Media, Culture, Technology

Author: Jeremy Barnes

Jeremy is a senior English major and Film Studies minor at Dickinson College. He enjoys video games, terrible movies, and is way too good at DJ Hero.

A Problem In Video Game Scholarship

I’ve said it a million times and I’ll probably say it a million more: Video games as a medium are constantly being dumped on. Too many people write them off as children’s toys, unworthy of serious attention and potential for analysis. That’s part of the reason why I’m writing my senior thesis on the modern military shooter genre. I want video games to be taken as seriously as any piece of literature or any film could be. In my thesis, I’m looking specifically at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Spec Ops: The Line and analyzing their uses of violence and how they justify themselves. What’s sad is that it seems like a lot of other critics and scholars aren’t willing to put similar time and effort into seriously analyzing the works about which they’re writing.

Often critics will overly simplify and generalize their discussions about games. Many readings of modern military shooters approach games of this genre merely as extensions of the US military complex, ignoring other narrative or ludic nuances embedded in them. The evidence they provide is also unfairly selective, with examples having clearly been cherry-picked to support an argument, thus preventing the game from being read fairly and accurately. One of the reasons that many critics accept this practice may be because the definition of a ‘war shooter’ is rarely clearly articulated; as a result, many shooters with a similar setting are assumed to have similar tendencies. For example America’s Army and Call of Duty are completely different entities, despite the fact that they both portray modern military conflicts. Even within a single game or series, further distinctions have to be made, like differences in different modes within a single title (e.g. singleplayer, multiplayer, or cooperative modes) or differences between the many devices on which games can be played.

Additionally many researchers may not have the necessary skillsets or knowledge base to analyze games, but attempt to do so anyway with their own training and knowledge from various different fields, such as psychoanalysis and sociology. These lenses and fields of inquiry can certainly be applied to video games research and analysis, but a problem arises when those employing those lenses do not understand video games or engage seriously with the works in question, and rely on the methodologies of other fields entirely. Their results thus end up full of holes resulting from incomplete analysis, erroneous claims, and overgeneralizations.

In his article “Playing War” Ian Graham Ronald Shaw argues that “Video games are political spaces fizzing with military agendas… [they] allow millions of users from around the world to transition into a space of pasteurized terror. They are virtual worlds built with the ideological scaffolding of the military entertainment complex that splay the lines between civilian and soldier across a cultural mosaic of consent, participation, and less frequently resistance…. From drones hovering in Pakistan to drones hovering in Modern Warfare 2, the way that war is known is increasingly playful…. Tucked away under televisions in millions of homes, they are banal technologies that distribute carefully crafted military aesthetics.”

Shaw’s argument is that what he calls “war games” serve to support the American military entertainment complex and make war into something playful, in contrast to what war actually is. His conclusion sounds entirely feasible, but his argument is based on erroneous and overly presumptuous research and evidence. While Shaw never explicitly states his playtime or experience with the games in question, it is very apparent that Shaw is extremely unfamiliar and inexperienced with Modern Warfare 2. He claims that “spatial simplification extends beyond a ‘mystical other’ (in games such as Prince of Persia) into a ‘violent other’ (in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) through the representation of Middle Eastern cities suffused with conflict.” Höglund argues that in order to keep “the flames of the ‘war on terror’ burning, the military entertainment complex depicts Middle Eastern cities as in a state perpetual war.” This assertion is false, as there are no “Middle Eastern cities suffused with conflict” depicted in the game’s campaign. There are sections of the game that take place in Afghanistan, but these missions take place in a decrepit airplane boneyard and in a secret American base. Even if Shaw’s point about location is taken to be true, the player never interacts with any Middle Eastern characters (neither friend nor foe) throughout the entirety of the story. The main antagonists are Russian soldiers, South American militia members, and American soldiers. Perhaps Shaw here is basing his analysis on the multiplayer action of the game, but he never makes this claim explicit. Furthermore, his reference to drone strikes establishes that his analysis is concerned with the campaign mode of the game, so it should be assumed that he would continue that analysis throughout his piece. Even in the brief few sections that he deals with Modern Warfare 2, he fails to provide convincing and accurate proof for his arguments.

America's Soldiers

David Leonard uses his article “Unsettling the Military Entertainment Complex: Video Games and a Pedagogy of Peace” to argue a similar point to Shaw’s: he makes the case that video games and other forms of popular media should be engaged with and questioned. In regard to the case of war shooters and military games, he believes that video games should be critically analyzed because of their importance to how the United States handles and portrays its participation in physical war. However, like Shaw, Leonard’s analysis is also flawed. He often makes statements that grossly overgeneralize the war shooter genre, likely resulting from a loose understanding and lack of direct engagement with military shooters. Leonard makes the claim that games promote “military solutions and the unilateral acceptance of the War on Terror as justification for all military endeavors,” and that “War video games are no longer purely about training soldiers already enlisted; rather, they are about recruitment and developing future soldiers, while simultaneously generating support among civilian populations for increasing use American military power. Americans of all ages are thus able to participate collectively in the War on Terror and in Operation Iraqi Freedom, just as if they were members of the military.”

Leonard mainly uses America’s Army and Operation Desert Storm to illustrate his points, while briefly mentioning games like Call of Duty and Kuma\War. However, his use of America’s Army and Operation Desert Storm as representations for the entire military shooter sub-genre misrepresents other military shooters. America’s Army in particular is a multiplayer-only experience that is often used as a recruitment tool by the United States military and is funded directly by the government, making this game a direct extension of the United States government. Other members of the military shooter subgenre, like entries in the Call of Duty or Battlefield series, have single-player, multiplayer, and cooperative modes and are products of private corporations and publishers rather than a government. Furthermore, according to “Reality and Terror, the First-Person Shooter in Current Day Settings,” there were over 160 first-person shooters released between 1993 and 2009, 95 of which could be considered military in nature as the these games pit the player against political enemies, rogue governments, and terrorists.” Using two examples to represent a further 93 would lead one to make fallacious claims. Unfortunately, Leonard is not the only video game critic to make claims like these.

According to Johannes Breuer, Ruth Festl, and Thorsten Quandt in their study “Digital war: An Empirical Analysis of Narrative Elements in Military First-person Shooters,” “most existing content analyses of digital games simply look at the first few minutes of gameplay or specific in-game sequences of twenty to sixty minutes. Such time-based sampling is likely to cause bias and does not represent the game in its entireity.” While this certainly does not apply to all analysis done, it does pose a problem to video game criticism when laziness and shoddy research is an accepted scholarly practice.

So what do we do about it? Keep writing about video games. Not as sexist and gun-toting pieces of garbage unworthy of analysis, but as serious pieces of artistic expression. While it is true that there are a lot of bad video games, it shouldn’t soil the integrity of the entire art form. To me, it seems like a lot of critics treat video games like toys or like some passing fad, not as a potential artform worthy of analysis. I’m certainly not trying to claim that all video games are art and worthy of supreme praise, but just that a video game shouldn’t be dismissed because of its medium.

Organic World Building Done Right

When I reflect on what’s missing from a lot of games these days, my first thought is “a cure for my crippling loneliness.” My second thought? A sense of discovery and mystery, of finding and uncovering of my own accord pieces of a game’s lore and world. I like going into a world that feels real, one that feels like it wasn’t created with my satisfaction in mind, but rather could have organically existed without my participation. A game shouldn’t have to spell everything out for me, because its job shouldn’t be to please the player. Not all games have to be fun. Games can be more than just things to do in order to pass the time; they can be challenging, emotionally engaging, thought provoking, and even sad. Not every game needs to make me excited, it just needs to succeed in its own right in whatever it sets out to do. Help from the game or being given a sense of power is nice sometimes, but I usually don’t want a game to hold my hand. Why do some games assume I wouldn’t be able to find my own face without a big glowing waypoint?

Two recent games come to mind that have really left a lasting impact on me because of their worlds and infrastructure: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (developed by Monolith Productions) and Dark Souls (developed by From Software). I’m not trying to make the claim that these two are the only recent games to have intrigued me lately or that other games are complete failures, but rather that these are merely two examples of the kind of successful world building that I’m talking about. These two games have their own ecosystems of sorts and allow the player to (for the most part) uncover their respective worlds’ mysteries on his or her own.

Shadow of Mordor takes place in Tolkien’s Middle Earth and follows Talion, a ranger from Gondor who seeks revenge upon Sauron’s henchmen for the death of his wife and son. The actual narrative of the story mode is pretty dry and really doesn’t feel all that original. Too often Shadow of Mordor seems like it’s trying to compete with the rest of the Lord of the Rings mythos by imitating other works within the Lord of the Rings universe, namely the Peter Jackson films. Its “me too” attitude makes it look like a little kid trying to wear his dad’s suit; it’s kind of cute at first, but when it tries to drive to work and do your taxes, the act starts to feel a little forced. Its many attempts at shoe-horning Gollum into the plot come off as contrived and Celebrimbor’s endless movie quotes can get a bit tiring, making the story missions in general feel a bit lacking.

However, the game more than makes up for these shortcomings with its Nemesis system, which produces an ever-changing hierarchy of Uruk warchiefs and commanders. The game tracks the rank and combat strength of each of Sauron’s Uruk captains and allows the player to aid, defeat, or enslave any of these captains in their struggles for power. When the player is defeated by one of these captains, that captain will then increase in strength and taunt the player for his failure if he or she chooses to go back for a second attempt at his life. The game will also track the deaths of your friends, allowing you to take vengeance upon the Uruk captain that killed your poor buddy. Lastly, Uruks shift their power positions even without the input of the player, making this system of power feel real and organic. This system is introduced to the player through the main storyline, but for the most part Talion’s interactions with the Uruk captains and bodyguards are not necessary for the completion of the game–which is odd because this aspect is by far the most interesting part of the game.

This ever-shifting ecosystem of war and succession is smart and refreshing and breathes life into an otherwise dull romp through Middle Earth. The game’s world and lore also come out far more clearly in the numerous collectibles that the player can optionally pick up all over the game map. Each collectible is embedded with some sort of memory or engraving, allowing a glimpse into the mind of the individual who owned said collectible. For example, Torvin the dwarf hunter is relatively uninteresting and one-sided in the main story; however, through a few pieces of collectible intel we learn about his relationship with his brother and the reasons for his passion to hunt the Legendary Graug. These pieces of intelligence and history provide context to the action and give the player a glimpse of the micro-level workings of Mordor, something that enhances the overall experience of the game world.

middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-nemesis-system-info

Even though Shadow of Mordor succeeds in terms of its Nemesis system and enlightening collectibles, in some places it still feels like it’s trying to hold the player’s hand. Once the player gets to an area’s watchtower, every collectible and objective is revealed on the game’s map, eliminating the player’s need to seek out secrets for himself. Instead of letting the player seduce and woo the game into revealing its secrets, Shadow of Mordor just drops its pants and flaunts its goods at the drop of a hat. While some may ask why I’m not more critical of its transparency, it’s because I’m just happy that Shadow of Mordor came to the party with pants on at all (I’m looking at you, Pokémon games; I can indeed chew my own food, contrary to how you treat me).

Unlike Shadow of Mordor, Dark Souls is engrossing and intelligent the whole way through. Along with its predecessor, Demon’s Souls, and its sequel, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls has entered the gaming canon as one of the most punishing and cutthroat games in recent years. Compared to some other modern games that treat the player like an idiot and the player’s character like a demigod, the world of Dark Souls seems intent on kicking the player’s undead keister back to 1988. Granted, it ‘s hard, but Dark Souls is perhaps characterized  too often solely in terms of its difficulty; there are far more interesting things to say about the game than “it’s harder than grandma’s month old fruitcake.” For one, Dark Souls gives the player a great deal of control over almost every aspect of the game, including the unfolding of the plot. The player controls a chosen undead in his mission to traverse Lordran and defeat the hollowed husk of Lord Gwyn, the world’s previous ‘caretaker,’ if you will. If that sounds vague, that’s because it is vague; the story of Dark Souls isn’t expressly given to the player aside from a few scarce cutscenes. All other bits of story have to be gleaned from NPC’s, from item descriptions, or from observation of the world’s topography and architecture. The item descriptions in particular give poignant clues to the nature of some of the game’s bosses and lore, while NPC’s breathe life into the world and hint at a vastness to the lands of Dark Souls.

Not only does Dark Souls leave its story ambiguous, but it leaves its gameplay elements and explorable world a mystery as well. Once you leave the Undead Asylum and its tutorial scenarios behind, the world of Dark Souls is left up to the player to explore (and probably perish in). Failure and character death are staples of gameplay, but they’re not meant to be deterrents; rather, they’re motivational learning experiences–and death in this game acts as a teaching tool. Dark Souls is meant to be taken meticulously and patiently. Rashness and high stakes are often met with death and loss of time and resources. Combat is like a morbid kind of dance where if you miss a step someone stabs you and steals your wallet (after which you get up, dust yourself off, and go back to get your wallet, but this time you’ve brought Mr. Zweihander and he’s out for blood). In addition to the regular combat, boss fights are an interesting endeavor as well. Bosses are scary and do big-boy damage, but their patterns can often be learned and exploited, and often times the most apparently formidable bosses have the biggest, albeit generally secret or hard to find, weaknesses (in the case of the Stray Demon, you can get him stuck on a pillar, rendering him harmless and easily killable).

The combat system has a lot in common with the missions and objective structure of the game. Which is to say that there really is no overtly easy or straightforward way of moving through the game, but the clever player can find shiny new items and areas and will make it much farther than the impatient player. Though there are mandatory objectives that must be completed in order to finish the game, many can be done in interchangeable order and others can be skipped or ignored. Entire sections of the game can go unnoticed by the player, like the Painted World of Ariamis or Ash Lake, the latter being arguably the most visually striking and beautiful section of the game; it’s reached by exploring a hollowed out tree located in the corner of one of Dark Soul’s main story areas. The Painted World also raises numerous questions about its origins and purpose: Who made it? Why does this place exist? These questions, among others, are never really answered, and I’m okay with that. I want to be able to wonder and make up my own conclusions. I don’t want to be spoon-fed every little bit of information and lore.

I don’t want this piece to be one of those “all modern video games are dumb and for babies” posts, because frankly those kinds of opinions are often uninformed and stuck in the past. Not all games have to be mysterious, complex, or highly intelligent, but I greatly appreciate those that make me forget that I’m playing in a constructed world. Sometimes I just want to get lost somewhere else and experience something new and exciting for myself, as I expect do many other players of video games do. Shadow of Mordor and Dark Souls are both excellent games, and should be celebrated for their success, because for someone who feels a bit jaded these are sometimes a breath of fresh air. In a real world filled with monotony and busy work, games like these let me stretch my imagination a little bit.

A Problematic Vision of Gamers

I like video games. Some say I like them too much, but only those who’ve seen me write “Mrs. Jeremy Games” on the inside of my school notebooks. Recently, my interest in them has started to become academic in addition to recreational; I’ve started to think and write about video games from a scholarly perspective, as you might do with a classic film or piece of literature. To many, writing academically about video games might sound completely ludicrous, like if someone wanted to exhibit paintings of Nicolas Cage at the Louvre or if someone said that spray cheese actually tasted like real cheese. Why is it that most people fully accept paintings, novels, or films as works of art with the potential for analysis, but video games are merely toys for children, not worthy of any scholarly merit?

While it is true that video games are becoming more popular among scholars, they certainly don’t have the widespread acceptance that other forms have; it would be rare to find a professor of video games or someone majoring in Sonic the Hedgehog for his or her college degree. While it is true that video games are a relatively young art form, I think a bigger problem is how the public perceives games, and even how video game fans perceive games. Games are often seen by more traditional and conservative media outlets as purveyors of violence and sex, objects that seek to corrupt our children and turn them into gun-toting sex fiends. Not only can detractors harm the public perception of video games, but sometimes supporters can as well. Both people working within the industry and self-proclaimed video game fans and supporters often infantilize video games and create another juvenile image of the medium as a whole.

While it is often true that new forms of entertainment and media are met with disdain and scorn from members of the old-guard way of doing things, it seems like video games have gotten an especially bad reputation within traditional media. As far back as the Columbine shooting, video games were blamed for heinous acts of violence; Doom was partially blamed for influencing the two teens that then went on to shoot up their school and harm their fellow classmates. The 1992 game Night Trap was also put on trial by Senator Joe Lieberman for encouraging rape fantasies and violence against women.

Even today video games are still being demonized. For example, take the release of Mass Effect in 2007. Fox News aired a segment that put Mass Effect on trial for its depiction of “graphic sex” and questioned the game’s general merit. Most of the conversation focused on its potential impact on children, and how depictions of sex and violence such as those they thought depicted in Mass Effect could inhibit or damage the development of a child. In fact, all of those on the panel that attacked the game had never actually played it; they had only seen trailers and pictures, and actually scoffed at the idea of actually playing the game. All of these controversies begin with the assumption that video games are inherently for children and that children will find some way to get their hands on them. Even today when many modern games explore very adult themes and involve extremely mature content, why is it that many still assume that video games are children’s toys? I believe that one of the biggest factors keeping this myth alive are members of video game fandom whose intentions come from a place of enjoyment and admiration, but whose actions ultimately betray their intentions.

A number of events and films that appear to be on the side of video game success, for instance, can actually do more harm than good. Events and features that are meant to celebrate games and those who play them, such as the Spike TV Video Game Awards (VGAs) and the documentary Video Games: The Movie (2014), treat their audiences (and their source material) like children. The VGA’s are meant, in theory, to celebrate the best titles of the year; however, their actual purpose and existence is something far less noble and worthwhile. The awards are actually something of an extended commercial, with various trailers shown and revealed for the next year’s upcoming releases. When they’re not trying to sell you something, the VGAs fill the rest of their air time with skits that would make Dumb and Dumber look like a dark satire on the duality of mankind. Nothing impresses twelve-year-olds more and says ‘class and elegance’ like Neil Patrick Harris’ entrance to the 2010 VGA’s where he shoots up an entire troop of dancers. At the 2007 awards, the nominees for ‘Game of the Year’ had their likenesses painted onto scantily clad women who then presented themselves on stage. All jokes aside, the VGAs aren’t bad because of the trailers or the lack of awards, but because the awards assume that their audiences can’t be entertained without a copious amount of blood and boobs.

Spike TV's 2007 "Video Game Awards" - Arrivals

The recently released Video Games: The Movie aims to justify a love for video game and seeks to briefly chronicle their history, but comes off as more of a love letter or a puff piece. Stated more harshly: it doesn’t do anything but lick the metaphorical boot of the video game industry. Director Jeremy Snead, along with an ensemble of movie stars and video game industry figures, guide viewers through a very condensed history of video games. Although informative for the uninitiated, the history that the film outlines feels like an encyclopedia article with little to no insight or analysis put forth. The film itself is a sort of pre-pubescent love poem to the video games industry: video games occupy the place of a middle school girl who’s just bought her first bra while the generic video game fans are like boys trying to get a gander at them yams.

The whole film is filled with larger-than-life claims about video games and their potential, but not a lot is said with actual substance. Various celebrities who have nothing to do with video games, such as Zach Braff and Donald Faison, have their voices heard in this film not because of any expertise that they hold, but just because they like video games. While there are prominent figures from within the industry in this film that do offer their insight–for example Cliff Blesinski and Reggie Fils-Aime–they too offer little more than their childhood experiences with Space Invaders or their first time playing the Legend of Zelda. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with sharing these experiences, when put into a film that places itself as an ambassador for video games as a whole, it makes the industry and the medium look extremely childish and unsubstantial. Moreover, the formal elements of the film are often lazily done and riddled with errors; at one point, one of the graphics has a typo and instead of displaying ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ the text reads ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocatina of Time.’ If a film can’t even be bothered to check its spelling, how can the viewer trust that the film’s message and content isn’t any less erroneous?

If VGAs and Video Games: The Movie are the wrong ways of talking about video games, then what are the right ways? I think that some form of justification of the medium is probably necessary, but not to the point of worship. One example of a representation done well is Indie Game: The Movie. It manages to tell the story of three groups of game developers without turning them into jokes, or worse, Big Bang Theory characters. These developers appear to be real people with a passion for video games, but not to the point of worship. I think the best part of Indie Game is that it doesn’t treat its audience with contempt; it assumes that the viewer can do his or her own thinking without having his or her hand held.

But seriously, liking video games doesn’t make someone a nerdy caricature because there is nothing wrong with video games in the first place. Video games can be taken seriously, but not if the only reasons given for the validity of the medium involve childhood memories and exorbitant flattery. If the general public is ever going to take games seriously, those who enjoy or play them need to take them seriously first. Not everyone needs to be the next great video game scholar, but simplifying games down to boobs and guns doesn’t do justice to the potential that video games offer as an art form or as a mode of storytelling. Hopefully the problems within the medium are caused by some kind of formal puberty, because I know that the medium of video games should and will one day become an art form that will be respected in its own right.

© 2024 Postscript


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