It would seem to be E3 time again; hmm. I suppose the world does not need another blogger talking about it, but I have nothing better to do. Besides, I never got around to talking about the name “Wii”.
Which is a stupid name. I know they’re trying a blue ocean strategy, I think that’s a good idea, I think that not using the name Revolution will help in that regard. But Wii reeks of bad consultants, and it doesn’t strike me as the sort of name that will appeal to the older nontraditional gamer. Still, I can’t see it making or breaking the console.
Actually, they could probably do a better job with their blue ocean strategy: there was a lot of traditional gameplay in their press conference. Then again, they probably are going to weight that sort of thing a bit more heavily at E3 than in their eventual lineup: I don’t recall them demoing Brain Age before its launch in Japan, for example. (I will give that game a try when we’re on vacation this summer; also, this game seems worth importing, for though I’m sick of sudoku by now, I still like number puzzles, and the DS seems like a good platform for that.)
I am getting quite curious about the gameplay now that first-hand reports are trickling in. Even traditional games will feel quite different, but I don’t have a feel for exactly how this will work. I had missed the fact (or forgotten) that the controller has an accelerometer built in, so it can tell how fast you’re moving it, not just where you’re pointing it; the fishing minigame in the new Zelda will certainly be an experience. Speaking of which, it’s too bad that it looks like there will be separate disks for the Gamecube and Wii versions of the game: it would be nice to play the same segment on both consoles to see how it will feel. (The again, I’ve played enough Zelda on recent consoles to have a pretty good idea how the Gamecube version will feel.) And, honestly, I’m still worried that there will be aspects of the Wii Zelda controls that I won’t like – will using the controller to slash with the sword be a distraction from the adventuring? (Will you even use the controller to slash with the sword? Maybe not.)
Pretty muted press conferences, given that one console just launched and two are about to. I would have thought they’d have more to say, somehow. Maybe it’s just my world-weary point of view now, though: new consoles don’t inherently excite me, and we’re in the end-of-generation lull of games, while the good games of the next generation aren’t far enough along to have much meat on them.
And where’s the Wii Smash Brothers? That’s a great series. Not that I have any friends to play video games with these days…
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Slightly off-topic: you’ve mentioned playing and enjoying Grand Theft Auto before; how do you really feel about the game?
I was at a friend’s house for a party, and they had a PS2 with some GTA thing going. One time I walked by and the player was just beating the living crap out of a policeman. Each blow made the policeman crumple a little further, with bits of blood or sweat or something flying off, until he had collapsed to the ground in a twisted pile. It was so graphic it turned my stomach. I had to go away. I sure didn’t want Madoka watching it.
Why is this okay? Why is this fun? What does Liesl think about it?
5/10/2006 @ 4:08 pm
I talked about this a lot in an earlier post, but basically I think it’s an excellent game on many fronts (actually, I think it’s a noteworthy cultural milestone and achievement (in a good way!)), and I think that people who raise the issue that you’ve raised are treating video games in an unfair way as compared to other art forms. There are movies and books out there with vast amounts of actions in them that we would consider abhorrent in real life; I don’t understand why people accept that in movies and books but not in video games.
(Hmm: for that matter, why does my stomach churn more when watching Reservoir Dogs than when playing GTA? I’ll have to think about that one.)
I’m not about to let Miranda watch it; Liesl, however, has watched me play it, and expressed appreciation for the game. (But she has shown no desire to play it herself; admittedly, she doesn’t play that many video games.)
I’m happy to talk more about the game, but it would help if I had a bit more background: do you play video games regularly; if so, which ones? Have you in the past; if so, which ones? Do you feel the same way about violent movies, or are video games special; if so, could you speculate as to why you feel that way?
(And, because I love it so much, I will link again to the strip on the subject in Dykes To Watch Out For.)
5/10/2006 @ 4:44 pm
I don’t play video games at all. I did in middle school and high school, but stopped in college. A lot of modern games sound fun, and I’ve enjoyed looking at the ones I’ve seen you play when I’ve visited you, but I always end up thinking it would be more fun to actually build something myself.
I don’t go to see movies like Resevoir Dogs. I think they would turn my stomach, too. But I think there’s a difference in that one is not invited to sympathize with a character cutting off someone’s ear or sodomizing someone in a basement (to pick on one director). In GTA, you elect to do those things, yourself, as a means to achieve some personal gain. I didn’t go see it myself, but I’m told the movie Sin City has a good guy — someone you’re supposed to empathize with — who hacks off an evil character’s limbs while they’re alive. And I also want to know why that’s okay.
I agree video games should be judged as an art form among others. But if a friend of mine were really into the movie Sin City (in which, I’m told, a sympathetic character cuts off the limbs of an evil character while the latter is alive), I think I’d ask them the same question. As it happens, the friends I have who went to see it walked out. Karl and I walked out of the original La Femme Nikita when it showed at Oberlin, in the opening scene. My general feeling is that the world has always been full of people I don’t understand and mostly wouldn’t like to know, so it doesn’t surprise me that they like horrid films. They eat lousy food, too. But when my friends do it, then it becomes a more interesting question to me.
And no, I don’t really know what I mean by something “being okay”. I’m not in favor of censorship. I don’t feel like decisions should be taken out of parents’ hands. There’s just some sort of “going with the flow” here that seems very weird. And I ask my friends about it as a way to help me turn that gut feeling into something more articulate.
I like that Dykes strip a lot, too. Madoka is still young for that kind of situation to have come up in that exact form, but similar choices about what sort of force to bring to bear do come up. I totally agree with the underlying principle. But you can’t see the screen at the end of the strip; I bet she’s not beating someone up.
5/13/2006 @ 12:49 am
Having gone back and read the post you linked to, I should say that I have no idea why the person at the party I was at was virtually hanging out and beating someone up. I’d assumed that this was some sort of activity relevant to the plot. If the game simply accurately models gratuitous brutality, rather than requiring it of the player, then that’s a bit different.
Still, you’re hitting some weird notes. The question is not whether all art should be acceptable to five-year-olds; the question is why that art is sought-after by adults. Similarly, what of it if someone judges video games inconsistently with other art forms? If you have a good answer as to why people enjoy vicarious brutality in whatever medium, why not present it, instead of concentrating on the questioner’s rhetorical inconsistencies? Isn’t there some defensiveness here?
Maybe the valorization of brutality is kind of an arbitrary cultural characteristic: it can be okay, or not. And it’s difficult to find an outside vantagepoint from which to assess it. I just think it’s needlessly ugly. I’ll take a wild stab (um) and say that the lives I and almost everyone I know lead are removed from real death and brutality, which is something to be thankful for, but I suspect it makes fake violence more palatable to us as entertainment. I wonder if infantry combat veterans also enjoy brutality in this way, since they’ve actually seen it and done it.
5/13/2006 @ 1:11 am
I don’t think that
is really accurate, for two reasons:
Anyways, I don’t have a big, coherent all-arching thought on this matter, but here are some random things which come to mind:
5/14/2006 @ 5:14 pm
I think my reaction nowadays to invitations to (virtually) behave brutally in a game, whether they’re at an individual level (beating up someone) or on a massive scale (drop a nuclear bomb on an enemy) is to sort of lose interest in the game. But somehow I never hesitated to play Space Invaders, Defender, or Stargate, which are full of brutality — albeit very pixelly (and ostensibly defensive) brutality. But that was when I played; maybe I was just more entranced with the gameplay, the way you are now. The fascination has certainly had time to wear off in my case.
I took an introductory art history class at Oberlin. In one of the first lectures, the professor suggested a thought experiment: imagine that you’re holding a picture of someone you love, someone you are very close to. The person looks happy; it is a photograph of good times. You have other spare copies of the photograph; the photograph itself is not precious to you, just its content. Now, suppose someone offered you $50 to swear at that photograph, scream at it, spit on it, throw in on the ground and stamp on it, maybe burn it. You have no other demands on your time. It’s just a photograph. $50 is a nice dinner for two. Would you do it?
I knew I wouldn’t do it. I think almost everyone felt the same way. I think I would wonder about the mental stability of someone who didn’t at least hesitate. The professor’s point was that some images have an effect on us that goes beyond the logical or economic.
When I think about people playing violent video games, watching violent movies, etc., I want to say that it’s very clearly just a game/movie/whatever, that we should leave people alone and let them enjoy themselves how they please, and so on. But to me, the thought experiment with the photograph proves the existince of a potent gap between rational and actual human reasoning that I don’t know how to deal with, and leaves me feeling I’m in the dark about what effect these media experiences really have on me. Is it really plausible that it would have no effect? It’s hard for me to believe that our mental boundaries between fiction and real life, especially when it comes to whatever informs unprompted emotional reactions, are so logical and firm.
I am not ready at all for a moral audit of my life choices. You did tell me about your job search at the time. I can tell you that my memory is disappointingly flexible about things like what opinions I expressed at the time, but I admire you for your choice now. I wanted to understand better how the brutality in GTA worked with you, given my own strong reaction; I hope it’s clear I wasn’t accusing you of being callous.
5/14/2006 @ 10:56 pm
I do wonder how I would feel about GTA if I’d gone straight from Space Invaders (pixelly aliens) to it, instead of Space Invaders to Choplifter or Lode Runner (pixelly humans), to (hmm, a bit of a gap), to Doom (shooting 3D-ish monsters) to, say, Goldeneye (shooting 3D humans) to, GTA (much more realistic shooting 3D humans). I’m sure the slippery slope has had some effect; I can’t tell how much.
5/16/2006 @ 8:43 pm