I want to talk again about Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain again this week. I am so sorry if you haven't played the game yet, but there's going to be massive spoilers so please get out of this blog post now if you want to experience this moment in game because you really should. A lot of people complain about a lot of games promoting and misusing violence. However Kojima is a master game designer when it comes to thematics in a game in Phantom Pain he actually created a gameplay experience where I as the player learned through violent gameplay, Kojima's personal message of pacifism and why wars and heroes of war are futile. You spend most of your time in Phantom Pain collecting and recruiting honest, brave and hard working men for your private military company. But at one point in the story a deadly parasite breaks out in your base and you as Snake are tasked to weed out the infection by any means and save any survivors. But here's where the game plays you like a damn fiddle. Most other parts of the game has given you free control over tactic an choice as you have been able to spare people to raise your heroism metre or earn demon points by killing enemies in explosive ways. But now the game forces you as the player to make a choice you don't want to make. All the men in your facility are infected with the parasite and the only way to proceed through the game, is to hunt down each of your infected men and put them out of your misery or risk your whole base and operation becoming infected. As you search the base innocent survivors show up as infected with the use of night vision goggles. People beg you not to kill them, that they're not infected. The game shows you each solider's name, they are randomly taken from any point in the story at any recruitment moment. When you shoot them, their blood splashes on you. You lose heroism points. Because you the player promised you would protect your troops, and gunning them down is outright lying. Your Diamond Dogs scream. They pause and salute you out of respect, knowing you mean only good for their will. Only for you to betray them minutes later. You are not a hero. And this is the point Kojima is trying to make. In this horrific scene of violence and painful loss, the player is taught something powerful. That even when we hype up violence in video games and the protagonists in video games as these awesome kick butt take nothing heroes just like we do in real life with real soliders. The realities is these men kill people. And violence is not the solution to peace. Violence is revenge. It is futile. It is painful. And you the player learn this lesson by killing virtual men in a virtual space. The scene is incredibly powerful and it really disturbs you soul your begin to realise what Kojima wanted you to learn the whole time. Revenge is not the solution. Revenge breeds war. True peace is found in not playing the game and the world agreeing to disband all nukes. His pacifist messaged that has echoed all the way since Metal Gear Solid 1. References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3loxdc/mgsv_spoilers_a_shining_light_even_in_death_we/ https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3l78f1/shining_lights_even_in_death_spoilers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3kyxuj/shining_lights_even_in_death_mission_43_discussion/
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This week I wanted to talk about my experiences at PAX 2015 and how it reshaped my evaluation of genres. There will be no reference link this week, as this is a summary of my personal thoughts based on my interactions with the developers I spoke to.
I used to think genres were a really important part of gaming. And I think when video games were emerging, especially when they were transitioning into 3D and when video stores were still a think, genres were important. It's how you categorised, located and discussed video games when describing it to another friend. For example: Friend A: "I like 3D Platformers?" Friend B: "OH then you'll love Platformy the 3D Platformer in: 3D Platformer Land!" Humans often need categories to understand, perceive and figure things out. However the video game industry has grown so much now that it's hard to slot games into genres. I may have been in denial about this, not willing to accept that the ways I discussed video games as a child are now not fitting. However after attending PAX this weekend, I realised that now more then ever, there are SO many video games, especially indie games that are really difficult to fit into a category. Games like Mushroom 11, where you control a circle of light pushing blocks of slimy fungus around. It's some kind of puzzle platformer but it's set in a post-apocalyptic world and is vaguely story driven. Cuphead is some kind of bullet hell platformer shooter with 1930s cartoon animation. Dungeon League (as pictured above) is a dungeon crawler that is also a party/team competition sport game. I even played some kind of a compeitive death match game where one team plays as first person divers swimming about while the other team plays as 3rd person sharks mauling them. Totally different genres for each team! My experiences were broadened as I realised it's not so clear cut any more. There are so many different styles and experimental concepts among the young indies that trying to categorise game in the traditional means is hard. I chatted to some of the developers about this. Some did not like being roped into a genre because it spread misconception for them, whilst some devs loved it because it helped them find their niche audience. Ultimately I think the use of genres is still important to describe some of the mechanics in a game, like I have above where I tried to describe a game based on experiences you may have already had. But I don't think we should fully define a unique game by a genre that it totally doesn't fit. Rather then be dualistic about it, I think we need to take a holistic approach and talk about what the game is, rather then what it isn't. |
AuthorBen Spanos is currently playing Undertale, Uncharted: Among Thieves and Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes. Archives
March 2018
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