games about killing should probably make you uncomfortable

January 29, 2015 8:10 PM

"[...] She kills for a living, and her mission cannot be overlooked as you make her traipse through the maze. She’s not the type to nuke a planet from orbit. No, Samus is hands-on: she likes to explore and kill to her satisfaction. She insists on landing on a planet’s surface and fucking-up whatever network of bubblegum and barbed wire is holding the entire planetary house of cards together—usually doing this so thoroughly that the world collapses around her ears as she just barely escapes. It’s a singular talent of hers." Rei writes about homelessness, genocide, and Metroid II: Return of Samus on SelectButton.net. (SelectButton previously.)
posted by jsnlxndrlv (48 comments total)

These supposedly indigenous creatures exist for grinding in some areas and clash with the ecological storytelling.

That phrase, ecological storytelling - I didn't know until I read that that it's what I really want out of a Metroid game. I've always focused on the isolation and exploration as the main points, but the hostile ecosystems Samus finds herself in are really a fundamental part of the game that I've never really thought out because I guess it's always been expressed through the tools they had at the beginning of the series when games were simpler by neccessity, so it's just "enemies" - your geemers and zoomers and metroids etc - all feeling kind of just plopped in a new environment as obstacles. But the toolbox for making games has grown a lot since they established those tropes, and I'd love to see something more organic in a new Metroid game, where the hostile ecosystem is an enemy with its own personality and logic and unique hazards. Throw Samus into something like Area X from the Southern Reach books with a healthy dash of inspiration from the Alien well that Metroid's always tapped, I'd play the hell out of that.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:26 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

"games about killing should probably make you uncomfortable".

I don't see why. It's escapism. It's an opportunity to fantasize about doing things I would never, ever, consider doing in real life.

I don't want my games to preach to me. I want them to be fun, and to let me fantasize about things that won't ever actually happen to me. What's the point of playing a realistic game? If I want that, I'll turn the computer off.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:28 PM on January 29, 2015 [12 favorites]

"games about killing should probably make you uncomfortable"

This is why I don't play chess.
posted by I-baLL at 9:38 PM on January 29, 2015 [27 favorites]

Jason Steakums the game you want is Waking Mars

Its beautiful, smart, engaging and cheap. Great on PC but I think its perfect on tablet. A seriously overlooked Metroid style game, probably because of the lack of killing. Essentially you are waking the dormany flora of mars, simple puzzles, exploration, some platforming and jetpacks.
posted by kittensofthenight at 9:47 PM on January 29, 2015 [11 favorites]

HAL loved chess...
posted by clavdivs at 9:48 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

That phrase, ecological storytelling - I didn't know until I read that that it's what I really want out of a Metroid game.

It's been a long time (over 10 years holy shit) so I may be coloring my memories a bit, but I seem to recall that Metroid Prime was much, much more in this direction. A big part of the exploration in that game was about scanning flora, fauna, and artifacts. Also I'm pretty sure there were a lot of passive creatures and most of the stuff you killed was the result of genetic experimentation by the space pirates.

Now that I think about it Metroid Prime gave me a pretty strong Nausicaa vibe.
posted by Doleful Creature at 9:52 PM on January 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

Speaking of ecological narrative games...I've been very interested to try Earthtongue, just haven't gotten around to it yet.
posted by Doleful Creature at 9:53 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jason Steakums the game you want is Waking Mars

Starseed Pilgrim might also fit the bill.
posted by Reyturner at 9:56 PM on January 29, 2015

I want them to be fun, and to let me fantasize about things that won't ever actually happen to me. What's the point of playing a realistic game? If I want that, I'll turn the computer off.

I don't agree. I think this is kind of the same as people who say they don't like watching uncomfortable, sad, or weird movies or books because they're "depressing". Media doesn't always have to grovel and ingratiate itself to us all the time. It doesn't have to puff up our sense of self-worth by giving us a saccharine fantasy with a cardboard villain that we tip over so we can feel better that we "won".

I'm thinking of Cart Life right now. Cart Life is a hell of a game where you run a food cart. Except you first have to get the money together, get the business license, go to the welding shop to get the cart put together, and then go to the big box to buy the cups and coffee before you even start your business. And the game just tosses you in this mess without telling you where anything is and how the bus schedules work to get from place to place.

I failed in Cart Life repeatedly. And it was frustrating, and the subject matter couldn't be farther from fantasy. But it was actually quite interesting and it obviously made a bit of an impact in my head since I'm mentioning it now. I wanna play more games like that instead of just shooting stuff over and over again.

I mean, I guess I don't see being uncomfortable as being mutually exclusive to fun. Not always, anyways.
posted by FJT at 10:22 PM on January 29, 2015 [20 favorites]

It may very well be the case that humans are simply genetically tuned for a level of aggression that is fundamentally incompatible with a stable civilization. Young males being the classic categorical outlier in this regard, though afflicted individuals obviously hail from all corners nor is it universally true for any particular category.

If society has shifted away from solving this problem by sending outlier individuals to die en masse in pointless wars and toward solving this problem by providing simulations of aggression where nobody is actually killed, then that seems like progress by virtually any reasonable standard.

As a game developer the vast majority of ethical worries I have with the industry instead concern the deliberate and unrepentant exploitation of addiction models to extract cash out of our customers without any regard for the impact on their lives.
posted by Ryvar at 10:26 PM on January 29, 2015 [20 favorites]

Many games (not all, but many) are about fantasies, but there are a lot of kinds of fantasies. Some games let me imagine myself surrounded by gorgeous women, which won't ever happen to me in real life.

Some let me imagine I'm a huge strong handsome man. Which also won't ever be true.

Some let me imagine I'm a big industrialist making billion-dollar decisions. Some let me imagine I'm pilot of a starship. Some let me imagine I'm a sorceror. Some let me imagine I'm monarch of a medieval kingdom. And a lot of other kinds of things.

And some let me imagine I'm doing things which, in real life, would be terribly immoral, and possibly outright illegal.

As long as they remain fantasies, though, and as long as I keep them in the game, they're harmless.

I've never played GTA and never will. That's one fantasy I don't have. But I don't condemn others who do play it; everyone has their own fantasies, and I don't judge people for that. And I don't try to tell them how they should feel, either. Their feelings are their own business and none of mine.

"games about killing should probably make you uncomfortable"

Don't tell me how I should feel. My feelings are none of your business. And the games I choose to play are also none of your business, unless you're in the business of writing and selling games.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:09 PM on January 29, 2015 [11 favorites]

Outstanding article. I love how she connected the navigation of her hostile real world with the oppressiveness and ugliness of Samus' world and deeds. Out of many excellent passages, this might be my favorite:

Too often games are about endless pleasure loops—the moment we’re frustrated or confused, we’re taught to see this as a flaw because videogame tastemakers of yore sold us the toxic myth that fun is paramount.

What is fun? I honestly don’t know or care.

*APPLAUSE*

Many factors hold gaming back from full flower as an artform, the childish fixation on FUN being one of the worst. No other medium is subject to this layer of appraisal. Full Metal Jacket is not fun. Guernica is not fun. Outside of I Don't Want to Die in the Hospital, not a single entry in Conor Oberst's catalog is fun and no one expects any of it to be. Games were products before they were art (place the switchover point where ever you like, I move mine all the time) and we're still living down the last of that legacy. They used to have no ambition beyond amusement and coin siphoning because by and large the vision and the technology for more ambitious work simply weren't there for gaming's early years. And a generation of players came up accepting that as the limits of the medium. Now that the technology and the vision to do more is at last impossible to ignore, we're discovering that now many players lack the vision and ambition to expect more from games and, what's more, are hostile to the idea that anyone else does.

I absolutely believe that games are an artform capable of delivering all the, comfort, connection, shattering catharsis and shifts of perspective we think nothing of expecting from film, novels, music or drama. None of those have to be "fun" first. Indeed, the works that reach for nothing but "fun" in those mediums are correctly recognized as unambitious pieces that might provide an evening's distraction but none of the full poetic power we know our creative mediums to be capable of.

Gaming will be a mature medium one day. Thoughtful, honest, deeply personal gameswriting like Rei's is part of how we get there.
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:12 PM on January 29, 2015 [13 favorites]

Don't tell me how I should feel. My feelings are none of your business.

The very sentence after 'games about killing should probably make you uncomfortable', which I bet you didn't read, says 'they shouldn’t be carefully crafted to be pleasant.' That is, the title of this post refers not to how players who play games about killing should perceive them, but how people who make games about killing should craft them.
posted by Quilford at 11:17 PM on January 29, 2015 [16 favorites]

The first Metroid Prime was one of the better examples of storytelling I have seen in a video game. The game encourages, but does not require you to collect logs and journals. You get them from the mercenaries that are arguably her most common intelligent enemy, NPC humans, and texts from the alien race that Samus has a strong connection with.

All three groups provide relevant, detailed information on various environmental hazards that get creepier and more intentional as the game progresses. In one entry the mercenaries go on at great length about the difficulty they have reverse-engineering her weapon, and about the test subjects they killed or maimed in the process. Later on they fight you with a crappy copy of one of Samus's other weapons. It was kind of disturbing to read a log describing Samus with fear and hatred, and realize that you could only get to the place with that log by ambushing and killing large numbers of them.

Most games I've have seen either have a simple unsatisfying plot, or a decent one that frustrates the gamers who hate any text in games longer than a sentence. The tight fit between exploring, fighting, and taking information from other groups was a good way of driving home the plot without alienating that group of fans for every game who don't want to hear it.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 11:57 PM on January 29, 2015 [8 favorites]

Just what are these games that "are about endless pleasure loops?"

I don't think games are or should be just about fun, but when I want them to be fun, they need to provide a challenge. For me, the enjoyment comes from being able to master a game's mechanics and becoming better at playing it at some quantifiable way. It can be something as simple as getting a better score than previously, or unlocking some hard achievement the designers put into the game, but I can also make my own challenges and set my own goals in any game I like well enough.

The important thing is that there needs to be a challenge first, and only after being frustrated by it can I enjoy overcoming it. This is the way I have fun with games. If I could do well by just playing any which way, I wouldn't feel rewarded by accomplishing anything. Instead of an endless pleasure loop, all I can imagine is an endless boredom loop. Expect that it wouldn't be endless, because I'd just quit playing.

Games that focus more on something else than providing challenges can be interesting too, and I wouldn't want to be the one to draw a line between real games with actual challenges and non-games that are about stories and atmosphere. There perhaps is a continuum from games are that almost purely game mechanics (such as Tetris, where the story is, to paraphrase some anonymous wit, about your problems accumulating until they overwhelm you) to completely non-interactive visual stories, which I believe are actually called movies. (And even with movies you can always write fan-fiction. Isn't that a bit like interacting with the imaginary world of the movie?) Knowing where something falls on this continuum might be useful in some ways, but it shouldn't determine what things are worthy of consideration as serious art or serious games and what are not.

I guess sometimes you want someone else to tell a story, and other times you want to tell one yourself. It's good to have different options for different desires.
posted by tykky at 12:44 AM on January 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

When Samus dies—a reasonable end given her goal—we are taken back to the title screen.

Only if I couldn't reach the power button in time to prematurely release myself* from whatever dreadful fate I was about to befall alone in the desolate voids deep beneath the planet Zebes.

The original Metroid was just that intense, at least to a seven year old.

* It just occurred to me that abruptly quitting the game could be interpreted as leaving Samus alone to silently die in a vacuous cavern, which I'm not too comfortable with. Maybe Captain N and Princess Lana rescued her as soon as the Player was longer watching?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:34 AM on January 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

I guessed from the pull-quote that this would be some sort of polemic against Samus as a character or Metroid as a franchise. I'm glad I was wrong-- this turned out to be very engaging. I've only played Super Metroid, and now I'm looking forward to seeing if Metroid II is everything this essay promises. If you're put off by the length or style of the essay, please give it a second try.

I sort of get the dissonance in the Metroid story.There's an arc to Super Metroid. You're inheriting the powers of a dead civilization, becoming better adapted to the abandoned world you're exploring, better suited to eliminating its invaders. So you'd be forgiven for thinking that you're transforming into a defender of the planet-- if nothing else, protecting an alien civilization's legacy-- right up until the planet explodes and a cheery fanfare plays, informing you of your success. I understand a certain resistance to clichéd stories about humankind being the real monsters or "No, John. You are the demons" twists, but Samus's indifference to an entire exploding planet really trumps the usual man's inhumanity to man deal.

I also understand the praise of Metroid as uncomfortable games because to me, the Metroid premise, overriding whatever space pirate skullduggery prefaces a particular episode, is: something is wrong here. They're games about eerie, abandoned places, overgrown or tomb-like and crumbling.

Super Metroid has great boss fights that tie these eerie feelings to the game's grotesque villains. After the suspense of silent, empty spaces, they're the other shoe that drops. They help build the game's dread from the initial don't-go-into-the-basement horror-movie discomfort until you reach the shock of facing a final boss who is absolutely beyond your ability to contend with. But these bosses primarily function as monsters rather than antagonists with motives, especially if, like me, you haven't seen the previous games and don't know these characters' identities.

So the Metroid II twist described in the essay makes sense. The horror-movie unease, the feeling of wrongness-- why should that lead up to a monstrous brain creature whose motives are unknown or a space pirate you can't tell apart from a native species? Why should your dread only increase as your power grows and your enemies die? Of course something isn't right on this planet, something doesn't belong: you.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 2:51 AM on January 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

"Just what are these games that "are about endless pleasure loops?"

I don't think games are or should be just about fun, but when I want them to be fun, they need to provide a challenge. For me, the enjoyment comes from being able to master a game's mechanics and becoming better at playing it at some quantifiable way."

That is one of the pleasure loops--pleasure comes along with mastery. Set objective > learn how to achieve objective > achieve objective > set new objective. To be more concrete, imagine a Metroidvania game: introduction to game mechanic, learning mechanic, mastery of mechanic, introduction of new mechanic.

"games about killing should probably make you uncomfortable"

Don't tell me how I should feel. My feelings are none of your business.

That was a statement from an abuse victim about how violence sucks and maybe we should be aware of that sometimes. It was not about you, or even really games in particular. You took this hilariously personally, wrote a "YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD" type post about it, and confirmed the stereotype of gamers as clueless and bizarrely defensive.
posted by alphagator at 4:17 AM on January 30, 2015 [15 favorites]

"* It just occurred to me that abruptly quitting the game could be interpreted as leaving Samus alone to silently die in a vacuous cavern, which I'm not too comfortable with. Maybe Captain N and Princess Lana rescued her as soon as the Player was longer watching?"

You need to play Save the Date. Short, free, and one of the best games I've ever played.
posted by alphagator at 4:19 AM on January 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

On gaming as not a mature art, its not as if Guernica exists in isolation in a gallery. Presumably it is surrounded by lighter, enjoyable scenes. Also presumably, you didn't go to the gallery as part of your civic duty but because you find it enjoyable or, perhaps, fun.

And art runs from Van Gogh to drawn porn just as games go from Doom to the third mission of Homeworld. You know the one I mean if you've played through that.
posted by Slackermagee at 5:10 AM on January 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't think the insistence on fun (entertainment for its own sake, escapism) is unique to games. I've had as much trouble explaining why I like demanding movies or music. There's a parallel divide in the audience of just about every medium.

Maybe games are the only medium where many of the most dedicated fans are the ones demanding less.
posted by skymt at 5:42 AM on January 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

BTW, I just saw that Nintendo is selling a downloadable WiiU version of the entire Metroid Prime Trilogy for $9.99 on their eShop this week. For those lucky few who own a WiiU, this is an essential download if you don't already own the regular Wii or GameCube version.
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:55 AM on January 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

As far as realism goes, wandering lost on the streets of Providence (especially in a disturbed mental state) is pretty close to being in a Metroid game. Well, except for rolling up into a ball and climbing wals.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:52 AM on January 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

OK Save the Date is fantastic!
posted by mrgroweler at 7:22 AM on January 30, 2015

As far as realism goes, wandering lost on the streets of Providence (especially in a disturbed mental state) is pretty close to being in a Metroid game. Well, except for rolling up into a ball and climbing wals.

If you're in Providence and you're lost I'm pretty sure you aren't really supposed to be wherever you are. That's why we don't have proper street signs.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:24 AM on January 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

More seriously, this is really not a "generic gaming article." It deals with one woman's very specific experience of one game, it's got some lovely writing and interesting thoughts. So RTFA or GTFO.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:47 AM on January 30, 2015

> Many factors hold gaming back from full flower as an artform, the childish fixation on FUN being one of the worst. No other medium is subject to this layer of appraisal. Full Metal Jacket is not fun. Guernica is not fun. Outside of I Don't Want to Die in the Hospital, not a single entry in Conor Oberst's catalog is fun and no one expects any of it to be.

But conventional art does have to be engaging. Full Metal Jacket, Schindler's List, Guernica: these are not "fun" works of art, but they do keep your interest. They're beautiful. They're sublime. They have intricate craftsmanship. You want to see them again and again.

Most of the "art" games I've played in recent years have lacked this attribute. Take something like "Dear Esther", for example. Now, I'm actually a player who valued his experience with the game immensely. Parts of it — especially the writing — still come back to inspire me to this day. But I don't think it was a particularly great game as a whole. During most of my playthrough, I was just plain bored, and the good parts tended to be the beautiful "Kodak moment" scenes that were doled out every 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, it seems that the current divide in the game industry is between "fun" games — games where you're always doing something, usually violent — and "art" games, which tend to be slow, contemplative, and — honestly — boring. Is it even possible to reconcile the two halves? Games like Braid have tried... but I've yet to play a game that has kept me engaged while also giving me a sublime emotional experience. I think it's a very difficult problem that's intrinsic to the medium, not just a consequence of the industry's "childish fixation".

(But in general, I think I agree. I'm definitely on the side that killing in games is juvenile — if fun — and points to the origin of the medium as a toy. I'm tired of shooting at things to interact with them. Let me engage with your world in other ways!)
posted by archagon at 8:25 AM on January 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

"As far as realism goes, wandering lost on the streets of Providence (especially in a disturbed mental state) is pretty close to being in a Metroid game. Well, except for rolling up into a ball and climbing wals."

You do that in Metroid too.
posted by I-baLL at 8:32 AM on January 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

But conventional art does have to be engaging. Full Metal Jacket, Schindler's List, Guernica: these are not "fun" works of art, but they do keep your interest. They're beautiful. They're sublime. They have intricate craftsmanship. You want to see them again and again.

Most of the "art" games I've played in recent years have lacked this attribute.

Yeah, this is the problem. A whole lot of art games seem stuck in that collegiate mindset where you prove how deep your feels are by making stuff that no one could possibly enjoy seeing. I remember reading once that while Brecht might have wanted you to think instead of feel, he would still fill the stage with color, song and action so you would *want* to think. And while Guernica is not easy, it's beautiful, and that matters.

As this article demonstrates, though, the interactivity of games can encourage the audience to bring a lot more to the experience than they otherwise might. So one can make a game that's perhaps inadvertently quite deep, because it gives the audience space to fill in. As with the pulp films the Cahiers Du Cinema crowd loved, one often gets to great art when just trying to entertain, while the ones who are visibly straining to lift themselves just produce a lot of huffing and puffing.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 9:13 AM on January 30, 2015

Is it even possible to reconcile the two halves? Games like Braid have tried... but I've yet to play a game that has kept me engaged while also giving me a sublime emotional experience. I think it's a very difficult problem that's intrinsic to the medium, not just a consequence of the industry's "childish fixation".

Damn, that is the question, isn't it? I think a lot of it has to do with how we as players engage with these games, what we bring into the cave with us. The article that started this thread is powerful because it's someone exploring the interaction of their inner world with a digital one. She wrote a response, not a review.

I'm playing Eidolon lately. It's one of those new "walking simulator" games, set in western Washington at some point after the fall of civilization (i think - still unraveling its mysteries). As a person who has spent a lot of time stomping around in the woods of Cascadia, I can report that Eidolon evokes that feeling and atmosphere quite powerfully. This is accomplished largely through the color palette, the soundtrack and the game's excellent modelling of the Cascadian sky and our misty weather here. Playing this game is very much like playing a poem about the woods. It fills your imagination with an image and says the image is enough.

In Eidolon, I had an experience that any Washingtonian could relate to, one that up until this game, I had only had in real life. The mist in Cascadia can grow so thick that our mountains straight vanish from the horizon, only emerging every few days like some bashful god. It can surprise you sometimes, a mountain sneaking up on you. In Eidolon, there was a day where I was wondering where I was and looking at the map, trying to figure it out and looking for landmarks in the fog. I'll never forget looking down at my map on a foggy morning, zooming in, zooming out, getting frustrated with my confusion, closing the screen, looking up and kapow, the wind had changed and Mt. Rainier had emerged from the clouds. I gasped.

I connected powerfully to this game because I love the woods it depicts and grew up around them. Right now IRL, in terms of Where Should I Live? and Where Should I Work?, I'm stuck between the Olympia area and the Seattle area, a little unsure where I'm headed. So it's been soothing to play a game where I'm doing literally that, wandering between these two places, wondering if I'm lost. The writing in the scattered artifacts you find of the old world is beautiful and finding the ruins of Olympia is a gaming experience I'll always treasure.

But if you look at the "time played" counter on Steam, it says I've only been engaged with Eidolon for about three hours. More time than most movies but a next to nothing compared to how much time I've sunk into, say, Civ V.

I'm tired of shooting at things to interact with them. Let me engage with your world in other ways!

YES! This is my chief complaint about Mafia II. The writing is good, the mocap acting is maybe the best I've ever seen and the game world is break-your-heart beautiful. Sometimes that almost feels like a point against the game because while you can walk around in it, you can't do much with it besides shoot, punch and drive. Oh, and shop, I guess. I buy the food and the screen blurring drinks after every mission because at least that's something besides violence.

I'm perfectly content to wander around in Eidolon but in a game where I'm playing as a mobster trying to come up in the world, not having many options to exert my will on the game world feels like a misstep. It's a tightly scripted game that takes place in an open world - I'm trying to respond to that tension by trying to think of what it would feel like to be separated from society by choosing a life of crime, to have access and power and wealth but not actual freedom. Could be that this contradiction is what the designers intended me to feel, but given that the only non car or weapon item in the game is collectible Playboy magazines, maybe that's giving them too much credit.
posted by EatTheWeek at 9:53 AM on January 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Jason Steakums the game you want is Waking Mars

Thank you kittensofthenight; I was looking for something to play this weekend and already have this.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:10 AM on January 30, 2015

It's a long, somewhat difficult read, but it is good. Thank you for sharing it.

Inevitably we come back to the videogames-as-art question. While I was reading the article --and several of the commments here-- I found myselft thinking: "why is it so hard to come to a consensus on video games as art?" Why is there so much friction to this process? Maybe a lot of it has to do with how young video games are...games in general are as old as art is, so what's the deal?

But then, nobody seems to be arguing to classify Parcheesi as art.

It must be that video games are already so close to art without even trying. They are comprised of painting, music, dance, and film. Without even meaning to, video games are simulacra of art because they use artistic assets to achieve the fun.

I also think it's instructive to recall that Nolan Bushnell, one of the greatest early forces in video gaming, managed the redemption games area at an amusement park. His amusement-attuned business sense was largely responsible for the early successes of Atari and those heady days of the arcade revolution. When that bubble burst, who was it that swooped in and revitalized the gaming industry? None other than Nintendo, another company who's previous moneymakers were things like playing cards and games of chance. Amusements.

Fun isn't even the right word. AMUSEMENT is what powers the primal heart of video games. Chess is fun, but it sure as hell isn't always amusing. But for a very long time (and still ongoing, for the majority) a video game has been considered an abject failure if it fails to amuse.

Rei's article gives me a lot of hope, though. Maybe the true art of video games lies in the expression of the players, not the creators. Maybe it's articles like these that really matter the most. Maybe a truly artistic video game is the one designed to provoke and encourage these kinds of "3rd-party" outputs. In that sense, Dwarf Fortress might be one of the most artistic games currently.
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:11 AM on January 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

you can't do much with it besides shoot, punch and drive.

"Games help me understand serial killers better: I want to interact with people I meet, but I don't have the tools, so I shoot them." - Tim Schafer

Another vote here for the greatness of Waking Mars! Such a neat ecosystem-explorer!
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 10:29 AM on January 30, 2015

I've never played GTA and never will. That's one fantasy I don't have.

Just a side note about GTA 5 - I also get no enjoyment out of stabby shooty thuggy cap-dat-nigga gameplay, but in GTA 5, you almost don't have to.

Almost. At the beginning of the game, you have to go through some scripted thuggery before you gain sandbox autonomy. But once you've gone through that - about 10 minutes - you are free to do as you like, and you never, ever have to engage in the main, violent thuggish story line. I don't.

I enjoy being Franklin, who peacefully rides his bicycle around Los Santos helping people. Sometimes you have the opportunity to chase down a mugger who stole someones purse, but you don't have to. There's an armored car over there, I could murder the guards and steal their money, but I don't, that's reprehensible. I sometimes drive a tow truck or a cab for some cash, legitimate jobs that don't hurt anyone, but rather help them, and save my money (and invest in the stock market a little) until I can buy that cool motorcycle I want. Then I look for trick jump spots and earn little trophies for my stunty achievements. I don't go to strip clubs because strip clubs make me sad. I greet strangers on the street with kind words and they say nice things back to me. I seek out off-road truck/bike/boat races and try and win a couple hundred bucks - again, peacefully. I went to Flight School and learned how to fly a plane!

Yesterday I went to the beach and ran a triathlon (and made a hundred bucks!) When the sun went down I walked to the pier and rode the roller coaster, nice day. Today I think I'll go to the clothing store and buy some good hiking gear and hike up Mount Chiliad, and then BASE jump off the top of the cable car tower there, and parasail serenely into Paleto Bay, maybe stop in the barber shop and get a haircut.

Tomorrow, I think I'll get in a round of golf at the country club ($100), try and beat my last score. Or maybe just pedal downtown to the movie theater and catch a flick. I'm undecided. What's cool is, I can decide. Totally.

(Plus the game is gorgeous to look at.)

/derail
posted by sidereal at 10:43 AM on January 30, 2015 [21 favorites]

Also, I will be purchasing Waking Mars tonight. Sounds lovely.
posted by sidereal at 10:44 AM on January 30, 2015

Many factors hold gaming back from full flower as an artform, the childish fixation on FUN being one of the worst. No other medium is subject to this layer of appraisal. Full Metal Jacket is not fun. Guernica is not fun. Outside of I Don't Want to Die in the Hospital, not a single entry in Conor Oberst's catalog is fun and no one expects any of it to be.

That's such a teenage idea of ART though, that it has to be dark and moody and about Big, Important Things. Picasso is still a genius without Guernica, Kubrick has done comedy, Oberst is a doofus no matter how dark he makes his work.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:45 AM on January 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Speaking of ecosystem games, Blueberry Garden is another one. As a game it's OK, but it has some really curious flora/fauna.
posted by archagon at 10:45 AM on January 30, 2015

> That's such a teenage idea of ART though, that it has to be dark and moody and about Big, Important Things. Picasso is still a genius without Guernica, Kubrick has done comedy, Oberst is a doofus no matter how dark he makes his work.

But even the "fun" games aren't really doing anything artistic with their shooting. Take a movie like Die Hard. It might "just" be a dumb action movie, but it's cool. It's tense. It has character. Every gunfight matters immensely. In contrast, the gunfights in almost every action game are interchangeable. They're there merely as something for the player to mindlessly do while they experience the narrative. I think Bioshock Infinite is one of the prime examples of this: no matter how clever or poignant the story tried to be, it all kind of fell apart once you realized that all the baddies pretty much behaved in exactly the same way. There was zero consequence to slaughtering hundreds of people, be they government folks or rebels. They even had the same lines!

I admit that I do like shooters — a lot, in fact — but not one has ever made me feel as engaged as even a simple action movie like Die Hard. Tom Francis wanted to originally design Gunpoint as a game where every single gunshot mattered; how interesting would it be if an AAA shooter attempted to do this?
posted by archagon at 10:54 AM on January 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not very.

You're still judging games on metrics from different media. Judge games on their own merits.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:02 AM on January 30, 2015

And that's of course one of the main obstacles to treating games as an artform, that persisent idea that we should treat them as interactive movies or books. So you get ridic scripted events in games like Tomb Raider or Bioshock Infinite all about how difficult it is for your personage to kill and then the mindless waves of enemies are sent down for you to kill.

As the original article here describes, Metroid II didn't fall in that trap and that's why it's so good and engaging if you're susceptible to it, it drives the player's moral understanding of the world they find themselves in through the game mechanics and game play. That's videogaming as art independent from the expectations of other media.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:07 AM on January 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

how interesting would it be if an AAA shooter attempted to do this?

STALKER did it for me. There's something wild and threatening there, an almost-palpable sense of decay as your gear breaks down and you have to ration what you use so you have your best weapon in reserve for when you really need it.

Playing that (even though I never completed it) is still a memory that affects me.
posted by mikurski at 11:09 AM on January 30, 2015

> Not very. You're still judging games on metrics from different media. Judge games on their own merits.

As an artform, I judge them by the metric: "Do they engage me as much as my favorite films, paintings, music, poetry, or books?" Unequivocally, the answer is "no". And it wouldn't be a big deal if some games didn't come so close! There's clearly a ton of potential in the medium that's just not being realized.

What a terrible world we would live in if cinema stopped developing after "A Trip to the Moon".
posted by archagon at 11:13 AM on January 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

> STALKER did it for me. There's something wild and threatening there, an almost-palpable sense of decay as your gear breaks down and you have to ration what you use so you have your best weapon in reserve for when you really need it.

Oh, Metro 2033 also had a fantastic sense of this. Running around on the surface for the first time — gas mask fogging up, running out of oxygen, no map, no direction to go, and unknown monsters lurking in the shadows — was an absolutely incredible experience. In other parts of the game, you even had to use your good bullets as currency! It's a bit of a shame that the actual gunfights between humans were still kind of same-y (and very much mandatory).
posted by archagon at 11:17 AM on January 30, 2015

Tom Francis wanted to originally design Gunpoint as a game where every single gunshot mattered; how interesting would it be if an AAA shooter attempted to do this?

Years after playing them, long after their stories have all but fallen out of my head, my most potent memories of the Deus Ex series are those moments where I wondered if it was time to pull my gun or not. Navigating those little moments of panic or, if contemplating a robbery, violent greed is what kept me coming back to those games and what stuck with me after. Deciding what sort of character I was playing, deciding whether or not to shoot. That simple design decision to require a button press to pull your weapon adds a whole level of agency and tension that just doesn't exist in gameworlds where you have no choice but to walk about wave a gun around. It's often a bit artificial, especially when you're playing a game with a toolkit of nothing BUT guns, but I appreciate it.
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:37 AM on January 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I fear that, in my excitement and haste to link this article, my introduction and framing of Rei's reflections have unfairly limited the true scope of what she has to say. She discusses the thought put into the sound design and soundtrack (with linked examples) and how this compares to its peer games; the exploited nature of the metroids; the use of acid as a pacing and narrative element; the environmental and design consideration that Super Metroid and later sequels didn't have the patience for; the unfortunate legacy of loot-dropping; the cosmic villainy and undoing of the avian forerunners on SR388; itc hthegl; the transgression of The Rules Of The Game for narrative purposes as Metroid II approaches its climax; the pathos of the metroid queen; the subversive and redemptive return journey... and the betrayal of that redemption that Super Metroid represents. And more! She talks about many things more, and I would urge you not to stop the first time you find something to disagree with as an excuse to walk away. Life is complexity, and games can be, too. Let's be complex together.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 12:26 PM on January 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

I enjoyed the post as a person's wrestling with stuff that I've also wrestled with. I don't necessarily agree with their conclusions, but I am down with this being what this particular person gained from this experience, and that's a useful and interesting thing for me to read. At the very least because I didn't get anything like that from these games. I gave them my own narrative, and it doesn't really match up with what this author experienced. 3

I picked up the Wii U rebundle yesterday and will be playing through it (although apparently I'll have to start over; "normal" difficulty is "easy", I guess I want veteran?). My favorite part is still just scanning.. everything. I want a xeno-*ology game (I still need to play Elegy for a Dead World). It's why my favorite part of Dwarf Fortress is just reading the history log that's generated before you even do anything. I started working on a game a couple of years ago that's just you poking around the world digging this stuff up. I kind of forgot about it, it got lost in life craziness; guess I need to get back to it.
posted by curious nu at 1:48 PM on January 30, 2015

If you enjoyed STALKER, try STALKER again but with the Complete Mod and the Misery Mod engaged. No map, no minimap, no radar, fewer ammo spawns, more and tougher enemies, enhanced graphics, and I believe better AI?

Its felt like a living game before hand and oh man, those two mods...
posted by Slackermagee at 7:23 PM on January 30, 2015

I failed in Cart Life repeatedly. And it was frustrating, and the subject matter couldn't be farther from fantasy. But it was actually quite interesting and it obviously made a bit of an impact in my head since I'm mentioning it now. I wanna play more games like that instead of just shooting stuff over and over again.

You should check out Papers, Please. It's my new favorite game. You play as a border / customs agent in a fictional 1982-era communist country. Don't want to give too much away, but it is tedious, the rules you have to follow change every day, and it's just... glorious. Your desk is not big enough to show all of the documents you have to examine at once, adding to the sense of unease and pressure. How do I feel when I get to (have to) subject people to humiliating scanner searches, deny entry to people who are possibly doomed as a result, and let in murderers and thugs, lest I be cited and lose a big chunk of my meager pay? I have played through 3 or 4 of the 20 endings, and I want to keep playing it over and over to see what all the different endings are.

Anyway, I think you might really enjoy it.
posted by megafauna at 11:51 PM on January 31, 2015