[MuseManMike]

But to be fair, he does entertain those thoughts. I know I've felt disgusted with the genre (or even occasionally with myself for playing certain games) from time to time. But I don't think the takeaway is that military shooters are "disgusting." I think the reason he's riffing on Stevens' poem is that he wants to consider all possibilities equally and fairly, and with as little judgment as possible.

It might not be "outrage" but his article chronicles his own personal uneasiness while playing certain games/scenarios. Disgust that isn't, like, visceral disgust (e.g. ew that's gross) is most definitely disgust of ethical consideration. And, again, it's not a global commentary but he is absolutely dealing with "right" and "wrong." Conceding his own shortcomings -- specific or not -- does not change that.

[legend166]

I don't agree with the premise people put forward (not Bissell, but others in this thread) that video games are no more violent than film.

Especially not mainstream film.

[arglebargle]

Or have read it entirely, because Boone's article isn't just the title of his article; there's about 1500 more words that follow, and his argument isn't that games don't aim higher than Michael Bay, but that more games should. He also takes care not to discount games that don't aim higher, so long as the experience they provide is enjoyable and well made, just like one shouldn't discount a formulaic action movie if they nail the formula just right.

who has the time? ill be honest that i only skimmed the boone article. i really just think people get too hung up on the fact that most of the most popular games look very similar to all but the most dedicated fans that can see the subtle differences. there are literally hundreds of games made each year that are drastically different from that. they seem to aim higher than mindless action, whether they achieve it or not is another issue.

i really do enjoy reading thoughtful writing on games though, so i dont want to come off as someone who is dismissive of these articles. bissell's piece especially was very good i thought. however i do think some of this ground has become fairly well trodden. people can obviously write whatever they want, but there are so few decent writers working in the video game space and almost wish they would aim their sights at more diverse targets.

[MuseManMike]

I don't agree with the premise people put forward (not Bissell, but others in this thread) that video games are no more violent than film. Especially not mainstream film.

You'd have to operationalize violence (draw equivalencies between a "death" in a video game, and a "death" in a film). Just counting how many people die doesn't work, because a death in a video is inherently less "valuable" than that of movie. You could have a slew of games that take death "seriously" and that equivalency would be much easier to draw, but I don't think that would matter. Movies don't have to concern themselves with player autonomy, mechanics, or "gameplay." I think you'd have to alter categorizations for that to work.

[hiphoptherobot]

im looking at the amazon page for extra lives and the publishers weekly review they have there seems focused on gta iv: i guess it would be helpful to know what games he does focus on and whether i would benefit from having played them before reading the book.

Off the top of my head i know he has chapters dedicated to Left 4 Dead, Far Cry 2, Bioshock, Braid and Oblivion. There are also some interviews with Cliffy B and Peter Molyneux. Its been over a year since I read it so Im having trouble remembering the rest. Suggested read though.

[buffelo]

Oh cool, another gaming journalist trying to make his mark by tackling tough moral and social issues.

[Jintor]

Oh look, another drive-by poster with a flippant, unresearched comment

[MuseManMike]

Oh cool, another gaming journalist trying to make his mark by tackling tough moral and social issues.

It's much better than the normal stuff you read. This isn't Kotaku. He keeps it very personal. You can still ultimately disagree -- as I do, but at least skim it. It's other posters who are taking his article as validation of their own personal dislike of certain aspects of gaming.

[B-Genius]

It's certainly a common topic, but I haven't seen any other piece of games writing recently that approaches it as thoughtfully as this one. Anyone whose takeaway from the article is that Bissell is simply outraged would do well to read it again.

Agreed. Haven't read anything as intelligent on the subject in a while.

And at the same time, his writing makes me want to try these games (The Line, Max Payne 3 in particular) even more.

I especially like entry 5. about games he considers to contain "acceptable" violence.

[buffelo]

It's much better than the normal stuff you read. This isn't Kotaku. He keeps it very personal. You can still ultimately disagree -- as I do, but at least skim it. It's other posters who are taking his article as validation of their own personal dislike of certain aspects of gaming.

Thanks for encouraging me to read it. That article certainly was more thoughtfully written than most Kotaku dreck. I find the way that he approaches games to be interesting, if only for the reason that it seems very weird and alien to me. Personally, I don't think I've felt any sort of emotional involvement in any of the single-player games I've played since I was about 14, excepting maybe some vague feeling of excitement. Killing in games has never bothered me at all, and moral choices in games don't really trigger my own conscience. I'm not saying this to brag or suggest that my way is better, but just to show the contrast. It must be harder to find a satisfactory experience when there are more emotional/intellectual considerations like the ones he's talking about. As far as finding emotional satisfaction in a shooter, well...to the author I say good luck.

[Jintor]

Well, at least you read the article through, I'll give you props for that. His style of writing might be more familiar if you read a lot of travel writing, it's his general speciality.

[MuseManMike]

Thanks for encouraging me to read it. That article certainly was more thoughtfully written than most Kotaku dreck. I find the way that he approaches games to be interesting, if only for the reason that it seems very weird and alien to me. Personally, I don't think I've felt any sort of emotional involvement in any of the single-player games I've played since I was about 14, excepting maybe some vague feeling of excitement. Killing in games has never bothered me at all, and moral choices in games don't really trigger my own conscience. I'm not saying this to brag or suggest that my way is better, but just to show the contrast. It must be harder to find a satisfactory experience when there are more emotional/intellectual considerations like the ones he's talking about. As far as finding emotional satisfaction in a shooter, well...to the author I say good luck.

NP. And I agree.

[XANDER CAGE]

A pretty interesting article. However, I do have an issue with V and VI - mostly VI.

At least half of the above-mentioned shooters did not enjoy overmuch commercial success — a fact, I suspect, that speaks for itself.

There'd be a point here if the games he's referring to sold/reviewed poorly did so purely on their portrayals of violence, but Kane and Lynch 2, Bioshock 2, Metro 2033, Far Cry 2, Bulletstorm all had issues beyond their aesthetic presentation of killing. I don't think anyone didn't buy Far Cry 2 or give it a low score because of its glib violence.

[Arklite]

I thought this would be about game mechanics, or map design, or building scenarios and pacing. I can't say I'm not disappointed.

"Couldn't you argue that the men and women who make Battlefield and Modern Combat and Call of Duty are making the world a demonstrably worse place? I think you could. Sometimes I wonder how they sleep at night"

No, I don't think you could, and that's actually rather insulting.

[PairOfFilthySocks]

Meh, I pretty much agree with him. Games have become so much more capable at depicting realistic situations and yet have completely failed to present them in a mature manner. If you're gonna have violence and sex in your games then you'd damn well better earn it, otherwise I'll just consider it more cheap shock tactics made to impress impressionable people and cause controversy. All you guys saying 'who cares, it's just a game' really can't criticise, say, Michael Bay for making movies with no substance and stupid attitudes to violence, since it's pretty much the same thing.


We're well past the point where games can simply use 'it's only a game' as a blanket excuse whenever something violent or disturbing is depicted without a good reason. Devs need to either grow up or get labelled as being immature.

[XANDER CAGE]

I thought this would be about game mechanics, or map design, or building scenarios and pacing. I can't say I'm not disappointed. "Couldn't you argue that the men and women who make Battlefield and Modern Combat and Call of Duty are making the world a demonstrably worse place? I think you could. Sometimes I wonder how they sleep at night" No, I don't think you could, and that's actually rather insulting.

Yeah, that was also a little much.

[bishoptl]

Thanks for encouraging me to read it. That article certainly was more thoughtfully written than most Kotaku dreck.

...so you just jumped in with a pithy one liner and emotional response pic without even reading the piece in the OP?

Living dangerously, my friend.

[Arklite]

We're well past the point where games can simply use 'it's only a game' as a blanket excuse whenever something violent or disturbing is depicted without a good reason. Devs need to either grow up or get labelled as being immature.

I feel that's the entire 'problem' with these types of articles. They speak of handling violence in better manners but the game part of a game is still the most important part. Instant feedback, push a button an action happens, violence, explosions, valves turn and the plot moves. We're extremely limited in how we can interact with a virtual environment.

How does one create tense action scenarios without participating in the action scenario? Slow paced battlefield "simulation" games can do this and with blunt consequences, but that's not mainstream, that's not instant, it isn't pick up and play, and it isn't flashy. Game designers aren't dreamers with unlimited resources to build an experience of total choice or something, and the market isn't full of wealthy individuals buying up all kinds of titles with broadly open minds.

These types of articles really feel like they lead to nowhere for me because they look at the most juvenile portion of game production and note how juvenile it is. If/when games do come to a point where they are perceived as having "matured," these juvenile shooters will still exist. It isn't something we'll grow out of and leave behind because they'll always have an appeal.

[Jintor]

What it feels like you're saying is "But man, video games", only with more words. Okay, yes, you've a point; saleability, funding, traditional expectations, and the fact that a majority of the construction of games to date has focused entirely around systemic interaction in an dynamic, engaging, often brutally violent sense. But I can't see that these articles become worthless merely because production is expensive, or that there is no profitable market for alternatives.

[Arklite]

But I can't see that these articles become worthless merely because production is expensive, or that there is no profitable market for alternatives.

I don't know if they'll ever be worthless, but I think there's a way to help games mature by speaking on how we interact with them, how we can change scenarios, how we can focus on narrative while keeping the player engaged outside of combat. Game design evolves slowly and it's worth talking about how it can improve.

When I read the thread title I thought this was precisely what this article was about, but that would be too hard, and take too much thinking. Instead, add another article to "that" pile.

That's a disrespectful way of pushing off a nicely written article, but I don't feel it takes the conversation anywhere it hadn't been.

[buffelo]

u gonna rat me out?

...so you just jumped in with a pithy one liner and emotional response pic without even reading the piece in the OP? Living dangerously, my friend.

[Dresden]

u gonna rat me out?

I think he's giving you a warning instead of just banning you.

[Alx]

How is one torture as bad as the thousands of people you will no doubt slaughter ruthlessly throughout the course of the game>?

Killing is raw violence. It is commonly justified in video games by the "kill or be killed" philosophy. Torture is cruelty, it's a perversion of violence (not that violence is usually a good thing to begin with). It's one of the biggest taboos in our society. The convention of Geneva forbids torture, not (all forms of) killing, for example.

I appreciate the self-awareness of the article in the OP, I think it's important to have more of it. Too many people hide behind the "it's all for fun" argument, either by delusion or because they won't accept any criticism of their favorite hobby. But a bit of self criticism never hurts, you can still embrace this activity while being aware of its shortcomings.
I don't really like the turn of morality/violence in action games personally, but maybe it wouldn't worry me as much if so many people didn't try to dismiss it as something innocent. I'd rather read "it's sick and twisted, I know it but I'll still play it" than "I don't see any problem there, it's just gaming as usual".
I don't know about "mature games" and what they should contain, but as for "mature gamers", they should be able to accept that a lot criticism of the medium is founded. Yes, games are frequently violent, they are silly, there are indeed better ways to spend your time and money... you can still play them, but you should be aware of that and accept it to take the responsibility of such an activity. That's what being an adult is about : knowing the consequences of your decisions, and bearing with them.

[B-Genius]

These types of articles really feel like they lead to nowhere for me because they look at the most juvenile portion of game production and note how juvenile it is. If/when games do come to a point where they are perceived as having "matured," these juvenile shooters will still exist. It isn't something we'll grow out of and leave behind because they'll always have an appeal.

I agree completely with you here. Just like there will always be action movies and trashy novels. No matter how complex and "mature" games become, there will always be a hysterical, adolescent audience.

However, I certainly don't find articles like this worthless. Apart from the comment about developers of "violent games" not being able to sleep at night (that was definitely a bit cheap), I found it very stimulating to read.

It's not as if he's simply saying "stop all the violence!" like most of the tat out there - he's actually come to terms with it (in more ways than many of us, I imagine) and has an interesting love/hate thing going in the various ways it's depicted in games. Like others have said, it's got a nice personal touch, and not worth getting so defensive about.

[FatboyRoberts]

who has the time? ill be honest that i only skimmed the boone article.

You had time enough to post a couple lengthy responses. Those responses might have been a little more effective had you taken the time to read what you were going to argue with. 'who has the time' isn't a very good excuse on a messageboard. You're on a messageboard. Spare time is obviously not a problem.

I really do enjoy reading thoughtful writing on games though, so i dont want to come off as someone who is dismissive of these articles.

But that's what you're doing when you admit you dont read what your're commenting on before wading in with an opinion that may or may not actually pertain to the discussion at hand.

[meta4]

That's because he's not a brainwashed idiot who cares more about fucking "brand legacies" than actual moral content. This is so fucking perverted. Anyway, great article. I never expected anything like this from gaming journalism (no idea if the writer is a journalist). Really cool stuff. Also, this is what's "mature", not blood and gore and hot coffee.

Yeah a covert ops agent torturing someone to get information. Not something which you see in books and movies right? This is a really stupid article. I was hoping he was going to call out SC on its stupid game design instead of whining about blood and torture.

[Flachmatuch]

Video games (although they do too often have a propaganda angle) reflect reality more than they influence it, but they do both, and this two way relation to reality is pretty important. It's their relation to reality that makes certain scenes in video games more perverted, much more than just simply acting out violent fantasies. The torture scene would have a very different meaning if things like Bagram or Guantanamo or the "kill team" didn't exist. The MW bomb scene would have a very different meaning if the US hadn't started several wars in Arab countries in the past decades, or if there actually existed another country that actually used an atomic bomb on civilians. Or take the (imo very disturbing) AC-130 scenes - they have a pretty different meaning when you consider the large number of droned down Pakistani and Yemeni and Afghan weddings and funerals. The general nationality of villains in video games would be of no interest if shooters weren't considered awesome recruitment tools by the military itself that helps it recruit real kids to fight real wars against real people with real nationalities. And so on. The real world also exists, and video games and their virtual worlds play a part in it. They do not stand alone, independent from reality.


Of course you can say these things have nothing to do with you, you're just enjoying the game and can see through all the propaganda crap - and it is quite probably true to a large extent for you personally (not always though, considering how many gamers are adolescents for whom self-critique and self-knowledge is not exactly a strong point :-) ). But in the big picture they do clearly play at least a statistical role, they have some "educational" power, and people and institutions with power who are always looking for more are very much aware of that and will do everything to use it (as I said, the military itself considers military shooters awesome recruiting tools - you clearly cannot say they have no effect on how people think when they have an effect on how they *act*, in making such important decisions about their lives). This "educational" power seems to be quite large, although it's not as easy to use for education in the traditional sense as for other (mostly worse) forms of manipulation. And while this may not mean much for the medium as an "idea", it's different for "actually existing" video games and the actually existing video game industry :-/


In short, criticising video games does not mean you're criticising the "medium" itself. Of course it has a lot of potential, in fact, some of it is actually fulfilled already in pretty good ways. It's mostly about criticising concrete games, or the general social and economic environment in which video games are made, or the motivations behind making them, the way they're designed, the motifs they use etc, while taking into account their complex relationship with reality.


Additionally, the existence of religious bigots or wingnuts making up dumb bullshit about "murder simulators" and "terrorist training tools" does not invalidate proper critique. On the level of concrete arguments, they can be handled pretty easily. But it seems to me that for a lot of gamers (and for basically the entirety of games industry journalism) the existence of these extreme idiots is actually a great thing as they can use them to justify their complete lack of self-criticism. Their train of thought seems to be somewhat like "Jack Thompson is a moron and he says all video games are evil, thus video games are all awesome". (Hence the kneejerk self-deceiving arguments like "if you criticise video games, you must be another ultra religious moron.")

[Flachmatuch]

Yeah a covert ops agent torturing someone to get information. Not something which you see in books and movies right?

Please understand that if you only have logical fallacies to support your opinion, you're not going to get closer to any form of truth. You may "win" the argument (congratulations for that) but it's just self-deception. If that's enough, well, good for you.


To explain: the existence of 24 or Tom Clancy or whoever writes that shitty jingoist spy crap does not in any way make the same crap more acceptable in video game form. "Everyone is doing it" is not really a good defense.

[codecow]

Wasn't really interested in the game even though I have a couple friends working on it, but after reading that blurb in the OP I want to check it out now :D

[Interfectum]

that was an excellent article... one everyone should read and think about.

[meta4]

Please understand that if you only have logical fallacies to support your opinion, you're not going to get closer to any form of truth. You may "win" the argument (congratulations for that) but it's just self-deception. If that's enough, well, good for you.

What self - deception and logical fallacies? What is so horrifying in the thought of a covert ops agent torturing someone for information which is probably a very normal thing to happen in the real world and not just in Art. Are you being serious in being offended by it. And please stop pretending that you are close to some form of higher truth that all of us are oblivious to.

EDIT: I see that you have edited your post. So basically you do not want to torture anyone or kill anyone in a videogame? Is that it? In what way is what they have depicted in the game crap?

[jett]

u gonna rat me out?

:lol You should be thankful he's warning you, no other mod bothers doing that anymore.

[Flachmatuch]

What self - deception and logical fallacies? What is so horrifying in the thought of a covert ops agent torturing someone for information which is probably a very normal thing to happen in the real world and not just in Art. Are you being serious in being offended by it. And please stop pretending that you are close to some form of higher truth that all of us are oblivious to. EDIT: I see that you have edited your post. So basically you do not want to torture anyone or kill anyone in a videogame? Is that it? In what way is what they have depicted in the game crap?

Think what you want, really. You won! Congrats!

[meta4]

Think what you want, really. You won! Congrats!

Boy are you insecure..

[UrbanRats]

A pretty interesting article. However, I do have an issue with V and VI - mostly VI. There'd be a point here if the games he's referring to sold/reviewed poorly did so purely on their portrayals of violence, but Kane and Lynch 2, Bioshock 2, Metro 2033, Far Cry 2, Bulletstorm all had issues beyond their aesthetic presentation of killing. I don't think anyone didn't buy Far Cry 2 or give it a low score because of its glib violence.

Yeah his 'good examples' list was also my biggest concern with the article, because of what you said AND because he gives a pass to a lot of games but, you could've appliead a similar reasoning to almost any game, and spin their treatment of violence anyway you wanted.
So it came off as a bit unsubstantial.

[Flachmatuch]

Boy are you insecure..

This is called an "ad hominem". The previous fallacy also has a name but I don't know it. Look up "fallacy" on wikipedia if you're interested. Again, you have not made a single proper argument yet concerning my posts. Relying on fallacies to "win" an argument regardless of facts is what I call "self-deception".

[Neuromancer]

I'd rather drive a nail into my own hand than play another so-called realistic military shooter — and yet when another so-called realistic military shooter comes along, I play it anyway. I guess I find these games insanely irresponsible and also somehow irresistible, which is what I most hate about them. Couldn't you argue that the men and women who make Battlefield and Modern Combat and Call of Duty are making the world a demonstrably worse place? I think you could. Sometimes I wonder how they sleep at night. Sometimes, when I can't sleep at night, I play Call of Duty.

This is a great bit. I like this guy.

[sonicmj1]

What self - deception and logical fallacies? What is so horrifying in the thought of a covert ops agent torturing someone for information which is probably a very normal thing to happen in the real world and not just in Art. Are you being serious in being offended by it. And please stop pretending that you are close to some form of higher truth that all of us are oblivious to. EDIT: I see that you have edited your post. So basically you do not want to torture anyone or kill anyone in a videogame? Is that it? In what way is what they have depicted in the game crap?

Did you read the original article at all?

There are two salient points to consider here.

1) Torture is a terrible thing, even if it's something that happens in the real world. It's a war crime to torture an enemy, but not a war crime to kill them. It isn't something (or at least it shouldn't be something) that's generally permissible. Most evidence suggests that it isn't even a good way of getting information in practice. So why portray it that way?

2) By making torture an event that must occur, and forcing the player to be complicit in it, but making killing that same person a "moral choice", it legitimizes torture as valid and more acceptable than the standard practice of war. Considering that's basically the opposite of the truth, that's pretty fucked up.

Flachmatuch has always been much more concerned with the nationalistic, jingoistic messages in military shooters than most. I don't feel as strongly about it, but he's not wrong. These games rewrite reality as much as they reflect it. Even as they entertain, they convey messages about the world, about war, and about these far-off lands where people fight and die.

That doesn't mean that there's no place for any sort of violence, torture, or immorality, but it's pretty disgusting when almost all of it is presented without any sort of awareness of what it's representing. I'm glad that Spec Ops is willing to grapple with the implications of what these games represent, and I'm open to seeing more things like it.

[Zaventem]

I've done much worse things in video games, i guess some people are just more easily moved.

[Alx]

What is so horrifying in the thought of a covert ops agent torturing someone for information which is probably a very normal thing to happen in the real world and not just in Art.

Covert ops agent are not allowed to torture people in the real world. Some of them probably still do it, and if it is revealed they can face accusations of war crime.
Maybe the fact that people like you consider torture a common thing that shouldn't surprise us, is a sign that there's something rotten in today's vision of violence.

[Neuromancer]

A few years ago, I was working on a shooter (now canceled) set within an inglorious American war infrequently visited in the video-game space. In truth, the game wasn't precisely a shooter, which was, I suppose, part of the problem. One idea that came up was to completely remove any kind of feedback loop when shooting. By that I mean you wouldn't have any idea whether or not your shots were hitting their targets. You'd just fire into the jungle and hope for the best. Maybe you'd find some bodies later, if you bothered to look. That would be your feedback loop: dead bodies. Combat would be somewhat randomized, in that it would always sort of be going on in the background. Everything was supposed to be tense at all times. The NPCs with you could die at any moment and, once you lost them, they were gone; the game's story was going to be designed to function without them. As a thought experiment, it sounded incredible: a war game that functioned like a survival horror game. The goal was to make a real war game, something that felt cruel and strange and oppressive, but also genuinely exciting when it had to be, because every combat vet I know, including my shooter-hating father, has described how beautiful and oddly life-affirming combat can sometimes feel. Seven years ago I was embedded with the Marine Corps in Iraq. One night, coming in late to Baghdad, the chopper I was in briefly took fire. I saw the whole thing out the open back of the chopper — these gorgeous green spears of tracer-fire light shooting up at us. The chopper banked hard. While the world below me spun, I remember seeing, down below, a single palm tree gorgeously on fire. It didn't occur to me to be scared until much later, but at that moment all I could think was how exciting and beautiful it was to be sitting there, strapped in, taking fire. I hoped this moment, somehow, would find its way into our game. Later, of course, I was wise enough to wonder how many people would even want to play a game with no shooting feedback loop. It was possible then and it's possible now that I take shooters too seriously.

I would love to play this game.

[Patryn]

I've done much worse things in video games, i guess some people are just more easily moved.

Wow. Just... wow.

This post just is a prime example of quite a bit of what Bissel's talking about in the article.

[Alvarius]

The objection also isn't just "Torture! Disgusting!" It's the fact that they force you to torture a guy and then prompt you to make a "moral choice" -- incapacitate or kill. After you just tortured a guy. It's silly and, if you're like Bissell, hungry for a game where violence gets the gravity it deserves, cause for despair.

[BigDes]

The objection also isn't just "Torture! Disgusting!" It's the fact that they force you to torture a guy and then prompt you to make a "moral choice" -- incapacitate or kill. After you just tortured a guy. It's silly and, if you're like Bissell, hungry for a game where violence gets the gravity it deserves, cause for despair.

Yeah

I would also like a game where torture results in what actually happens, the person being tortured says any old thing to make the pain go away

So instead of finding the nukes or whatever you find an empty shack 30 miles away from where you needed to be

[Mxrz]

Someone I know was tortured because of something I wrote about him — a cold little bibelot I'll take with me to my grave.

. . .wait, what?

Is this a new trend, where you throw in some one liner that is way more explosive than the rest of the article? This has to be the third or fourth time an article on video game violence has had one of these.

[UrbanRats]

That doesn't mean that there's no place for any sort of violence, torture, or immorality, but it's pretty disgusting when almost all of it is presented without any sort of awareness of what it's representing. I'm glad that Spec Ops is willing to grapple with the implications of what these games represent, and I'm open to seeing more things like it.

See i kind of agree with that but also do not (don't know what that implies, lol).
You have Splinter Cell using brutal torture as a tool just to have some cheap shock and paint Fisher as a badass who doesn't fuck around etc etc.. then you have a moral choice, simply because everyone is doing that gimmick now and, "gotta have it in m' game".
I see it as something incredibly childish, if anything-- btw the game should not be aimed at people under 18, and i would love to think that someone over 18, could understand how fucking stupid all of it is, but i digress-- the point is that the disturbing element of BlackList is not torture in and out of itself, but the context it's used in and how it is painted, right? Well while awarness is a good thing as it gives your art more depth, there's a point when it just comes out as some uncanny valley shit.
Take GTA4, for example: in every GTA since the first one, you could do incredibly disgusting stuff with little limits (in the first one i remember if you failed one mission, you ended up bombing a kindergarden, or something of the sort) yet with GTA4(or maybe with San Andreas?) they tried to introduce more "depth" to the characters, the world and the whole thing, while not altering significantly the gameplay.
This i guess worked for a lot of people, but for me it created a situation were i was actually presented what i was doing as a meaningful act, by Niko trying to act like a more conflicted character and all that, all the while being still able (i had to, actually) to go on killing rampages, i could bomb hospitals and never encounter any gameplay alteration in that sense, from previous GTAs.
It created, imo, a conflicting message were the story is telling me how real and deep the world is and the characters are real human beings etc etc, but the gameplay is still that mindless "kill to advance" game i've known. It's an uncanny valley kind of feeling where i feel they should've gone either in one direction or the other and commit.

Tommy Vercetti never second guessed his actions, because he had no depth, just like anyone else in Vice City, Tommy was a criminal and wanted all the money, end of story.
In Red Dead Redemption, Marston is a tormented man with a family a violent past, seeking redemtion, but can hog a nun into the train rails and the games doesn't really give a shit.

Bottom line is, if they were to introduce torture in GTA (and to a degree, it's already there) i'd rather they return to the non-selfaware style of the old ones, so that everything came off as having less weight OR go all the way in the other direction and while still mantaining the freedom, give your actions the real weight they deserve, in gaming logics.
So many games right now are in a phase were they sit right into that uncanny valley, i feel -- they bring with them the consequence free actions of the past, but mix it with the more "try hard" deep stories and characters they ape from cinema, creating a weird middleground of creepyness.

And again let me state: GTAV is by far my most anticipated game, i'm not sporting a holier-than-thou attitude, just saying this is a bad spot to be in for videogames: either you go back to the cardboard box representation of the past, or you decide to grow up and embrace depth fully, but this is an awkward spot.

My 2 cents.

Yeah I would also like a game where torture results in what actually happens, the person being tortured says any old thing to make the pain go away So instead of finding the nukes or whatever you find an empty shack 30 miles away from where you needed to be

Don't know if you were joking, but that would actually be a good idea.
One of many you could use to give torture in your game some more depth, in gaming logics.. if you're gonna put it in because "it happens in the real world" you should be fair about it.

[Alvarius]

. . .wait, what? Is this a new trend, where you throw in some one liner that is way more explosive than the rest of the article? This has to be the third or fourth time an article on video game violence has had one of these.

Well, the guy does way more than write about games. Gamers know about him because he recently wrote a book about games, but most of what he's done is literary fiction and non-fiction. If that quotation had shown up in an IGN game review, I would be with you, but the guy's done a lot, written a lot, been a lot of places. I too am interested in what happened, but it's pretty irrelevant. The relevant part is just that he feels close to the subject.

[SixFourMike]

I agree with UrbanRats. There's no harm in the 'normal' style of game, where you just do whatever you do. But when you half-and-half it, it's just silly. I guess that's somewhat in line with the writer's view on Splinter Cell, except his aversion to torture seems to be motivated by his mysterious guilt instead of morality.

[shinobi602]

The author of this article seems to be taking this WAY too seriously. I wouldn't even have flinched at this supposed "torture sequence". Come on now.

The "moral" choice afterwards doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I just look at it as it is, a video game. Guy should relax.

[Flachmatuch]

except his aversion to torture seems to be motivated by his mysterious guilt instead of morality.

What? "Guilt" is all about morality - a concrete clash of your particular actions and their results with your moral principles. But yeah, that was a good point.

The author of this article seems to be taking this WAY too seriously. I wouldn't even have flinched at this supposed "torture sequence". Come on now.

You're well trained already, that's why - and in some part it's thanks to video games. Your parents' or grandparents' generation would most probably feel very differently. I mean, you may consider this a good thing, or neutral at worst, but I think this merits some discussion, and there is not much of it.