Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?

[Megajoule]

IMO, the US is facing the End of Empire, and I don't think we're going to do so with as much grace and dignity as England (likes to claim it) did.  The ego of a person or nation in decline may drive them to do irresponsible things, to try to stave off the creeping despair.

[Samuel Tow]

I honestly don't know enough about the US to tell either way, but this is actually an interesting point to make, as a tangent. I've always felt very "iffy" about the concept of nationalism as a personal ideology. Maybe it's just because I don't feel I have a country that has much to be proud of but ancient history, or maybe it's just that I've lived essentially my entire life in a global society... Seriously, I was watching the Cartoon Network when I was 7. I watched and still watch the Discovery Channel. I've spoken English well enough to play American video games since grade school, and those were the only games there were for many, many years. Certainly the majority of the 90s. Well, not necessarily JUST American, but foreign, let's say.

I guess that's part of why I don't get some of the world's problems of today. If you come at it from a "globalist" mindset - i.e. it doesn't matter where the other person is from, what colour his skin is or where he goes to school because I wouldn't know these things over the 'net anyway - it the kind of fear and animosity which can drive "a nation" is just something I don't get. I can see in practical terms, say money and opportunity and such, but the actual nationalistic pride of living in a country that's "the best" just doesn't resonate with me. Even if I were from a major world state... I'd be proud of it, sure, but I wouldn't derive personal pride from it. I didn't make that state, and that state's achievement can't stand in for my own. Hell, I can brag about being from a state with tremendous ancient history extending all the way back 681 AD, but so what? How does where I was born make me better or worse?

I know it seems like a tangent, but what you say does seem to resonate with what I've noticed. US video games seem to be the ones getting darker with consistency. Japanese games are actually doing quite the opposite. I mean, look at Resident Evil, for example - that has been less dark and gruesome as time goes on, and by this point it's basically ego-stroking. Our protagonists went from having to look for keys to a screen door to flip-kicking zombies bulldozing platoons of armed zombies, one-man-army style. Even Silent Hill: Homecoming gave the player much more control over the game's mechanics, and it was the least scary of the bunch. So, yeah, I hear what you're saying loud and clear.

I'm hoping games can rediscover that happy medium between wrist-slitting depression and self-parodying satire that made games like Darksiders so much fun. Because really, there WAS a time when playing games was fun. That was the whole reason I played City of Heroes to begin with - because I could not believe how much I was enjoying it. Pinch me, for I must be dreaming, that sort of thing. There was a time when I'd play through a game, at 4AM on a work day, and then have to drag myself to bed so I don't start it again. Games would leave me with so much energy and enthusiasm that I couldn't sleep. Now I finish with a game and I feel drained, like I want to go to sleep and just not go to work, at the very least. And I don't know when, or even why, that happened.

It just... Doesn't feel right that a game should leave me feeling like I've been beaten up.

[TimtheEnchanter]

I can't find the info anymore, but I remember reading somewhere, that nearly every nation in history that has had a system resembling America's, collapsed in on itself within 200 years. America is older than that now, but that may just be due to the credit system and insane borrowing.

[Colette]

"...we saw that AWFUL "almost rape" trailer and so on...."

Y'know, rape is a particularly tricky trope, and in my opinion, using it in any but the most serious work is the mark of a poor writer. Y'see, some members of the audience may have been through it, so they will not be entertained.

I stay away from rape. I stay away from Nazis as well. Unless I have something serious to say and a justifiable reason to use 'em, I'd rather not invoke such a tragedy. It feels like grave-robbing. Hope that makes sense.

"IMO, the US is facing the End of Empire."

I'm going to respectfully disagree, in that I've heard that since the gas crunch of the seventies. The US is going through a demographic wave as the baby boom reaches retirement age. As we in the US, by and large, do not throw our elders to the wolves, we're facing some expenses. I myself am helping my old mom with some ten-thousand bucks in medical debt right now. That's family.

China, by contrast, has a young and vital populace. In twenty years, that position will reverse.

My opinion. Mind, macro-economics is not my field.

[Samuel Tow]

Y'know, rape is a particularly tricky trope, and in my opinion, using it in any but the most serious work is the mark of a poor writer. Y'see, some members of the audience may have been through it, so they will not be entertained.

I stay away from rape. I stay away from Nazis as well. Unless I have something serious to say and a justifiable reason to use 'em, I'd rather not invoke such a tragedy. It feels like grave-robbing. Hope that makes sense.

To my eyes, every storytelling tool has a "cost" associated with it, which basically defines how good the story needs to be in order to justify it and how necessary it must be in order for that story to work for people to not feel exploited. Concepts like rape, torture, grotesque violence and such tend to have a very high cost, hence why it's best to simply never use them unless you have no other choice. If your story absolutely, positively cannot work without a rape plot AND you're a good enough writer to pull it off so it doesn't feel icky, then and only then would I support going for it.

The trouble is that most writers with enough skill to pull it off also have the good sense to not do it, and most writers who do use rape use it callously and irresponsibly. I think it was Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug who said that the worst thing you can do to a story involving rape is to treat it as "something which happens to women" and nothing beyond that, to use it as a simple shock factor because everyone knows it's bad. The worst thing you can do is when you sideline the woman it happened to and simply examine the man who perpetrated it and the man whose significant other was hurt. To do this is exploitive, because you're exploiting something reprehensible for the sole purpose of making your audience feel bad, and to make them mad. And they will be mad - AT YOU.

The best "dark" stories are ones that manage to horrify us while still being in good taste. They're the ones who recognise the power of certain storytelling tools and use them carefully and responsively. They are the stories who horrify us not by using examples, but by constructing settings which put us in that mindset. They are usually not stories which involve just dropping rape casually to make sure we hate the bad guy, because that's crude writing. It's replacing a writer's skill to tell a story with simply saying something you know will upset people. It makes for a bad story that makes a mockery of something for which there isn't much room for tolerance.

Some things you just don't write about, and it galls me how many writers don't think about that. I keep wanting to ask them "Who the hell do you think you are just dropping a bomb like that? You don't deserve to say these things." And it's true. Some things, writers don't deserve to just say. They need to earn them, and very few seem aware of this. They just drop these horrible things because they know they'll make us horrible with no control over mood or atmosphere, convinced like a girl I knew that it's more effective if you just rub people's faces in uncomfortable truths. It isn't. It simply makes people recoil at your story and walk out mid-way through.

All of this is to say that I don't trust Tomb Raider's writers to handle the rape and torture undertones with any sort of taste or dignity. You don't handle these things well when you set out to put them in your game for the sake of making it gritter. "Dark" elements are not a solution to your inability to tell a story without them, writers. A Hollywood pyrotechnician once said that anyone can throw a stick of dynamite into a car and blow it up, but only an expert can make big, cinematic explosion that's also safe for the stuntmen around it. It's the same thing with storytelling - anyone can say there's rape in their story, but very few can use that theme while actually crafting a good story around it, and most of THEM tend to know better than to try that anyway.

I guess, to a large extent, that's a problem I can point to. Video games are a big business now - bigger than they've ever been. They're as big as movies and music now. And because of this, everyone's trying their hand at writing for games, and not everyone has the experience, skill or - let's face it - good taste to do it. Basically, I'm back to my previous argument of doubting the abilities of people making games. "Dark" simply seems like an easier tool for coolness than it actually is.

[Colette]

"To my eyes, every storytelling tool has a "cost" associated with it, which basically defines how good the story needs to be in order to justify it...."

That is an intriguing theory.

Rod Serling dazzled me with two of his Twilight Zone episodes. One had a young demagogue haunted by the ghost of Hitler (He's Alive!) and another followed an SS Captain as he revisits Dachau (Death's Head Revisited.) Both are simply amazing, not least because I'd expect these stories to crumble. If I was to guess why they work when they shouldn't, I'd say first, because he was a superb craftsman and a man of taste and refinement, and second, because he really meant what he was writing. He wrote with conviction against an evil he genuinely hated and feared.

If I ever dare call up that ghost, that's the kind of story I'd aspire to.

"I think it was Lewis 'Linkara' Lovhaug who said that the worst thing you can do to a story involving rape is to treat it as 'something which happens to women...'"

I enjoy Linkara, but I'm gonna disagree with him there. I understand Devin Grayson did some disastrous story in which Nightwing got raped.  Maybe it's simply too toxic? the TV Tropes site ruminates on this a bit, concluding that the great villains show some refinement, and at worst leave rapine for their petty thugs to do offscreen. "Rape is a Special Kind of Evil."

A writer ought to strive to break new ground. But If one sought to write a great rape story, where's the example to work from and compare against? M, I suppose? Streetcar? There's a Shakespeare poem. A scene in Lawrence of Arabia.

[Samuel Tow]

I enjoy Linkara, but I'm gonna disagree with him there.

I think you misunderstood, and I don't remember which of his billions of videos he said this in.

What Linkara meant is that it's a mistake to treat rape as just "something that happens" without addressing the consequences of it TO the person it happens to. This is criticising such practices as raping the wife or daughter of the lead character not to address what this does to her, but to make the lead character angry while basically sidelining the woman herself. He spoke about this in relation to Dr. Light doing this to I think Sue Dibney and how the story never really focuses on her, only on the men who are outraged at it.

Rape, torture, disfigurement and so on are not things you can just "drop in" because they're bad. If you're going to use them in a story, you better damn well treat it with respect. I maintain that these themes have a cost and that you only use them when you absolutely have to. I consider these like nuclear weapons, in the sense that they're very, very powerful buy you never want to resort to them unless you're literally out of all other options.

Sadly, unlike actual nuclear weapons, you don't need special permission to write stories about rape, torture, mind-fuckery and other such nastiness, so the irresponsible and the inexperienced keep trying to.

[Tenzhi]

Rod Serling dazzled me with two of his Twilight Zone episodes. One had a young demagogue haunted by the ghost of Hitler (He's Alive!) and another followed an SS Captain as he revisits Dachau (Death's Head Revisited.) Both are simply amazing, not least because I'd expect these stories to crumble. If I was to guess why they work when they shouldn't, I'd say first, because he was a superb craftsman and a man of taste and refinement, and second, because he really meant what he was writing. He wrote with conviction against an evil he genuinely hated and feared.

There are a lot of good old Twilight Zone episodes, but those are two stand-outs for me as well.  Mind you, I'm not averse to simply having Nazis in a story just because they're recognizable Evil that most people don't mind if you punch, shoot, or blow up in droves.  They are a classic pulp action villain.

On the TV-torture front, I'd say one of my favourite examples is the Star Trek TNG episode where the Romulan (David Warner, who is one of those actors that inevitably makes a great bad guy) is torturing Picard for info.  Of course, it does it without needing to get graphic.

And on a related note, in my mind it seemed to me when Picard went home after the Borg made him Locutus that they were treating the experience as analogous to rape.

[Colette]

"What Linkara meant is that it's a mistake to treat rape as just 'something that happens' without addressing the consequences of it TO the person it happens to."

Ah! Yes. Quite right. And Linkara's review of Identity Crisis is suitably devastating. Mind, I actually think there's a great story hiding inside Identity Crisis, and a great editor could have helped :: pops up wikipedia :: ...Brad Meltzer tell it.

Someone wrote that a story (a feature, not a serial) should be about the most important day of the protagonist's life. For many people, a rape would be that day, and to simply blow it off is insulting to those who have endured such an ordeal.

"I maintain that these themes have a cost and that you only use them when you absolutely have to. I consider these like nuclear weapons...."

"Literary plutonium?" Yes, that's a good metaphor.

"I'm not averse to simply having Nazis in a story just because they're recognizable Evil that most people don't mind if you punch, shoot, or blow up in droves."

As a personal choice, I maintain that, even as the Nazis pass from living memory, they should be treated as "literary plutonium" as well. Consider the Indiana Jones series. It treats them rather flippantly, until the brilliant scene where the Joneses visit Berlin. Suddenly we're reminded that these weren't merely pulp bad guys twisting their mustaches and cackling, but a cancer to be expunged from humanity's soul.

"...after the Borg made [Picard[ Locutus that they were treating the experience as analogous to rape."

Yeah, I mentioned that earlier, and the follow-up where Picard breaks down was one of my favorites.

"...where the Romulan (David Warner)"

Cardassian, and not one of my favorites. More "literary plutonium."

A lot of this falls under "triggers." Those who have been exposed to violence, oppression or crime will likely not enjoy stories that employ literary plutonium. I myself experienced a PTSD trigger when I made the mistake of seeing Saving Private Ryan unprepared, (an excellent film, but one I'll never watch again,) so I fully sympathize with those who do not appreciate triggering material employed lightly.

[Tenzhi]

As a personal choice, I maintain that, even as the Nazis pass from living memory, they should be treated as "literary plutonium" as well. Consider the Indiana Jones series. It treats them rather flippantly, until the brilliant scene where the Joneses visit Berlin. Suddenly we're reminded that these weren't merely pulp bad guys twisting their mustaches and cackling, but a cancer to be expunged from humanity's soul.

Interesting.  My interpretation of that scene was that it merely reinforced the moustache-twirling image while providing a devil's-cameo.

"...where the Romulan (David Warner)"

Cardassian, and not one of my favorites. More "literary plutonium."

A lot of this falls under "triggers." Those who have been exposed to violence, oppression or crime will likely not enjoy stories that employ literary plutonium. I myself experienced a PTSD trigger when I made the mistake of seeing Saving Private Ryan unprepared, (an excellent film, but one I'll never watch again,) so I fully sympathize with those who do not appreciate triggering material employed lightly.

Curse my traitorous memory.  I remembered it was Gul something, and for some reason associated that title with Romulans when I absolutely should have known better. 

"Literary plutonium" for me is brutally killing a dog.  It's perhaps strange that I can read stories and watch movies where people are killing each other and getting killed left and right without batting an eye, but all it takes to put me off a story is brutality against an animal.

[Samuel Tow]

"Literary plutonium?" Yes, that's a good metaphor.

I could have used that quote from Other People's Money that says "Lawyers are like nukes. I have 'em, the other guy has 'em, and when you use 'en, they fuck up everything!" But yes, like that.

I think writing is really the only side of game design where this simple fact is so easy to miss. If you're doing programming or graphics and you try something ambitious, it's pretty evident very early on that you're going to fail. Sure, slip-ups like those do occasionally surface: See Heroes of Might and Magic 4 (butt ugly) or Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour (it just doesn't work). It happens, but it's not frequent because the "cost" in most fields is actually quite evident.

Not so with writing. If you can think it, you can usually write it, no matter how bad of an idea that might be. And since most of your colleagues will be too busy doing other things and you WILL NOT face an editor, there really is no apparent cost to using these "literary nukes." That, to me, is where skill and experience can really save a writer's ass. It can alert him to the fact that that big gun he was given won't just kill the enemy, it will blow him up, too, and alert him to this fact BEFORE he uses. A skilled and talented writer is a godsend to a game developer... Or should be, at least. But the sad fact is that such people aren't valued very highly.

If I had to point to one SEVERE problem with modern-day gaming, it's that it's still treated like gaming was in the 80s and 90s, which is to say we only value game mechanics. Certain games may SAY they're about the story and the characters, but for the most part that just means graphics and gameplay. Rare exceptions exist, like Mass Effect right up until the writers shot WAAAY past their own skill level, but these are rare and they are exceptions. As such, the people who are most suited to telling these stories don't receive the recognition they deserve, and you end up with an industry without any real market for professional writers. You can apply as an artist or a programmer or any of a zillion project management jobs, but how many people can apply for the job of a "writer" without needing to also do a bunch of other things, as well? The sad truth is you don't have "writers," you have people who are specialists in other fields who also moonlight as writers when they don't have other things to do. Hell, how many people can find a job at a game company as an EDITOR? How funny would that be to go and apply for?

So really, how CAN writers have any experience? How, when the gaming industry doesn't respect them? You'll see this a lot with "expert developers," and I've even seen this problem with Extra Credits. It's this belief that you can't start with a story, that because games are an interactive media, you have to focus on game mechanics and tell mood through them. To my eyes at least, there's wanton disregard for having a solid fictional world with compelling characters and interesting stories made for a game to draw on. So OF COURSE you have these writers trying their best and often failing - because they pretty much have to.

Even City of Heroes, much as I like its lore, ended up falling into the same trap. Once the game ran out of Rick Dakan's original content after Jack Emmert replaced him, the game started struggling. Still, Jack ran it like a GM, and he tried to keep story on the surface. Once Jack Emmert left, though, Matt Miller just lost it completely and tossed it over to whoever was willing to write to do with as he pleases. That's why Doc Aeon got so far in over his head - because I don't think anyone at the company really appreciated his skills AS A WRITER and nobody sat him down to critique his work. We did, but by the end, I'm pretty sure he saw the players as his enemies, based on his comments.

Until games recognise writing as a skill as important as artwork or code, then we're going to keep handing amateur writers the keys to the nuclear subs, handing them a pair of scissors and letting them run around unsupervised. And that's a problem.

[Colette]

"A skilled and talented writer is a godsend to a game developer... Or should be, at least. But the sad fact is that such people aren't valued very highly."

WARNING: INCOMING RANT.

As physical printing declines, creators of books continue to struggle. But even decades ago, writers have never received respect. Bradbury lived in poverty. Lovecraft died in poverty.  A Faber Press reader rejected Lord of the Rings for being too long. After a year of heartbreak, Faber himself called up to ask, "where's my Hobbit sequel already?"

The movies deliberately bury writers. Stephen King -- big writer, yes? But it's John Carpenter's Christine, Stankey Kubrick's The Shining, and Brian DePalma's Carrie. It's never David Goyer's The Dark Knight, Lawrence Kasden's Star Wars, or Jules and Philip Epstein's Casablanca.

Find someone not a comics reader over thirty. Ask what League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, V for Vendetta and The Watchmen have in common. You will not hear "Alan Moore." Folks, I was on the set of League. Not only was I the only person who had read the graphic novels, I was the only person who'd read Stevenson, Stoker, Wilde, Verne and Wells. I am not exaggerating.

Only when the author's long dead can it be Shelley's Frankenstein, Shakespeare's Merchant or whatever. If writers started commanding their own audiences, then they'd wield some clout in Hollywood, and that must never be allowed!

If writers had power, producers would have to pay Ozuma's estate to make The Lion King, or Koushin Takami to make The Hunger Games. Unthinkable! What, Neil Gaiman thinks our "Death" screenplay sucks? Meh! Just change the name to Meet Joe Black and cut him a severance check.

Occasionally a writer plays it smart and puts a producer credit in his contract, like Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry or Lauren Faust. Still won't stop 'em from firing you. It does make you famous, at least.

So Sam, don't hold your breath for computer game companies to start respecting writers and their literary output and skill.

End rant.

[Tenzhi]

The movies deliberately bury writers. Stephen King -- big writer, yes? But it's John Carpenter's Christine, Stankey Kubrick's The Shining, and Brian DePalma's Carrie. It's never David Goyer's The Dark Knight, Lawrence Kasden's Star Wars, or Jules and Philip Epstein's Casablanca.

They've gotten the occasional credit on television, though.  It was Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, for instance.  I believe Stephen King got his moniker on his made-for-TV movies as well.  That's not a defense, just an observation.

I was the only person who'd read Stevenson, Stoker, Wilde, Verne and Wells. I am not exaggerating.

I read quite a bit but I don't believe I've read any Stevenson (assuming you mean Robert L.) or Verne.  I think the only Oscar Wilde story I've read is The Picture of Dorian Gray (mainly due to the character in League of Extraordinary Gentleman).  I've barely read any Wells.  And the only Stoker I've read is Dracula.  I've also missed some oft-referenced literary classics like Catcher and the Rye or Animal Farm.  And I'm someone who considers reading as a viable entertainment option.  Given that in my experience most people consider reading a tool at best and a chore at length it therefore would not shock me that a select group of people hadn't read any of those authors.

[Samuel Tow]

So Sam, don't hold your breath for computer game companies to start respecting writers and their literary output and skill.

Hope springs eternal in the human heart, as it were

This really pisses me off, though. Unless you're making PacMan or Shoot Many Robots or some such - i.e. if you game has a story AT ALL - then writing is an important part that you cannot overlook. It's just as bad as completely ignoring gameplay and making one of those "walking games" that critics have been so fond of. A good writer can make a good game great and a bad writer can make even a great game terrible. It's an important position, and yet game companies just stick whomever they can find in there.

Imagine you were a starship captain. You had engineers, weapons officers, tacticians, soldiers... And then you grabbed some kid off the street who played StarFox and stuffed him into the pilot's seat because, meh! Who cares about pilot skill, that just gets us there, and we only care about what we do once we arrive. Then your starship flies off course and skids into a black hole and you find me there going "I told you so!"

Stupid metaphors aside, if your game has a story, it requires writing. If you don't care about who does that writing, you're creating a mighty liability for yourself, and you'd think a game company that spends eleventy billion on the Frostbite 2 engine might want to spend some lunch money on hiring someone who can actually spell correctly.

[Colette]

"It was Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, for instance."

Just so, and I eagerly applaud the exceptions.

"...it therefore would not shock me that a select group of people hadn't read any of those authors."

Yes, but when making The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it behooves people to read Alan Moore, and also the sourcework he in turn drew from. They didn't. Everyone on set thought this guy James Robinson wrote the thing. The film deserved to founder.

Contrasting example: Viggo "Aragorn" Mortenson had not even heard of The Lord of the Rings. He read it in the plane to New Zealand. That's doing one's job.

"Imagine you were a starship captain."

We're in agreement again, Sam. And Star Trek is a particularly good example of a property demanding good writers.

Edit: Hey, whatta'ya know, I finally got the last word! 

[Kuriositys Kat]

They've gotten the occasional credit on television, though.  It was Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital

*SCREECHING BRAKES and the smell of burning rubber*

Sorry, I cannot agree with that, as it is Lars von Trier's "The Kingdom" that was Americanized by Mr. Stephen King into "Kingdom Hospital".  Kudos to Mr.King for bringing it to a wider audience but  it is STILL Lars von Trier's work!

Edit: Sorry Collette I think I flubbed your last word

[TimtheEnchanter]

And then you grabbed some kid off the street who played StarFox and stuffed him into the pilot's seat because, meh!

Hold on there, bucko. StarFox championship from the original title game here.  I can fly anything you can figure.

Or at the very least, I promise I won't drift into the doorway and scratch the paint while exiting space dock.