Do Game Developers Hate Us Players?

[Darth_Payn]

I've finally hit 1000 posts, so I think it's about time I started a topic and I want to be important, so here goes. DO Game Developers hate us? I don't mean Publishers, when they nickel and dime us to allow us to play their products, so they at least like our money. I mean the developers, the ones who make the games and make them call us assholes and monsters for playing them how they were designed. The most critically praised titles in recent months (Spec Ops: The Line, The Last of Us, GTA V) have you do horrible things to progress and calls you a bastard for it. When did this start? Why are they doing it?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

They're just playing around with morally ambiguous narratives. It's a sign that storytelling in gaming is passing from adolescence into an awkward puberty. Authors and film directors have done it for years (or centuries, in the case of the former), and I'm fairly certain that authors and film directors don't "hate" you.

Well, except Uwe Boll.

 

[Itchi_da_killa]

I think like music and movies, there are some games that have a director or writer(s) who want to make profound statements or some social commentary through a game. It kind of makes sense if your trying to reach a lot of people because a lot of people play video games. I really don't think games are a proper place for such dialogue though, because games are meant to be fun and challenging activities for your brain. Some people like that though. I had a friend who became teary eyed during the air port mission in Modern Warfare 2. I understood the statement but I just had fun with it. I would never shoot innocent people in real life but I had a blast with it (no pun intended) in MW2.

 

[senordesol]

No. They don't hate Players. More than likely: they're probably frustrated with the mechanics and themes they're being forced to push over and over again, and want to put a new spin on it. For years the Player has been the 'hero' no matter what he did, and questioning such a notion as the medium matures is simply a natural progression.

The reason TLoU and SOtL are praised is because they don't 'speak' to us in the same pandering way CoD does. They dare us to think about what we're doing and question: that even though we are acting 'as designed' does it still make it 'right'? Take a look at Bioshock: in general, I found it a rather ho-hum shooter even for its time, but the hook was getting the Player to consider why he performed the actions he did throughout the game (i.e. because someone told you to).

The fact that these games stick out to you is proof enough that this technique is somewhat effective; they made you feel uncomfortable and caused you to question the motivations behind the design and narrative decisions. You'll remember the story of The Last of Us a lot longer than you will Call of Duty: Oh God Make it End.

 

[XMark]

I think they're just playing with user expectations of a traditional game narrative.

It's one of the variety of ways game developers get around the increasingly visible problem of Ludonarrative Dissonance - just point it out to the player, and blame them for it

 

[EternallyBored]

I think your examples may be a little off, the only game you listed that actually tries to talk to the player directly is Spec Ops, the other 2 use their characters to either tell the story, or to satirize society in general (or just for the laughs).

In The Last of Us, Joel does terrible things because he lives in a terrible world, and has been traumatized by it. The game makes you do those terrible things to help you build understanding of who Joel is as a character, and eventually you sympathize with him, he's a man who is forced into terrible situations and numbs himself to the brutality because the only other option is death. The ending is open to interpretation, but even if you see him as a bad guy for it, he's not that way out of some hatred the developers have for their players, he's that way because the developers want to tell you a story about a broken man looking for even a little redemption or reason after the end of the world.

GTA uses its evil protagonists to satirize American society, L.A. and California, and just modern society in general. The GTA series has always featured remorseless characters, and the developers play to this. They want to give you protagonists that are evil, but entertaining, you realize these are the bad guys but you still want to play their story just to see what kind of shenanigans they get up to, while the game uses exaggerations, stereotypes and satire to bring comedy to an otherwise dark story. Without the comedy, the GTA protagonists would be much harder for many players to play, probably part of the reason when they did Red Dead Redemption, they made John Marston a much more sympathetic character, conversely Niko Bellic gets criticized because his somber story sometimes doesn't mesh well with the over-the-top GTA world.

Even in Spec Ops, I don't think they are trying to shame the player, so much as trying to present a meta-narrative that wants the player to step back and realize that the American violence glorifying shooter game is kind of screwed up when you think about it. Admittedly, despite Spec Ops attempts, the emotional manipulation hinges on investing the player in his actions, when that fails, the impact of the story is lost and it just starts to look pretentious rather than moving. It's also kind of ironic that people compare its story to shaming players of Call of Duty, when CoD is actually fairly critical of America, and is a lot more pro-British than pro-American.

 

[sageoftruth]

Depends on their experiences with us I think. Some of them despise us I'm sure. I know Phil Fish hates our gust, but I doubt that they all have a uniform opinion of us.