Culture Clash

(November 2007)

Monkey See/Monkey Do

What's worse than doing? Watching

The much-ballyhooed release of the emasculated (with pliers, no doubt) Manhunt 2 is upon us, and we in the games industry can be sure of one thing: it's going to sell a lot of copies, because it'll be on the news (local and national), and there'll be press conferences and protests and so on. Manhunt 2, a mediocre sequel to a mediocre game from people who should be ashamed because they're capable of better, is going to sell like Krispy Kremes because of the backlash, and would have bombed utterly without it. We've seen it many times– a bad, boring game created by smug, troublemaking developers too lazy to work hard on quality; advertised into double-platinum by those who claim to hate and fear it, who single out games and in so doing, pimp the product they despise.

The fact that games are interactive, claim the Moral Boring People, makes them worse. Means they should be legislated differently than passive entertainment, because in interactive games you're actually raping cops and killing hookers or whatever. When tongue-in-cheekedly discussing this before, I took the party line, arguing a common and valid assertion: that the interactivity in games is abstract, that there's no comparison between pulling an Xbox trigger and pulling a real one. I still believe this is true.

“Doesn't matter,” opponents argue, “it's interactive. It makes you part of it, abstract or not. It's worse.”

Worse than what? Than watching violence? Surely not.

Yes, “doing” something, no matter how abstract compared to its mirror in the real world, is different from simply watching it occur, because you are, peripherally, involved. But “different” and “worse” aren't the same. In fact, when you think about it, violent games aren't nearly as horrific as violent TV and movies.

A passive viewer of torture, murder or violence – who chooses to watch it as a form of entertainment – is not just tacitly condoning it. The observation of such activities is gratifying, to the point that he seeks it out. That kind of voyeurism is much more depraved, sitting there eating popcorn while characters beg and scream. And while it could be argued that there's more to Saw or Hostel than simple gory violence, it is the main course of the entertainment. In games, the play experience is the allure, not the violence. I don't play Jericho to see skinned people, available in ample numbers though they may be. It's the action, the skill, the adrenaline, the atmosphere, all these things. Playing such a game obviously includes violence, but that's not the reason people play – in fact, the violence is just a mechanism or catalyst that helps realize the game experience. The killing is tertiary at best. This is true in all but a few intentionally exploitative cases, like, frankly, Manhunt.

There's also the fact that videogames, no matter how violent, are absolutely, positively less disturbing than passive, viewed entertainments. I'm actually pretty squeamish about some things; I'd never see a Captivity. I don't deal well with gore and violence associated with torture or cruelty. Heck, I cringe and look at my knees during scenes in movies as far-flung as Robocop, The Fly and The Machinist (hand trauma also freaks me out). But I have never had that reaction to a videogame, even ones with intensely graphic depictions of violence. If they made Manhunt into a movie, I couldn't sit through it. But the game doesn't bother me in the slightest, aside from sucking. Why is that, exactly?

Probably because games are in no way as realistic as more established media – and because even the worst moments are happening to 3D models and voice actors, not real onscreen people. Games also often still lack the subtlety of other media, falling back on the melodrama of testicle tearing and lawnmowers to evoke reactions, when a more delicate cinematic hand could rub us far rawer. In this way, the interactivity in games has so far created a detachment that reduces impact as compared to other popular entertainment.

If violence doesn't prove it, look at sex. The absurdity of interactive porn content, from Hot Coffee to Hentai games, pretty much speaks for itself. Even romantic relationships still come off as extremely clumsy, producing – at best – a short-term emotional reaction. Same goes for most in-game tragedies. Part of this is because games are still maturing as an evocative medium, but part of it is the barrier that interactivity erects. Passive voyeurism is much more sadistic than interactivity.

I imagine most gamers would agree that they've never had as visceral a reaction to brutality in a videogame as they have to a movie (sorry, Quake IV people; it might've been more upsetting if you hadn't trumpeted it for 18 months). Does that mean we're so desensitized to violence that we don't even care any more? Of course not, or else we'd be desensitized to it across all media. If we weren't, the opposition's own argument falls apart: if games only desensitize you to violence in other games, the threat is naturally enclosed and not dangerous at all.

In fairness, those critics of gaming who are actually sane make a point to single out idiotically-violent-for-violence's-sake games like Postal , and socially inflammatory games like GTA , rather than all games everywhere . I do the same here citing Hostel and Saw rather than “every violent movie ever.” There's a place for violence in art, and (again, the sane) critics of a new art form tend to recognize and respect that, provided the rating system works. Which it does. But one fact remains: regardless of where you fall on the interactivity versus voyeurism debate, these people are perpetuating the “problem” by casting media attention on the objects of their ire. Maybe self-preservation is their true goal. After all, if haughty, low-talent developers ever stopped making sensationalistic trash and focused on deep, affecting, and occasionally violent interactive worlds, why… no one would have anything to complain about.