (in this case, laser-rifles).

I half awoke into a hypnogogic state, and as I opened my eyes, one of the characters I had been shooting at was standing right there in my room. He was holding a grenade, ready to launch it at me, and he was saying "Oh really? Oh really?"

As I awoke a little further, I noticed his shape blurring around the edges. It was like his form was destabilizing. I actually willed him to disappear by saying out loud "poof" and he was gone. Standing where this fully realized dream figure had been in my room a moment ago was a lamp.

I enjoy dreaming like this.

Funny you should mention this, because I also find it hard to shake the FPS games (Halo 3) from my mind, and often after waking from a dream that I know involves me slaugtering people, I can actually see little blue weapon icons for a brief moment in my field of vision, just like in the game... It's been happening to me the more I play the game, and sometimes when I'm awake too.

I also played Call of Duty 4, and I have to say, it is the most disturbingly realistic game I have ever played. This is without a doubt, blantant jingoistic violence conditioning for the minds of the well-to-do youths in North America and Europe. For example, the more you progress in the game, the more you gain access to better weapons, and they are real guns such as the M-16, MP5, and P90, and you can win extras for them such as laser scopes and silencers. Personally, I am confident that such realism does desensitize me to violence, and even persuades me that it is fun to kill people. It would be interesting to know how much training these simulations actually provide us with... My guess is that the average online FPS gamer would probably be a slightly more competent killer in real life, compared to those who don't slaughter virtual adversaries for kicks.

Oh yeah, and I also got to check out the Assassin's Creed game, and I was amazed by the graphics and gameplay. I think thats it's very interesting how the storyline involves assassinating members of the Knights Templars... Also, i find the logo for the game strikingly similar to the masonic compass:

[KeenInsight]

The institute showed gory scenes of sword, gun and knife violence from several video games. A scene from "Assassin's Creed" depicts an attacker plunging a knife into his victim's back several times. A man in "Manhunt 2" taunts a prisoner by urinating into the man's cell. A fallen victim's body is riddled with gunfire as blood spurts across the screen in "The Darkness."

I picked up Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4 as a special promo, and have to say that I found one mission in COD4 the most disturbing moment I've ever had in my gaming history. Much more disturbing than any of the scenes mentioned by the Family Media site.

One mission called "Death From Above" removes the player from the typical first person mode, to the gunner of an Apache helicopter (I think it was). Your POV is the grey-scale night-vision footage we're all familiar with from real life Fallujah mass murders, and the slaughter of the people in the field by the tractor. It's disturbingly realistic, down to the idle banter coming over the radio.

I did a google of the mission and found this gamer forum that already has all the links I was going to google myself.

(warning that the following links are all pretty graphic in a cold emotionless way)

COD4 footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgMc0Xv7mD8

Real http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAcElq1jfy4

Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyTTtNYa5cs

Atrocities http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeE6qoqWTso

I played through the mission, but as a 'good' soldier, I switched down to the 25s to not violate any international laws. (insert MASSIVELY ironic ) Honestly I wanted to hijack the plane while on playing that level, and crash it in a field somewhere.

I'll probably finish the game, but ever since that level, I really can't enjoy it on a certain level. Having to PLAY what feels like propaganda is much more disturbing than just being fed it passively, though now I'll be playing it with a much more critical eye. COD4 is the first 'real world type' military game I bought in a long time, based on the stellar reviews and the cheap price. I don't think I'll ever buy one again. I'll stick with the lone man fighting against corrupt power structure themes of games like Half Life, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed etc.

That's why I definitely won't be buying CoD4. I knew from the get go that it would be that way. And obviously there are plenty of people who think modern war (or any for that matter) is/are 'cool.' Well, it's not. On a gamey level, CoD games are one-sided and linear, and they haven't changed.

I definitely agree with your statement and sticking to the games with more substance. Half-Life was great back and the day. Half-Life 2 is simply epic. Deus Ex is one of my favorites (It has been confirmed they are now making a 3rd Deus Ex). Bioshock is also the spiritual successor to System Shock.

And for those that don't know, Assassin's Creed has many elements that will catch your attention. The game doesn't actually take place in the past, because you are "playing" recalled memories from the main character in 2012. You play as an ancestor of this individual, and this ancestor is a Muslim Assassin and a member of the Hashshashin. That's right, you get to play as a Middle Eastern Muslim going against Christian Crusaders. These memories are shown, because it becomes obvious in the story that there is a conspiracy stretching from the Crusades to the Modern Age. However, for a game to work the mechanics need function. The story may be intriguing, but the gameplay itself can be problematic and does not deliver on the promises that were given (an issue with developers vs. publisher deadlines).

[FourthBase]

If you want to discuss the effect or non-effect of violent video games on those who play them, this is probably a better place than that ThirdArmy thread. It is staggering that you would deny some kind of minimal but still significant and lingering effect that a game like Call of Duty or that recent mental asylum game would have on, say, the average 13-year-old boy's mind. (And please don't come back at me with a simple either/or misrepresentation of what I just said, about how I'm saying video games turn children into killers or whatever, when that's not what I'm saying.)

[orz]

My guess is that the average online FPS gamer would probably be a slightly more competent killer in real life, compared to those who don't slaughter virtual adversaries for kicks.

Mentally maybe, but physically... not so much.

[FourthBase]

My guess is that the average online FPS gamer would probably be a slightly more competent killer in real life, compared to those who don't slaughter virtual adversaries for kicks.

Mentally maybe, but physically... not so much.

My guess would have been phrased this way: The average antisocial teenage boy who happens to be a FPS gamer would probably be a slightly more competent (and slightly more willing) killer in real life, compared to the average antisocial teenage boy who doesn't happen to be a FPS gamer.

[theeKultleeder]

My guess would have been phrased this way: The average antisocial teenage boy who happens to be a FPS gamer would probably be a slightly more competent (and slightly more willing) killer in real life, compared to the average antisocial teenage boy who doesn't happen to be a FPS gamer.

How about boys who hunt - you know, shoot dead real living things with real guns?

[FourthBase]

My guess would have been phrased this way: The average antisocial teenage boy who happens to be a FPS gamer would probably be a slightly more competent (and slightly more willing) killer in real life, compared to the average antisocial teenage boy who doesn't happen to be a FPS gamer.

How about boys who hunt - you know, shoot dead real living things with real guns?

Yep, that would be the ultimate in perparation.
Since preparation doesn't get any realer than the real thing.
(They're just carbon-based automatons, anyway )
I would guess the ratio of experience:tendency is a lot higher for hunting.
That doesn't negate the far less influential effect of FPS video games.

[theeKultleeder]

(They're just carbon-based automatons, anyway )

What does this mean? You're confusing me.

[FourthBase]

I was bemoaning the hideous human indifference to animal slaughter.

[theeKultleeder]

I was bemoaning the hideous human indifference to animal slaughter.

Hard to do it without hypocrisy unless you are a vegetarian. I know - I'm a meat eater and seeing slaughterhouse footage and stuff makes me sick to my stomach...