Gay Marriage, Child Molestors, Torture, Abortion & Nihilism

[Emiscary]

I'd rather not play an incredibly depressing game when I sit down to relax and have my evening's fun. I get enough for that when I read the news.

First off, just because a game includes subject matter that could be construed as depressing doesn't make the game tragic.

Second off, the purpose of a game is not necessarily to relax people in their jammies. Nobody who bought Fatal Frame was looking for a quiet meditative experience.

And finally, nobody's twisting your arm to buy "depressing games". So don't demand they not be made because you're easily depressed.

 

[endtherapture]

I'd rather not play an incredibly depressing game when I sit down to relax and have my evening's fun. I get enough for that when I read the news.

First off, because a game includes subject matter that could be construed as depressing doesn't make the game tragic.

Second off, the purpose of a game is not necessarily to relax people in their jammies. Nobody who bought Fatal Frame was looking for a quiet meditative experience.

And finally, nobody's twisting your arm to buy "depressing games". So don't demand they not be made because you're easily depressed.

I enjoyed The witcher 2 which was a very mature game and had some mature themes.

However, abortion...child molesting? Apart from having a short implied story sub plot...I just can't see how they'd add to the value of a game or anything, especially if they were playable sections...

The Witcher 2 as I said has some pretty dark issues (such as an elven women killing herself after her baby was born after she was raped) but child molestation is just...way out there, no.

 

[Emiscary]

This argument:

"I'm perfectly for dark/mature/controversial content... ...but that dark/mature/controversial content is off limits."

Is always stupid.

 

[chuckdm]

Gay Marriage - how many games address marriage at all? I can think of...less than five, and one of them is Fable which allows it.

Child Molestors - touchy subject. Games try to stray away from depiction of kids especially ones where they are hurt, because they fear the media outcry.

Torture - what would you want to see addressed? Because more than a few games featured torture (offscreen or fade to black) with the clear implication that it's not nice. I would say games feature close to the same amount of torture (maybe a bit less) as other media. Torture isn't really popular anywhere.

Abortion - it's a bit outside the scope of games again. Very rarely do they deal with pregnancy and/or birth.

Nihilism - plenty of games feature their take on villains who want to destroy all because nothing has a meaning (to paraphrase). Arcanum does it really good, too. Again, what do you want addressed in particular?

Well...

Gay Marriage - This can be done in Skyrim. Right now. Without mods. ME3 also allows for gay relationships, though no marriage either way. This does seem like something that should be included in the next Sims game, though.

Torture - I played 4 missions of COD Black Ops (no online, thankfully) and it seemed to me that they were beating this Mason fellow up pretty badly. The protagonist in the new Syndicate remake wakes up being beaten half to death. At one point in Rage you ate captured by hostiles and almost killed. Aside from Mason in BlOps the gaming coverage of Torture seems pretty brief, but is has been covered. To be honest, the main reason I quit playing BlOps before at least finishing the campaign (Side note: It's amazing how fun that game is when you play it singleplayer!) was because the torture made me squeamish.

Abortion - What quote said. The number of games with marriage is small. The number of games with kids is, AFAIK, singular. Besides The Sims 3 (and maybe The Sims 2, I skipped that whole iteration) I can't think of a single game that includes pregnancy at all. That said, yes, this seems to be to be something that the next Sims really should cover. Knowing EA they will avoid it like the plague, but I can't think of another game that is even in the right realm to cover it. They don't even have to call it Abortion. They can call it an "anti-woohoo potion" for all I care.

Nihilism - Again, what quote said. Unlike the other 4, this has actually been covered ad-nausea by a myriad of games. My assumption here has to be that what you're looking for is a game where the protagonist, rather than the boss baddie, has this. I can think of a few (still haven't seen the grand moral justification for everything Mercer does in Prototype, for example) but clearly this motive is indeed very lopsided towards the bad guys, and the player is seldom the bad guy. As I understand it (haven't played it) Saints Row has this to a certain extent. I mean, you're playing as a gang member trying to defeat a rival gang for no other reason than "this is our block, fools!" and that's pretty much the most paper thin justification I can think of for dropping JDAMS on civilians in LA from an F-22. This isn't exactly protagonist-nihilism but it's in the same family.

 

[King of Asgaard]

*reads title*
... *sings* These are a few of my favourite things!

captcha: walk the plank. Agreed, I should.

OT: Several games have, if not focused on, featured the above in some way, even minimally.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Oh, i thougt this thread is about a game i really want to play.

I`m pretty sure that there are a few japanese rape games on the market. I read an article about one. First you follow the mother from a subway station to her home. There you can impregnate mother and daughter in their own basement and keep on raping them. I`m pretty sure it was news about a year ago. I was a bit late to get my copy and in the end i don´t mind. It wasn`t extreme enough anyway.

I was nice and googled a link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/30/japanese-rape-fantasy-vid_n_518891.html
(hopefully it works, never posted links before)


my memory wasn`t correct on this one since there is a sister involved and you follow them to their mothers house.

note: the link leads to a normal news site it`s not a porn link. It was the first Google spit out.


All sicko fun beside i don`t feel the need for this kind of themes. When it comes to torture, rape and other controversal themes the old argument of the doing it interactive will rise up in no time. For now i`m glad that virtual killing doesn`t get such an uproar anymore. No need to overstep the lines to fast and looking at society it`s only a matter of time anyway.

 

[Baralak]

the closest game style I can think of to include child molestation would be to make an LA Noire style game. It'd basically be Law & Order SVU: The Game. I do think it'd be interesting to talk with the caught criminals, though. To hear the explanations and rationale.


Actually, I think it'd be neat to make a conversation heavy game, where you're a therapist. Let you decide if you want to guide people to being "normal", or if you want to try to abuse your authority and work on your persuasive skills. Maybe have a guilty pedophile come into your office, ashamed at what he enjoys, and you can decide if you want to encourage him to suppress the urges, or tell him that the urges are right, and "society's wrong" or something. That'd actually be pretty cool. Manage different patients on different days (think managing your time in Persona), to deal with different issues, from out there ones like the above example, to more mundane things, such as abandonment issues, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

 

[Emiscary]

Well...

Gay Marriage - This can be done in Skyrim. Right now. Without mods. ME3 also allows for gay relationships, though no marriage either way. This does seem like something that should be included in the next Sims game, though.

Torture - I played 4 missions of COD Black Ops (no online, thankfully) and it seemed to me that they were beating this Mason fellow up pretty badly. The protagonist in the new Syndicate remake wakes up being beaten half to death. At one point in Rage you ate captured by hostiles and almost killed. Aside from Mason in BlOps the gaming coverage of Torture seems pretty brief, but is has been covered. To be honest, the main reason I quit playing BlOps before at least finishing the campaign (Side note: It's amazing how fun that game is when you play it singleplayer!) was because the torture made me squeamish.

Abortion - What quote said. The number of games with marriage is small. The number of games with kids is, AFAIK, singular. Besides The Sims 3 (and maybe The Sims 2, I skipped that whole iteration) I can't think of a single game that includes pregnancy at all. That said, yes, this seems to be to be something that the next Sims really should cover. Knowing EA they will avoid it like the plague, but I can't think of another game that is even in the right realm to cover it. They don't even have to call it Abortion. They can call it an "anti-woohoo potion" for all I care.

Nihilism - Again, what quote said. Unlike the other 4, this has actually been covered ad-nausea by a myriad of games. My assumption here has to be that what you're looking for is a game where the protagonist, rather than the boss baddie, has this. I can think of a few (still haven't seen the grand moral justification for everything Mercer does in Prototype, for example) but clearly this motive is indeed very lopsided towards the bad guys, and the player is seldom the bad guy. As I understand it (haven't played it) Saints Row has this to a certain extent. I mean, you're playing as a gang member trying to defeat a rival gang for no other reason than "this is our block, fools!" and that's pretty much the most paper thin justification I can think of for dropping JDAMS on civilians in LA from an F-22. This isn't exactly protagonist-nihilism but it's in the same family.

Birth/marriage are kind of joint issues that games need to start acknowledging at some point if the medium is ever gonna mature.

As for torture, I wanna see it represented in a non disney fashion. It's only ever *implied* to happen, it doesn't actually happen. If there was a more visceral representation of the act you'd get a much much stronger reaction to it. (Also: Saw, Hostel & The Human Centipede. I win.)

And I know there are nihilistic *characters*, I wanna see a nihilistic *game*. One where hopelessness, self deception and oblivion are central themes.

(When people's responses are so similar I find it saves me time to just quote myself in response.)

 

[Risingblade]

Nihilism hasn't been included in games? That's pretty surprising to be honest. It sounds so Persona ish

 

[peruvianskys]

I feel like the best way to help a medium "mature" is not to make a list of controversial things and then shoe-horn them in. I can't think of a game that would be improved in any way with the addition of abortion or extended torture scenes. Games exist for entertainment, and although I certainly don't disapprove of the inclusion of mature and morally ambiguous themes, just ramping up the sex and gore is not the way to do that, especially since any game in which the player character commits such morally dubious actions for entertainment value is implicitly endorsing those behaviors.

As for nihilism, I think there are plenty of fairly nihilistic games out there. Limbo and Manhunt are both good examples.

 

[Emiscary]

I feel like the best way to help a medium "mature" is not to make a list of controversial things and then shoe-horn them in. I can't think of a game that would be improved in any way with the addition of abortion or extended torture scenes. Games exist for entertainment, and although I certainly don't disapprove of the inclusion of mature and morally ambiguous themes, just ramping up the sex and gore is not the way to do that, especially since any game in which the player character commits such morally dubious actions for entertainment value is implicitly endorsing those behaviors.

As for nihilism, I think there are plenty of fairly nihilistic games out there. Limbo and Manhunt are both good examples.

Why is it that everyone thinks "torture in a game = torture sim", and "abortion in a game = abortion sim"? There's more to be done with the ideas than giving a player a straight razor or a coat hangar.

And "ramping up" sex and gore isn't my wish. Like I said in OP, cramming every item on that list into one game would probably be a bad idea. Besides which, gore and sex have already been implemented to a near maximum degree in games already (see: Dead Space & Leisure Suit Larry).

And the "commit morally dubious actions for entertainment value is implicitly endorsing those behaviors" shpeel? Yeah, horseshit. I doubt that people who played Bioshock are for the murder of little girls, and I doubt that people who play Street Fighter are big into fight clubs.

 

[GiglameshSoulEater]

Birth/marriage are kind of joint issues that games need to start acknowledging at some point if the medium is ever gonna mature.

As for torture, I wanna see it represented in a non disney fashion. It's only ever *implied* to happen, it doesn't actually happen. If there was a more visceral representation of the act you'd get a much much stronger reaction to it. (Also: Saw, Hostel & The Human Centipede. I win.)

And I know there are nihilistic *characters*, I wanna see a nihilistic *game*. One where hopelessness, self deception and oblivion are central themes.

(When people's responses are so similar I find it saves me time to just quote myself in response.)

The main question you really need to be asking about it is how would you make a game about these subjects?

Toture - lots of games feature torture. Metal Gear Solid games often have the protagonist tortured, for example.

Nihilistic games - Nier was pretty nihilistic, considering it was post apocalyptic and

Spoiler

you were killing innocents all along

But birth and miscarriage... those are difficult. Not because games are 'immature' as a medium, but the difficulty in making an effective game about them. What can you do? Hell, what particular films or books are there about birth and child-death beyond 'this happened. It was very sad.'
As an interactive medium, it has to have interactivity, and theres not much I can think of straight off for birth and miscarriage.

 

[Headsprouter]

Torture? Have you not found that recording in Bioshock which holds the sounds of a man being interrogated using electricity?

 

[The White Hunter]

Swat 4 had that one level with the bloke who killed kids. I think it was implied that he molested them as well.
MGS has the torture scenes too.

But yeah, they're touchy subjects. Big companies don't want to risk the bad press because they might sell less, and it's even worse for little companies who could get shut down if their game has some bad shit in it.

I remember a lovely torture scene from MGS3 where snake gets his eye shot out.

Also because business, alot of people plain just wouldnt be interested in games that made a big point of adressing these issues so why make a game about it?

 

[Emiscary]

Swat 4 had that one level with the bloke who killed kids. I think it was implied that he molested them as well.
MGS has the torture scenes too.

But yeah, they're touchy subjects. Big companies don't want to risk the bad press because they might sell less, and it's even worse for little companies who could get shut down if their game has some bad shit in it.

I remember a lovely torture scene from MGS3 where snake gets his eye shot out.

Also because business, alot of people plain just wouldnt be interested in games that made a big point of adressing these issues so why make a game about it?

Fuck those people, those people are boring

 

[Emiscary]

Torture? Have you not found that recording in Bioshock which holds the sounds of a man being interrogated using electricity?

I wanna see it represented in a non disney fashion. It's only ever *implied* to happen, it doesn't actually happen. If there was a more visceral representation of the act you'd get a much much stronger reaction to it. (Also: Saw, Hostel & The Human Centipede. I win.)

(Quoting myself again, due to response similarity.)

 

[Gatx]

A lot of games that offer romantic relations nowadays have an option for gay romance. I guess marriage is another issue, but as someone already stated, the Sims and Skyrim at least have actual gay marriage. But wait, they're not addressing the issue in any serious discussion, you might say, and that's just the point. Within the game mechanics both straight marriage and gay marriage are the same, which says something about the subject in and of itself. Personally I don't think a game about fighting for/against the rights of gay marriage would be any real fun. You could probably make an art game out of it?

I doubt games could deal with child molestation any more "maturely" or "in-depth" than any other medium. Something like a crime investigation type story where "child molesters are criminals and must be brought to justice," which everyone should know and is kind of shallow. I could see it as maybe part of a characters backstory in a Silent Hill type horror game, where the trauma is manifested as various symbolic monsters for something deeper but it seems kind of obvious to me and I wonder if something like that has already been done. Also does Heavy Rain count?

Addressing torture is probably futile in games. Think how little violence means in the typical videogame. The Call of Duty games usually have some torture and execution scenes for shock value but for the rest of the game you have regenerating health and are killing guys left and right. That said, Skyrim lets you get a torture chamber in one of the factions' bases. You have to actively interrogate the prisoners yourself (by hitting them with actual attacks) while they tell you to stop so depending on how squeamish you are, that sort of addresses it?

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Gay Marriage - This can be done in Skyrim. Right now. Without mods. ME3 also allows for gay relationships, though no marriage either way.

You're forgetting that ME3 does indeed address the issue of gay marriage. Cortez spends a great deal of time talking about his dead husband. ME3 does a great job of dropping it in without making an issue of it. ME3 drops in gay marriage in such a way that it implies that it is totally normal and accepted in the ME universe - so much so that it is just another marriage, without the need to label it as gay.

And yes, I had a gay marriage in Skyrim. No one seemed to notice or mind there either. Although Skyrim does forbid premarital sex, which is a bit prudish of them.

Unlike the other 4, this has actually been covered ad-nausea by a myriad of games. My assumption here has to be that what you're looking for is a game where the protagonist, rather than the boss baddie, has this. I can think of a few (still haven't seen the grand moral justification for everything Mercer does in Prototype, for example) but clearly this motive is indeed very lopsided towards the bad guys, and the player is seldom the bad guy. As I understand it (haven't played it) Saints Row has this to a certain extent. I mean, you're playing as a gang member trying to defeat a rival gang for no other reason than "this is our block, fools!" and that's pretty much the most paper thin justification I can think of for dropping JDAMS on civilians in LA from an F-22. This isn't exactly protagonist-nihilism but it's in the same family.

And this. Nihilism is so common in games, I'm not sure why the OP listed it.

 

[Emiscary]

And this. Nihilism is so common in games, I'm not sure why the OP listed it.

Lots of pretentious teenaged wangst and "fuck everybody" machismo doesn't really constitute my idea of a good examination of nihilism as a concept.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I think sometimes, in our love for gaming, we forget just how young the industry is. It took film about twice as long as gaming has even really been around for yet to start addressing these things properly, and they still fuck up a lot. That's not tol say we shouldn't always encourage progress, but we have time. It's not a problem yet.