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In the debate on violent video games, there’s one company who’s name doesn’t generally come up.
Nintendo, with their family friendly image, a small percentage of M rated games on their system and an online set up with the DS that’s entirely based around protecting kids, are understandably not in people like Jack Thompson’s targets. Nintendo are probably one of the only major game companies not to have been sued or threatened with a law suit by the SLAPP happy lawyer from Florida.
But all that my friends, is about to change.
The fuse is already lit, and the flame is winding its way across the floor towards the barrel of gunpowder labeled ‘Revolution’.
Am I being serious? The console almost universally seen as the home version of the DS is about to become a massive problem at the center of the political and ethical debate that’s going on with video games right now?
The company that has gone to great lengths to keep itself clean with a strong family brand is about to become a major target in the anti gaming movement?
Surely I’ve totally lost the plot?
No… I’m afraid I haven’t, and at the center of it all is just why these people see videogames as a bigger threat than movies, novels and gangster rap.
Interactivity. The fact the player makes decisions. The fact the player is involved in the game. That’s what people in the anti video gaming camp point to as the key difference, and right or wrong on that point, its why they going to flip out when they learn about the Revolution.
I hope Nintendo are ready for the fall out that I’m betting is going to begin shortly after E3, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are, but its not exactly something they have experience in.
So what’s the problem? Immersion. The very same thing that has people like me giddy with excitement.
The Revolution’s controller with its amazing technologies could change the face of gaming forever. It’s already being touted as a better than mouse and keyboard set up for first person shooters, and that’s barely scratching the surface of what we expect to be doing with it. We’ve all considered the possibilities no doubt, but I’m amazed no one else has considered the reaction.
A popular argument against ‘games training people to use guns’ is that the actually mechanics of using a joypad or a mouse are nothing like that of using a gun. This is true, and no doubt because games like Time Crisis and Silent Scope have been much more accurately mimicking the real thing for years, without problem, the fact that the Revolution controller mimics a gun better than a mouse or joypad seems moot.
Consider though, that there is no light gun version of GTA. If there was, you know the anger about it would be even higher. If Lee Malvo had been playing Silent Scope instead of Halo, then there’d have been a lot more weight to the argument that he ‘trained’ on a game, instead of the evident ‘trained by his sniper uncle’ angle.
We’ve just started getting information on Red Steel, Ubisoft’s shoot and slash em up Revolution launch title. You use the remote like a gun, or like a sword, just as you’d imagine. Swinging it around. Stabbing people with it.
Rumours are suggesting that the game, which is being overseen in part by Nintendo themselves, doesn’t have blood or gore, and while that may sound disappointing isn’t a surprising move for a game Nintendo have taken involvement in.
Imagine though if the game let you cut off limbs. Imagine if the game let you repeatedly stab fallen victims.
No longer would we be looking at something that just depicted violence, we’d actually be making the physical movements to simulate it. That’s exciting from a gamers perspective, but from the other side of the curtain, that must be terrifying. When stabbing someone repeatedly isn’t just hit the X button over and over again, the difference between actually performing that violent act and doing it in game gets smaller.
Those people who say gaming desensitizes people are going to pull their hair out when they find out about this.
And just because Red Steel might not be the game that upsets people doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
Take Sadness, a black and white gothic horror title coming from Polish developers Nibris. This game lets you use the Revolution controller to do such things as wave around flaming torches to scare off rats, lasso things with a rope, and slit someone’s throat with broken glass.
Pause a minute to think about that from the perspective of a politician, media watchdog or fundamentalist lawyer. Even if it’s just one moment in a bloodless game that is never repeated, it’ll cause shockwaves.
As brilliant an idea as the Revolution is, it’s going to be a scary one for those people. Imagine the hard core sex game where you strap the remote to your crotch and have to get yourself into the correct position for the virtual lady on screen. Imagine the game where you play the psycho killer with the remote your kitchen knife, as you chase down babies sitters and stab and stab and stab… and imagine now how much more immersive those games will be thanks to the Revolution remote.
Those extreme games will likely never exist, but the fact the Revolution makes them possible in a way never imaginable before is going to make Nintendo a major target in current campaigns, and the fact that two of the first titles being revealed give the player much more immersive ways of killing is not something to be ignored.
Yes Red Steel lets the player decide not to kill people, even encourages it to a degree, but that won’t stop people being upset that the option is there, just as they don’t care that you can play the GTA games without ever visiting a prostitute, or play 25 to Life from the perspective of a Cop and use only non lethal methods to bring down the criminals you’re arresting.
13th April | Reply
Nintendo has a bunch of things working in there favor. For one thing they have time on there side so to speak. Unlike Sony and MS there are plenty of people who owned a Nintendo in there 30s nowadays. This helps there public image because they have a familiar mindshare and the promote continuity within there game lineup by still showing Metroid, Mario and Zelda Front and Center. Rumors of the locations of Donkey Kong remain widely uncofirmed.
Secondly Nintendo is very choosy about the games it wishes to promote attached to it’s system. I don’t know if you ever saw many RE4 comercials but they didn’t prominently feature the gamecube logo the way GTA 3 comercials featured the playstation logo. They tend to be more inclined to spend there marketing dollars on there first party games and more wholesomee titles because it’s in there best interest to support those games.
13th April | Reply
a game doesn’t need much promotion at all to be infamous. the fact that the xbox has parental controls did nothing to stop JT condemn Bill Gates for allowing GTA to be released on the system. when the controller facilitates what will be seen as harmful action, there’s no way a controversial game won’t see Nintendo taking heat in the same way, whether or not they advertise it. JT and co don’t wait for the advertising to build up. Bully was basically just announced, with one screenshot release before JT was trying to tell everone it was a columbine simulator. Plus these people don’t care if a game is against the grain of a system. M rated games make up a minority of the games released on any system. No matter how Katamari Damacys you release they’re still going to be upset about a Manhunt.
13th April | Reply
Couple of Thoughts:
1) I thought Jack Thompson was being disbarred by an Alabama Judge who had the wits to realize what a douche bag JT was being and wasting the Court’s time.
2) Your idea about a game where you strap the RevMote to your wang sounds like a lot of fun. Unfortunately, my mind went to a weird place. I want to see Se7en redone with the RevMote as the murder weapon in each scene. Specifically the Lust murder, but…like I said, my mind went to a weird place.
3) I’ve been thinking of a game like Hitman on the Revolution. Using two RevMotes like the handles for garrote wire and choking the life out of someone. Then I was thinking how great it would be to strap a RevMote to my need and add some more violence to the assault.
4) I really don’t think Nintendo is ready for the shit-storm that the Revolution is going to cause. Your points and concerns are valid and whether or not the “Revolution” logo is prominently displayed on the “Balls Deep: Wang Adventures” game you were talking about, someone WILL sue Nintendo, and it won’t be good.
5) There is also another real problem that Nintendo is about to unleash on the Western World: Brain Age. It will be disingenuous of gamers to assert that a game can train your mind to be sharper and more alert, while at the same time saying that the violent ones have little to no impact on our psyche. I’m no lawyer, and it took me about five minutes to make this connection after reading your article.
6) Could you post some links for Sadness?
Great read.
13th April | Reply
Assuming that they ever here about them in the first place. Nobody made a big deal about Vampire The Maqeurade Bloodlines despite the huge amounts of content that would frankly horrify most of the censorship movement. It’s dripping in sexuality and violence and the occult and all sorts of fun stuff and you never heard a word about it. In fact the only games you ever seem to hear about are these urban themed games that are so ridiculously popular because this is what’s hot right now and GTA sold a number of copies which wasn’t able to be conveyed by rational numbers and Manhunt and Bully got picked up on because they were by the same company as GTA etc.
13th April | Reply
In Reply to #3:Well Brain Age & the video game violence thing are totally different. Brain Age is about neurology, it keeps the brain acting the way it does things best. The violence complaints are about psychology–it prevents the mind from acting it’s best so go the stories. Quite different things actually.
14th April | Reply
In Reply to #5:
I don’t really understand how the Brain Age stuff works at all. But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you are training your brain by doing reptitive tasks. You learn to identfy the number of objects on screen because you do it and as you do it, the game flashes objects faster. Or asks you to do math questions faster or whatever. It is rote learning to keep your mind sharp.
If you play a Resident Evil-like game where threatening human-shaped objects come at you and your in-game/real-life action is to make a stabbing motion with the object in your hand, it isn’t hard to believe that after a few hours of playing a game like that, if someone comes at you unexpectedly or in a threatening manner, you will react in the way that you have trained yourself. (run-on sentence for the win)
If you don’t think that’s how it works, and I’m not trying to sound like a dick, take some kind of martial arts training or combat training. You repeat the actions and movements until they become second nature so that you can defend yourself or attack in a situation without pausing to think about what you are doing. That isn’t to say people are mindless, but that’s the idea behind training. If someone throws a punch at your face, you aren’t supposed to think about whether or not you should let it make contact. You train yourself so you at least attempt to block it without thinking.
Even if you are right and the difference is in neurology and psychology, the first time a parent sees Little Johnny stabbing at the ground with his RevMote while his on-screen avatar mercilessly kills, let’s stay a woman, will be the day Nintendo gets sued.
Plagiarize is right, this is a powder keg waiting to explode. The only thing that will diffuse it is if parents take an interest in their child’s choice of hobby and actively consider what games to purchase for them and what games are appropriate.
So…there will be a huge lawsuit by December, I’d imagine.
14th April | Reply
You guys know that the Brain Age guy, Professor Kawashima has talked out against violent games? Before Brain Age was even a concept, he was publicly cited as being upset with the areas of the brain that violent games stimulated. His series of Brain Training books were meant to stimulate positive areas of the brain, and when Nintendo came a knocking he was happy enough to get involved in what he probably sees as an antidote for violent games. It certainly puts things in a different light once you realise that.
The point I was hoping to make though wasn’t ‘Will this actually be harmful’ as in many ways that’s besides the point (even though it shouldn’t be). Since people are already saying that games ‘train’ people to kill, having them doing the physical action as well as the conceptual action is going to upset those people even more, while lending strength to their arguments.
Oh and if JT is disbarred in Alabama it only means he can’t practice law in Alabama. It won’t be the first time someone tried to disbar him, and he’s succesfully fought similar moves before, so I wouldn’t start reading too much into it yet.
21st April | Reply
The recent biological discovery of mirror neurons which fire in response to watching an action being performed are quite enough trouble for violent games without brain age being added to the mix at all.