Character Studies: World Character

The world of a videogame can be a character unto itself. Play characters are the portal through which the player engages with the world and non-player characters are the ludic or narrative elements with which they engage. Yet, the world that surrounds everything within the game is itself a character with as much depth and importance to the entire experience as either of the other elements of a game. Beyond a simple setting, the world of a videogame is a livable place inhabited simultaneously by every person, character and idea related to the game. It is also a framing device used to establish the core elements of the game. The world character of a game ultimately defines not only what the game is, but what it will become.

In the most basic terms the world of a videogame serves all the same narrative elements that the setting of a novel does. It establishes a place of action and a feeling of place. Interestingly enough, place of action and the feeling of place are not always the same. In fact sometimes they are purposely conflicting. The place of action is the simplest role that a videogame world plays within the narrative. It is the literal ‘Where is this happening?’ ‘When is this happening?’ A feeling of place is a more complex concept. Adding a level beyond the concrete physicalities established by the place of action, a feeling of place is the emotion or sensation the world wishes to impart. When as a person in real life or a character in a game, you – the player, enters a new area what is it that you think? Do you look around and think ‘This room is approximately 40 sq. ft. with low ceilings, dirty possibly blood splattered floors and several dark menacing shadows?’ Or do you think ‘This place is creepy. I’m getting out of here.’ That feeling of fear, sense of slight disturbance that is a feeling of place. What you think as you enter a new area for the first time, the sensations imparted on you is the feeling of place a videogame world provides. Occasionally for added effect the place of action and feeling of place with conflict with each other to impart greater meaning to the player. Would the sunken city of Rapture from the original Bioshock be so memorable if it wasn’t for the juxtaposition of the broken and ruined physicalities of the place of action in relation to the grandeur imparted by the feeling of place? A videogame world is a character that provides the game with a place of action as well as a feeling of place.

The place of action and feeling of place are both concepts that videogame world character shares with other forms of media; books, plays, movies, ext. Together they form an establishment of setting necessary for all narratives. However, even in setting the interactive elements of videogames establish themselves forcing a change in the way world character is established. The world character does not only reflect and influence the narrative of the game, but so too does it affect the gameplay. As a ludic experience the game and therefore the world character must be dominated by the interaction and engagement that the player, the audience, you, gets to have with it. The place of action and feeling of place have immense ramifications on the gameplay of a game. When all the elements work in tandem; world character, narrative and ludic elements, the total experience is cohesive and all the more enjoyable. The best way to avoid ludonarrative dissonance is through the use of a properly aligned and strongly developed world character. Because ultimately it is the world inhabited by the game; its developer, its characters and you, the player, which create the tone of the game. That tone can range from playful, to sincere, to energetic, to somber depending on the game being played. And it is that tone which gives focus to gameplay. It would not make sense for Mario to stop on a Koopa and there be blood spilling out. It goes against the tone established in world character. Likewise it would be disruptive to have mushroom power-ups in Call of Duty. The place of action and feeling of place work in with narrative to develop a tone pervasive throughout the world character and it is that tone which focuses gameplay. 

Videogames have one last unique characteristic in relation to their world character; the world character of a videogame is transcendent.  Books and films have previously reached levels or transcendence become iconic in their own. But there is degree to their transcendence that is somehow lacking. Less about what the literature, film or even play meant to audience, but what is has meant over the course of time. Although that is a perfectly suitable definition, it is inapplicable to videogames. An unfortunate side effect of the medium being so young. Transcendence in videogames is achieved in another manner. It is directly related to the world character of a videogame that it becomes transcendent. The audience is always the final collaborator; they will bring to the game something unique that will change and differentiate the experience for them. And the world character of a videogame allows for that. Narratives, even in the most open and free form of videogames, are already set by the time a player engages with them. However the world is not. World character is a living conceptual place inhabited by all the collaborators of the game. The developer’s concepts are most strongly felt throughout this world; their characters inhabit the play space after all, but the world character of a videogame adapts and changes as the player engages with it. What you, the player, choice to take, interpret and make your own from the game becomes part of the world character. It is part of you and you are part of the game. In that manner, Fallout became a deeply personal self examination for myself. I choose to believe in something the developers had created therefore making it partly may own. It is for you, the player, to decide in the end how the game will play out and that makes you just as strong a force within the game as the developers who created it. World character for videogames is transcendent. It is a living place that evolves and changes holding on to the ideas and experiences of every person who contacts it. Just take a small dive into any of the massive fandoms surrounding videogames and franchises. All these people believing and committed to the world character of the game, constantly adding to it, expanding it, making it live. That is transcendence.

World character defines a videogame while at the same time elevating it. The establishment of place of action and feeling of place is also the establishment of tone and gameplay. World character feeds the other elements of the game ultimately creating a living fiction. A transcendent experience shared by millions, but utterly unique to each one. World character in videogames defines what the game is and what it will become.

First Ever Age of Gaming Open Insult Forum

The past week has been a very interesting one within the games industry. The always prevalent gamer rage, hatred and backlash final took a noticeable tool resulting in the cancelation of Fez II and the departure of Phil Fish from the industry. It is sad that this has happened. Any exodus of talent from any creative medium is a saddening event. However, it is not the only moment example of gamer hatred getting the better of good people.  David Vonderhaar, a developer at Treyarch, received multiple death threats and threats to his family when he revealed the new patch notes for the latest Call of Duty: Black Ops II patch. Certain guns were recalibrated to make the game over all more balanced. For this he was scorned. The slander and threats rose to the point where Dan Amrich, Activision’s community manager, wrote an editorial called Stop threatening game developers on his personal blog. This week has been a maelstrom of hatred and anger rising from gamers.

Industry power houses such as Cliff Bleszinski and Ken Levine have already made their opinions on this matter known. Levine takes a more reserved approach neither criticizing nor supporting Fish’s departure. He merely goes to say: “… for me, it's just part of the job at this part, but I don't think it helps gaming.”  Bleszinski takes a more sided approach. In an open letter to Phil Fish he urges the developer back into the industry. Bleszinski writes with a slightly juvenile tone, but his shear charisma, fanaticism and belief in videogames is appealing.  It is that combination of child-at-heart and game-designer-in-brain from Bleszinski that produced this awesome paragraph:

“The other key is to absorb all of that hate into one big fireball of motivation inside of your belly and then pour all of that energy into your work until you can unleash one big giant motherfucking HADOKEN upon the community that wins awards and sells millions and then the haters will truly be eating a giant bushel of dicks as you roll in a pile of money, acclaim, and community love.”

But, now I have done the recap of weekly news and there is still so much to say. It is with that in mind that I, Steven – proprietor of The Age of Gaming, open the first ever Age of Gaming Open Insult Forum. An examination of slander form game players is necessary. It can go ignored no longer. There is a massive problem that must be addressed. The best way to do that is to open myself to it. So I put myself on the pedestal, get your rotten fruit ready and take aim. This is going to hurt.

My tumblr has an ask box. It is open to anyone. Go ahead. For those of you that read via my blogspot or want to leave longer messages (ask box has a character limit) I give forth my email. Treat it wisely.

I want you, dear readers, to open up the hate and level ever criticism at me you can muster. Warranted or not, I open myself to attack. Examples must be made and slanderous hatred cannot be allowed to continue.  In a week’s time I will write a response to this, a capstone of the experiment. But for now, the time is for death threats.

Let the first ever Age of Gaming Open Insult Forum commence!

Merry Christmas. War Is Over.

Or more specifically the Cold War is over. 

What is referred to as the Cold War today was actually a period of time from 1945 to 1991 that encompassed much of the world’s major political events including but not limited to several “hot wars” in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. If that last sentence sounded too textbook-y, then this next one won’t. In the simplest terms possible the Cold War was nearly 50 years in which the world was under threat of nuclear war between the United States of American and the Soviet Union because they wanted to see who had a bigger penis.  (By penis I mean nuclear stock pile) 

Both countries were vying for power hoping to be the predominant world super power. The launch of Sputnik, the moon landing, three wars, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Chernobyl disaster  and the Cuban Missile Crisis were all part of the over arcing struggle between the two countries. The development of modern day political allies and other relations can be attributed directly to both the NATO Treaty and the Warsaw Pact. In short all of what is taken for granted today has roots directly in the Cold War. That stands true for today’s videogames.  Nearly all modern war games, whether they be RTS or FPS, place Russians as enemies. But the thing all those games (and the people who develop and publish them) seem to forget is that the Cold War is over. Has been for over 2 decades.   

Then why are Russians always the enemy?

To be perfectly frank this gaming trope bothers the hell out of me. I was born in 1995, after the Cold War had already ended. During my formative years there was no major American adversary. No threat from an opposing country. America was just another country in the relatively peaceful world. Of course that didn’t last very long. One of my earliest memories is of 9/11. I was in kindergarten. I did not really comprehend what was going on then but I do recall clearly that the people responsible for it were not from one specific country. War was declared on a group and an idea they held. America still had no opposing countries. 

So maybe my view of the world is different than someone who spent their formative years in the Cold War. Those people who learned to fear and hate the Russians. And at the time they had good reason to. The ever looming threat of nuclear war had scared their parents and most likely their grandparents as well. Russian antagonism was just another part of normal American life. And then the Cold War ends when these children are already grown. The mindset has already been planted and that underlying fear cannot be erased.  

Now I am in no way saying that the elder generation is racist against all Russians. Quite the contrary. People themselves have the ability to change. Society as a whole does was well, but it often lacks any sense of urgency in that change. Why else did it take nearly a hundred years from the 13^th Amendment to the Civil Rights movement? Russia is still a societal touch stone of antagonism.  An acceptable enemy in a world where the lines between enemy and ally draw ever blurrier. 

Or to make this even clearer: It has been 21 years since the Cold War ended. The average age of a game designer is 31 according to the International Game Developers Association. That is ten years of societal fear ground into the creativity behind some of today’s biggest selling franchisees.   

And there is no franchise that sells more than Call of Duty. In its ten year history there have been nine games released in the main franchise. Two thirds of those games (or six of the nine) involve fighting and killing Russians. The Modern Warfare series has them as the main antagonists and the Black Ops series has them as predominant enemies in the first game. Black Ops II which has been marketed to take place in the future and promises a compelling new antagonist in Raul Menendez cannot help but to place some of its levels as flash backs to the 1980s in the Afghanistan conflict. Who were the enemies then and there? That’s right; Russians. 

I, personally, am strongly opposed to this type of preconceived notion that all Russians are the enemy. It unjustly stereotypes 141,930,000 people (the current population of the Russian Federation) as vile murderous war-mongers. Thousands of American gamers view Russians through their gun sights every day. It leaves a negative impact of an entire nation of people in the minds of gamers today: Gamers that were not born during the Cold War. Yet through the proliferation of war videogames where Russians are the enemy, the same societal fear from the Cold War lives on. And that is, by any definition, wrong.

But then what can be done to fix it?

My suggestion is to simply have other groups or nations as the enemies.  Although they take a lot of criticism for being trite and predictable, sci-fi shooters present a good alternative to killing Russians; killing aliens. In a sci-fi shooter like Halo or Killzone, the enemies are completely fictitious. That gives the games writers a chance to create new and interesting antagonists. Ones that are compelling and truly evil. Without the safety net of supposed Russian evilness, writers must actually come up with interesting villains. They cannot use the crutch of “He’s Russian so he must be the enemy” when designing their game. 

Or the game has to be a gritty realistic shooter taking place in today’s volatile political climate use another nation. Homefront, for all its flaws, had an interesting premise and enemy in the North Koreans. It presented a frighteningly possible futuristic situation in which North Korea had launched a nuclear attack on America followed by a full scale invasion. By not falling back upon the ingrained fear of Russians, Homefront presented an enemy that was not only possible but truly scary.

Finally if the game must have enemies that have Eastern European accents and a predisposition for saying the word “comrade” then make them from Belarus, not Russia. As the world stands today the Russian Federation is only a threat to the United States economically. Belarus on the other hand is formerly Soviet Republic that upon getting its freedom has been working ever steadily to go back. The government of Belarus is a “republic in name, although in fact a dictatorship”. That quote is directly from the CIA World FactBook.  Under the harsh rule of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus has committed human rights violations and been called “the last true remaining dictatorship in the heart of Europe”. If that is not basis for a modern war game, I don’t know what is. 

Russians have been inappropriately labeled the enemies for far too long now. It is time that that stopped. There are enough current other viable threats to America that can be used in the next Call of Duty. But please leave the Russians alone, the Cold War is over.