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Editor’s note: Mega-franchises like Guitar Hero and Madden NFL aside, Aaron’s claim that almost all big-budget titles are built around violence and killing as the primary gameplay element is hard to argue with. How quickly — or even if — that will change is much less obvious. -Demian
My father typed a strange series of commands into our new (and first) computer, and that’s when it happened. Horribly low-resolution 3D pixels appeared on the screen; at the time it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, and it still stands out as the moment games became not only a significant hobby, but a large part of my life in general.
It was the original Doom. My first experience with video games was pointing a double-barreled shotgun at a spikey monkey that shot fireballs. I cheered as he exploded in pixelated giblet glory.
Thinking back over my past 16 or so years of gaming, I don’t think much has really changed since that initial experience. Sure, tons of games have stories now, mind-blowing graphics, animation, and sound that in many ways are comparable to film.
But in many cases, the gameplay experience itself hasn’t really evolved past shooting monkeys with shotguns. The shotguns are just prettier, and the monkeys dressed up as aliens, robots, or soldiers.
I am well aware how diverse gaming supposedly is these days — my collection is full of titles from many different genres, but as I consider which ones were arguably the most successful or that I enjoyed playing the most, and they’re all games about killing.
My most-anticipated titles this year and next are 90 percent ‘I’m going to go kill things’ games. Even so, I am getting a little sick of it, or perhaps bored is a more appropriate word. Why is the industry so utterly obsessed with producing games where all we do is kill?
The audience, at least the ‘young male’ part, shoulders a not-insignificant amount of blame. But surely developers are getting sick and tired of doing the same old same old as well.
If the critical success of the independent games industry and the financial success of the Wii isn’t a big enough indicator of a glaring problem, I don’t know what is. Plenty of people who like video games don’t want to just be killing things.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a prime example of what I think is wrong with the modern enthusiast gaming industry. Here is a game that is utterly brilliant in terms of raw production values, but even with all that amazing tech and art what is the game at its core?
A very simple shooter with some light platforming and a miniscule amount of adventure-game-style exploring and puzzle-solving.
The sequel looks like it’s going to be even more focused on just the shooting (and though I’m disappointed about that, I’ll probably still buy it, so yeah, I know I’m part of the problem). But this game and other games like it could be so much better if they concentrated on just telling a great adventure story, with gameplay centered around exploration and puzzle-solving — arguably the more fun parts of the first Uncharted.
I realize that developer Naughty Dog always intended the franchise to be an action series where the combat was a big part of the gameplay, but I can’t help but wonder why. Are combat and killing required components in a game of this budget and production quality?
The Indiana Jones movies are full of shooting and killing, but the main character almost never does any of it. He’s busy running away from or outsmarting the people trying to kill him, or instead exploring locales and solving puzzles en route to a big adventure.
Game publishers and developers are in business to make money, I get that. The simple, easily marketable game almost always sells better than the complex or different game.
I’m still pretty much a part that young, male, violence-obsessed demographic that game publishers love to target, but let’s try removing ‘violence-obsessed’ from that string of adjectives. I don’t want every game I play to be a ‘realistic’ and ‘gritty’ killing simulator, or even a cartoony, lighthearted killing simulator. I like to think that I’m not alone in this, that it isn’t just older gamers who are sick of killing sims, but some younger gamers feel the same way, too. Everyone appreciates significant diversity in movies and music; it’s dissappointing that big budget games still follow the same tired formula.