Editor’s Note: Have a seat, because Jonathan’s piece on maturity in gaming covers a lot. But it’s totally worth reading. Though our immature side could have used a dick joke or two. -Michael
Maturity in gaming has come a long way from the early 8-bit days, but even the most adamant of gamers can tell you that “maturity” in gaming still has a long way to go. Here is a list, in my opinion, of a variety of spectrums of storytelling, human being, and human interaction that gaming needs to strive towards to be taken more seriously as a mature medium of entertainment. At no point do I want anyone to take this list as a “all of gaming must head towards serious content” argument but rather a request that a select few developers and publishers stop pumping insane amounts of money into the Grand Theft Auto and God of War clones of the world and create something new and meaningful from time to time.
Religion
Few games try to cover the complexity and depth of story that religion has to offer. Most offerings for religious gaming have been either educational (the countless number of Bible games!) or just plain awful (anyone else remember Noah’s Ark for the NES?).
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Religious stories and games will surely shock certain crowds and please others. This is easily one of the biggest reasons why most developers are petrified of creating a game with serious religious undertones. However, religion in gaming could open up a world of new experiences for gamers. Dante’s Inferno is a game that EA has already tried to promote via some of the controversy that is expected to come with religious content. While EA may have jumped the shark they certainly knew going in that people were going to be offended.
Religion has inspired millions upon millions over the span of human civilization. Holy wars have been fought, empires and countries birthed and destroyed because of religion and its powerful ability to move people. I want to see religion used intelligently and powerfully to convey human emotions and interactions with the world.
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Consequential Violence
Violence is clearly the most heavily used way of interaction in gaming. We use it to be the hero and the villain. We use it to change the world around us. It is the de facto standard for gamers to engage and alter the world in a meaningful way.
Remember the first time you saw Saving Private Ryan? The visceral and realistic nature of the violence felt so different than the Bond-bullet-dancing violence we had gotten so used to. The violence in certain video games could push towards becoming more “realistic”. I don’t want that to come off as, “I want to see just exactly what it would look like to have a bullet enter and exit a human body”, but rather that I want to see the real and human consequences for our violence. Violence changes people in so many different and complex ways. Few people are the same after witnessing the loss of life. Many people who played Grand Theft Auto 4 recall the option where they had to choose between two people to kill. The consequences were felt and many people had reasons why they did it, but more importantly many had regrets or mixed feelings about the decision after the action. This is something that rarely happens in video gaming.
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I want it to truly mean something when a life is lost in a video game (whether it’s you or the enemy). Clearly not all games would work to have such heavy-handed repercussion’s motivate the interaction, but if gamers want to hold gaming as a mature form of entertainment we are going to need much better examples of how gaming can deliver on this experience.
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Romance
Romance is an area of human interaction and emotion that gaming has attempted on many occasions but has mostly failed. We have seen videogames go from the simplicity of Mario saving Peach to the complexity of Alex and Gordon’s interactions in Half-Life 2. We rarely get to see genuine relationships that gamers can connect to.
Believe it or not many gamers are big softies. We love witnessing a romantic relationship as long as it’s meaningful. Case in point, Aerith from Final Fantasy 7 is the obvious “turned gamers into misty eyed softies” example. The sheer number of people that claim that the death of Aerith caused at least an emotional response shows that romance can be done in gaming.
Gaming needs to strive to move away from the hero saves girl romantic relationship and focus on the other ways romance can grow in a game. Half-Life 2 has done a great job of providing a love story where both the guy and the girl are capable and complex people. Where Peach’s existence was created for Mario to save her, Alex was created to help Gordon. Few realistic (and more importantly, relatable) romantic relationships stem from a one-sided affair.
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Companionship/Friendship
With the sudden demand for co-op gameplay in our normally single-player experiences we are heading in the right direction for some interesting and complex relationships in our games. Companionship has been done in gaming for quite some time now. Most core gamers can relate to missions or objectives in games where we must protect/lead an AI companion from point A to point B. While this has been an early way of creating a bond between yourself and another, it really does need to be pushed further.
Showcasing a relationship that really feels like a friendship can be incredibly difficult in games. Why did so many gamers feel an attachment to the weighted companion cube from Portal and those same gamers couldn’t care about Shiva from Resident Evil 5? Clearly, presentation and your experience with the companion holds a lot of weight to the depth of your connection.
On the other end of the spectrum Left 4 Dead provides a more open ended way of creating friendship and connections. Many times when playing L4D with strangers I found myself thinking of my teammates as friends more and more as we made our way through the campaign. Often times what was hesitation at the sight of a teammate in trouble became instinct. Leaps of faith to save a friend became justified. With no story but your own personal experience to create companionship, L4D often times created some great emotional responses with very little to work with.
Storytelling through gaming
Very few games use the gameplay itself to tell narrative and story. Often times we are caught between the forces of “gaming time” and “story time” whether it be cut scenes, text sections (like dialog) or audio (think BioShock’s recordings). None of these often used ways of telling story in games actually pertain to the way the user normally interacts with the world.
Braid is a prime example of storytelling that only truly works as a game. The core game play focused on time manipulation which directly related to the story. They felt incredibly cohesive. We need more games like this. How often have we heard the line “the book was much better than the movie”? This often-used line stems from the idea that certain stories are almost always going to be told better or more completely in the original format. I think most gamers would agree that a book or movie based on Braid would be just plain silly.
The pacing of a novel certainly varies from the pacing of a movie and the same can be said about gaming. That said the need for cut scenes will always be there, but some games can truly take advantage of the medium. Another good example of a great mix between story and game play was BioShock. When that certain moment in BioShock reveals the major story twist, it truly plays off of our expectations and norms associated with gaming.
Power of Choice and Consequence
Since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic made it popular, the power to choose your avatar’s reactions and choices have started to become more and more pivotal in role-playing games and has slowly entered other genres as well (think Infamous). Gaming provides the unique ability to directly interact with story. Much like the Choose Your Own Adventure books gaming have tried to develop branching stories and paths based on simple (and often black and white) choices made.
Obviously some games pull it off better than others, but as it becomes more prevalent in gaming the quality and depth of it will continue to rise. BioWare has stated that Commander Shepard can die in the Mass Effect 2. Fallout 3 allowed for good, bad, and neutral karma, creating better shades of grey of morality. The much-hyped Heavy Rain will supposedly allow for many of the main characters to die without the game ending, leading to some very different story branching possibilities.
Fallout 3 is also a good example of the disappointment that giving players the idea that they are making choices with impact can lead to when in reality their actions mean little in terms of story. How odd was it at the end of the game to play through a certain mission when you were supposed to be a “bad guy”. It just didn’t fit with your actions throughout the game. Games that give us choice need to make the choices truly matter.