Moral inconsistency

Here we have a game full of violence, mayhem, and vulgarities. In Grand Theft Auto IV, the main character Nico, fresh off the boat, encounters his brother who immediately begins to talk about women and their "big american titties." In the next few missions that take place, Nico will ruff up an immigrant store keeper, steal cars, and murder. Meanwhile, the player has full reign to run over pedestrians and kill whoever gets in their way. The game is not made by Disney.

And as the game continues, the bodies will pile up, a parking garage worth of cars will be stolen, drugs will be smuggled, and every obscenity known to a fifteen year old will be shouted. Yet, none of these things will get a rise out of the moralist gamer. Only when Nico slaps a girl does a fervor erupt.

Why is that? The same gamers who have no qualms with wanton destruction will even complain and claim the alternative game Saints Row 2 is a better game because there is more mayhem. Why do those gamers have their only issue be slapping a young woman who is trying to cause the car their character is driving to crash?

Examining another issue in the game, players are free to visit strip clubs and visit prostitutes in the street. While in the strip clubs, the most revealing underwear covers the stripper as she dances erotically for the game's character. If multiple dances are requested, the player is "rewarded" with a second stripper who dances with her female companion. On the streets, a player is able to solicit hookers with a honk of the horn, find an alley, and engage in three separate levels of intercourse, shown without any pixelation or obstruction.

Once again, gamers did not argue over the graphic and sophomoric sexualization of women in the game. It is only that slap that garners universal disdain. So the wise adage of the strip club, "you can look but you better not touch," holds firm. No complaints are made over the nudity, since the scapegoat of "you'd expect nudity in a strip club" stifles any critic. However, one shot, one scene in the downloadable content for the game caused a frenzy of disgust with gamers.

The inclusion of a digital penis sent a shock wave across gaming websites and communities. Many thought the inclusion was completely unnecessary, despite the fact that the scene is mere seconds and takes place in a full body massage parlor. The game, which features and promotes vehicular manslaughter, murder, random sex with paid women, and copious amounts of near female nudity, is at worst tolerable and still critically celebrated.

But, examine the context of the male nudity. Rather than have its inclusion be for the sake of only creating controversy, the scene has importance. The nude character is a senator, a man of great power and comfort with his power. His later existence in the game is the catalyst for the climax of the game's central narrative. Upon first meeting him, the senator is in a massage parlor getting rubbed down by a female employee. The player, as portrayed by a member in a biker gang, is visibly disturbed by the open nudity of the senator. Rather than have the character be the only one uncomfortable, since as a member of the biker gang he is probably homophobic, the game designers chose to show the same nudity that is causing distress to the character to the player, and it is fair to say that the vast majority of males who play video games, particularly the Grand Theft Auto series, have at least homophobic tendencies.

Anyone who has played a game on the online Xbox service has undoubtably encountered some sort of homophobia. Young teenagers shout at other players "faggot" and racial slurs. Those that do not will use terms like "that's gay" in a derogatory fashion that casts dispersion on homosexuals, even if the intent is not purposeful - a term considered "subtle racism" in some contexts. Even Microsoft in their moderating of the online community will ban anything they consider to be sexual, however the case can and has been made that they target same sex material more than heterosexual content, despite any interpretation to the "offensive" material. A player will be banned if their gamertag or biography makes mention of their homosexual status, but a gamertag that is heterosexual will not. Various websites have chronicled this in greater depth, despite Microsoft's claims to the otherwise. And little to no action is ever taken to those that shout homophobic epitaphs in games with other players.

So, where is the rallying cry from those moralist gamers who cry foul at a slap for the constant sexualization of women in the very same game or the homophobia that is rampant within the industry? The problem is that those same gamers must first admit their own prejudices before the support the injustice against others in the community. If the male nudity causes discomfort for the player, the player must fess up to the true reason of why it bothers. If the male nudity is excessive, and the female nudity is not, despite being in the game far less, then the player must admit to the prejudicial bias. If the player claims to be a champion of women in their games and decries a small act of violence to them, then the player must continue their crusade against the sexualization of women. Moreover, these gamers must break their paternalistic view of women and their mentality to protect them from any and all physical violence; the same can be said to the championing of butch, independent women that represent only an early view of feminism and not the post-feminist (or womanist) world in which we live in today. However, none of this will happen until gamers, and the country, grow up. Until then, homophobia will be the norm in online game sessions and gamers will continue to draw and salivate over busty cartoon depictions of women.

Idiots with no memory

Psychonauts was a mediocre platformer. Fighting against an awkward and outdated camera, jumping from platform to platform was tedious. The last level in the game, the Meat Circus, is not only timed, but also an escort mission that combines two horrible design choices into a cluster bomb of vomit. Controlling Grim Fandango sucked. He was difficult to turn and maneuver in static environments. The ending was rushed, and some of the puzzles were too obscure.

Are you people mental? Did you forget these problems in two masterpieces of video gaming?

Brutal Legend is under heavy criticism for not having the greatest "gameplay." These critics are idiots. Every Tim Schafer game has problems when it comes to the core foundations of controlling the character. It existed in Psychonauts and it existed in Grim Fandango. However, people gloss over these issues in hindsight while criticizing Brutal Legend... why? Because it wasn't what they expected.

Brutal Legend begins as a ho-hum God of War, Ninja Gaiden clone. Eddie Riggs, played by Jack Black, swings a guitar and an axe dealing fierce combinations of attacks. Rather than continue this design for the next 10 hours, the game opens up to introduce driving sections and, ultimately, real time strategy elements. Now, Eddie Riggs can command armies from the sky and still be able to drop to the ground to participate in the warfare with the old melee attacks or vehicle driving. The game does not exceed in any of these different tactics of control, but as with any Tim Schafer game, it is the sum of its parts that matters.

Psychonauts transcended platforming games via its ingenious premise of entering the minds of people, complete with their fears, and an art style that would make any animated design team jealous. The writing was sharp and wonderful. Grim Fandango marked the end of adventure gaming with its culmination of a Day of the Dead world with a film noir story. If made into a film, it would be heralded.

Brutal Legend has its issues. Yes, the controls are sometimes less than desirable. But, the game clips along with the same speed as so many classic Schafer games. And, ultimately, it is a memorable experience that will last after the short runtime. Critics are idiots.

Be mean

Two years ago this coming November, Jeff Gerstmann was fired from the video game website Gamespot for essentially giving a heavily advertised game a low review score. What should have sent a shock wave throughout the industry resulted in only a thud. Not much has changed in the last two years with video game reviewers.

Video games are picked on constantly like no other massively popular medium. Video games are constantly portrayed as for children, mind rotting, violence inducing, misogyny, vulgarity, and generally vile. While one could spend the time debating the merits of those complaints, one thing for certain is that such attacks have made video game players a prickly and defensive group. While some games try to push boundaries (GTAIV as previously discussed in another article), many in the community who play video games do not want to rock the boat. Perhaps this is why sequels are so prevalent. Moreso, the internal criticism of the video game community is virtually nonexistent.

Take for example the issue of racism in Resident Evil 5 brought up by N'Gai Croal. First lambasted as an outsider, then too mainstream of a critic, N'Gai and his topic were denounced almost unilaterally by people. This was probably just a knee jerk reaction to any and all criticism of video games and a fear that such a comment could land gaming on the evening news, where if it is ever mentioned it is done so negatively. After the dust settled, a few people brought up the issue again, and explored the issue in other games such as Punch Out for the Wii in the efforts to seem more substantive in conversation. Video games, and their general audience, vie to be taken more seriously. Perhaps this is why budgets for games balloon with movie like productions and orchestral music.

Nevertheless, video games are in an infancy still, despite existing in a mainstream form for twenty years. It is imperative for people within the gaming community to be more critical of each other. For example, on a recent Bitmob podcast, Dan Hsu, the former editor in chief of Electronic Gaming Magazine decried a recent surge of entitlement among gaming press, such as whining about standing in lines to play games to not always getting free copies of games to review (and then keep). However, Hsu did not personally name anyone involved in such tantrums. Rather than expose these people or sites so that the listeners could take heed and avoid them, Hsu remained cryptic. This was puzzling from the man who revealed in the magazine that the publisher Ubisoft would ban people in the gaming press from access to their games if in the past low review scores or negative coverage was given. Hsu had no problem confronting a major publisher directly, but failed to do so with fellow press.

Usually, when a person form another gaming website complains about a member of the press, they are usually complaining about IGN. IGN is the largest U.S. video game website on the internet. They have some talented people working there, and some very untalented people. Parody websites have been created to mock the hyperbolic nature of IGN. When someone complains that video games are scored on a 7-10 scale, it is because IGN reviews a vast majority of their games in the range of 7-10, nullifying two-thirds of their review scale. Other problems with the website exist, such as the fact that IGN will almost assuredly overrate a game if they received preferential access or if they have close ties with members of the development team. This is evident in the high scores given to Too Human, The Conduit, and Bionic Commando; the Metacritic scores for these games, Metacritic being a review aggregate site that compiles review scores from a multitude of sites, are 10 points lower than what IGN gave the games. Is this a result of money being exchanged for favorable scores? Probably not. The simpler explanation is that these people are too nice and feel a sense of obligation and politeness to not be critical to a game.

Someone on the popular video game forum NeoGaf recently discovered through his own research that the standard deviation of video game review scores is very low, especially compared to that of films. In simplistic terms, this means that the people who review video games from many different outlets tend to give the same scores as one other, while movie critics will often disagree with one another and give lower scores. Roger Ebert recently gave Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen one and a half stars out of four. The Rotten Tomato score for this movie is under twenty percent. One of the biggest and most anticipated movies of the summer is being critically bashed, and this is not terribly uncommon. I cannot remember the last time, if ever, a high profile game received an aggregate score of two out of ten.

Many reasons exist for these issues, such as a desire to model gaming scores off of the American educational scoring system (which rates a C or average at a seventy percent) or the desire to have reviews be product descriptions and detailed manuals. But, as stressed in other articles and again here, for the medium of video games to advance, change must come from within the community. The people who play video games must demand more of those in the press. And, the press must expect more from the readers and listeners. In lockstep, both must mature and give, and allow, criticism of their beloved pastime.