First, some of us are saying that there just aren’t enough people asking for mature (really mature, not just boobies and cursing) video games to make sense. People seem pretty happy with guns, explosions, and jingoistic tropes.
Second, expecting the big companies with established customer relationships and big money IPs to really push the envelope on uncomfortable subjects goes against all business sense, especially in light of the point above. It’s more logical to expect the indie guys to do it first and then as the medium matures, perhaps the big guys will follow suit.
Big studios typically don’t make big budget movies with a message because, by the sheer nature of their message, they polarize audiences. You can only do that with smaller movies, where the stakes are considerably lower.
So really, the issue is that EA and Activision are only making summer popcorn faire. There’s no room there for message games. Is it a flaw? Not for them, because there’s also no evidence of a middle tier of games existing anymore. It’s all blockbusters and tiny indie products. You see message games in the latter category all the time, so I’m not entirely sure what the problem is.
Well gosh, it’s almost like those games with a Statement ™ exist but they’re not the eight-figure two-year cycle blueprint action shooters.
I’m pretty sure your average QT3er could name a dozen modern indie or lower-budget games that had a fairly cohesive statement or purpose off the top of their head.
Wringing your hands over the triple-A big bankroll establishment not laying out huge sums of cash for art house projects is a…strange activity.
[edit: reading this looks like it’s aimed at steve who posted just above me. Not the case; we were typing at the same time, it would seem.]
Relative to most blockbuster entertainment, Cameron totally stuck his neck out by making a pro-environment/anti-expansionism movie.
Of course it’s popcorn fodder and about as deep as a freshman paper on the subject, but you can’t deny that he made a $2 billion grossing movie with an obvious message. It’s overt, not subtle in the slightest bit, and audiences went with it because of or despite the message.
I’m saying that juvenile message was no different than any message of any game I’ve ever played. (of those that have messages) The problem isn’t really that games don’t have messages, its that the ones that do have them are the same simple crap you see in blockbuster movies like Avatar.
I’d say the point is to have the big-budget games say something in addition to the soldiering and the shootering. These things do not preclude each other. Instead, they make for more satisfying fare for everyone, grow the audience to include those with more adult sensibilities, advance the medium, make the games more satisfying to work on for years and grow the prestige attached to making and publishing them.
The statement games don’t have to be heavy-handed, hit-the-audience-over-the-head “artsy” affairs. They can stay pretty much as is except with the added bonus of actually being about something. Having the characters say some meaningful lines doesn’t cost any more than the current drivel. It just needs the conviction to make it so.
The indies have already been doing this for years. It’s time for the big boys to follow suit. They have only their preconceptions to lose and very much to gain. It’s the long-term thinking needed to keep the field healthy, growing and viable. The stock owners should sue the executives not working to mature the medium. Smiley.
EA was the one parading the serious intent of their mature Medal of Honor. It’s fair game for Bogost’s intent and the reason for our discussion thus far. I readily acknowledge it’s going too far in practise to assume the AAA’s would be first in line swinging their machetes on the way forward through the self-expression jungle.
EA et al. are now paying for the First Amendment legal fight. It would help their case immeasurably if they produced actual self-expressive content worthy of legal protection. Probably be a lot cheaper in the long run, too.
I don’t really have any interest in the game, but I think the article fails because he doesn’t seem to grasp the difference between single- and multi-player. Of course the name of the team is largely irrelevant to the multi-player experience-- it always is.
That doesn’t mean that the game is not specifically about Afghanistan, or that is has no message. If it has anything at all to say there, it will (obviously) be in the story mode, which from what I can tell isn’t subject to the retraction at all.
How soon we forget Command and Conquer: Generals. Talk about a timely game with a ‘message’ (published by EA too), although it certainly wasn’t one that all wanted to hear at the time, including me.
Blame consumers. EA, Activision, et al, aren’t stupid. If consumers start buying “statement” games en masse, then they’ll start making them. It’s not a question of “freedom of speech”. It’s a question of supply and demand. You and Ian Bogost aside, there simply isn’t the demand to justify a supply.
Let’s see what Medal of Honor executive producer Greg Goodrich has to say about that:
Medal of Honor has always been rooted in authenticity and respect for the soldier, but it’s also always been devoid of politics or political discussion or debate.
…
For this game, I don’t care why they’re there.
…
Well, I think we’ve always approached it in the sense that it’s not about the war itself. We’ve not approached as a game about Afghanistan, or a game about Al Qaeda. This is not a game about the Taliban. This is not a game about local tribal militias or warlords.
It’s true we don’t know yet what exactly the message of the single player story is. Maybe it even is what I’ve been clamouring for, I sure hope so!
Huh. Well then! I still think their willingness to rename one of the multiplayer teams is the wrong aspect to latch onto, but the more I hear the more it does seem they are being pretty craven in their approach to the subject matter.
This is the vicious cycle I’ve mentioned. If the game publishers say there is not enough demand for statement games and the audience cannot buy them as they’re not there (in commercial properties like console games) nothing will change. Someone has to make them first.
It’s always been the same in any medium. The trivial content stuff gets made first. The more thoughtful ones follows later when the creators say: “Enough with the playing with the new toys and the technical experiments, let’s get down to the real business of creating something with a little meat on its bones.”
I’ve already listed what I think are very good reasons to head in this direction. It does not mean change will have to be instant and involve the summer blockbusters at first. The change will have to come from the publishers. Baby steps are fine but they need to be taken for also the big boys to be able to some day run on the beach and feel the salty wind of ideas and opinions flick their curled tresses around.
The members of the audience so inclined can help by encouraging, demanding and cajoling them to lift their heads from their creative cribs, to look around and to take the scary fist steps.
While I’m all for games leveling up their game when it comes to handling mature subject matter intelligently - which is not to be conflated with shock value, which we’re full up on, thanks - there are a few serious faults with Bogost’s OP-ED.
First, mentioning documentaries at all is a red-herring digression; conflating non-fiction with fiction doesn’t advance his case when videogames are all firmly in the latter category.
Second, as others have mentioned, Bogost neglects to draw a distinction between small-budget indie films like “The Hurt Locker” which are willing to be daring and big-budget escapist summer blockbusters like, say, “Iron Man 2” which always play it safe. MoH and other AAA game titles clearly fall into the latter category; isn’t it fairer to compare the strength of its convictions to such Hollywood pablum? I mean, if someone uncovers proof that “Transformers 2” was totally gonna be a stirring indictment of the modern military-industrial complex but The Man forced Michael Bay to sell out, then maybe Bogost would have a point here about big-budget films being more daring than their videogame counterparts. But that scenario strikes me as…unlikely.
Third, MoH is hardly the first game to depict modern warfare or even the first to be set in Afghanistan; I think Delta Force Task Force Dagger was the first post-9/11 Afghan-set game. I don’t know if Bogost is deliberately ignoring other military shooters, but acting like the new MoH is a special little snowflake venturing into virgin territory is a little disingenuous, IMHO. I think it would be more instructive to look at the “War on Terror” military-shooter subgenre as a whole rather than fixating on a single example of a big publisher caving to public pressure to avoid negative publicity because - surprise! - it wants to make lots of money off its multimillion dollar investment.
Here’s a hint: it’s not the old creators that do this. It’s new ones. What we have now is simply a mature market serving one form of consumer demand. The market leaders got there by providing a type of content that was very popular and that’s what they’re going to do as long as customers keep buying it. Change comes from outside. Let’s say someone comes up with a really cool new genre of games … say games involving musical instruments. That’s going to start with small companies (Harmonix/RedOctane) and then after the success is proven it will get picked up by the bigger companies (Harmonix was bought by MTV, RedOctane was bought by Activision).
And in this case, as people have already mentioned to you, there is lots of experimental game development going on at the fringe of the mainstream market. The problem isn’t that the big companies are scared to pick it up. The problem is that the big companies can’t sell it or at least not to the degree that you’d like.
Finally, it’s also disingenuous to pretend that no interesting storytelling or “statement” games are being made and/or that mainstream video games should compare to indie/cult movies. I’ll take Bioshock’s story over Avatar’s any day. Both are successful mainstream products and it’d be misguided to compare Bioshock to an indie film.
I don’t think taking the name “Taliban” out of Medal of Honor has anything to do with whether or not EA is making a “statement.”
I mean, George Orwell made his statement with an allegory about a farm. He wasn’t talking about actual pigs.
If EA wants to make a statement about our war with the Taliban, it’s really rather incidental if they call them that or just make them some other nameless “enemy.” If they’re trying to say that the Taliban are really freedom fighters and we’re in the wrong war, or if they’re trying to say our war is incredibly urgent and the Taliban are a much more savvy and tenacious threat than we anticipate, or whatever other “statement” they could choose to make… as long as the audience understands that this is what they’re talking about, it’s really of no difference if they use the name.
In fact, skirting actual names and places can often be a very effective way of drawing people into a story with a real message to it. It doesn’t have to be shocking, or “drawn from the headlines” to be an effective use of the medium to get people thinking about something deeper than where the next explosion is coming from. Will Bioshock 2 have a point to make about modern American Jingoism and immigration, especially with a release during an election year where rampant “I’m more American than you are” pride is at a fever pitch? Maybe, maybe not, but it’ll have nothing to do with the fact that the game doesn’t take place in the modern day and doesn’t use real people’s names or real places.
The inverse is true as well. I thought “No Russian” was provocative for the sake of being provocative, had no greater message, and didn’t even fit into the poorly crafted story.
