RE: Games For Justice

The biggest problem with creating the “socially and morally productive” digital experience you describe, Pete, is that in the end, it will still be a game. This interactive digital medium is still relatively new and has not yet commercially explored any mode of experience other than ‘playing a video game.’ One of the fundamental characteristics of “play” is that it is distinct from the seriousness of real life. Is it fair to think a video game could possibly try to simulate the reality of life in the ghetto without being able to offer the seriousness of that life’s consequences? The digital transference of real-life consequences into a game severely diminishes their impact on the subject. Take dying for instance – the final real-life consequence – which is used in almost every video game. When a player dies in-game, it usually only stands as a relatively minor inconvenience, forcing him or her to start from a previous save and retrace his or her steps. How fun would a shooter be if when you were shot once, you could barely move if you didn’t die immediately and the game simply ended? Not fun at all. You have to tweak the rules of real life in order to make a game that is fun, which further defines the separation of play and real life. This is why I find difficulty in the prospect of translating situations that are usually devoid of all fun into a ‘game,’ which requires it.

This brings me to a second obstacle in designing such a simulation: the tastefulness in recreating traumatic life experiences. Games’ simulation of situations inherently diminishes their seriousness, which would be arguably inappropriate for replicating, say, the difficult life of an impoverished urban child. Along the same lines, take the Six Days in Fallujah controversy. What are the moral implications of replicating an actual military assault in Iraq for a paying audience? Designers argue that it realistically portrays the struggle of modern warfare while parents of deceased soldiers cry foul. Would there even be an argument over a game about trying to survive in a Nazi concentration camp? If gamers were to come across – not a ‘game’ – but such a video project, what would require them to discern the seriousness of the content from any other shoot-em-up? Recreating almost any situation in the virtual sphere could transform it into an act of fun, when the actions themselves would hardly be considered fun in real life. Take any FPS as an already existing example. Imagine having to take seriously the casualties in a game like Battlefield or Call of Duty – no gamers sign out of their server wondering about the families of the soldiers they just killed. They don’t have to, and they’re not supposed to – they are merely ‘playing’ soldier.

I think GTA is a more productive game than most people outside of the gaming community give it credit for. It balances the vast difference between the street ‘game’ and the video game, offering some of the seriousness of the situation it portrays while keeping it fun by letting you escape from the cops and run over innocent bystanders. Granted, these methods of fun would only be fun in real life if you were batshit crazy – but that’s part of the video game experience, living out impossible and sometimes twisted fantasies, which starts another whole conversation. But the types of experiences we’re talking about probably should never be considered fun by anyone and would have a difficult time finding their place in game form.

You can imagine the inner struggle I have while I relish the gory mowing down of virtual bodies despite my real-life pacifism and ideals of non-violence.

Killing Spree!

Alan