Just over 10 years ago, the edge in emotive, immersive and cinematic game design was the FMV (full-motion video) game. Constructing its complicated gameplay sequences out of live-action footage, these movie/game hybrids had a distinct advantage over their pixellated peers: They looked fantastic because their visuals were sourced from the real world. Things have changed.
The obvious pitfall of this type of game -- completely static, restrictive, and linear gameplay thanks to expensive, prerecorded footage -- is now anathema. Gamers want to make their own choices about how to interact with their virtual worlds.
EMERGENT STRATEGIES
Ken Levine, president of Irrational Games, has been working to meet the needs of gamers since 1999, when it released System Shock 2 (SS2). This game is the prime example of what Levine calls "emergent gameplay" -- very little is pre-scripted, most parts of the game can play out in any order, and players are free to come up with their own strategies for dealing with enemies and obstacles.
It's an immensely satisfying format, because players feels as though their choices matter. Irrational is now hard at work on BioShock, SS2's "spiritual successor."
"The problem when you build emergent spaces," Levine said, "is that the amount of testing and rebuilding is much higher, because areas have to be applicable to a lot of different scenarios. If you look at a game like Half-Life 2 or Call of Duty, their developers can really custom build scripted areas with no fear that gameplay is going to trickle out of that area. Their AI [artificially intelligent] entities are tethered to specific areas and situations; in a game like BioShock, AIs will wander around and follow you around."
He sees emergence as worth the effort, though, because it increases the audience's involvement with his games.
"I think if you look at even the least participatory art forms there's the notion of vicariousness. When you see [the film] Goodfellas, you sort of walk out feeling like you're in that world. You watch a romance, and if it works, you feel that kind of giddiness you feel in a real romantic situation," he said.
"And videogames just take that further, because you have more participation," he said.
Indeed, one of videogaming's greatest strengths is its ability to construct "moral playgrounds" -- safe arenas in which people can explore different philosophies, principles and personalities. This has, however, also attracted most of the criticism and controversy surrounding the games industry in recent years.
In videogames such as the Grand Theft Auto series, players can pretty much do whatever they want -- they can play through the game's storyline as ethically as possible, or go on a mass killing spree.
The question is, though, how much is too much? Are games in which mass murder is possible and allowed harmful? By allowing for (and simulating) destructive behaviors in their games, are developers thus endorsing those behaviors? These questions are extremely important when considering something like Running With Scissors' ultra-crass and (let's be honest) ultra-juvenile Postal 2 (2003).
Featuring racist epithets, opportunities for "upskirt" glimpses with almost all female characters -- albeit accessible only once you've bludgeoned, shot or otherwise fatally disfigured them -- and spectacularly stupid violence, Postal 2 was designed, arguably, to excite the wrath of the moral majority. In Australia, it is illegal even to own a copy.
That said, as Mike Jaret, designer on the upcoming Postal 3, said: "You could decide how violent you wanted to be in any given situation. None of the missions required killing anyone for completion; therefore, it is possible to make it through Postal 2 without killing or firing at anyone."
"It's not easy to do, but it is actually possible to complete all the missions with nonlethal force. Free will [is the central design philosophy behind the Postal games]. Postal could be considered a test to see how people will react to different situations and also give them the opportunity to see how they would react in a situation that they may never be involved in," Jaret said.
open-ended
"Postal is also intended to be an open-ended, sandbox-style game where you can do a ton of other things besides playing the missions," he said.
Levine is not a fan of gameplay that's explicitly intended to shock and offend.
"There are certain topics that are so repulsive that they only belong in works of art designed solely to repulse," he said.
But one part of BioShock's gameplay could be considered disturbing. Throughout the game, players need to collect a genetic resource known as "Adam" in order to survive and progress; the easiest way to do this is to harvest it from mutated little girls known as "Little Sisters."
Because of the philosophy behind this facet of the game (and the apparent tastefulness with which it's been presented), Levine would find any uproar about BioShock unwarranted.
"Now, that's not to say videogame developers don't have a responsibility to make a game that deals with moral issues very seriously," he said.
"The exploitation of children is a major theme in our game -- we give the player the choice as to whether they participate in that exploitation, or they go the other way, and try to save those creatures who might still be children. It's appropriately compelling and disturbing."
"The Little Sisters are creatures who've been enslaved in the world that the player's thrust into. In order to survive, the player needs this material; one of his two advisers -- his companion -- advises him to harvest it from the Little Sisters, saying `They're not really children any more,' and if the player refuses, he, the adviser, and the adviser's family will eventually die," he said.
"And then there's another character, who said, `No, you have to rescue them -- they're still children. I'll reward you in some way if you do this.' So players have to choose: do they try to rescue the Little Sisters and turn them back into children, and risk their and their friends' lives in the process, or do they harvest the material -- knowing the Little Sisters won't survive it -- for an immediate reward?" he said.
BioShock manages to deal with the subject matter without being particularly graphic. Still, even if the game doesn't have the power to reinforce one's inner pragmatist or humanist, it certainly has the potential to reveal them.
Levine concedes that in testing, most people stuck with a certain approach -- harvest or rescue -- throughout their time with the game, but he thinks this is mainly a result of role-playing, as all the players he saw taking the less morally tenable route were "perfectly nice" outside the game.
AFFECTING BEHAVIOR
"And I'm not a scientist, but there isn't a lot of data out there to support the notion that games affect behavior in any significant way. I don't want to be put in a ghetto in regards to what I can do with my games, while other entertainment media can do what they want," Levine said.
Jaret concurs.
"That is definitely the case nowadays. The latest example of this is the new Die Hard movie. The trailer makes it look extremely violent, with lots of explosions and people getting shot. It has only received a PG-13 rating by the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America], while a game like Postal gets an M rating by the ESRB [Entertainment Software Rating Board]," he said.
"I would imagine Die Hard 4 received a PG-13 rating because it doesn't cuss that much, as you can have light cussing in a PG-13 movie. Postal 2 hardly had any curse words and lots of action/violence and received the highest non-adult rating possible."
But will Bruce Willis torch a marching band, urinate on their corpses and watch in amusement as passers-by vomit as "Postal Dude" does in Postal?
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