Just a game

The video release from WikiLeaks of the US military bombing unarmed journalists in Iraq has been met with much hostility. One of the comments getting passed around commonly is how much the sequence plays like a video game. In truth, it is just like a video game.

After witnessing the debacle that is Modern Warfare 2, it is easy to understand and assume that the first Modern Warfare is a bit of an enigma. In the midst of the military celebration is a sequence that speaks against war very eloquently. I've spoke on it before, but briefly, here are the two scenes.

The first level is that of an intense firefight. The player assume control of a random Marine and struggles to gain ground, fighting against a never-ending supply of enemy combatants, tanks, and artillery. Slowly, and with constant fire all around, the player must push forward to capture various points of the map until the level concludes.

The second level is from a gunship high above the fight. The player himself cannot die. Rather, the level is lost if the player does not provide appropriate cover fire for the Marines below. In a grainy black and white monitor, the player must fire various cannons from the gunship, eliminating white dots that represent the enemy. As this goes on, the pilot of the gunship comments on the action in a dry tone, mocking the death of the soldiers.

What makes this such an interesting sequences is that the player is able to, in a loose sense, "experience" the action of the soldier on the ground with the detachment of the gunship above. War is hell, so they say, and when death is immediate and almost probable, it is more intense than cushioned hundreds of feet above a battle. It is an antiwar sequence because it shows the common detachment of war, the ease of it, by eliminating any danger.

So, when the video of the WIkLeaks "Collateral Murder" appeared, this sequence immediately jumped to mind of many people. We've seen in recent years the detachment of war. Predator Drones fly unmanned and bombing people, "enemies" and civilians, and not much fanfare is made. And while many people can make not that the video from WikiLeaks shows innocent people dying, or the military covering up the video, or the ethics behind leaking a video while we are in a current war, this is not what concerns me the most. What concerns me is this detachment. In the video, the pilots and people are laughing at the people dying below, callously dismissing the death of the innocent and children who "dare" to bring minors into the battlefield, a battlefield that didn't become one until the military opened fire. The people "over there" may be our "enemy", but they are human, they are people, we are bound by the common connection of flesh, bone, and blood, and though we may need to strike and kill to preserve our precious "way of life", we need not do so with callousness and malicious intent. To do so is to lose our humanity and undermine our very purpose as a society.

The military pushes this detachment, supports it, covets it, and uses video games, such as the official US Army sanctioned game, to recruit. When does it end and become no longer "just a video game?"

The odessa steps, Modern Warfare 2, and Heavy Rain

Playing through Heavy Rain immediately brought up thoughts about the immensely disappointing Modern Warfare 2. For me, the unification between the two can be traced back to the Odessa Steps sequence in the 1926 Sergei Eisenstein masterpiece The Battleship Potemkin. For those that haven’t seen the film or at least the memorable scene of the film, the brief plot is that of faceless Cossacks gunning down helpless victims  in the midst of a celebration. The scene has been parodied to death and imitated in many other movies, notably the ending shootout of Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Nevertheless, the seen remains timeless and still emotionally evocative due to Eisenstein and his remarkable theory of montage. Montage, in a nutshell, is the practice of editing together different images in order to convey a certain emotional response; it is not only bound to training sequences in sports movies.

The sequence itself is not that long, lasting only 7 or so minutes. However, In that brief period, a wide variety of characters are quickly introduced. We see a women with a parasail, a women with her child, a man with no legs, and old women with glasses, a baby carriage. This comprises the first minute of the seven. The next six are devoted to the fleeing and the carnage of these people by the guns of the faceless Cossacks. Through the use of montage, the editing and direction of Eisenstein, an incredibly deep connection is established in such brief moments that make this onslaught all the more horrific. The Cossacks are unknown, seen only from the back, and are not the focus of the scene. The attention is paid directly to the common people who are butchered.

In seven minutes, this sequence does more than both Heavy Rain, which drunkenly indulges in attempting to establish emotional responses and Modern Warfare 2, which doesn’t even bother to identify the people murdered in the airport scene. Rather, in the scene from Modern Warfare 2, the player is asked to identify with the killers and not the killed. As a result, the desperate attempt at controversy and attention fall flat because no emotional attachment is made with the player on the repercussions of their actions. What would have made this sequence actually work would have been that one minute part of the Odessa Steps. Have the player walk through the airport, noticing a family waiting for their flight, or the women traveling with her crying child, or anything that would have identified the nameless crowd.

Heavy Rain, on the other hand, goes to far in trying to establish its emotional connections that it beats the player over the head with trite sentimentality. The game opens with a father, Ethan, playing with his two children. He carries them, runs them around on his shoulders, engages in a  sword fight, and help prepare their birthday party. Then, they go to a mall where he buys one of them a red balloon, loses his child in a crowd, and watches in horror as his son gets hit by a car and dies. This all sounds like it should work on paper, because it makes logical sense. Establish an emotional connection with the player to the characters by having them live mundane lives until tragedy strikes. The problem lies in the skill of the game creator, David Cage, and his storytelling abilities.

This section of the game goes on for about 30 minutes in an 8 hour game. There are other sections of the game that are similar in muted tone. A few months after the death of his child, Ethan is divorced and has care of his other remaining child for the night. He can, if the player decides to, cook dinner, play with his child, force his child to do homework, let his child watch television or stay up late. This probably lasts 15 minutes. And there are other many more scenes;  spend five minutes making a sandwich for a prostitute, give a crying baby a bottle, and whatnot. The problem isn’t directly with the scenes, but their excess and poorly written nature. Each of these moments is begging the player on hands and knees to notice their sentimentality and their unique existence in video games.

When you give a player choice in a story driven game, it can undermine the intentions of its creator and reveal the game to be shallow. If the player in his control of Ethan chooses to not play with his children, help with setting up the birthday party, ignores his hungry child and doesn’t feed him dinner, or complete any of the five trails a serial killer has set up in order to find his son who is later kidnapped, there are no penalties. These scenes of sentimentality become even more false when the actions of its main protagonist are ignored. What is left is a game that has its manipulations of emotions so shallow that an inch beneath their surface reveals an empty abyss.

There exist moments when Heavy Rain succeeds and succeeds admirably. However, these issues involving its story and manipulation of the player reveal what may be a bigger problem in gaming where choice confronts artistic integrity. Other problems exist, such as the treatment of minorities in the game and its use of gratuitous female nudity, but those comments will be saved for another post at another time. Heavy Rain remains an intriguing, if deeply flawed, interactive experience.

No russian, no warfare

Violence and adult content should not be pigeonholed to only one medium. Sex can and should be both written and shown in books and films, and sexual interaction have a place in video games. The same can be said for violence. A society that hides itself from the realities of life, whether those realities be vile or morally repugnant for some, is a society that suffers.

The first Modern Warfare made a grand statement about war. In the game, two levels juxtapose the reality and detachment that exists in war. Violence on the ground is real, unavoidable, and nasty. Violence from the air is without consequence and quiet. This could have been extrapolated into the situation games create, where reality and virtual reality are farther apart than people care to realize. I can't believe such a statement was in a popular video game played by millions. I thought "The genius to do this and pull it off... wow!"

Of course, it was accidental.

No, the grand statement was nothing more than just a cool way to show people dying and glorify war. The sequel to the first game cements this cold realization. Here, Infinity Ward, the developers of the megahit, sprinkle the foliage with pot leaves, ridiculous military jargon, and worse. In the lead up to the game's release, the company decided to show a promotional video on their twitter feed. The video was an official product, not a fan video or something else. It was initially fully endorsed.

The video acted as a fake campaign against one of the problems in the first game's multiplayer mode where people would use grenades to kill people. The fake campaign in this video was titled "Fight Against Grenade Spam" and that those that spammed grenades were "pussies." There's two major problems with this, and it is sad, but predictable, that only 1 is the focus of media attention.

The first obvious one is the fact that Infinity Ward is using the derogatory word fags. For homosexuals, the remark is very offensive. It would be as if Infinity Ward had the campaign be called "No Infinite Grenade Gouging Everywhere. Really Serious" and called people niggers instead. This is hateful language to a group of people that is already bullied constantly on the multiplayer service. And, whether they want this connection or not, there's also the issue of the extremely homophobic nature of the U.S. military, and the game is a military shooter.

Then, there's the issue of "pussies." Again, this word is being used in a derogatory manner. Women play games, and even violent military games. Just as it isn't right to call someone a fag or a nigger, it's not right to call someone in a derogatory fashion a pussie or any other female slur. The fact that this part of the video is being ignored only further shows that the entire video game culture is dominated by men, reported by men, and ignores any issues relating to females.

Then the game came out, and it was more messy. In the game Modern Warfare 2, an undercover CIA operative infiltrates a Russian terrorist group and accompanies them on a mission to shoot dozens of innocent civilians in an airport. There is a warning that because of the content of this mission, the level can be skipped by the player with no penalty.

However, the problem arises in the fact that the level itself is of no consequence to the game. Instead of acting as any catalyst for larger discussion, the scene is only a plot point in a ludicrous plot that doesn't even remotely try to ground itself in reality. As such, why bother putting something so grizzly and realistic in a bizzaro military fetish simulator? The simple answer is to drum up controversy to promote sales.

You can't shoot the Russian terrorists in the level, or else the terrorists will shoot you and you die. You can't just sit there or try and leave the level, or else the terrorists will shoot you and you die. You are forced to walk side by side and witness the carnage of innocent men and women dying for no purpose. The game gives these vague ideas that it is worth having this awful event take place so that a worse one in the future can be prevented, but what is this event? What is worse than hundreds being gunned down in an airport?

Yes, you can go through the level without killing any civilians. But this is a small accolade given to the player. You are still required to kill the police who arrive to try and stop the massacre. I spend hours, literally hours, trying to pass this 15 minute section, but it was impossible. The police are acceptable cannon fodder and the game requires it.

More nonsense continues, but why give this game any more words than it deserves. What respect I once had for Infinity Ward is gone. When Modern Warfare 3 comes, there will be one less purchase, and I'll encourage those around me to do the same. This game, and this company, are hateful. Despicable.

No Russian. No Warfare. No more.