Comments on Hit Self-Destruct: War Crimes

"Sometimes war is so frustrating I almost thr...

2009-09-06T11:01:28.134+12:00

"Sometimes war is so frustrating I almost throw my controller at the television."

That's the best piece of irony I've read in a good while.

Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill, is publish...

2009-04-01T16:18:00.000+13:00

Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill, is publishing a new book next month about his experiences with different subcultures in America. Here's one description:

“From his work as a reporter at Hustler magazine, to his National Magazine Award–winning writing for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, Evan Wright has always had an affinity for outsiders—what he calls “the lost tribes of America.” The previously published pieces in this collection chart a deeply personal journey, beginning with his stark but sympathetic portrayals of sex workers in Porn Valley, through his raw portrait of a Hollywood überagent-turned-war documentarian and hero of America’s far right. Along the way, Wright encounters runaway teens earning corporate dollars as skateboard pitchmen; radical anarchists plotting the overthrow of corporate America; and young American troops on the hunt for terrorists in the combat zones of the Middle East. His subjects are people for whom the American dream is either just out of grasp, or something they’ve chosen to reject altogether. Sometimes frightening, usually profane, and often darkly comic, Hella Nation is Evan Wright’s meticulously observed tour of the jagged edges of all those other Americas hiding in plain sight amid the nation’s malls and gated communities. The collection also includes an all-new, autobiographical introductory essay by the author.”

I'm not sure the etiquette for this, and I hate pe...

2009-03-22T06:56:00.000+13:00

I'm not sure the etiquette for this, and I hate people who just show up to promote themselves, but I wanted to share something that I wrote on Veteran's Day regarding Call of Duty: World at War and the entire military shooter genre that I think relates. I wrote:

"I don't mean to unfairly single this game out. It's probably a very good war-themed shooter with glittering production values and sobering bromides about warfare that pop up every time the player is killed, just to show that the game is sensitive to the fact that war is not a game. The Call of Duty series has always been very good at slipping little antiwar messages into its militaristic fortune cookies. The fourth time you die crossing a field, Douglas MacArthur will remind you that it's fatal to enter a war without the will to win it. The fifth time you die, Barbara Kingsolver is on hand to talk about the inhumanity of man.

This has been bothering me lately, and I'm hard pressed to completely explain why. There were always things about the series that never sat quite right. The quotes are one example, but there was also the annoying way the games were so barefacedly ripping-off Band of Brothers, Enemy at the Gates , and a slew of other World War II films. The games were never about the war, but were instead about movies that were about the war .

Except that the games always had such a stench of horseshit coming off them, far outstripping Hollywood in terms of jingoistic revisionism. The movies at least acknowledged some of the human cost of the war. Not just in terms of the awful damage it inflicted on so many human bodies but also the minds and hearts of those caught up in the maelstrom.

The Call of Duty series, always so careful to keep its ESRB rating, redacted any of the physical cost of war. More insidiously, they whitewashed the monumental cruelty, stupidity, and misery of the war. The troops rather cheerfully went through each mission with their grizzled sergeant character, playfully bitching about their orders, and then celebrated after their victories. War, as the early Call of Duty series liked to portray it, was kind of like a big football practice. And it was all for a good cause."

Obviously I didn't know that the quotes had been removed from WaW, but beyond that, this pretty well sums up my feelings on where this genre has gone wrong.

Now I'm playing through Far Cry 2, having just bought it yesterday, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I do wish the game included civilians, if for no other reason than to make the game stop feeling like a theme-park, but in the absence of that kind of context, I have a hard time caring about my mission to kill The Jackal.

In fact, the way the game sidesteps all the messy realities of a 3rd world civil war just makes it seem a bit craven when it introduces a real-life issue, like the "evil international arms dealer" or the "Africa is for Africans" strongman who abuses the language of nationalism to rationalize perpetuating civil war. It's like the game is trying to use authenticity as a mild seasoning, but is afraid to make players feel any of the misery that it claims is afflicting this country.

Anyway, here's the full piece I wrote on military shooters. http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?publicUserId=5928939&bId=8941108

See, I think if you were genuinely keen on this id...

2009-03-17T00:36:00.000+13:00

See, I think if you were genuinely keen on this idea as a developer, you could create a game that doesn't penalize you for civilian casualties. It is simply part of the game and you can deal with it however you like. That is, assuming it's not a training simulator.

Another option is to allow for real-world repercussions such as teammates losing trust, getting demoted from squad leader, getting lower priority missions etc.

Depends on how far you want to go with the idea. If you had a Sims context then eventually you'd be fired and have to do paperwork at a lower income :P

Yes, as soon as I finished this post I found mysel...

2009-03-12T03:29:00.000+13:00

Yes, as soon as I finished this post I found myself screaming about SWAT 4. It was good post, by the way. I find military shooters fascinating in the way they allow gamers to often kill with reckless abandon and little consequence. I have yet to try Far Cry 2, but I plan on doing it very soon. It's a game that has spawned some very divisive opinions on how it succeeds with its "open" concept.

I hate repeating myself so I will direct you to every single thing I have written about SWAT 4, because they touch on many of the points that have been discussed here about it. Incidentally, it was my favorite of 2005. I have yet to see anything that comes close to it.

Teaching the Value of Human Life

SWAT 4: Compliance is your only option

Game of the Year 2005

The Stetchkov Syndicate (expansion)

Also, you *should* feel frustrated about having to restart a mission for using undue lethal force or failing to secure civilians. That is your *job*. I think the point reduction/final score mechanic is the only way to get this idea across so you can correct your actions appropriately for the next time. It's a training simulator. There is certainly room for improvement, but as I said - there has yet to be a game that takes non-violent reactions to violent situations seriously in an FPS.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I agree that t...

2009-03-11T17:38:00.000+13:00

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I agree that the practicalities of "punishing" the player are increasingly difficult to pin down, which maybe says a lot about the limitations of the FPS genre. It's discouraging to me that so many games choose to omit that side of things entirely, though. I think I should play SWAT 4.

To ILR, I think what you characterise as SWAT's failings ("point reduction") sound fairly accurate to real life in its dehumanizing. I'm sure for a lot of soldiers and cops, the shooting of civilians is largely a legal/procedural complication (i.e. was he carrying a weapon, did the officer properly identify himself, etc) and if they were justified, then it's OK. After a while those guys are probably not stricken dumb at each and every tragic loss of an innocent life.

Also, while I'm on the subject of Far Cry 2 I want to reiterate that, to my surprise, the malaria and the checkpoints did't bother me at all but I hate the fast-talking so so much. It drives me crazy every time. What's going on there?

Hmm, great post. I ended up renting Far Cry 2, aft...

2009-03-11T07:23:00.000+13:00

Hmm, great post. I ended up renting Far Cry 2, after all the hooplah I had read about its superior gameplay and intriguing moral ambiguity. However, after playing for a few hours I realized that, to me at least, it was just more endless shoot-anything-that-moves scenarios in a setting that is currently experiencing very real violence. For all the praise I heard about its immersive open-world gameplay, I felt let down that the only actual activity to take part in involved shooting someone or talking to someone about shooting someone else. I imagine a lot had to do with expectations and perhaps an evolving taste that is trending away from shooters altogether, but it was still really disappointing to have this held up as a pinnacle of modern gameplay (even though I know a lot of hard work went into the game, especially crafting a fairly beautiful environment).

again, great post!

Scrolling down the comments I also thought of SWAT...

2009-03-10T23:53:00.000+13:00

Scrolling down the comments I also thought of SWAT 4. I wonder if it's the pinnacle of civilian behavior modelling in FPS games, hopefully not. Not that tying them up isn't particularly satisfying, though.

But as a game mechanic, it's hard to think of the non-combatant NPC's as anything other than potential minus points. The only level where this is averted is the famous second mission of SWAT 4 with the kidnapped girls and the friendly neighborhood molester. In some missions, dead civilians result in outright failure; in others, they incur a significant point reduction to the end score. Enough minus points and you fail to pass the level.

As for other topics touched here, the SWAT series has strict rules of engagement too. A lethal takedown of a hostile gets you a minor point penalty and shooting before ordering them to drop their weapons gets you an even bigger one (not on par with a dead civilian, though). Hell, you even lose points for failing to confiscate the dropped guns. The best result you can get is a mission where no one is incapacitated and no shots were fired.

Where SWAT 4 (for purposes of this discussion) fails is that Progress in the game depends on Making the Grade. Ultimately I find myself reacting to civilian casualties and forgotten status reports in a similar manner: point reduction. Although you can afford to keep complete radio silence towards the HQ and still not come close to the more severe penalties.

The upside is that even a failed mission can be completed. This allows you get to vent your frustrations by recklessly mowing down every suspect in a four-headed cacophonic flurry of SWAT Agents with Tourette's screaming "ON YOUR KNEES! NOW!!" while emptying their shotguns on every available organic entity. None of this girlie-man flashbang'n'tazers approach, I say!

So yeah, there's room for improvement.

Thinking about this, SWAT 4 did have civili...

2009-03-10T21:02:00.000+13:00

Thinking about this, SWAT 4 did have civilians and innocents in there and you'd lose the game if you did too much damage to them.

But did I actually care about not shooting those civilians? I think I might've done the first two times or so but then it just became "please don't get in the way, I don't want to restart this mission AGAIN..".

Then again, that's why I eventually gave up on SWAT 4 - everything's going to plan, great, oh shit I missed one guy in a corner with a shotgun - BLAM - restart the mission..

Fantastic post by the way. Mitch's reference to li...

2009-03-10T07:22:00.000+13:00

Fantastic post by the way. Mitch's reference to light gun shooters in which terrorists would grab innocents or stage battles in public spaces is interesting. I think those games benefited from simpler game mechanics, in that the player could be easily punished for killing civilians. Without exactly four health containers with you through the game, developers may be out of ideas of ways to punish players for killing civilians. Sure, in real life, civilians are killed frequently, but any soldier in particular can face court martial and imprisonment for blatant killing of civilians. Incorporating moral, and legal concerns, in a game that gives players great freedoms, is difficult to say the least.

I do think Far Cry 2 is different in this a...

2009-03-10T04:57:00.000+13:00

I do think Far Cry 2 is different in this aspect to Call of Duty 4, as FC2's themes and story seem to be about what morality still means in a world where people are endlessly shooting the crap out of eachother - the Jackal makes a point of saying he is the one actually helping third world countries overthrow their oppressors by selling them weapons (albeit in a completely dry, uncompelling way, the Jackal being a dully written odious tit).

So I would've liked to seen more of a civilian population in FC2, is what I'm trying to say. It would've fit in with the game's themes.

I wonder about this sort of thing a lot. I wrote t...

2009-03-10T02:57:00.000+13:00

I wonder about this sort of thing a lot. I wrote this about Rainbow Six Vegas:

"Rainbow Six: Vegas is as fine an example of tactical action as you’ll find anywhere. What’s missing is a frank look at what a terrorist situation in a place like Las Vegas might entail. The cat-and-mouse shootouts are so tense that at first you might not notice that the casinos are otherwise empty. In the world of Rainbow Six, there are hardly any victims. Wouldn’t a real-life attack on Las Vegas leave thousands dead? Wouldn’t counterterrorist units have to contend with numerous civilians in the line of fire? Wouldn’t that make for a more thought-provoking game than the one we have now?"

But then I remember playing light-gun shooters in the arcade, like Lethal Enforcers and Virtua Cop, and they definitely did have good guys that you could accidentally kill. But I think we'd agree that games like R6, CoD, and Far Cry are miles ahead of those games in terms of narrative and thematic sophistication. The civilan question may be something we're going to have to circle back around to.

Matthew: Oh yeah, that's true. I mean, there's def...

2009-03-09T23:27:00.000+13:00

Matthew: Oh yeah, that's true. I mean, there's definitely a difference between that kind of barely-interactive cutscene and actual combat scenarios, but you are right. (Far Cry 2's opening taxi ride is similar.) It is one of the game's best scenes.

The Unknown: I'm probably such a bad judge of what would sell. I think Far Cry 2 did pretty well, which is encouraging. As a mainstream Western FPS, it's often a very counter-intuitive design in a late-90s PC game kind of way.

Not to subtract from your point Duncan, but Call o...

2009-03-09T18:52:00.000+13:00

Not to subtract from your point Duncan, but Call of Duty 4 did have at least have one scene that paid lip service to the plight of civilians.

Glad to see HSD back in full swing!

Interesting. But your post seems to hint at the qu...

2009-03-09T18:07:00.000+13:00

Interesting. But your post seems to hint at the question: would one want to play a war game where civilians are present and where enemies can hide among them? I, for one, would be very much interested in it, but would most people? Would it sell?

Also, new reader, by the way. =P