That would be any culture that could produce a video/mobile game like this. Before you click that link, be aware that it takes you to the beta site of an Android game called Dog Wars. From that link (all typography in the original):
Raise your Dog to Beat the Best!
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A GAME THAT WILL NEVER BE IN THE iPHONE APP STORE!!!
Feed, water, train and FIGHT your virtual dog against other player’s… action games, chatroom, many characters and dogs to choose from, virtual store, etc.
If this already has been blogged here, my apologies. Hell, my apologies for belonging to the same species as the presumptively sentient types who wrote the necessary code.
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I know that there are all kinds of real arguments folks have over whether or not games or porn or violent kids shows or Kill Bill evoke or displace the behaviors they depict.
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What’s more, I’ll concede that point, FWIW: if I were a betting man, I’d lay cash down on the proposition that no one is going to be seduced into dog fighting by playing with digital pit bulls on a three inch screen. But that’s not my point.
It is that our culture — all the ways we experience, interpret and express feelings and ideas about the business of living in the world — dies just a bit every time something like this slips by. If we think that cruelty isn’t be fun, then representations of the joy of sadism can’t be passed by in silence.
Perhaps I’m just too much of an alter-kocker in saying so, but there it is. To be clear: I do not argue that games like these should be banned. I think it, its makers, and anyone playing it should be shamed.
It should be no more acceptable to play this than it is scream “kike” in Fenway’s bleachers (happened to me once; called the guy on it; did not get my head removed, to my rather surprised relief).
I would not let my son play with any kid who showed him that game, and I tell the parents so and why. I would respond to anyone who talked of it with gusto to me (pretty unlikely, I’d say, given my DFH-ish daily round) that this kind of thing is a moral and an aesthetic cancer. I’d write this.
It just isn’t acceptable to celebrate others’ pain. Dogs, people, whoever. I’m sickened, saddened and most troubled by the comments at that link that tell me to chill, because after all, it’s only a game.
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Well yes it is…but if the old writer’s adage — you are what you read — has any truth to it, we need to be damn careful about what we play. And if we care about our collective capacity to care about what happens to one another, then it seems to me both right and necessary to name and shame those who wallow in this particular swamp.
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Please forgive the rant. I’m just gobsmacked by this one — perhaps over reacting to what is, after all, just one more in a long line of stupid human tricks. But still…
Image: William Blake, The Stygian Lake, with the Ireful Sinners Fighting, (illustration for Dante’s Inferno, Canto VII), 1824-1827.
greennotGreen
Perhaps such wantonly violent games stem from the teenager’s impulse to rebel against any kind of authority, no matter how sensible. Programmers who write such games and people who play them have probably never matured beyond that phase. I agree that shaming them is probably a good solution – “uncooling” them would be even better.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Agree.
This is infinitely worse than virtual humans torturing virtual humans or fighting or revenging or engaging in other documented homo sapiens sapiens behaviors.
Animals don’t have a choice.
This is just ugly.
burnspbesq
FWIW, I’m on your side on this one.
However, I’m sure you understand that the complete and irrefutable rejoinder to your argument consists of only two words: “Sez you.”
Believing in individual choice and free will isn’t always easy. No one ever said it would be.
Keith
It’s just a game
Svensker
Alter kockerette here, but I feel the same way. When our son was a teen we outlawed games that involved first person shooting (Grand Theft Auto had just come out and we were appalled) because we felt they were morally wrong. We knew our kid would play those games at other kids’ homes, but we wanted him to feel guilty about it and know, deep in his soul, that mom and dad did not approve.
Those games are corrosive to the moral fiber.
Softail
Not sure if this is perfect quote but it’s Vonnegut. Can’t seem to find it on line.
FWIW I’ve seen several take downs on this game already online. A lot of people share your disgust.
Citizen Alan
It’s in bad taste, definitely, but in terms of how much actual “cruelty” this game provokes, I fail to see how it is any worse than cruelly murdering green pigs by flinging explosive birds at them. You do realize, don’t you, that linking to something offensive for the purpose of complaining about it probably gives the producer more hits than any positive word-of-mouth buzz that’s been out there so far. And as for the coarsening of culture, I am old enough to remember the outrage nearly 30 years ago when an independent game company released an Atari console game in which you played a nude, 8-bit General Custer and had to impregnate as many Native American women as possible while dodging a hail of arrows. As long as artistic media have existed, there has been artistic media designed to appeal to prurient and base interests, probably all the way back to the Bronze Age or before. Same as it ever was.
Cacti
You and every other culture scold.
Yutsano
@Keith:
It only took four comments for that rationalization to show up. Either we iz not learning or slow on the uptake, because that was what I was expecting to pop up right out of the chute. And it is a rationalization. It glorifies something we ruined a famous man’s career for, and with good justification. Even virtually, there is no excuse.
(and if your comment is snark, well played sir. My point still stands however.)
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
Wait, what – Kill Bill? Was the release of this somehow linked to possible upticks in sword fights and wedding massacres?
Now Moldavia – now that was a wedding massacre.
nancydarling
OK, Tom. Not-too-hip here in NW Arkansas doesn’t know what an alter-kocker is. Someone enlighten me.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@nancydarling: Old fart.
Cacti
@Yutsano:
I would guess you were talking about Michael Vick.
If the $1.6 million he earned playing professional football last year and $5.2 million he’s schedule to earn next year is a ruined career, I wish I could be equally ruined.
Karmakin
Disgusting. But I’ll just point out that our culture was disgusting a long time before androids or video games came round.
In my mind today is particularly disgusting.
Mike D
I almost never comment on this site in spite of lurking around for 4 years, but you’ve dragged me out of my voyeurism for this one. It’s so tiresome to see the constant incessant attack on video games in the media that only recently has (somewhat) died out, and I certainly didn’t expect to see it on this blog.
I can’t say I have a dog in this fight, as I have no interest in that game, and I doubt any gamer I know does. But this argument that games are going to slowly infect you with the need to do whatever you’re pretending to do is an out and out lie. If you didn’t want to participate in dog fights before, 20 years of forced playing of that game is not going to change your mind, regardless of how fun you might find it. A desire to play that game has nothing to do with a desire to force dogs to kill each other. Nothing.
I’ve played Carmageddon (which breaks Ms. Granger-Weasley’s “innocence” factor where you specifically plow down pedestrians for combo points), I’ve played every single iteration of GTA. I haven’t played Manhunt as that seemed just a bit too creepy (and more importantly, was badly rated), though my sister has and enjoyed it.
I don’t see why games always, incessantly have to be randomly picked out as “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO OUR CHILDREN?!” factors. I really don’t – they’re not doing anything to our children. I played Carmaggedon when I was 13. I laughed, it was funny. Digital representations != real life people, and you know that at a very early age. It really isn’t different for dogs.
You are what you read is a ridiculous concept, and would hold just as true for games. I have a friend who lives and breathes zombie and horror stories and he’s the nicest guy I know. It’s a hobby, and that’s all it is.
Why do we feel the need to play this stupid moral superiority game? That’s exactly what I despise about Republicans and it makes me absolutely livid when I see that shit tossed around on my side. You wanna start playing this, “In spite of no statistical evidence proving games are evil, some games just are?” Then let’s play the “in spite of no statistical evidence proving abortions make women sluts, it’s just true.” The only difference between this shit and what fundamentalists do is the type and severity of freedoms infringed, and I suppose in your case you’re not screaming, “THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW!” Though it doesn’t sound like you’d be crying too hard if there was.
Don’t play this “oh my god, think of the dogs!” People say it’s just a game because that’s all it IS. There are no dogs involved. There will never be dogs involved.
People like to explore ‘evil’ subjects sometimes and games are literally the perfect outlet for it and the reason should be obvious – no one gets hurt. No one becomes obsessed with killing because they played GTAIV, no one starts mowing down pedestrians because they played Carmageddon, and no one’s going to start a dogfighting ring because they bought a stupid game on their Droid. And it’s not because there are laws against all of those things, it’s because the gamer who toys with any of those games doesn’t have any desire to do it in real life. To think otherwise is to be ignorant of the hobby.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Karmakin:
That reminds me – there are some public hangings downtown here in Seattle I want to attend, today. Then me and the Mrs. will throw some rotten eggs at the adulterers in the stockades.
Look, I am really not down with the dog/cockfight stuff. But I’ve been past appalled at what passes for entertainment in video games and, hell, movies, decades ago.
Big picture, I tell myself. Big picture.
nancydarling
Thanks, Parallel. I’m not sure the game is a sign of our culture regressing. Maybe it’s sign that we haven’t come far. There was bear-baiting and all sorts of stuff going on in the past. I think we learned these tricks when we came down out of the trees and started living in caves. Have any evolutionary biologists studied this as they have the ’empathy gene’?
Andrew
So Pokemon, but grounded in reality? Making your pets fight other pets to the totally not death has been a hugely popular series around the world for 15 years now.
Tom Levenson
@Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama: Yup. I agree. But sometimes a stray and pretty low consequence bit of asshattery like this somehow sticks in the craw more than lots of other stuff…and the fact we no longer have fairs at Tyburn Tree is an insufficiently present consolation.
Lord Omlette
I can’t wait for you to discover Pokémon.
Boxer
So while I have no desire to play (it’s probably horribly designed) is this game worse, better, or the same, morally speaking, as a game like the grand theft auto series where you murder, steal from, and beat innocent humans?
These games tend to attract a lot more attention than similarly violent games featuring humans.
Ed
So our entire culture is ruined by one guy writing a phone app? Or we see that app and now can re-confirm just how awful and horrible everyone is?
I’m thinking that someone is using a very old marketing trick in a newer medium and you are helping him sell more games.
Tom Levenson
@Lord Omlette: @Andrew: I’m genuinely curious — not snarking — as to why you think this and Pokemon are equivalent.
I think that the realism of the game is what makes it so corrosive. What happens in Pokemon (a) doesn’t emphasize pain (see the blood on the dog’s muzzle in the screenshot at the link) and (b) exists in a world clearly unlike our own.
Those differences don’t seem significant to y’all? Again, not snark…just make the argument.
nalbar
Moldavia was a wedding massacre?
No, the Red Wedding in Song of Ice and Fire was a wedding massacre. The guy got his head sewn onto the body of a wolf for gods sake!
nalbar
Andrew
@Tom It’s certainly true that Pokemon doesn’t emphasize the pain, but I think that makes it worse, really. Or at least more insidious. It’s just casual beating the shit out of adorable pets for fun and profit (I say this as someone who admires the game design). And the idea that it’s a world unlike our own I think allows us to excuse a lot of behaviors in popular culture, especially in fantasy/sci-fi, which as a fan of those genres makes me angry.
Tom Levenson
@Andrew: I’m not sure I agree with your first point — but the second one is stronger to me. I remember the feeling after finishing Ender’s Game in which I realized I’d been brought into sympathy with a genocidal prodigy with a sense of self-pity.
But I do think the direct representation of explicit cruelty is a particular problem — and that’s what’s going on here.
nalbar
As far as this subject;
It is not possible to have cruelty to animals in a computer game. Everyone knows that, right? The ‘dogs’ are digital numbers! 100100111010011. Little tiny circuits that click on and off. The game has nothing to do with cruelty to anything.
Ranting about it has about as much meaning and relevance as shouting at clouds.
.
nalbar
BTW, the comparison to Angry Birds was excellent. They are not birds, they are not angry, and no pigs got hurt. Because there were no pigs.
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gnomedad
@Mike D:
You posted just so you could use that phrase.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Cacti:
well, there was the 150 million he would have earned otherwise, and the fact that most of that money will only, really be paying off debt.
i am not a fan of dog fighting, or dog fighting video games, hell the grand theft auto, kill em shoot em type games never did much for me either, but i understand that there are people who don’t see why either is particularly wrong.
my only point is, that it is more subjective than objective. i expect to get crushed on this, but people who never thought of dogs as pets, in the pamper and cuddle, knit funny sweaters sense, but believe their dog has to be tough, because they have to be tough, and dog fighting is a growth out of that.
again not into it, but, people who are, are starting from a whole other concept. they project different values onto their pets than other people.
the same goes for video games.
i just came from a conversation with a woman who works in the sex industry lamenting that the popular acceptance of stripping and whatever else, has killed the golden goose. that some sex industry work, the profit is or was based on the lack of cultural acceptance, the taboo for the sake of taboo.
i guess the shock and horror has to be mitigated by whether people who enjoy it, are enjoying it because it is so shocking and horrifying to some, or if they just don’t care or even register that something might be wrong with it.
back to mike vick, i think he has paid his price, and it was hefty, i would find it a bit ironic if people heckling him are playing this game.
Citizen Alan
@Tom Levenson:
Pokemon is “cute” cock-fighting cleaned up for 8-year-olds. How this point is not self-evident to anyone who has ever played the game is beyond me. And I don’t have a problem with that, because cute cock-fighting with fictional animals that exist only on playing cards or in a video game is vastly superior to cock-fighting or dog-fighting with living, breathing dogs. As for the gory picture, I can’t really tell from the screenshot, but I’ll be very surprised if they can do any sort of realistic graphics on an Android app. But that does raise a question: would it be better or worse for you if the dogs in the game were obviously cartoon animals like the befuddled green pigs who get massacred in Angry Birds?
Anyway, I’d like to expand on my earlier comment: I went to the wiki page for the game I mentioned — “Custer’s Revenge” — to refresh my memory about it, and I learned that despite terrible graphics, terrible game play and a universally panned premise, it still sold 80K units and was by far the most successful product put out by that company, with sales apparently driven almost entirely by people who bought the game on a lark after reading about histrionic condemnations of the game from women’s and Native American advocacy groups. In fact, the makers actually prescreened the game for those groups in hopes of generating just such condemnations in order to boost sales.
So I ask you, Tom, how do you reconcile your condemnation of this game with the fact that you have probably just increased its sales by giving the makes free publicity and, I imagine, click revenue that they would not have gotten had you just ignored the game?
Tom Levenson
To the thread: dropping out now…family stuff. So I’m not ignoring the argument.
Well I am, but not maliciously.
Nellcote
@Tom Levenson:
In this same vein, I think “reality shows” are a bigger problem for the culture.
S. cerevisiae
I’m not a gamer, but this does remind me of the PMRC bullshit back in the eighties or the idiots that sued Judas Priest and Ozzy because their lyrics promoted suicide. I hate the very idea of this game but in the long run I agree with the commenters above who said this is nothing new.
I saw Death Race 2000 as a kid and I have never run over any pedestrians.
JGabriel
Tom Levenson:
I have no idea whether you’re over reacting or not. I suspect not, but I’m not sure.
Two examples:
1) In the middle of Portal, players carry around a large metal cube (roughly a meter cubed) with a heart printed on it, which they are ordered to incinerate when they’re finished with it. For whatever reason, a lot of people anthropomorphize this cube and feel guilt or aversion to incinerating it.
And for whatever reason, I’ve never felt it. Maybe I’ve become callous from living in NYC, where we routinely toss paper “I ♥ NY” coffee cups in the garbage everyday.
2) In Oblivion, characters can choose to play several different roles, like fighter, thief, wizard, et. al. One of those roles is: assassin. It requires killing innocent or good people. Obviously, some people enjoy playing the game that way, whereas, although I know they’re just virtual computer characters, I feel an aversion (guilt?) over killing innocent characters even accidentally.
So, on a scale between playing an assassin and incinerating a heart-imprinted metal cube, my aversion level is somewhere in the middle. I suspect that’s true for most of us.
Does playing a virtual dog fight trainer in a computer game rank lower than playing a virtual assassin on the aversion gaming scale? Higher? About the same?
In Oblivion, there are options for playing ethically “good” characters. Playing “evil” is just a choice. Does that make a difference? Would a dog-fighting game that gives one a choice to play a policeman breaking up the dog-fighting ring be better?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but they seem relevant to the conversation.
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jheartney
To expand a bit on Mike D’s point, simply looking at whatever sprites are being depicted tells you very little about what makes people want to play a game.
Someone brought up Angry Birds and asked if it isn’t violent. I think anyone who plays that would understand that the storyline is largely incidental, and what brings you back to it is the challenge of pursuing an artillery strategy that brings down the structures as efficiently and effectively as possible. The images could be pebbles launched at toothpick structures with little tiny balloons in them, and the game would have most of the same appeal. The bird/pig storyline is just an amusing hook; the gameplay is about the dynamics of challenge and reward, just like all other video games. Besides, the depictions of the birds and pigs are so cartoony that I doubt anybody could see them as anything other than a fictionalization.
People used to complain about how violent Road Runner cartoons were, ignoring the genius of Chuck Jones’ imagination and comic timing (not to mention the fact that all characters emerged from all the violence utterly unscathed in the next scene, every single time).
Uloborus
I wish to add another argument. Trying to repress harmless expressions of violence and evil is actually counterproductive. These desires exist and you CANNOT get rid of them. Trying to strangle them and make them inexpressable… how well does that work with sexual desire?
There may be some line where these things are bad, but I’d say it’s placed where the art actually suggests that these things should be glorified in real life, rather than expressed as a vicarious and virtual thrill. Where cattharsis becomes advertising.
EDIT: And one more thing. Always remember that ‘creepy’ is not ‘wrong’. Puritans think homosexuality is ‘creepy’. ‘Creepy’ is a gut reaction individual to you. You have every right to be personally revolted by this game, but that is not proof it’s destructive.
Cassidy
I saw what you did there…very clever. lol
Personally, I find the realistic level of violence in MW2 more troubling than this.
JGabriel
@Softail:
I don’t know if it’s the exact wording either, but it’s close enough that I can tell you it’s from Mother Night — if you want to look it up.
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Ruckus
Tom
As a non gamer I would ask the following, how many games don’t have some sort of violence in them? At what level of violence do the games start to sell at a higher level? At what level of violence do the games stop selling? How many games are out there that are not trying to be commercial successes but only worry about artistic success, what ever that may be?
Cause I’m thinking that most(vast majority) of the game writing today is financed by the bottom line, not the moral or artistic line.
ETA Isn’t there some line that freedom creates the opportunity for greatness as well as crassness?
Beauzeaux
I’m sure this game is no worse than any of the others mentioned.
It’s just one more nail in the coffin.
WarMunchkin
@Tom Levenson: Pokemon is about taking your pet, training it in combat, and using it to brutally beat the lights out of another animal. Just because they make cute animations out of it doesn’t make it any different. The same argument you’re making here has been applied to video games for a long time though – see grand theft auto, mortal kombat. It’s too realistic to be a game, etc.
Citizen Alan
One final point: part of the reason I’m being contrary on this issue is outrage fatigue. This post is followed by the one about the asshole in Michigan who wants to require foster children to get all their clothes from second hand stores and another post about how Franklin Graham is a birfer. It is preceded (a few posts down) by a lengthy video of racist troglodytes at a SC Tea Party event and a Galtian argument that raising taxes on the rich is per se morally wrong. With everything else going on in this country, I just can’t be buggered to worry about fictional cruelty towards fictional animals in fucking Android app that hasn’t even been released yet. It is literally not even in my Top 100 Things to Get Outraged Over.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
If you think this shitty little Android app (which you just provided with lots of free publicity, and I’m sure the developers thank you for it) will somehow make dog fighting more popular or acceptable, you’re a moron.
Did shooting up airport become more acceptable after Modern Warfare II came out? Because you do that. That is, you walk through an airport with an assault rifle and mow down hundreds of innocent people. It’s a regular fucking mission in the game.
This game you’re describing here is a more graphic and realistic version of the most popular children’s game in the world. You claim that Pokemon is someone so different because it’s cutesy. Well, guess what, it’s still about enslaving weaker creatures to fight each other for your amusement and aggrandizement. How exactly is it better to portray animal sport fighting as though there are no negative consequences for the animals you’re torturing? Isn’t it actually better to portray the reality of the sport, which is blood and pain and suffering?
This is such a disappointing thing to read here. Never mind the idea that the actual suffering humans being inflict on each other is apparently not as rage-inducing for you as the idea of pretend dogs fighting each other. Just the idea that a FP here wants to get into the demonize-the-new-media game pisses me off.
There’s really nothing more important going on? As we speak, somewhere in the world someone is being tortured to death. I give not one fuck about digital dogs.
WyldPirate
@Citizen Alan:
Ha. Death by a thousand outrages!
Seriously, Tom makes a good point. It’s a fact that our culture is a cesspool in general and in some places, it’s beyond foul. The fact is, it will continure to get “worse” until something alters its path.
and here is another outrage:
Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps
But the people in America are generally doing what their leaders do–accept responsibility.
Josie
@Mike D: Your reply is interesting to me because it is a carbon copy of the argument my youngest son (mid-twenties) has made every time I freak out at the video games he has played–mortal kombat, grand theft auto and several others. I keep saying they are a bad influence on the people who play them. He keeps saying that anyone affected by the game was messed up in the first place. It is hard to argue with his logic as he is the sweetest, most pacifist son I have (out of three). We settled on the agreement that there is probably an age limit for some of the more violent ones, maybe around 11 or 12, so that the person would be able to distinguish fantasy from reality.
Cat
Just to start, “I denounce Stalin and the broccoli mandate.”
You must spend a lot of time apologizing since you are a member of the same “presumptively sentient types” who rape, murder, and otherwise be cruel to each other by the 1,000’s every day.
Tom Levenson
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: I am ducking out of some family stuff to respond to this one because — well it pissed me off.
I don’t question your reading comprehension skills, just your attention, but I’d draw yours to the fourth graf of the post (not counting the block quote):
I don’t think a dog fighting app produces dog torturers, just as Rome Total War does not breed centurions. I said so, right there where you seem to have missed it.
My point is cultural: it doesn’t in fact bother me that people make games like these — as plenty of folks have pointed out, violent entertainment is an old and popular phenomenon. What does bother me is what seems, maybe just today, maybe because I’m sickened by the casual acceptance of Predator drones to mention the pathology that John writes about, or of torture, as plenty here and elsewhere have talked about (including me, over at my personal blog, long before I came here), of gun violence blithely passed over with excuses every time some maniac with a 31 shot clip shoots up a parking lot…and so on.
I didn’t know that there is a table of acceptable outrage I have to complete before I can get pushed over the edge by something as trivial as a game. For me, you can sometimes see in exactly such trivial ephemera as this a kind of off-axis view of how we habituate ourselves to the admittedly vastly more real and consequential outrages of real life.
There’s lots more to respond in the thread, and stuff I’m thinking about. But a birthday supper calls, and now I’m really checking out for the evening.
Mike D
@gnomedad:
I won’t say it wasn’t a factor.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Ruckus:
There are a lot. Puzzle games like Tetris or Bejeweled are generally completely abstract, and those two are some of the best selling games of all time. (In fact, by my calculation Tetris is the world’s best selling game, having been on the market continuously since the 80s.) Music and dancing games like Rock Band or Dance Central generally have no violence either. The biggest breakout hit of last year, Minecraft, does have some fighting but the meat of the game is creating new things out of mined materials. However, the majority of separate titles do feature violence, if you include cartoony violence like the Mario games. (I’m not so sure that the majority of single copies sold feature violence, and I don’t have time to look into it today.)
In my opinion, this doesn’t make much difference. Many of the most popular games have no violence at all, and many low-selling failures are sickeningly violent. A game’s quality and marketing are the biggest factors, but there’s no hard and fast rule to figure out what will be popular. There’s no upper limit on violence where games will stop selling altogether, but that’s also true of movies and books
The biggest games from the major developers can cost upwards of $100 million to produce. Those games are most definitely made for commercial success more than love of the art. This is as it should be, since people’s livelihoods are on the line. That’s not to say that there’s no art to be found in the AAA titles, just that moving copies has to be the main concern.
Most of the artistic work is being done at the indie level, where a handful of people can make a game with a small budget. Braid is the poster child for this sort of game, being a study of obsession and regret in the form of a side-scrolling puzzler. There are also a fair number of people who make games by themselves, and these are often the more avante garde types. Things like Passage, a pixelated representation of life’s journey, fit into this category.
But yeah, the bottom line is the bottom line. But, if you would condemn games for that, you also have to condemn every other art form that exists. People gotta eat.
(Can you tell I’m a game developer? I’m trying, anyway. I think video games have the potential to be a great art form, but there’s still a long road to hoe to get there. People are out there trying, though.)
Karmakin
The funny thing about this is that the thread is accompanied by an illustration from Dante’s Inferno..a cultural work that probably has done more real harm to our society than every TV show, movie and video game put together.
Uloborus
@Tom Levenson:
I see it as the cure, rather than the disease. A harmless release of violent tensions that used to be channeled into playground fights, beating your children, and lynchings.
Uloborus
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
The Void and The Path. Good lord, are they art. The Path is so art it’s hardly a game anymore, and even the developer’s web site blatantly lies to you. Or in the ultra-indie web games, how about ‘Today I Die‘?
Mike D
@Josie:
Y’know, it’s one thing I’ve been personally okay with – the idea of an age limit. I don’t know that a game would have really affected me at any age, but hearing a 5 year old tell me he and his dad would play GTAIV together rather disturbed even me. 12 sounds about right, though knowing our culture I’d be surprised if something like GTAIV ever got an age limit below 17. Really, though, that’s fine. It just means getting GTAIV at an early age is like getting a pack of smokes, and the kid doing so already knows he’s messing with something he’s not REALLY supposed to yet.
All the people I know who game, and every one I’m thinking of plays rather violent and what many in this thread would consider disturbing games, and the vast majority are extremely nice people, and those that aren’t had those issues well before they ever picked up a controller.
I guess my argument, in the end, is if it doesn’t affect real world interactions, and they’re not going out and hurting others, who really cares what that person is doing in front of their own screen? Why should we care some guy had a pit bull thrashing another one in some stupid Android game? Why should you go out and give some parents hell because they let their kid play a pit bull abuse game?
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Tom Levenson: Yes, fine. We pissed each other off.
But if you’re not worried about this game creating more dog-fighting, then what is the worry? That humans are fundamentally cruel and violent? Well blow me down, I hadn’t noticed.
Whatever violence appears in this piece of crap dogfighting game is matched by violence that appears in movies, and in books, and in fucking paintings. Not to mention real life. You seem to think that having it appear in a game somehow makes it worse. That’s horseshit.
I can appreciate that the horrors of the world disgust you. They disgust me too. But I’m not going to sit by while people scapegoat games because they can’t handle the rotten nature of the world. If the outrage causes the developers of this dog-fighting game to cancel it, there will still be dogs being tortured for people’s amusement.
I don’t understand what you want done about this. Generally, when people start talking like you you did, they want bannings and censorship. If that’s not what you want, then what?
Citizen Alan
@WyldPirate:
Really? Our culture today is worse than when executions were publicly held and widely attended? Worse than when politicians would openly praise the activities of lynch mobs? Worse than the 1800’s, when the American Kennel Club actually formulated rules and sanctioned referees for dogfights? Worse than the dance marathons of the Great Depression, in which rich patrons watched desperate poor people dance till they dropped in hopes of winning enough money to survive for a few months more?
It is always strange to me, this constant pining for a lost golden age when things “were better” but which never actually existed. Despite all the problems we do face today, I would rather be alive now and in this nation than in any other time and place in history.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Uloborus: Today I Die is great. I usually don’t like the “hey look at me I’m so so so artsy” type of games, but that one is just designed so well.
I like a mini-trend of flash games that force you to make difficult choices and refuse to give do-overs. One Chance, for example.
Games as art is still in a pretty primitive state. I would prefer that it not be snuffed out by facile outrage over sex and violence.
(Time Fcuk is another oddly artsy game you can play for free, though it has solid puzzle mechanics as well. I’d link some more, but you know, FYWP.)
Uloborus
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
I don’t know. I think games are at least as much art as movies or television. Games period are young, that’s all. By any recognizable definition of art, games can be and often are art. There are games that make you cry, games that present fantastic visual imagery, and games with thrilling stories with clever twists. Portal is not famous because of the gameplay or even the ending song. It’s famous because of the twisted madness of GlaDOS, because of a very well-developed character. The Bioshock games are philosophical and deeply immerse you in a mood. Games are art, man. Like all art they can be cheap and they can be pretentious and they can be highly technical.
Ruckus
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Thanks for the reply.
My point may have been a little fuzzy, lets see if I can do better.
Games seem to be split into two camps, ones that make you think and those that pass the time. Sure the one’s that make you think pass the time but that is not their main attraction. The pass the time games seem to use violence as the basis for the game. Not all of them for sure but a large percentage. Is it our nature as humans to be violent and therefore the games just reflect our culture? Do we have to learn to be less(or more depending on your point of reflection) than homicidal manics? Do the games re-enforce the violence or give it a place to be harmlessly dissipated?
As for the costs. Just because someone spends a substantial amount developing/doing something does not mean it has any value or that they spent the money wisely. For example I give you Iraq. I have seen gaming companies spend huge amounts building a state of the art computing facility just to walk away 2 years later. All written off as part of the cost of the development.
Karmakin
One thing that I think is far to neglected in these discussions is gameplay and systems as a form of art, and that’s where I think they largely miss the mark.
From the early days of Pac-Man and Miyamoto’s work on Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda, right through to modern day, with Modern Warfare’s respawn system encouraging and requiring teamplay, and Portal’s use of..well..Portals, gameplay has evolved a lot over the last 30 years or so.
And it’s not just video games. A good example I would give is the land resource system in Magic: The Gathering that puts it steps above competitors, or Poker, which has evolved into a largely Hold’Em game. Or think of the Duplicate system of Bridge.
Gameplay, and gameplay evolution/progress is something that I think is entirely ignored, but to me, it’s a very important art of our culture. If play is important (and I think it is) then so is gameplay evolution.
Karmakin
Aw crap. Mention of a certain card game (You know, the one that Rounders is based off of?) hits the moderation trigger. didn’t know that, but I should have.
Long story short, before it goes through moderation. Gameplay is important too, so don’t ignore that. Games like Modern Warfare and GTA3 actually provided significant gameplay advances that make them worthy of well..existing in my eyes.
Aaron
Violent video games? Seriously?
Stop hating on the freedom of American culture. Its a free marketplace of ideas.
Ruckus
@Citizen Alan:
It is always strange to me, this constant pining for a lost golden age when things “were better” but which never actually existed. Despite all the problems we do face today, I would rather be alive now and in this nation than in any other time and place in history.
I’m not sure I’d go all in for this nation than any other place at this time but the total sentiment is correct.
I was young in the 50’s but they still seemed to be pretty crappy. Sure more people could afford a small crap shack house but that’s what you really got for your money. I knew personally 3 people who had polio. We had wars, guns, lynchings. The thought that a man with any known black genetics could be president? Not a thought that any one had. Social security? No. Medicare? No. Jim Crow? You bet your ass. A woman running for president? Ha! Ever seen the video of a 59 chevy in a modern crash lab?
You are correct. Rear view mirrors are small and distort the view. Try driving at 30 in reverse only looking in the mirror. Let me know how that works out. Wait, if you want to find out just ask a conservative to hold elected office. The only difference is the higher speed they try to drive in reverse. Which only makes it worse.
Arclite
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I’m not sure that it’s infinitely worse. The virtual humans torturing virtual humans games can get pretty disgusting, both viscerally and morally (link not for the squeamish, even though it’s just a game and fairly low-rez at that).
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Ruckus: In my opinion, humans are, by default, vicious predators who will kill and torture for fun and profit unless they’re given a good reason not to do so, and that providing that good reason is the purpose of society. So yes, games just reflect our violent nature. I suspect that violent games can work as a steam valve for people who might otherwise be violent in real life, but I wouldn’t put any money on that idea until some better studies are done. I do think that studies done so far don’t show that playing violent games leads to RL violence for most people, but I can’t discount the possibility of a violent game setting off a mentally unstable sort of person.
It does seem fairly clear that violence in American culture has fallen somewhat since the dawn of video games, but I seriously doubt there’s any causation to go with that correlation. Crime is much lower now than it was in the late 70s, for example, but if video games are a factor in that they’re a tiny one. All IMHO, mind. I’m no sociologist.
However, the major reason we see so many violent games is, again IMHO, that game designers know how to simulate violence. Violence is a relatively easy way to add conflict to a video game, because we’ve been developing techniques to do so for thirty years. Making a series of conversations into a game, for instance, is much much more difficult, and doing so always entails a risk of failure.
If you’re making a game with a $30 million dollar budget, do you want to risk your company’s survival and the jobs of everyone in that company on an extended metaphor of a girl going through puberty that might have dodgy mechanics and sell poorly, or do you take the more sure path of a game about space marines shooting people? The second choice can be derided as pandering and playing it safe, but accolades for your bravery and artistic sense are pretty hollow when you’re out of a job.
Take Bioshock. Great story to that game, being about the breakdown of an underwater Galt’s Gulch and why it collapsed. The whole game is a stinging rebuke to objectivism, with some meditation on the nature of free will thrown in for good measure. And yet, most of the time spent playing this game is spent shooting nameless goons by the dozen.
This is what I mean when I say that games are still a primitive art form. It will still be years before we have a real handle on compelling mechanics for things outside of moving, buying, selling, and killing. And the sad reality is that most of these advances are going to have to come from poor indie developers, because they can afford to take those risks.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
Shame
Genuine Interocitor Parts
Whenever I see arguments that video gamemakers should be shamed and that violent games are a sign of our collective moral decay, I always wonder: do you apply the same standards to older pass times?
Tom, would you seriously forbid your child from playing with another kid who suggested a game of Risk? It’s a game that encourages the wholesale slaughter of other armies so one can take over countries – presumably filled with people living there – which in the game are nothing more than resources.
Would you call Monopoly a “moral cancer?” There’s a game where the point is to gain as much money as possible while actively forcing other people in to utter financial ruin. For no other reason than the fact that they’re not you. That is cruelty, plain and simple. But not only is it not considered unacceptable, it’s pretty much universally called a “family game.”
Would you argue that reading a James Bond novel where he shoots Russian guards to be morally equivalent to shouting anti-Semitic slurs at a ballpark? Sure, one could say he’s doing it to save the world, but the ending isn’t why people read spy-thrillers or watch war movies – it’s for the tension, the action, the danger. And usually, that involves violence.
I think we’d agree that those reactions would be silly.
I love your posts generally, but this one just smacks of an assault on a new medium. Along the lines of the fictional violence and cruelty I grew up with is A-OK, but what these kids are doing now is just beyond the pale.
On the dog-fighting game in specific, it looks like an attempt to be controversial in the place of being interesting or original. That doesn’t deserve indignation. That deserves a yawn.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Tom, in case you read this dead thread, I just want to apologize for calling you a moron. That was out of line and certainly not true.
To be honest, I really don’t get it when people act as though violence to dogs is somehow worse than violence to people. Because dogs are so innocent or something. As someone who was attacked by a dog as a child, I just don’t believe that. I mean, say what you will about humans, but I’ve never seen one rip a bunny apart with their teeth, then toss it aside in boredom once it stopped moving. Dogs do that.
We’re both apex predators. Both our species are alive today because we’re good at killing and willing to do so. That being so, it just seems odd to me to be so bothered by a dog fighting game to play on a Droid phone. I mean, that Droid is made using rare metals that are usually mined by slaves who are worked to death, so I just can’t concern myself about virtual atrocities or the people who pretend them.