OH GOD, THE ANTI GAMES PEOPLE WERE RIGHT!

[Kahunaburger]

Or to be edgy. I dunno. Presumably that's what they assume the target audience of teenage males* will find edgy, and 'dark' and 'mature' and all those other buzz words that are so often grossly misused.

I've definitely seen this. There's someone on this forum (I forget who) who unironically believes that CoD4 is a landmark in vidya gaem storytelling because a controllable character gets nuked.

 

[Muspelheim]

The only one that bothered me was "No Russian."

In retrospect I'm not entirely sure why. I've done my share of casual bystander slaughter in the GTA games. I enjoyed Prototype, a game where you slaughter civilians almost literally every time you walk down the street. I think what bothered me about MW2 was how blatantly cynical it was - there's no reason for it to exist other than for shock value and lulz.

Or to be edgy. I dunno. Presumably that's what they assume the target audience of teenage males* will find edgy, and 'dark' and 'mature' and all those other buzz words that are so often grossly misused.

[sub]*With apologies to any teenage males reading this. I know it's a stereotype, but it's a stereotype Activsion play to.[/sub]

It's not character development for the protagonist - since his character doesn't develop any further. It's not a moral dilemma - since the option to shoot your 'friends' is artificially blocked. It's not even shock/gore or 'realism' - since your targets just fall over when, let's be blunt, firing a gun that size, that calibre, at close range against unarmoured targets should leave you ankle deep in entrails.

I guess it was there to grab headlines, and it certainly succeeded at that, but it's irresponsible for Activision to use one of the biggest selling gaming franchises in the world to provoke a negative media reaction in the name of publicity.

True, I had forgotten about that... In a way, I can understand what they were going with, and it was interesting to (sort of) see the perspective of the baddies, while also taking the role of the ultimate modern villain we have in this day and age; the merciless terrorist. But it fell completly flat the moment the game expected me to feel enraged when the Russians did the same thing, creating a silent statement of "Well, those were foreigners, they're less valuable", which really got under my skin.

A game where you're the terrorist could be interesting, -if- it was handled with exceptional care. As a terrorist character, you would be faced with some very important choices, as well as being forced to question yourself and your actions. But there's a difference between that and just gunning down civilians because the game thinks it needs a shocking moment.

I've definitely seen this. There's someone on this forum (I forget who) who unironically believes that CoD4 is a landmark in vidya gaem storytelling because a controllable character gets nuked.

I can sort of see what they mean, however. It's fairly rare that you, the player, is in a position where you can't win, where you are as powerless as you are in that scene, with really no options but "Where to stumble before I collapse and die?". I certainly didn't see it coming, myself. But it's not exactly a landmark in video game history, just an interesting scene that they then decided to abuse the hell out of in the sequels.

I mean... How on earth do you miss the point that much, CoD-devs?

I remember when I first played that game, really well done feature. Its not usual for a game to make the player understand (even if just a little bit) the horror of the real thing. Movies manage to do it better though.

It was a very interesting feature, I think. Made things feel a bit more human. I got shot once, and the character laid down and whimpered for help (which never arrived). It really established that my character wasn't some sort of fridgeman who, if there were more bullets than it could absorb and couldn't find a desk to hide behind, would just respawn and take it from where it left off.

Ach, poor Boris, I hardly knew ye...

 

[josemlopes]

After having played Red Orchestra 2 in the free weekend I understand why some non-gamers look at it and get a bit freaked out. Fiddle around with the language option and all of a sudden your Russian soldier screams for his mother when he gets shot. A good bit too heavy for me.

None the less, it's no reason to ban the game.

I remember when I first played that game, really well done feature. Its not usual for a game to make the player understand (even if just a little bit) the horror of the real thing. Movies manage to do it better though.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Yeah, it was a pretty fucked up bit. The thing is though, the first time I played through the level I had my TV on mute and tried killing off the twins because of how annoying they were in the beginning. The "you're fucked" like is really messed up but not because Duke said "you're fucked" but how the twins replied, saying "it was our first time with an alien, we promise to lose the weight". It just seemed in poor taste...also, those bitches were already skinny as pencils.

Other than that I've got nothing.

 

[Zhukov]

It's hard to look at, say, the Destructoid forums...

What's wrong with the Destructoid forums?

(Never been there, just curious.)

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

It depends on your view of videogames, should games be able to touch on subjects that books and films have free reign to? if you support this then they have every right to depict that type of scene, of course it doesn't mean you have to like it.

Going back to the No Russian scene it was a tasteless scene to provoke controversy just as the bomb scene in MW3 was. In these situations I think developers should self-censor instead of promoting the view it's ok to be an insensitive... person to sell copies.

 

[Lilani]

Mine came when I heard about the alien hive level in duke nukem forever. When I heard the outrage, I thought "Dumbasses, can't they see it's a simple aliens reference?" After a while of hearing about it, I got curious and looked up a walkthrough on youtube. And it was horrible.

It wasn't that amazingly graphic. They body asplode, then loads of little alien critters pop out, honestly, that's probably the most friendly they could've done an aliens reference visually. But then there's the sound design. Screaming, crying, saying stuff like "I wanna go home" and "how can it already be moving!!?" It's goddamn horrible! How the f*** did the game designers think this could be funny? Was it supposed to be this bad? Was it supposed to be a genuine scary section? Because that's blown away the moment the duke tells two victims "You're f***ed".

In fact, it reminded me of the sound design in dead space 2. People can say what they want about dead space, but I will defend the sound design to the death. The section where you come out of the hospital into a residential area, and you can hear an the screaming of an unimaginable number of people. See, dead space is a game that goes close to the edge at points, but it's okay there, because it's all done to achieve a scary effect, it doesn't imply f***ing rape, and most of all, the audience aren't expected to laugh at it, at all. It's all meant to be scary and even tragic.

Seriously, whoever made that section and thought "Yep, the prolonged torture, rape, and eventual painful death of thousands of innocent women is hilarious!" is sick. And that's coming from me.

I'm sorry, but the whole time reading this I couldn't tell if you were joking or if you were seriously offended. You lost me at "they body asplode," and I remained lost as you had no problem using goddamn but for some reason felt the need to asterisk out fucked (even though you were using the word voluntarily).

 

[Skoldpadda]

There was this guy in Prey, who was going nuts from, you know, the whole being-abducted-by-something-he-couldn't-comprehend-as-a-mere-human-thing. You approach him and your character asks if he needs any help, and this dude just screams and kicks and your character says "Shit. Guess not." I laughed heartily. It was funny. And then there were the screaming babies in The Blair Witch Project and I didn't think it was funny because I was seeing that damn movie in the dark and I couldn't sleep for days afterwards, but it wasn't meant to be so ok.

Whether it's meant to be funny and comes over gross, or it's meant to be horrific and comes over funny, you're not going to scream "Won't somebody think of the children" because that makes you an idiot. It's fiction. Be glad it's fiction.

I'm sorry, OP, but I don't agree with you. Dead Space is meant to be horror. Horror is horrific. The things in Duke Nukem you describe are meant to be funny and they're horrific. I'll grant you that. If you laugh with that, you've got a pretty dark sense of humor (nothing wrong with that per se). So the intended humor is ineffective. But, and this is the important part, it doens't make the anti game people right. Those people will always be wrong. Being anti-game makes them wrong. Not the bad humour of one game that's been widely accepted as designed by dumbasses.

I hope this post was coherent. I'm afraid I'm quite drunk.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

It's the Duke. If it's not offending someone it's not really Duke Nukem.

Duke Nukem (Since Duke 3D) is deliberately crass and aims to offend. The humour is shock value... think South Park, but less savvy with the Satire.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Games are still pretty shallow thematically. Even when it tries to offend or stir up controversy, it's pretty shallow.

Film on the other hand, I've stopped watching certain shows out of pure discomfort. The movie Kids, is something I watched once but can never bring myself to again. There was some movie from a few years ago that was so vile I had to turn it off and leave to get some air.

Games, for me, have never garnered such a visceral reaction.

EDIT: I quoted myself... sorry.

 

[Kahunaburger]

It's hard to look at, say, the Destructoid forums...

What's wrong with the Destructoid forums?

(Never been there, just curious.)

In a nutshell: http://gamersareembarrassing.wordpress.com/category/destructoid/

It's like ground zero for people who like Jim Sterling and "hurr durr go make me a sandwich" jokes.

 

[Gigano]

Well, that doesn't offend me in the least.

And nothing I'll ever see in fiction shall ever offend me a trillionth of any suggestion that it be censored.

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

It's hard to look at, say, the Destructoid forums...

What's wrong with the Destructoid forums?

(Never been there, just curious.)

In a nutshell: http://gamersareembarrassing.wordpress.com/category/destructoid/

It's like ground zero for people who like Jim Sterling and "hurr durr go make me a sandwich" jokes.

There are several sub-communities within Destructoid with the forums probably being the least populated. Please research what you say before you say it.

 

[Vrach]

After having played Red Orchestra 2 in the free weekend I understand why some non-gamers look at it and get a bit freaked out. Fiddle around with the language option and all of a sudden your Russian soldier screams for his mother when he gets shot. A good bit too heavy for me.

None the less, it's no reason to ban the game.

But that's nothing short of a good thing. Displaying the horror, in this case, of war, is not bad, not by any stretch of imagination. I get why people get pissed at something like Postal, being just gratuitous violence with no real artistic goal in the game (none that I can see anyway), but when you're trying to display a situation, anything goes, it's just a matter of whether the viewer can stomach it - but that's the viewer's problem for the most part (exceptions exist ofc).

Anyone whining on games being too graphic, realistic or horrific is just talking out of their arse. You have these exact things in books (being probably the most respected form of art with a narrative) and much worse. Hell, Andric's "A Bridge on the Drina", being a large part of what got him a Nobel prize, features a very descriptive scene of a man being impaled alive, with every gory detail you might imagine.

FYI, that's mandatory high-school reading material here in Serbia - if that was a game, it'd get an adult-only tag, if not be banned outright. I can tell you, after playing games like GTA, Resident Evil, hell, even Postal 2 itself (tried it for shits and giggles), since I was a kid, reading that book at 17 made me go fetal on the couch for a good 15 minutes feeling physically ill.

So all those violence desensitization, violence inspiring articles and studies? Sorry, not buying into them for a second, I've seen and keep seeing way too much empirical proof to the contrary. I also know how, after growing up with games since I was 8, plenty of them being violent, I'm not even close to being desensitized to violence. I'm desensitized to virtual violence partially (though not even completely there), but that's a whole other thing. I squash bugs, it doesn't mean killing human beings is just a stone's throw away.

 

[Kahunaburger]

It's hard to look at, say, the Destructoid forums...

What's wrong with the Destructoid forums?

(Never been there, just curious.)

In a nutshell: http://gamersareembarrassing.wordpress.com/category/destructoid/

It's like ground zero for people who like Jim Sterling and "hurr durr go make me a sandwich" jokes.

There are several sub-communities within Destructoid with the forums probably being the least populated. Please research what you say before you say it.

Yeah, I'm just talking about the forums. And I'm sure that even on the forums, there are wonderful non-asshat people who don't have issues with women and who don't slavishly defend Jim Sterling.

 

[Zhukov]

It's hard to look at, say, the Destructoid forums...

What's wrong with the Destructoid forums?

(Never been there, just curious.)

In a nutshell: http://gamersareembarrassing.wordpress.com/category/destructoid/

It's like ground zero for people who like Jim Sterling and "hurr durr go make me a sandwich" jokes.

Oooookay.

I'm not sure what that site is supposed to demonstrate. It seems to be a rather angry blog made by someone who is desperately overcompensating for something and hates Jim Sterling because... something.

Still not sure what exactly is wrong with the Destructoid forums.

 

[Kahunaburger]

It's hard to look at, say, the Destructoid forums...

What's wrong with the Destructoid forums?

(Never been there, just curious.)

In a nutshell: http://gamersareembarrassing.wordpress.com/category/destructoid/

It's like ground zero for people who like Jim Sterling and "hurr durr go make me a sandwich" jokes.

Oooookay.

I'm not sure what that site is supposed to demonstrate. It seems to be a rather angry blog made by someone who is desperately overcompensating for something and hates Jim Sterling because... something.

Still not sure what exactly is wrong with the Destructoid forums.

Those are just examples. You can look at some threads over there as well to get a pretty good pulse on the level of discourse. And, honestly, it's not specifically a Destructoid thing, either. The whole "hurr durr booth babes" thing is something you'll see on basically any mainstream video games "journalism" site, as is the general trend towards immaturity and asshattery on video games forums. This one is one of the few ones where it's even remotely possible to have a reasonable discussion about things like racism or sexism in games.