Heart of Darkness: E3, Violence, and Context for Outrage

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Adam Maresca

by Adam Maresca

To everyone who has been finding some of the content from this year’s E3 to be pushing the boundaries of sexual politics and highly graphic violence: what kept you? In case you think that question was rhetorical, I’ll give you my best guess.

It’ll scare your mom! It’ll scare your little sister!
It’ll SCARE YOUR DOG. (And also the ESRB.)

As a particularly new medium, video games have been the target of moral fervor since the introduction of gory violence, with plenty of memorable flashpoints along the way. Mortal Kombat  and Night Trap   were hounded by Senator Joe Lieberman, David Grossman demonized imaginary Doom levels in the aftermath of the tragedies of Columbine, Jack Thompson led a failed two-pronged crusade against Grand Theft Auto , and Breivik’s self-implicating statements have name-dropped Call of Duty . We were fortunate in many ways that the vocal opponents of these games chose to resort to hyperbole and publicly made fools of themselves, but at the same time it fostered a persecution complex which has steadily been ballooning over the last two decades.

For many, ridiculous assertions that video games were a primary motivator for horrific violence have been countered with equally ridiculous claims that games have no effect whatsoever. Certainly there are many studies that have exonerated games from any direct correlation to violent behavior, but there have been results that show triggering in those predisposed to agitated behavior . Fingering Modern Warfare  as a mass murder training tool is as ludicrous as the 1990s witch hunts over Marilyn Manson CDs. All the same, it’s also irresponsible to deny them as some small incidental part of a larger composite, or as cultural artifacts that reflect some of the values of the times they are created in.

OOGABOOGABOOGA! I’M CORRUPTING YOU!
Oh hang on, call about next week’s gallery show.

And it seems like there’s something that needs addressing given the brunt of AAA content being touted around E3 last week. This is by no means representative of everything from the floor; there were plenty of games suitable for any age, and many games that had the player assert their dominance without depicted bodily harm, and even games that did revel in bloodshed but had some aplomb in their execution. Anyone looking for reassurance and praise should go have a look at their preferred press release drip-feeds. Time to put some work in.

  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
    • Decapitation of an enemy knelt in prayer for their personal last rites.
  • The Last of Us
    • Ever-rising stress on viscerally brutal coup de grace shotgun to face.
  • Hitman: Absolution
    • Latex fetish nun assassin troop being summarily introduced and executed.
  • Watch Dogs
    • Dystopian panopticon of totalitarian data banks at the mercy of hackers.
  • Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Battlefield 3 DLC
    • Enough jingoistic military propaganda shooters that they all blur together…
  • Halo 4, Gears of War: Judgment, Crysis 3
    • …with the occasional flair of sci-fi aliens instead of evil minorities…
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II
  • Tomb Raider  reboot
    • That whole groping QTE / sexual abuse trauma crucible thing.
A little damning all laid out at once, maybe? At least it makes some strides in attempting to explain some of the malaise that surrounded the proceedings beyond the usual “long console generation” line. Whether or not these games preside over a holding pattern doesn’t change that the overall impression of these games is bleak.
Eight assassins prepared to kill with maximum efficiency.
Sixteen high-heel pump boots with matching rubber/fishnets.

(Sidebar: look, that whole Lara Croft demo was messed up, point blank. Guess what, there’s a reason it isn’t Nathan Drake getting groped and overpowered and thrown in a highlight reel of helpless, victimized suffering. And even if it was, his grunts would register more as “anguish” than “hammy porn orgasm” while strung up in bondage. It’s also a pattern from the first trailer they did about a year ago where she almost drowns twice in a shipwreck… remember that? A character going through Hell and emerging victorious is one thing, the details and framing are quite another; this definitely isn’t Irréversible  by a mile. It’s garden-variety scummy and any writer who buys into the PR whitewash on this one doesn’t deserve an audience bigger than single digits. Oh, and I have huge reservations over violence in video games as well as problems with their stances in gender politics so don’t try and trot out that hoary old false equivalency either.)

The intermediary point is that things are getting dark enough (or we’ve grown sensitive enough to the same material) that we have sizable contingencies thinking maybe we should pump the breaks and take stock. And maybe that’s coming from the fact that we’re collectively in a pretty bleak place. Unemployment is in the general public, and the industry insider horror stories and studio closures have been piling up ; representative or not, it’s an unpleasant picture on all sides. Everyone who wasn’t already partway paranoid about their digital shadow is slowly coming around. The supposedly left-wing President of the United States is ordering secret kill-priority lists and hand-waving noncombatant American casualties of drone strikes . There’s no real escape from the news because it seeps into the foundations of our fantasy worlds as familiar elements.

Just like that Nine Inch Nails ARG, but real!
No concert tickets; just a federal watch list.

Zombies have transitioned from an oblique criticism of capitalism to a catchall apocalypse scenario to be constantly preparing for only half in jest. Settings like those in The Last of Us and I Am Alive are more direct flashes of this same nihilism. We’re worn out on brown-palette military shooters the same we fatigued of Iraq War news coverage, and we put the same unwavering trust of moral certitude in our own forces as we do in the next faceless Mason or McTavish. We look at the hacked NPC data on the HUD of Watch Dogs and it resonates with us not just because it’s an unexpected new title, but because somewhere in the recesses of our minds are brief flashes of our footprints on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, emails, phone calls, credit cards, bank statements, Social Security files, doctor’s records…

And all that same information we put out there is what marketing teams pay to access, and how they determined that this is the violence and sexism that will move the most units. Comments, critiques, and meandering think-pieces (like this one) take too long to read when thumbs up and page-views are more readily quantified. Bloggers don’t move the same numbers YouTube commenters do, so those are the power fantasies we’re going to continue to see. Some will refine and splinter off in interesting directions, others will keep mutating and devolving until Randy Pitchford horks out another Duke Nukem game we can all feel dirty acknowledging the very existence of.

That searing pains between your temples?
That means you remember… the horrors…

And so will the cycle begin anew.

This entry was posted in Features and tagged Adam Maresca , Call of Duty , Call of Duty: Black Ops II , Crysis 3 , Duke Nukem Forever , E3 , Gaspar Lewis , Grand Theft Auto , Halo 4 Gears of War: Judgment , Hitman:Absolution , Irreversible , Jack Thompson , , Marilyn Manson , Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance , , Randy Pitchford , , , Watch Dogs . Bookmark the permalink .