If you want a interesting challenge, try playing Prototype with the intent of minimizing "collateral damage"...
Digi7 said:
A couple of hours later though I was running through a crowded street with my claws out. I turned to look at something, and as I did I accidentally hit the mouse button, and I hacked a girl in half. I stood there and looked at her dead face and mutilated body. This was meant to represent a person who lived and breathed, had a loving family, partner and maybe even children. She had hopes and dreams. Now she was gone. I was horrified at what I had done.
I dunno, man. Smart money's says the pixels on the screen didn't have too many "life" ambitions other than fulfilling the binary script-states of "walk around, just chillin'" or "run around, terrified".
Digi7 said:
I have always been one to be very empathetic and in touch with his emotions (I'm an artist, and an artists greatest tools are his emotions), but I'm far from delicate. The murdering of innocents, however, is too much. It is beyond my capacity to understand why any would want to willingly DESIGN this into their game. They painstakingly rendered every hacked off limb and disemboweled corpse, and for what? So some psychopath can get off on it? For 'realism' and 'grittiness'?
I'm an artist too! Hi-5z!
I'm tempted to go on at length about how conflict is the foundation of both rapture and despair in art, typically emphasized through time tested amplification-through-violence (depicted or implied) in the majority of art: cave paintings, myths, written works, entertainment and all media prevailing through human "civilization", but all that kinda describes it by itself.
As for gore, it can be profound - look at LIMBO, or Bioshock; it's an essential element of the dread atmosphere. In Fallout the violence has always been so over the top, it's just pulp-comic funny, and suits the dark radiation-burn humor excellently. In Manhunt 2 (uncensored), it's pretty much pornographic in that it exists simply for depraved titillation.
I think all of those serve their intended purpose admirably. That said, I think a reasonable compromise would be to remove or minimize many of the gore effects as a toggle in the options menu to allow the consumer to customize their experience to their respective tastes and sensitivities. However, that leads me to my next point...
Nobody is going to be playing Manhunt 2 if they're not looking for a horrifically violent, nauseating experience, which in turn brings me to the point where I have to more adamantly disagree with you:
Putting a committee or censor board or "watchdog" group in power is unavoidably stupid. To do so is literally to say, "I/We do not believe I/We am/are capable of making rational choices regarding what media I choose to observe: But YOU are."
Even if is not your intent to say that, you, as an artist, are advocating artistic censorship that closes doors for you and your community of peers. Even if you don't consider Manhunt 2 (as a complete package) to be
art, do you think of the people on the staff as artists?
- Level Design
- Lead Artist
- Character Design
- Lead Environment Artist
- Animators
- Audio Design
- Music
- Writers
- Cut Scene Animation
- Graphic Design
- Motion Capture: Cast, Stunt Coordinator, Stunts, Motion Capture Director
- Voiceover Talent
(All positions selected from the Manhunt 2 Credits list)
Your problem is not with the content of
games or
media, but the aspects of human nature that begs them to be there and votes for their appearance with their $s. If you want to prop up a highly subjective champion of morality to interfere with the free choices people want to make... Good luck to you, I guess - you'll bloody need it!
But you're not going to make the world a better place, nor beat human nature and you're not going to make any friends as the dissolution of outmoded puritanical morality continues largely unfettered, eroding in waves of new generations of minds awash in information.
*looks down and notices the soapbox*
