With the amount of turmoil in the world today and the countless issues on the table - not to mention the deep, complex understanding required to effectively comment on them - it's not difficult to understand why so many simply opt out of the discussion altogether, settling instead for the simpler, lower-stake dilemmas of day-to-day life. Video games, as a form of recreation, would seem like the last medium where political and social satire, commentary or criticism might be appropriate, but for dedicated, hardcore gamers, it's exactly what's needed. In an age when so many youth call out for serious issues to be addressed, the gaming industry relegates itself to the sidelines - but why?
The answer is, in reality, quite simple: risk. More precisely, the risk involved in taking a stand on anything even remotely controversial, and the unwillingness of most developers to do precisely that. Gone are the days when strong ideological messages could be conveyed to gamers through tens of thousands of lines of text that few people would have the patience to parse or through subtle hints sprinkled into spoken dialogue. Style more so than substance has become emphasized as the central paradigm for game development over the past several years, and with that metamorphosis, the ability to fly under the radar with any kind of material that some might find objectionable has largely evaporated. Nowadays, it seems like around every corner and just outside each game development studio or publisher's office, there's a Jack Thompson or Militia of Angry Mothers, alert and ready to pounce at the first sign of blood in the water.
While some gamers might applaud a studio like Rockstar Games for its perceived rebelliousness, be it in the form of lethal sex paraphernalia in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or the infamous Hot Coffee minigame that was intended for (but not actually included in) San Andreas, the reality is that these stunts do nothing to help bring video games alongside other appreciated forms of entertainment in mainstream culture, but instead give the industry's detractors the ammunition that they need to spread misinformation about games and create mass hysteria against them.
There is a reason why World War II is such a popular theme for video games. It's simple and safe - black and white (almost). Few are going to object to a game where the player disposes of entire divisions of Nazis (or even those who are merely Germans, since many games, such as World War II Online, shy away from any overt mention of Nazism due to censorship issues in places like modern-day Germany). A game depicting dozens of Shi’ite Iraqis prowling through the streets of Baghdad, however, presents a much more confusing, distorted picture where black and white blur together and form many shades of gray. Last year's excellent Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare hit a bit too close to home for some in this respect, even though the setting and characters were totally fictional. One can hardly imagine what controversy a similarly high-profile, high-quality mainstream title centered on the War on Terror might evoke. Perhaps the issue is one of proximity - it could be that 60 years from now, assuming the Iraq war and related conflicts are resolved by then, games and media in general will have less of an issue using them for creative purposes like they currently do for World War II. Or, the issues of today's world could simply be too inflammatory for any real consensus to ever be reached on them. Only time will tell.
The gaming industry has a few scattered examples of titles that have attempted to make something of their plots and deliver some kind of political message or commentary. Arguably the best of these, at least for contemporary Western audiences, was Ion Storm's 2000 sci-fi hit Deus Ex. Set in the near future where the world is slowly tearing itself apart, Deus Ex dealt with places and organizations that were all too familiar. Eventually, though, the game's protagonist finds that nothing is how it seems. The game addressed a host of social, political and ethical issues in a way that had never been done before, and earned itself a place as an all-time classic amongst "old school" gamers.
While there are in fact games in existence that are very story-driven and do raise ethical questions or otherwise provoke thought on serious matters, these are in the minority, and most that engage in moral or ethical discussion of some kind do so in a much more indirect way than Deus Ex, usually in settings far from our own and in less recognizable terms. Harvey Smith, one of Deus Ex's producers, attempted to carry over some of his earlier masterpiece's charm in developing last year's Blacksite: Area 51, but the result was underwhelming, to say the least. The game was simply incomplete, as were its attempts at political commentary, which is particularly sad since the title's subsequent panning may discourage developers from taking similar thematic risks in the future.
The reality of the situation is that video games are still struggling to gain acceptance as a valid form of entertainment as well as an art form, and, at least within public perception, are not yet on par with books, TV and literature. In order to gain equality in this respect, developers are going to need to move outside of their comfort zones and start addressing issues that filmmakers, writers and scriptwriters tackle on a regular basis. Until that happens, games will continue to be marginalized - perhaps in an even broader sense than they are now - as throwaway entertainment not intended for entry into the intellectual domain. There is indeed such a thing as a solid, fun thinking man's game, and the industry needs to be reminded of that before it forgets.
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