Guns don't kill people, violent games do

Have you ever wanted to stab a man? Maybe you’re not a blade sort of fella; perhaps gunning down a group of helpless pedestrians on your nearest pavement just because you can, just to see quite what this murder lark is all about, before you hurtle your Ferrari, new-car smell still lingering, into the nearest wall/river/yawning chasm, is more your thing.

Probably not, though. Most of us would be horrified at the thought of such monstrous, inhuman behaviour. It just wouldn’t be polite, frankly. But more importantly, because we know there are consequences. That man had a wife and kids. He had dreams, ambitions. He was scared of bees. Similarly, that Ferrari took a group of underpaid Italians weeks to watch the automated machines to make, cog by cog. Wrecking it would be like licking the Mona Lisa clean – tragic, inexplicable and pointless.

That’s real life, though. What about in games?

Games are not real. Regardless of what Jack Thompson (that guy who hates GTA), Barack Obama or the BBFC (those stiffs who slap 18 symbols on our games here in the UK, along with PEGI) might have told you, the guy you just ran over on Liberty City’s grimy ‘street’ isn’t real. He didn’t have thoughts, feelings or a family to go home to. In fact, he’s the same guy who was in the gun shop a minute ago – and I swear he just came back from the dead and is now walking around the park without a care. In short, he was a just a bunch of polygons, duplicated ad nauseam. It doesn’t matter that you just checked your tyre pressure on his legs.

But that’s not how the government, angry mothers and the media seem to see it. Games, to these groups, are sick, depraved filth causing our youth to turn into violent yobs, stabbing everyone they meet for kicks because they saw it in Call of Auto 6: Generic Subtitle.

It is, quite simply, ridiculous. As a society, we’ve gone – in just a few hundred years – from ‘children’ marrying at 10, being industrial slaves by 12 and fighting wars by 16, to a bunch of mollycoddled fatties who might be influenced by the ‘horrific’ scenes in the latest shooter – so terrible that they’ll obviously cause an entire generation to run into the streets and overthrow society one pistol round at a time. By that logic, the 1980s should have seen a sudden uprising of sickening turtle stampings, ghost persecution and Italian u-bend menders eyeing apes suspiciously.  Violent games don’t modify children’s behaviour any more than watching darts makes us all fat beer drinkers.

Games are an arena in which we can live out our wildest fantasies; driving obscene race cars, saving the hot girl and shooting the bad guy. But they are also – and this is something that some people will simply never grasp – consequence-free simulations in which we can let our darkest curiosities play out; stealing a cop car, causing a 10-car pile-up and yes, mowing down every Tom, Dick and Harry in the latest ‘sandbox’ city just because.

After all, better that than on a real street; with real people, with real families. We can’t hide away our healthy desires any easier than we can our slightly psychotic thoughts (“let’s see what happens when I minigun that helicopter”), but we can at least have a place that we can explore both sides of our psyche without causing problems.

After all, parents shouldn’t be letting their children play these games anyway. They’re sick, violent, and they’re all mine. The difference is – I’m over 18. I understand where gaming ends and reality begins. Parents need to understand that they have the responsibility to protect their kids until they are old enough to realise, too – whatever age that is in each case.

Now pass me the pad; I’ve got this sick idea.

Let's Get Critical

Games reviewers. Both our best friends and our worst enemies. When they slap a high score on that title we’ve already thrown down a hefty pre-order price for, we’re quick to sing their praises. When they cruelly slam our most anticipated titles with a witheringly low ‘6/10’, or some such figure, the conspiracy theories fly. ‘They’re Xbox fanboys!’, ‘they hate this genre’, ‘they’ve been bribed by Sony/Microsoft/etc.’
Our relationship with reviewers, then, is truly Marmite – which is to say, very love/hate. But is it just our crazed internet personae being baited into knee-jerk reactions online, or is does the system itself need to come under review? I certainly think so.

Games, it has often been argued, are an entertainment media on the up. What was once seen as a childish or nerdy pastime (though the medium still struggles with such labels) is more commonly being seen as a serious form of escapism, culture and very occasionally, art. Titles like the recently-released Heavy Rain (pictured) seek to show a more considered, mature side to gaming.

Not the big guns, big swears, bigger 18-symbol kind of mature, but the kind which focuses on strong narrative and adult dialogue. Games like Brain Training and Wii Fit have taken a stab at gaming maturity in an entirely different, but arguably even more successful way, taking a ‘kiddy’ pastime and allowing adults to utilise it to solve deadly serious adult problems like weight gain and senility.

It is time, now more so than ever, that we treated the medium seriously. Which is to say, critically. We cannot allow games to have an easy ride, especially when the standards of production values, graphics and even writing have never been higher. It’s time we got critical.

Other serious forms of entertainment are regularly given a rough ride, panned and pulled apart for every tiny flaw. Whilst I’m not arguing that every film is minced by critics, nor that every game should be, either, it is only by calmly acknowledging a game’s drawbacks can we improve for the future. If games reviewers simply foam at the mouth every time a good game comes along, we’ll never be able to tell what’s truly hot and what’s just hyperbole.Case in point: Grand Theft Auto: IV. The darling of reviewers this generation, garnering a 98/100 average on reviews-aggregate website, Metacritic.

Hold on. 98/100? On average? It doesn’t take a mathematical whiz-kid to work out that 98 on average is an absurdly-inflated score. Similarly, Super Mario Galaxy, Nintendo’s biggest critical success on 97/100 average, is obviously over-scored.
As a regular reader of gaming reviews, it is quite difficult to accept. SMG is possibly Nintendo’s single greatest achievement, potentially besting Super Mario 64 or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In my humble opinion, it does. But I still don’t think it deserves a 97/100 average. I don’t think any game does.
Film reviews are more considered. You get the feeling that the critics aren’t simply raving fanboys, rabid hype-junkies or silly company-politics obsessives.

 For example, Avatar, now the most successful film ever, garnered a very impressive 84 on Metacritic.That's a hugely positive review score, and any game developer should feel proud to achieve such a stunning critical reception for their title. Except, that’s not quite the case. For games reviewers have become accustomed to only using the top end of the scale.

 As a result, a 6/10 seems ‘a poor score’ when in reality it’s above-average. Similarly, 9/10s and 10/10s are dished out like Guitar Hero instalments, meaning it’s difficult to distinguish a truly outstanding title from a pretty good game. Now, games reviewers have created a vicious cycle in which only the highest scores will do. Regularly, reviewers point out real flaws in a title whilst going on to award it a 10/10 regardless.

Some publications do things differently, and get a fierce kicking from all corners of the internet as a result. EDGE magazine, for example, recently handed Final Fantasy XIII a 5/10. They argued that the game was technically accomplished but far too linear. Fair complaints, if we take linearity to be a bad thing (but that’s for another day...). A 5/10 is not a bad score, it is average. A game doesn’t need serious flaws to score in the middle of the scale, just be a game which is not particularly outstanding. Many forum-dwellers quickly pointed out that ‘an EDGE 5 is a normal 7 or even 8’.
Sadly, they’re right. Games reviewers and the industry at large needs to realise that high scores should be the exception, not the rule, if gaming as a medium is to truly be respected.

Don’t agree? Good. We need to be more critical.