Abstract
Radical young developers are challenging tired old formulas that have dominated the games industry for years, says
In the wake of this autumn’s launch of Grand Theft Auto V, an upgrade of one of the world’s best-selling and most controversial video games, you might think that computer games are all about teenage boys glued to their consoles, hypnotised by the fantasy of playing the character of a macho killer protagonist who commits ultra-violent crimes and rescues scantily-clad babes-in-distress. If you’ve not seen the hype, games probably mean the rather less disturbing picture of children mesmerised and wasting hours on the sofa in front of the screen when they should be doing something else. But not all games are violent fantasies or brain-numbing diversions. My company recently launched a Facebook game, Meet the World Brain (http://on.fb.me/H37mxZ), which encourages young people to think about the corporate control of knowledge and data. It was designed to promote Ben Lewis’s documentary Google and the World Brain, nominated for a prize at the Sundance film festival for independent movies, which covers the same themes but targets a very different audience.
Games that deal with serious subjects are not part of the mainstream. Like Hollywood, the console-games industry prefers to stick with entertainment that appeals to wide audiences. Given that many console games now cost more than films to produce, this probably makes commercial sense.
Outside the mainstream industry, on open platforms, there are a number of games that take on more serious subject matters, including several that address questions of freedom of expression, as well as censorship. The “open web” – a section of the internet accessible to everyone and where the emphasis is on open source software and wider access to technologies – is cheaper for developers to use. Compared to console games, the same is true of mobile networks, popular proprietary online environments such as Facebook, and “virtual-world” 3D games such as Second Life, so these platforms are increasingly used to explore some of today’s most controversial and difficult topics.
“Some issues are easily disguised in games – women in action, historical points of view, free will – and it is great that gamers can play around with these ideas,” says Mia Bennett, a game publisher who runs businesses in the UK and Iran.
Gone Gitmo and Wall Jumpers, created by Nonny de la Peña and Peggy Weil, use Second Life to take players into places the media cannot reach. In Gone Gitmo (http://gonegitmo.blogspot.co.uk/), interviews with ex-prisoners were used to recreate the Guantanamo Bay camp in virtual space. Players put on an orange prisoner jumpsuit and are transported as prisoners on a plane into the camp, where they are confronted by a place in which no cameras are allowed – but they can hear and see the stories of some of the prisoners. Walljumpers (http://archive.org/details/Walljumpers) takes a more light-hearted approach by letting users virtually jump over the most dangerous borders in the world, which is great fun if you’ve ever wanted to catapult yourself from South to North Korea or vice versa.
Some issues are easily disguised in games – women in action, historical points of view, free will – and it is great that gamers can play around with these ideas
De la Peña’s current project was inspired by camera-phone footage of US police officers using force at a crime scene – footage they tried to delete. “Use of Force Protocol is based on mobile phone audio and video captured by two bystanders who became witnesses to the homicide of a migrant by more than a dozen US border patrol agents,” she says. The new game’s development is funded by the Tribeca Film Institute and an AP/Google Technology and Journalism grant.
ABOVE: Images from the game Walljumpers by Peggy Weil and Nonny de la Peña
“When the episode escalated, two border patrol agents grabbed mobile phones from bystanders and began erasing video material – but two witnesses managed to slip away. My source says that one of the agents was trained to work with a variety of mobiles so that he was expert in erasing material on any phone he would come across. My intent for project is to show how important it is that we stop that kind of censorship. The border patrol’s report on the death was a complete whitewash.”
Developers with controversial stories to tell use game mechanics and platforms to engage players – but then surprise them by subverting their expectations. MolleIndustria, an independent Italian developer (http://www.molleindustria.org/), made headlines with Desert of Real, which subverted the US army recruitment game America’s Army. The game depicts how soldiers as often lonely and suffering the consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder. The same studio released Operation Paedo-Priest, in which players have to cover up sex scandals on behalf of the church.
Games For Change (http://www.gamesforchange.org) is an international network set up in 2012 that showcases games that promote social and political change. Several directly address human rights, including freedom of expression. On The Ground Reporter Darfur puts the player in the shoes of a journalist in Sudan who has to uncover the truth. The developers are currently discussing creating a series of “on the ground journalist” games that can sit alongside “first person shooter” games as a popular genre.
Games For Change has also released a Half the Sky Movement – The Game (https://www.facebook.com/HalftheGame), which aims to encourage social action for global gender equality. It has built a user-base of more than one million players since its release earlier in early 2013.
Players are tasked with selecting and printing only stories that will maintain social order
Lucas Pope, an independent games developer, tackles the issue of censorship head on with The Republia Times (http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt). In this simple game, the user is put in the chair of the editor-in-chief of a newspaper run by the fictional Ministry of Media for the fictional nation of Republia. Players are tasked with selecting and printing only stories that will maintain social order and a positive image of the nation.
There are even a few mainstream console games that cut against the grain. Although it relies on “first person shooter” formula for much of its play, The Bioshock Infinite game (http://www.bioshockinfinite.com) uses propaganda from church and state in the US as a backdrop throughout.
Radical games are often controversial. In Pipe Trouble (http://pipetrouble.com), a game from Pop Sandbox Productions funded by the public service broadcaster TVOntario (TVO), players have to build an oil pipeline, balancing such factors as damage to the environment, profitability and avoiding problems with eco-terrorists. The presence of eco-terrorist enemy characters in the game caused a media storm in Canada – and even the government pitched in to say that it glamourised eco-terrorism. It was subsequently pulled from the TVO website, though an independent review later exonerated the game.
Radical games developers are supporting freedom of expression – but they face several challenges. Knee-jerk reactions from non-gamers, media misrepresentation of games culture and risk-averse games publishers could all threaten their distribution.
Fortunately, the open web provides direct-to-audience distribution, which will generally provide a channel for games developers who are willing and able to distribute their own games, even where they cannot get their stories onto console gaming platforms. Independent radical games are starting to have a real impact – the usage stats for some of them are encouraging and the film industry is starting to take notice. (Pipe Trouble was featured at the Cannes Film Festival.) It’s going to be an uphill battle, but it’s one worth fighting.
Computer games and censorship …………………………………………… Games are subject to government censorship around the world. Various industry boards exist to regulate and provide ratings for the console-games industry, much as they do for films. However, the level to which the Apple App Store censors mobile games is perhaps less well known. “Apple is known for banning games that aim to address socio-political themes or current events,” says Asi Burak, who heads the network Games for Change. Endgame: Syria (http://gamethenews.net/index.php/endgame-syria/) from the UK-based alternative games creator Game The News (a member of Games for Change) was banned by Apple but is now available on the web. The game examines the complexities of the Syrian civil war through card-based gameplay from the perspective of the Syrian rebels. The consequences of players’ choices, all of which have an impact on the outcome, are outlined by the game, showing the options available to the Syrian rebels and the long and difficult road to potential war resolution. “We view apps differently than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticise a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app,” the AppStore guidelines state, clearly showing that Apple thinks it can exert more control over games than other media. Apple’s guidelines are problematic, however. The criteria used are not clear and are applied without consistency when games are submitted for technical review, largely by technical testers and not by content experts. One developer who asked not to be named said that he was forced to remove a Hitler character from an educational history game about World War II because it might be viewed as encouraging neo-Nazism. MolleIndustria’s Phone Story educational game, which looks at the dark side of smartphone technology development, was banned by Apple and its website now boasts a “Banned from the AppStore” badge instead of an “Available on the AppStore” logo. Stupid decisions by gatekeepers applying guidelines crudely lead to poor-quality content being distributed to audiences: they do not protect them. Google Play is the AppStore’s main competitor and is far more permissive of controversial content, with very few reports of game banning.