Video games do reinforce violent
tendencies by simulating a reality wherein violence is a viable and strategic
option. This may be novel for the sort of introverted person who begins playing
games as a way of coping with social anxiety. In so far as the developers
themselves are afflicted with antisocial tendencies, the design of the game may
in itself be the expression of a violent, antisocial tendency, the likes of
which we find in such delusions such as survivalism, as well as the veneration
of armed conflict and organized crime, all common cultural themes that have a
place in game design as well as a “target” audience (no pun intended) in those
adults and adolescents who already exhibit these neuroses as conscious
attitudes. It follows logically that it is ridiculous to try to separate the “fantasy”
of video games from the “reality”; in fact, that is already a violent line to
draw, and often gamers draw it violently.
There is no mistaking the fact that
the leading franchises in game development hinge upon Immersion, the sensation
of a game’s virtual environment being “real”. In effect, a game cannot be said
to be experienced totally without the suspension of disbelief. In theatre, the
actor has to suspend his or her own disbelief and identity in order to “disappear
into the role”, and it is out of both empathy for the actor and sympathy for
the character that auditors forget their own lives, except perhaps by analogy
to the simulated world.
Yet can this be called “escapism”?
When composers innovated Program Music in the nineteenth century, they abandoned
“absolute music” in favour of compositions which “told a story”. Narrative immersion
was thus introduced into a medium that previously only explored drama in opera,
oratorio, and the occasional lute ballad about crying. Composers wrote programs
that were printed for the audience to read and to contemplate as they listened
to the music. Hector Berlioz managed to woo a woman who had previously spurned
his advances by composing an entire Symphony in her honour. The Symphonie
Fantastique used experimental orchestral techniques to invoke the quality
of a heartbroken young man’s drug trip; some instruments are even believed to
represent the fall of a guillotine’s blade as the vision becomes more and more
nightmarish. The effect was miraculous: his light of love was so moved by the
composition that she agreed to marry him. (Though perhaps this was more of a
testament to the beauty of the music than the plot of the story, since too much
immersion might have offended her once she imagined herself depicted as a
witch. The marriage ended quickly, probably as the spell faded.)
What’s remarkable about music and
what sets it apart from theatre is that it is Imminent. No one goes to a
concert just to “escape” reality; one goes there to experience reality more
intensely and immediately. Every note is Absolutely What It Is, even if the
music is not “absolute music”. When you hear the percussive crash, you may
imagine a falling blade, but there is no denying that a cymbalist smashed two
cymbals together; everyone in attendance saw it. Nothing is truly “hidden from
the audience” in formal music; even something as Byzantine as Mick Gordon’s
sound experiments for the Doom Soundtrack did not take long for
audiophiles to unriddle, with hilarious dramatic irony.
This hints at an important trend
known to philosophers as “naïve realism”. When gamers tell you that they can
discern “reality” from “fantasy”, hoping to save the integrity of the fantasy
by disidentifying with those who cannot adequately comprehend “reality”, they
are already waging a sort of virtual warfare, on behalf of their own
communities and lifestyles, which is fought on a philosophical battlefield. The
pretension that a TRUE gamer CAN be trusted to discern “reality” from “fantasy”
is already a form of fantastical escapism. Yet this is not only because gamers
MUST escape “reality” in order to enjoy the “fantasy” of the game. I don’t mean
to imply that, like a method actor who is too good for his own good, they
forget how to “turn off the fantasy”, even though the history of extreme method
acting would make this tendency to “leave it on” embarrassingly relatable and
forgivable. My contention is a metaphysical one: that this “reality”, as
distinct from this “fantasy”, does not exist.
Gamers of an extremely rational
temperament already escape, on a daily basis, into the nineteenth century.
Rationalism suggests a Hierarchy of Reality that is comprehended only by the most
“rational, discerning” adult minds. Roughly summarized, it can be laid out like
this:
1.
Hard Facts.
2.
Collective Knowledge.
3.
Individual Experience.
4.
Fiction.
Yet suppose we dispossessed
ourselves of this conditioned prejudice. Consider, again, Music: we know it to
be REAL; that it makes us feel as though we were somewhere else is no more an
illusion than the feeling that we hear a loved one’s voice over the telephone.
Sure: we should question the integrity of the medium, as well as those who use
it, but perhaps not to the point of outright paranoia. Berlioz seems to have
adequately communicated his feelings through his Symphony, and for some short
time his fantasy became a socially accepted reality. (Thankfully, minus the witches’
sabbath.)
What if we saw games in the same
manner? Philosophers such as Lacan and Zizek attest to the reality of
virtuality, even delineating several layers of each. Instead of plagiarizing
them, however, I would like to take advantage of the novelty of the gaming
medium in order to introduce a model of my own:
The realm of Fact CONTA!NS the
domain of Fiction. All fictitious works are produced, reproduced, and
experienced in the Real World. What is hidden from the audience, to various
extents, is the Fundamental Nature of the Artistic Work. Yet this is ALSO
hidden from the DEVELOPER, who learns how to synthesize new realities by
entering into established traditions. Often, the point of entry is totally
arbitrary. When a college student tells you that she is “learning the basics” of
programming, sound design, writing, et cetera, she is bluffing, though she may
not know it. There is no “foundation” upon which learning occurs; we just start
coding, writing, and composing at some point arbitrated by the teacher. It’s
the same way with all languages, and any language plays such a radical part in
shaping our “realities” that it seems daunting, if not impossible, to look
Reality directly in the face. Life can be understood almost entirely in terms
of communications. In context of this, those inputs which we deem to be the
products of the “Real World” are no more reliable than those which are produced
through the consumption of Art; it is purely a cultural conceit to treat Art as
though it had come from the Heavens instead of from Earth. All information
passes the threshold of personal Imagination. If there is any Reality to hold
on to, it is ensnared not by the force of Reason alone, but by the force of
Will.
Now let us return to the question,
therefore, of Violence.
Something like Warfare, especially
of the Modern kind, may be understood by analogy to the Law. Franz Kafka writes,
in his seminal novel The Trial, that no man has access to the Law. This
principle applies in Vince Gilligan’s prequel to Breaking Bad, Better
Call Saul, wherein several young but established lawyers grapple with the
labyrinthine complexities of the legal system and what it means to them.
The same can be said of war. There
is no true “specialist” in armed conflict. Young men and women are “thrown into”
a war zone, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, with only their orders and
their national identity intact. Even the highest-ranking members of any
military cannot say for certain what the Absolute Nature of violence is; they
have become so accustomed to it as a justifiable means, whether noble or a
necessary evil, that their very instincts have become biased in its favour, and
any universalizing philosophical claims which they might make about the Gods of
War and where those Gods might stand within a larger Pantheon are bound to be
the product as much of willpower and conscience as of deduction.
This is why war games have so much
replay value. It’s become a joke between myself and my sister that most first-person
shooters are practically the same game: you parachute into a warzone and you
shoot things. Very few games in the industry, such as Doom, BioShock,
and Half-Life, deviate from this format. It’s not just because this
format works as a recognizable design formula; the REASON that it works is
because it mirrors the actual conditions of (the) military occupation so well.
Everyone is “thrown into” it without much preparation; bootcamp is only a
tutorial, which is offered as sort of a stand-alone demo in the form of R.O.T.C.
training. Why, then, would you play a game over again, if each time you must
start from the bottom ranks? (so to speak, at least.) Wouldn’t the novelty and
the mystery wear off by the end of the first playthrough? The answer is an
overwhelming “Sir!! no, Sir!!”
The truth is that reaching the
final objective and dispatching the last enemy are not sufficient to comprehend
the experience. Yoko Taro uses this to ingenious effect in his masterpiece Nier:
Automata. The same story is presented in the first two playthroughs from
two different perspectives; a previously nonplayable character switches places,
so to speak, from our perspective as mere players, with the principal heroine. By
the end of each consecutive playthrough, the same conflict is revealed to be
more absurd than it had appeared previously, and the same ending is made to
appear less heartbreaking only to the extent that the final, disillusioning
blow has been forestalled for a short while longer. Players watch adept
soldiers, overwhelmed by armies and monoliths, turn into seasoned warriors,
only to become powerless before the sheer meaninglessness of the entire crusade
for which they were designed to fight. Nier: Automata is the sort of
game that can turn a pacifist into a freedom fighter, only to spite his commitment
to the cause by using the same initial pacifism against the heroes in a tragic fashion
whose brutality is augmented by its cosmic and ironic justice. In the same
manner, most other war games, such as Call of Duty, can give a young man
who never stood a sizeable chance against bullies the experience of killing
terrorists and becoming a hero to the ostensibly Free World. It’s not a fantasy
that one can easily dismiss in the contemporary media; entire dynasties pledge
themselves to such a cause, disowning their children who would go off in search
of another way.
Yet can a game alone turn someone
into a Special Operations officer? Perhaps not. The kid might just as easily
become a first-person shooter. Don’t get me wrong; he probably won’t. All that
the game supplies is the EXPER!ENCE OF using violence, communicated from the
point of view of the Developers and their contributing consultants, through the
interactive medium, to the player. The rest is up to the player. Most players
are presumably too stupid to comprehend the impact of the games they play upon
their own decisions, though in many ways Life Itself is a game which can only
be understood by analogy (really, by metonymy) to its various sub-games, only a
fraction of which are formally referred to as games and even fewer of
which are “video games”. Only the subtlest players will comprehend the fact
that, even in the virtual world, they have willingly reduced others to objects
and used force and dexterity to silence those objects. Video games can serve
the same function, therefore, as combat training, wherein previously
conscientious, life-preserving civilians become professional killers by
practicing on human-shaped targets.
If it works in conditioning
soldiers, can a consumer not use it to the same effect? The clever, metaphysically
enlightened players may do so consciously, using the Reality of the Game to
warrant the conflict in Actual Life, though they are met with anti-intellectual
opposition from law enforcement and clinical psychiatry. The ordinary minds
will simply internalize the experience and confine it to the dream realm, until
some trying and demoralizing situation compels them to be seized by an unintegrated
archetype and they act out a subconscious, violent fantasy with such stunning
accuracy that they themselves might not believe it afterwards. Who is the
greater danger of these two parties? The jury is out on that, as is the Court
Martial.
Games are a wonderful learning
tool. Playing through even the first run of Nier: Automata helped me to
recover from line hypnosis and abuse at an overwhelming and physically
demanding job. My reflexes were heightened; I found within myself the capacity
to communicate clearly and efficiently while running from objective to
objective within a very narrow time limit, honing in on every moment. War games
are not alone in training us. The Curse of Monkey Island taught me to
scan my environment, both immediate and macroscopic, for clues and
opportunities, though I’d like to say I never stole anything. Braid
taught me how to rethink my assumptions, trying the same thing over and over
again but in different ways until the underlying secret was revealed. Sonic,
one of my first games, taught me how to run and jump, but also when to stop and
to pace myself. Beyond the mechanics, a game’s narrative can tell a story that
a novel or a film cannot convey. By the second playthrough of Nier: Automata,
I was shaky about my place in the Universe; by the third, I had lost all moral
and romantic hope for the future. I do not regret this, since several
playthroughs later I had the opportunity to make a sacrifice that would at once
impact a stranger and test my altruism in the Real World. Though I will
respectfully abstain from spoiling this ending, suffice it to say that it’s an
ideal example of the Game Becoming Real, in a manner that reveals how it was
Real Already. But I’ll leave that up to you to decide, especially because that
ending is optional.
I can already begin to imagine the
counterarguments regarding violence. Somewhere, somehow, there may be a Navy
S.E.A.L. who only plays Animal Crossing. While such news, presented as a
retort, would be an impressive observation, it’s hardly a logical argument. It
would sooner be an instance of correlation masquerading as causation in an
attempt to use an exception to challenge a trend. It is not enough, however, to
find one professional killer who only plays a notoriously nonviolent game. One
must expose the internal logic of the connection. I have demonstrated, on
multiple grounds and through multiple disciplinary lenses, the MANNER IN WH!CH
video games and other art forms, including those dating back hundreds of years,
can influence human behaviour. The man who kills at work but fishes at home
does not prove by so doing that games are inconsequential. Supposing that that
same gamer had chosen, instead of a career in the military, to catch rare fish
and to sell them in order to pay his mortgage. Such an example would certainly act
as overwhelming evidence for my hypothesis, for he can easily be accused of
having learned the habit from Animal Crossing, though his defense might
attest that the realism of Animal Crossing lies in the fact that you can
do that anyway. (In traditional societies, perhaps so.) It is not that games
are the ONLY road to violence, nor that they are ONLY a road to violence. Yet a
game CAN be a road to violence, notwithstanding, and unlike examples to the
contrary my argument illuminates the path and its internal workings. I am
almost afraid to do so, knowing how it might be used, though I do not doubt
that those who would abuse it have already begun to do so, so I seek to illuminate
this as much to expose them as to offer strategies.
In summary: Yes. Games can and do
make people violent.
The real question, therefore, is
this: ought they NOT to?
Games like Nier: Automata compel
us to think of violence in different ways. I am told that the same can be said
of games like Spec Ops: the Line, and I can say with some certainty that
God of War, Half-Life, and Grand Theft Auto use different
styles of storytelling to elicit sympathy for mercenaries. The best war stories
tend to be told towards this end, regardless of whether the proffered thesis is
a pacifist one or a martial one. What sets games apart is that you do not only
watch the simulated violence; you enact it, and you live with the consequences.
Considering that modern warfare forces recruits to treat their targets as
THOUGH they were mere objects, the microcosm of three-dimensional digital models,
animated only by artificial intelligence, is not very far off from the truly
postmodern battlefield, and the very nature of postmodernity makes it anyone’s
guess where one front ends and the other begins. Between the violence in games
and the violence on the streets, who is to draw “the Line”? We have the
privilege, in the United States, of marginalizing the threats to our immediate
safety as we venerate our representatives in foreign wars. Whenever a civilian
snaps and commits violence in the homeland, it is a media tragedy, yet it also
exposes the fact that we are never TRULY safe from our own culture, and perhaps
we should sympathize more with those cultures whose constituents might have to
ban video games to prevent children from becoming extremists. The subtlest
thinkers do not presume upon nonviolence, even if they might arrive at it. Yet
if we are to defend our generation’s greatest Art Form, let us not underestimate
its power to create new, Real Worlds.
[({Dm.A.A.)}]
