Should Games take themselves seriously?

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yes. Always. All of them. No exceptions.

all of them? No exceptions? Even asset flips and prank/meme games?

It's a [REDACTED] answer for a [REDACTED] question.

 

[Omniponent]

I'd say its more about cohesive tone then which particular tone they take.

So I realize that my meaning got a little twisted. I was asking specifically about 4th wall breaking and atonal characters or dialogue.I wasn't trying to imply that all games should be dark, serious, grim, or hyper realistic.

I may make another post with a differently worded question, because it seems I sent everyone down the wrong track.

Uh? Aren't we talking about seriousness? What does immersiveness have to do with it? Being immersive can be used to make the game sillier too. I remember seeing a tech demo of a VR game about a silly alien making shopping on a space station's grocery store.

tl;dr: for a meaningful discussion about seriousness, it's better to focus on a genre, theme or topic.

CaitSeith kind of proves my point here. I definitely need to reword my question.

 

[Something Amyss]

Depends on the game and the tone and what the devs are trying to accomplish. Saints Row can get away with being totally balls to the wall crazy because that's what Saints Row is known for(which is an interesting case because it started off fairly serious and went silly over 4 games).

I wouldn't call Saints Row "serious" though. It was more grounded, trying to emulate GTA SA, but even the first game had a lot of black humour in it, and the second one ramped that up even as it embraced the sillier "spray sewage on people!" elements.

TBH, that's what I miss most about the series, and it really only existed in force in the first couple of games. Even as a GTA clone, it didn't tret itself too seriously. It just didn't have the bright colours and superhero mentality of 3 and 4.

I don't know., I just feel like making this distinction because a lot of the time it seems like there are only two settings...batshit over the top or constipated. Bright colours or desaturate all the things.

Maybe this is a nitpick, but I always considered GTA to be a silly and childish series to begin with. I mean, I don't remember 3 all that well, but VC, IV, SA and V have all been that way to one level or another.

 

[sXeth]

I'd say its more about cohesive tone then which particular tone they take.

So I realize that my meaning got a little twisted. I was asking specifically about 4th wall breaking and atonal characters or dialogue.I wasn't trying to imply that all games should be dark, serious, grim, or hyper realistic.

[/quote]

As 4th Wall breaking goes (I think I covered it in the reply already), well. That jokes kind of a dead horse. You'd need some hell of a new iteration upon it to make it worthwhile.

If its something like Zelda (as an example) does where they kind of flip flop between actual in-world dialogue, then the same dialogue starts telling you controls or whatever. I'd chalk it up as more or less harmless. Yeah it might ding immersion a bit when the grizzled mentor suddenly apparently tells in-world Link to spin his joystick and push the A button, or talks about the heart metre. But its not completely derailing.

 

[Dalisclock]

Depends on the game and the tone and what the devs are trying to accomplish. Saints Row can get away with being totally balls to the wall crazy because that's what Saints Row is known for(which is an interesting case because it started off fairly serious and went silly over 4 games).

I wouldn't call Saints Row "serious" though. It was more grounded, trying to emulate GTA SA, but even the first game had a lot of black humour in it, and the second one ramped that up even as it embraced the sillier "spray sewage on people!" elements.

TBH, that's what I miss most about the series, and it really only existed in force in the first couple of games. Even as a GTA clone, it didn't tret itself too seriously. It just didn't have the bright colours and superhero mentality of 3 and 4.

I don't know., I just feel like making this distinction because a lot of the time it seems like there are only two settings...batshit over the top or constipated. Bright colours or desaturate all the things.
.

Well, 2 had some really dark bits that were treated as such. Aisha getting killed right in front of Johnny, stuffing a woman into a car trunk so her boyfriend would kill her and then pointing it out to him, and of course, Carlos getting a bullet in the head after being dragged nearly to death behind a truck for miles.

3 had the problem of having serious stuff happen but nothing is really treated as such. The Saints can blow up a building and drop a plane or two over the city and nobody really treats this as being particularly bad when they could be easily defined as terrorism. Even declaring war on the military is pretty much treated as a big game, so there's this real big sense of cognitive dissonance. I like 3(despite it's many flaws) but it's hard to really get behind either then grounded crime sprees or the superhero(supervillian) antics that seem to uneasily coexist.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

Surely the more interesting question is should 'gamers' take themselves seriously?

Jesus no. Then you end up with cringy shit like "I'm not wasting one life I lead many" or whatever it was.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well, 2 had some really dark bits that were treated as such. Aisha getting killed right in front of Johnny, stuffing a woman into a car trunk so her boyfriend would kill her and then pointing it out to him, and of course, Carlos getting a bullet in the head after being dragged nearly to death behind a truck for miles.

3 had the problem of having serious stuff happen but nothing is really treated as such. The Saints can blow up a building and drop a plane or two over the city and nobody really treats this as being particularly bad when they could be easily defined as terrorism. Even declaring war on the military is pretty much treated as a big game, so there's this real big sense of cognitive dissonance. I like 3(despite it's many flaws) but it's hard to really get behind either then grounded crime sprees or the superhero(supervillian) antics that seem to uneasily coexist.

Well, 2 had some really dark bits that were treated as such. Aisha getting killed right in front of Johnny, stuffing a woman into a car trunk so her boyfriend would kill her and then pointing it out to him, and of course, Carlos getting a bullet in the head after being dragged nearly to death behind a truck for miles.

3 had the problem of having serious stuff happen but nothing is really treated as such. The Saints can blow up a building and drop a plane or two over the city and nobody really treats this as being particularly bad when they could be easily defined as terrorism. Even declaring war on the military is pretty much treated as a big game, so there's this real big sense of cognitive dissonance. I like 3(despite it's many flaws) but it's hard to really get behind either then grounded crime sprees or the superhero(supervillian) antics that seem to uneasily coexist.

One of the elements of 2 that pissed me off in 3 was Jessica Parrish. Because 3 had the STAG guy (forget his name) bring up the fact that the Boss locked her in a truck and used Mero as a weapon to kill her, and I really expected that to go somewhere. I mean, that's the sort of shit you do when you frame someone as abad guy.

But I think my expectations were too high. Even in 2, you move on from killing Jessica pretty fast and you go on to have a heroic triumph over Vogel, killing him in a fashion that even makes Johnny Gat go "what the hell as is covered in...4, I think?

Overall, the serious moments in 2 are undercut for me by the narrative. And possibly the ludonarrative dissonance or whatever you call it. Carlos is sort of just there through much of the story. We imprint on him like baby birds because he's the guy who introduces (or reintroduces) us to the world of Stilwater, but he doesn't have a lot of impact. More to the point, I got hundreds of my homeys killed in the game by that point, and even did a few of them in myself due to carelessness and whatnot. It's hard for me to take serious this moment of gravitas when the Boss has been portrayed as a cavalier villain to that pint, and odds are our own actions made that worse.

Jessica? It could be argued that this is how screwed up the Boss is, but the fact that all of this arises over a dispute over cut always seemed farcical to me, and as a result, her death strikes me as too over the top to really take seriously. It's cartoon/1movie villain stuff, but we're right back killing Mero because we're the protagonist and we will not be held accountable for our actions. Even before 3 dropped the Dex storyline, the Boss' deeds had put us in charge of Ultor...yay.

The boss has a series of heavy moments that don't really last all that long, in my opinion. They're grave in the moment, but I'm not sure they're any more meaningful than the one in 3 where STAG brings up Jessica and asks how far they should go (which ends up wqith a mad supervillain plot) or IV with the two doors bit where you are told how awful you are and then...well, canonically, you choose the "stay alive" door, because the other one causes a game over. Or Johnny stopping to say the Boss' actions fazed even him. Or a handful of other examples through the latter two games.

I mean, it put it in perspective, it's like that Man f Steel neck snapping scene. I honestly would have been fine with Clark killing Zod and the NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO if the movie hadn't then immediately gone into a new scene with no real followthrough. That should have been a major game changer, and the end of the movie doesn't really follow through. It's only after heavy criticism that the "Superman causes more destruction than the bad guys" and neck-breaking are given any sort of follow-up...in BVS.

Shooting Carlos is very serious at the moment. Then you're back to blowing up half the city and killing Mero. Oh, and now I'm summoning Zombie Carlos.

Rescue Johnny? Now here's a wacky montage where you shoot people while escorting him on a stretcher!

 

[Chewster]

Depends on the game and the goal of the developers I suppose. I don't think a game must be one or the other (or a mix) necessarily, it is going to depend. As long as it is consistent and the characters well developed etc.

However, if we, as gamers, want the medium to A) grow and B) be taken seriously as an art form, the answer is obviously going to be yes no matter how many angry Twitter/YouTube dweebs whine about the lack of grizzled white men in Apex Legends or whatever the fuck.

 

[BrawlMan]

Depends on the game and the goal of the developers I suppose. I don't think a game must be one or the other (or a mix) necessarily, it is going to depend. As long as it is consistent and the characters well developed etc.

However, if we, as gamers, want the medium to A) grow and B) be taken seriously as an art form, the answer is obviously going to be yes no matter how many angry Twitter/YouTube dweebs whine about the lack of grizzled white men in Apex Legends or whatever the fuck.

edit: Second. With that said, gaming should not constantly try and impress those that dislike the medium or look down it. Most of the time, those type of people are impossible to please.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

A game can be as serious as the devs want it to be. But never at the expense of fun factor. I'm yet to play Red Dead Redemption 2, but there's really no excuse for some of the mechanics that Rockstar chose to implement. If that game ever sees the light of day on the PC, I bet some of the most successful mods will revolve around reducing the "realism" mechanics.

 

[Something Amyss]

Depends on the game and the goal of the developers I suppose. I don't think a game must be one or the other (or a mix) necessarily, it is going to depend. As long as it is consistent and the characters well developed etc.

However, if we, as gamers, want the medium to A) grow and B) be taken seriously as an art form, the answer is obviously going to be yes no matter how many angry Twitter/YouTube dweebs whine about the lack of grizzled white men in Apex Legends or whatever the fuck.

If we want the medium to grow, we need some serious games. But motion pictures were taken seriously despite slapstick and giant gorillas terrorising New York. It will be taken seriously or it won't. Other media has gone through the same novelty stretch as gaming, and come out fine.

 

[Chewster]

If we want the medium to grow, we need some serious games. But motion pictures were taken seriously despite slapstick and giant gorillas terrorising New York. It will be taken seriously or it won't. Other media has gone through the same novelty stretch as gaming, and come out fine.

I mean, I did say it depends. Not every game has to be The Last of Us or whatever but game companies should not be afraid to tackle heavy subjects if they wish, despite silly objections from the more....let's say, vocal among the gaming community. Experimentation is what birthed the industry after all and if the AAA industry took more risks instead of churning out more AssCreed games or trying to imagine up more draconian DRM, the gaming world would be a better place IMHO.

But I agree overall, gaming will very likely be fine. Art moves forward regardless, it seems to me.

Second. With that said, gaming should constantly try and impress those that dislike the medium or look down it. Most of the time, those type of people are impossible to please.

Also agreed. I mean, if you think gaming is kids stuff, you're likely not gonna be playing them anyway.

 

[Squilookle]

Should all games anything? No. I mean, serious games should take themselves seriously, non-serious games shouldn't.

Walking simulators and interactive movies like Alan Wake seem to have long forgotten they are games, and are all the worse for it..

I liked Alan Wake, and it felt very much a game to me, certainly less of a 'walking simulator' and more of a 'sprint from light to light and keeping good track of ammo simulator'.

Sorry- I didn't mean Alan Wake was in the walking simulator category- I meant it was in the latter, interactive movie category.

 

[CaitSeith]

It's really difficult to take the plot of an open world game seriously. I mean, I have tried; but any sense of urgency from the main plot gets lost among the vast open space, exploration, side-quests and sense of freedom in general. I think that's why there is a difference in tone between Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas: the former tries to have its main plot to be taken more seriously than the later.