Video Games as Storytellers

                In April of two years ago, a game called Six Days in Fallujah was announced.  Shortly after it got media attention, controversy arose from its subject matter.  The game depicts the second battle of Fallujah in the recent Iraq War.  At the first sign of controversy, the publisher of this game backed out and left the developer to find a new company willing to touch the heavy subject matter.  Meanwhile, numerous war movies have come and gone, some having taken place in the recent War on Terrorism.  This is a perfect example of how the gaming industry is not taken seriously for storytelling.

                If you pay much attention to the media, it’s likely that you have seen an article on the “evils of video games.”  Ever since video games have emerged as a major form of entertainment, they have been under fire from people very ready to pass the blame.  While some of these arguments have merit, many of them drip from the lips of the ignorant.  The recent London riots have been blamed on video games by numerous people.  The favored scapegoat of teen violence, Grand Theft Auto, has been placed under the grinder on countless occasions.  On one of my favorite occasions, parents of an adopted child claimed the game Portal 2 was attacked with claims that it made fun of orphans.  The parents, in this case, listened only to a single line of dialogue and ignored the following lines in which the character mocking orphans is scolded as being completely ludicrous.  The local news station, of course, took the story of the parents at face value and aired an almost slanderous story about the game’s publisher, Valve.  Yet none of this even taps the attacks the video game industry has suffered since its rise.  Those ignorant of their legitimacy are unable to take them seriously.

                Those that have actually played video games, though, know that they can be an excellent form of storytelling.  Grand Theft Auto IV tells a great story of a man unable to escape his past.  Red Dead: Redemption (developed by the same producer as Grand Theft Auto) tells an incredible story of an outlaw-turned farmer forced to atone for the sins of his past.  The Uncharted games have all contained interesting, well-developed characters to go along with their engaging stories.  The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series creates world with such mood that they become enthralling simply for that reason. 

Video games have a way of drawing in their audience, or player, in ways movies, books, and music cannot.  One of the best examples of this comes from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  A big point of controversy for this game was an optional level in which the player takes the role of an undercover agent impersonating a terrorist.  The opening finds the player emerging from an elevator, machine gun in hand, facing a crowd of innocent civilians he is expected to gun down.  The decision is left up to the player whether to shoot or not, but the main character’s cohorts soon become violently suspicious if the player chooses not to shoot.  As expected, this level has been highly controversial.  What separates this from the numerous blood-bath movies that have come since the advent of film?  What makes this so controversial?  The same thing that makes it such a compelling device: player control.

                Numerous video games today stress player choice, often forcing the player into situations where there is no clean-cut choice of “good” or “evil.”  These situations put the audience in the shoes of the main characters in ways that other forms of story-telling cannot.  Whether the player is choosing not to shoot innocents, literally crafting their character, or deciding to save a man on the side of the road being mugged, they are investing into these characters and delving deeper into the story.  Few things have captured a sense of desperation and determination better than the ending part of Metal Gear Solid 4, where the player starts by simply walking normally with the joystick and then ends in a beaten crawl, with the player pushing the X button repeatedly to press on and complete the mission.

                I could go on and on with hundreds of examples where video games have been able to bring stories to life and engage the player in things other than mindless violence.  I am not claiming that video games do not contain excessive violence, because some of the most certainly do, but I ask you to not consider them to be a plague to mankind.  They are not the sole source of the problems displayed by today’s youth; actually I do not believe they are the source of them at all, but this is a topic for another time.  I simply ask you, dear reader, to understand that video games are an excellent form of storytelling when utilized well.  The game I described at the beginning of this blog, Six Days in Fallujah, has yet to find a publisher.  In an interview from the developers, it is highly apparent that they were attempting to craft a game that would weave a story of a group of Marines and let the player understand somewhat of what they went through.  One of the biggest cues is the fact that they were advised by a group of 47 soldiers, Iraqi civilians, as well as insurgents.  Despite this genuine attempt to recreate an informative scene for the audience, this has yet to be appreciated because of mainly ignorant nay-sayers.