Gralian said:
remnant_phoenix said:
This is my exact feeling toward modern military shooters in general.
When I play a game, I have the opportunity to go into a virtual world and experience something that isn't possible in the real world.
Of all the creative and fantastical video game worlds out there, why would I want to go into a world that is almost identical to my own, except terrorism is even more dangerous and I'm a special ops soldier action hero wielding normal modern weapons (Modern Warfare 2) when I could explored a stylized steampunk dystopia where I wield an electro-shotgun in one hand and shoot fire out of the other hand (Bioshock)?
Don't get me wrong. If you like the more "modern realism" approach, I'm not judging you. If that's you're thing, cool. It's just not my thing. I understand that everyone has different tastes.
What I DON'T understand is why the "modern military shooter" genre seems to be so incredibly appealing that CoD breaks sales records yearly... and Black Ops is the ONLY video game I EVER hear my secondary students talk about... and said students think I'm some kind of freak because I love video games but I have no interest in Black Ops.
Three words: Male Power Fantasy.
When you shoot someone dead, you are exerting power over them. Having a high k/d ratio makes you feel powerful. Dominant. Being the biggest badass on a scoreboard is all about power. Killing someone before they kill you is about effectively making them "your *****". Even in the military culture portrayed, glorified and somewhat satirised in the game itself demonstrates male power fantasy. The machismo surrounding the characters is unquestionable and that mentality is carried over into multiplayer. Before you say not everyone who plays COD are men, i will counter that by saying male power fantasy does not apply exclusively to men. It also affects women. Evidence for this comes from filmography. When a woman picks up a gun or other weapon, it is a symbol of male power. Women are able to experience and desire the male power fantasy just as much as men. The term simply comes from male culture being often surrounded in competition and struggle for domination among peers. Power is a means to attain esteem. Hence male power fantasy.
While your point about modern military shooters being mundane is very valid, i will say this. I love all kinds of video games, from COD to Bioshock to MMOs and to point and click adventure. But there is one thing that can bug me about 'fantastical' shooters. It can break immersion when the world is so dreadfully inconsistent. Example being Bioshock. When i shoot someone in the face with a 12-gauge, i expect them to drop down like a sack of potatoes. Instead in bioshock i see a health bar pop up and they keep running at me. When i make an explosion or empty 50 machine gun rounds into a person, i expect them to be dead. Not the case in Bioshock. This also carries over to the super powers you get like incineration and electrocution. That kind of thing can feel incredibly disconcerting, frustrating and outright inconsistent. The world is weird and wonderful, but the mechanics are not for everyone. In COD, one good shot, or one very broad shot from a shotgun will kill someone. When an explosion goes off, someone near it is going to die. The world behaves and reacts in realistic ways which in turn do not ruin the immersion and experience. This helps to maintain the world as believable. I know you are meant to suspend disbelief for the fantastic in a world like Bioshock's, but suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
Finally i'd like to say that your secondary students are young adults and teenagers and glorification of male power fantasy will likely be a very big part of their culture until they enter their tweens.
Excellent points. I understand the power fantasy angle, as I'm not exempt from that. I just get more power fantasy jolly from shooting lighting out of my hands than wielding an AK-47 with an attached grenade launcher.
I will counter your point about believability and suspension of disbelief. Not for the sake of being argumentative, but to simply continue the discussion.
What bugs me the most about MW2 is that the gameplay was realistic, but the story and cutscenes were not. My suspension of disbelief was hurt when I thought, "No snowmobile, or snowmobile rider for that matter, could make a jump like that unscathed."
I didn't have this problem with World at War's campaign, which I enjoyed thoroughly. And as a history nerd, going through the campaign thinking to myself, "These are things that people ACTUALLY experienced..." was a mind-trip.
I suppose that I place a lot of value in
consistency of setting, whether realistic or unrealistic. You called Bioshock "inconsistent," and while I would agree that it is inconsistent with reality, I'd argue that it is very consistent in terms of its own fiction. It takes multiple shotgun blasts to the face to kill a mutant splicer, yes, but it also takes multiple shotgun blasts to the face to kill you, because, well, you are also a mutant splicer. Mutant splicers can survive attacks that would kill a normal human. Consistency.
In World at War, the gameplay is gritty and realistic and the story it tells is also gritty and realistic. Consistency.
In Modern Warfare 2, the gameplay is gritty realism and the story is popcorn-munching, physics-defying, action flick. The gameplay and story are going in two different directions. I guess this is also why I can't really get into most action movies. The hero break physical laws and can survive just about anything (especially falling damage) as long as he isn't shot in a clear vital area, or hit with a highly damaging weapon. Just like shotgun-blast-to-splicer's-face-in-Bioshock hurts suspension of disbelief for you, this stuff hurts suspension of disbelief for me.
Although, all this stuff wouldn't bother me as much if the MW/MW2/BO/MW3 train wasn't so hyped.
