I was reading Stuart McDowell’s fun-loving article about murder and I found myself feeling a strange a sense of deja-vu.
About two years ago, when I first started at studying at Art School, there were two causes that I believed in with particularly more fervour than others. One was that heavy metal was roughly equivalent in value to pure Ambrosia, and that anyone who couldn’t be converted was a dullard, a dunce and a malevolent slime. The other was that fighting against the censorship of video games, and in particular the bloodiest, most violent ones, was a cause that any sane person should feel the most passionate zeal for, and if they didn’t, then they should feel the deepest, burning shame.
I suppose that’s fairly indicative of what I was like as an 18 year old. My hair was a silky black mane of heavy metal pride, to perfectly match the sleeveless flannel shirts, camouflage shorts and combat boots in which I was permanently outfitted. And I absolutely loved video games. And looking back, I was a pretty tasteless, and for want of a better word, boring kid.
And not because I loved video games, but more because of the type of video games, and indeed, the type of films and literature and “art” that I loved.
I was so easily impressed by the sight of a ridiculously muscled, armoured colossus, hulking about decapitating monsters and spitting pious, predictable wit out of his square jaw.
Or those endlessly mundane imitations of already stale Tarantino style gangster films, the pithy lines that become even more stilted when translated to the digital canvas.
I still really like video games. Even the things I liked then, like Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto, provide me some excitement, but not without a constant nagging feeling of irritation at the sheer obviousness of it all.
What really turns me on now, is humour, style, invention and any combination of the three. The idea of attaining the coveted “R” rating for the medium doesn’t really hold as much appeal as it used to.
I still completely support the opposition to censorship.
An artist has the right to present their opinions and ideas to through whatever narrative and conceptual avenue they see fit, and an adult has the right to choose to engage with it. Those rights should never be lost.
But I can’t help but notice that the games that seem to break the most ground often tend to be the ones with the least potential to be found objectionable.
Valve’s “Portal”, for example, is in my opinion, the best game ever made. It achieves more stylistically and conceptually through the use of simple, non-combative puzzles and witty, satirical monologue than any number of games have achieved with kilos of guts, swearing and bad taste.
Yes, censorship is awful, but perhaps gamers should spend more energy and time supporting and demanding inventive content and mature concepts in a medium that seems to be becoming desperately polluted by the turgid violence and sweary shouty sexy men that they’re fighting so hard to protect.
I’m the first to concede that my argument has flaws.
Just as in film and visual art, there have been many groundbreaking and marvelous titles that have been steeped in sex, drugs and violence. And some of those titles were in fact, censored or banned.
But if you actually examine the list, very, very few of them ever stayed banned, or censored for more than about a year.
More of an inconvenience, it would seem, than the major breach of civil liberty that we gamers feel we’re fighting against. Until Gaspar Noe makes Irreversible: The Video Game, I don’t think we’ll be missing out on much.
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