The Anti-Blood thread :D (sincerely tho)

Nandrew

It's pure coincidence that this arrives hot on the heels of the announcement for our bold new interest group, I'm finding this stuff very interesting lately:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/04/violence-is-boring-the-tedium-of-violence-as-progr.html

We're looking at the idea of violence in videogames as a negatively persistent trope.

Here's a more dev-centric one from Keith Burgun (was this one mentioned somewhere here? I seem to recall):

http://keithburgun.net/violence-part-1-glorification/
(Part 2 is about mechanics!) http://keithburgun.net/violence-part-2-game-design-ramifications/

Brain noms. I don't think I'm looking to stamp out violence in videogames, but it's felt good seeing challenges to this paradigm and I'd really love to experiment with anti-violent thinking in future prototypes.

francoisvn

I'm in.

Anti-blood is much better than blood. In fact, I don't know about you, but I want us to grab our pitchforks and go clean up some hay. Or institute a policy of mandatory conscripted hugs: HaaS (Hugs as a Service) (TM).

Now that I think about it, I think we need to take the necessary steps to ensure nothing in our games have anything with blood, so there's a 0% chance of blood.

Oh wait, am I being a little zealous? I can't tell, busy draining my blood and my head is feeling kinda light...

FanieG

@Nandrew create a No Bloodbourne prototype?

Nandrew

In No Bloodborne, players encounter a variety of chilling and unnatural horrors who really just need someone to understand them.

Encounter such ominous foes as The Club-Wielding Troll Who Tries To Swat Away Flies, the Too-Helpful Animated Cleaver and the Knight Whose Hands Are Swords (Even Though It's Really Not Their Fault And They Just Forget Sometimes). Discover their unique stories, goals and hobbies.

Sheathe your weapons! Resolve misunderstandings! Make friends where others would only see imminent doom!

Dispel evil in the world...

...One rational conversation at a time.

francoisvn

... ok I regained consciousness. I think we need a pledge of allegiance to really cement things. I'll get started and someone else can take over (still light-headed):

I <<insert name>> hereby pledge my allegiance to ABBA (Anti-Blood is Best Association) on this day <<insert date>>. Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. From this moment forth I shall denounce all blood in games. I shall spread the word of ABBA through song, internet writings and spoken word (but mostly song), and everyone shall hear the true message. <<you can add more here, kthxbye>>

Nandrew

I'm trying to justify the time to pick up an oldish prototype and finish it. A party-based negotiator. I want to see if I can portray violence in an entirely negative way, and put a spin on the concept of party-based RPG combat games.

Pierre

I can't figure out if these two opposing threads are for realsies or not....

Nandrew

The blood thread is shits 'n giggles. This one has a cutesy name but the resources I'm linking to -- and the discussions I'd like to generate -- are genuine.

If people wanna talk crap here then I guess that's okay too, but first try read the stuff I've linked to in the original post. That's the heart of it. :)

FanieG

I agree with Keith's conclusion in the first link and also liked how he admitted that he himself does not see the connection between gamers being violent due to violent games, even though there is research to the contrary. It's brave to admit that. In the closed thread I suggested a jam around this ''blood'' issue. It was a bit ''toungue in cheeck'', but realize now what a crappy idea that was. Some really nasty stuff could have come from that. So sorry. I am usually fine with blood in games, like Broforce, but usually put my controller down the instant a game becomes distastfull in how it is done. The moment it makes me feel quessy I shelve it, and advise others against it. This is the same reason I usually don't enjoy horror games/movies. I've checked my own prototypes and only one had blood in it, and even that one could have done without it, so i agree that there is some challenge in how we approuch our designs. Also, I am a great believer in age restrictions, but those only help if you have guardians who care. I used to work in gaming retail and always found it shocking how many parents had no problem letting their kids play a GTA or resident evil title. So thanks for the food for thought.

dammit

Thanks for adding the two articles from Keith Burgen. I'd read them some years back but it's interesting to see them again, non-the-less.

I think it is really interesting that - as Tauriq mentions - violence is just used as a way for the story or character to progress. But without the character actually evolving in any way.

At the same time, though, all media, no matter what it is, communicates cultural values.

What is a game like that telling us about ourselves? We - as human people - are incredibly complicated individuals, driven by a huge variety of wants, needs, fears, aspirations etc. What we do is, well, interesting. We make decisions, come to conclusions, take actions and deal with consequences. We're not simply drones that do a lot of shooting to achieve an objective.

And who can really relate to those characters? The ones that

murder because of something, something revenge

? I mean, I'm not likely to be taking up murder or even care enough about anyone else to consider revenge a life goal.

I realise games are fantasy and there's the whole power play thing going on and you usually need a reason for all the murder and it's great as a stress relief, but I think there's so much more to people and aspects of life that we haven't even touched yet in games. Challenging yourself in a game jam to not use any form of violence is an interesting challenge! I think it may be something that produces really unique ideas - far from the outdated troupes that we've seen hauled out time and time again by the AAAs.

And this doesn't mean you're limited to puzzle or casual style games either. It's just changing the way you perceive the violence in the game.

Consider, if the enemies you usually kill are a "threat", something preventing you getting to your goal, then simply rethink what kind of threat you're dealing with.

What if the threat is something that threatens your character's ego? Something that needs to be dealt with otherwise your character may be too depressed to finish his/her quest?

Eh, okay, brain is mushing on a Saturday night and this seems to have been a rambling post. But that's my thoughts for now. Might sleep on this and add more later.

Chippit

I've always enjoyed how Echo Bazaar (now Fallen London) handled its verbs. Not unlike many modern role playing games (digital ones less so), mechanically speaking, every interaction the player took was identical, whether it is engaging in a dance with a partner, spotting a thief, travelling to a treacherous location, or fighting a rat. This allowed the designers and writers to create an environment where players engage in a huge variety of different actions, most of which were not violent. I suspect, having not yet played it, than Sunless Sea probably follows this same trend.

I don't think their mechanics were particularly strong, mind you, but their flexibility allowed the game to achieve things that most do not, and allowed their story to confront the player with challenges and conflict that was rarely as simple as 'something wants to kill you/hurt you/hurt someone we want you to care about/destroy the world'.

Unfortunately, videogames will always have the unique challenge that they need to explain themselves to players, and I feel like so long as our traditional understanding remains, violent conflict is one of the easiest ways for games to communicate their goals/challenges/threats and will probably continue to be the way most games challenge the player.

francoisvn

I'm a little lost what the sincere part of this discussion is about. I mean, it seems like everyone here is in agreement that violence is not a requirement for games (it is even boring) and can often be detrimental to the overall design, i.e. a "negatively persistent trope." Am I over-simplifying or glossing over something?

So, where do you draw the line regarding what is violent? Is any game about attacking an enemy a violent game, even if it depicts the "violence" without any blood or gore, for example Invisible Inc? Is any game about overcoming obstacles by exerting force on them a violent game? Is it about the use of lethal force?

Pierre

Maybe there is something to consider in the need for humans to apply themselves in a harmless environment that simulates struggle and violence.

We are born kicking and screaming in a mess of blood... and throughout our entire planet's eco system, the challenge to survive comes down to struggle and conflict.

Now being established in a safe urban environment with very little to fear but each other... is it not possible that , no matter how mundane or basic the desire... there is something innate in humans that enjoys being able to wrestle and to be violent without actually hurting anything?

Just a thought... but where science has proven that our conscious thoughts are only a small part of what makes up our minds... we might be giving these basic urges less credit than they are due?

I'm not stating outright that anybody is wrong or right. I'm just thinking out loud about the reasons that might explain why violence is such a common theme in our entertainment.

dammit

Or, @pierre , we believe that we're innately violent because the media has fed that to us for a long time :P

We're actually born completely fucking helpless - and are unable to fend for ourselves for many many years. So, we're more innately innocent than innately violent.

Jurgen

Me, I don't mind blood and gore in games. I like simulated violence and I am not a violent person. I sometimes wish I could be on a battlefield and just end a stupid war. The first game on pc I ever played was Golden Axe, and I loved it. Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter got me spending money in the arcades at a point in my life.

In reality, I steer clear of the "media indoctrination machine" because I know what to look for. I have made a personal study of how I interpret my world and the power of individual interpretation, choosing to take in or not take in whatever, is entirely up to the self. Self interpretation is very important I think.

I may only speak for myself. At the end of the day, violence and blood in gaming for me is, if it's done well, a link to realism.
When fantasy seems or becomes real, I'm in.

Nandrew

francoisvn said:

I'm a little lost what the sincere part of this discussion is about. I mean, it seems like everyone here is in agreement that violence is not a requirement for games (it is even boring) and can often be detrimental to the overall design, i.e. a "negatively persistent trope." Am I over-simplifying or glossing over something?

So, where do you draw the line regarding what is violent? Is any game about attacking an enemy a violent game, even if it depicts the "violence" without any blood or gore, for example Invisible Inc? Is any game about overcoming obstacles by exerting force on them a violent game? Is it about the use of lethal force?

The "sincere" moniker is just distinguishing it from the pure tongue-in-cheek of the other threads. ;) The more I think about it, the more I realise that this thread was named very, very poorly. ;_;

Anyway, I like the carrying of this conversation to broader definitions of violence, yah. I think this is where the interesting thought challenges come in. Maybe humans aren't naturally "violent" in the sense of specifically desiring blood and physical conflict, but I think that we have certain violent -- or adversarial -- defaults in our thinking to facilitate the gathering of personal power.

We could see physical violence as a sort of "basic" go-to for power (or the dumbest, most literal way -- one which would be most easily represented in videogames and other media), because clubbing someone over the head is such an obvious reinforcer of that. If we challenged someone to generate a scene with physical violence, and a similar scene with non-physical violence (let's forget about the matter of quality for now), I think it would be very easy to lop off a few heads or shed some blood in just a few seconds, while most non-physical violence would require something at least a little more complicated (a conversation with context, a trend of gaslighting, a focus on emotional impact upon people, an establishment of goals, etc).

As soon as we start to seek power in other ways -- via conversation, manipulation, money, social proofing, etc -- the inherent violence of our behaviour goes mostly unacknowledged (even if it remains obvious that we're improving our own position at the cost of someone else's).

Even tackling an innocuous, "casual" puzzle game could be stemming from subtly adversarial thinking: we are not co-operating with the game, we are pitting ourselves against it, reinforcing the patterns of engagement, conquest and reward that feed slightly into every future attempt at conquest.

TLDR I would relate violence more to an attitude than particular acts, and as a vehicle to access power rather than something we desire for its own sake.

EvanGreenwood

Certainly in the first part of that Keith Burgen article he's not arguing for never showing any kind of violence (even the graphical kind) but arguing against the glorification of violence, against portraying violence as having only positive outcomes, or being glossed over as necessary. He's saying the way violence is portrayed is important (and that for the most part it is portrayed as justified and fun).

Keith Burgen also makes the point (int the second article) that the kind of go-to violence that many many videogames employ is lackluster in terms of game design. Like @Nandrew pointed out the easiest way to achieve an experience of overpowering an adversary is to make them killable at a button press. But, if left at that, it's also the least complicated and least interesting (in terms of gameplay consequences).

Though killing someone at a button press, with no complicated consequences, is also by far the most affordable way to deliver a power fantasy, which is certainly part of why violence in video games is so overused as a solution to problems. Not every game needs to be, or should be, a power fantasy at the expense of others. And as soon as you look outside the "core gamer" space there's a ton of them that aren't, even a predominance of non-violence in some genres/audiences.

Personally, while I enjoy graphically violent media, I enjoy it a LOT more when the creators seek to contextualize the violence as tragic and horrific. That's my taste, but I don't really think taste is what's important here.

Keith Burgen mentions that video games (and other media) communicate cultural values. Cultural values matter, they affect real life decision making. Even if watching violent movies doesn't make the viewer enact violence themselves, it might make them more likely to support wars, or more likely to forgive neighbours who perpetrate violence on their spouses. Even slight changes in attitudes towards violence can have dramatic rippling effects in a system as complicated as society.

In addition, the portrayal of violence (physical or otherwise) often relies on othering the victims in order to justify it. Again it's a problem of simplicity, it's easier to other than it is to portray well, so it happens more often.

I know this discussion isn't just about that Keith Burgen article. But it's an interesting starting point. And the question of what values we want to communicate is important.