Kobe Bryant and Black Ops: Perceptions About Video Games

Activision: There is a soldier in all of us.

I’ve been playing and studying video games long enough to know that a major release like Call of Duty Black Ops will cause controversy.  However sometimes I am surprised as to the path it takes. The hot issue this time is the advertisement where Kobe Bryant and Jimmie Kimmel are among dozens of people participating in a live action multiplayer match.  I admit I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal until I saw my old professor, Dr. Robert Thompson of Syracuse University, on ESPN’s Outside the Lines (OTL).  Well technically I saw it over Xbox Live’s ESPN channel (ironic, I know).

So Prof. Thompson and four other gentlemen whose names escape me were having a rather vigorous debate about Byrant and the messages his participation sends.  While Bryant’s team, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the NBA have been silent on the issue, there must be parties or groups who feel that Bryant should represent more wholesome entertainment. Thompson correctly pointed out there is, though there shouldn’t be, distinction between actors in a game and those in film.  If Bryant is to be condemned for his involvement in Black Ops, then why not condemn actors for participating in violent films?  However I will take it further: if Bryant were to play the part of a villain in a summer action movie would there be controversy?  Would there be such a discussion if Bryant were to take on Bruce Willis in the next Die Hard movie?  The implication here is that video games, especially the more violent ones, are not as acceptable as other media such as television and film.

In fact, video games reside at the lower end of popular culture.  Yes, we know that in the United States, the gaming industry out-grosses the domestic box office.  But if anything, that speaks to how popular gaming is and that sometimes leads to the argument that because games have broad appeal, they have little cultural value.  When compared to books, film, radio, and television video games cannot match the cultural appeal mainly because this newer medium is still viewed as “games.” As such, games sit on the lowest rung of the cultural ladder, somewhere between monster truck racing, Jerry Springer, and pro wrestling.  The message here is: “it’s okay to sit and watch violence in the movies, but it’s wrong to pick up a controller and kill someone.”

Now unless I am missing something, nobody actually dies in a movie.  It’s fiction.  We say characters die, but the actors who portray these people are very much alive.  Likewise, nobody dies in games.  It’s fiction, however interactive it may be.  Yet one type of violence is more acceptable than the other.

So while the gamer in me may be offended that such a debate even takes place, the researcher in me continues to be fascinated by the struggle of this medium to reach a higher level of acceptability in mass culture.  Over the past three years, I have watched debates swirl around Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto IV, Six Days in Fallujah, Medal of Honor, and now Black Ops. In this last case, the message from the commercial was supposed to be that Kobe Bryant is just like you and me: he loves hopping into a MP just like the next gamer.  However the lasting message might end up being that Bryant risked tarnishing his image by signaling that he approves of violent games and that would be a sad commentary indeed.

American or Taliban? In Multiplayer It Doesn’t Matter

Reading Michael Thomsen’s “Games With The Power to Offend” brought me right back to the whole Medal of Honor controversy I wrote about last week.  Now I have no plans to buy MoH but not because of the controversy.  As I wrote before, the idea of playing a Taliban fighter doesn’t really mean anything to me but I’ve been thinking about it for the last week so I thought I would add to my last post.

In BFBC2 Rush mode it's the US vs. the Russians in attack and defend.

Let me use MoH developer EA’s current game as an example.  In Battlefield Bad Company 2 you can either play as an American or a Russian soldier in the multi-player suite.  Of course the relationship between Russia and the United States is better now than it was during the Cold War, but the fact is as a Russian soldier, I have plenty of opportunities to kill Americans with knives, bullets, tank rounds, and mortar fire. However when I play as a Russian, I don’t see Americans in front of me.  Nor do I see Russian soldiers when I am on the American side.  Why is that?  Because both sides are exactly the same.  The only differences are the uniforms and the weapons you enter the match with.  I know that on some MP maps US forces have access to Apache attach helicopters while on others the Russians can fly the Hind attack chopper.  Americans use this type of assault rifle while the Russians use that type.  I remember that the two sides have tanks with slightly different capabilities. However the soldiers on both sides are interchangeable.

I’m betting that when MoH releases in October, gamers will find the same MP concepts as in Battlefield and other games in the genre.  As far as the game play and objectives of the match go, there is no difference between the two sides.  Yes, the weapons are different but that will not give one side an advantage over the other.  Balance is important in MP.

This notion of identifying with the different MP factions borders on the absurd.  If the tactics of one side differed from the other than perhaps it would make more sense to vilify EA for including the Taliban. Maybe if part of the game were to hurry up and construct an improvised explosive device (IED) and bury it in the road all the while reminding each other why we hate Americans, then perhaps gamers could experience why that role is abhorrent.  But gamers don’t have time for such things in MP. Everyone is in a rush to get to the killing.  In the real world, we know there are differences in ideology, tactics, and objectives when comparing US forces to Taliban fighters, but those differences don’t make it into MP. In MP gamers are not forced to listen to Taliban propaganda, ideology or religious doctrine. There is no talk of American oppression or the righteousness of their cause.  We don’t see what happens to American prisoners nor do we witness how IEDs are constructed and planted.  Images of Taliban fighters celebrating the deaths of Americans never becomes game content.  And so we don’t see those differences highlighted in the game.  How can we attach any type of meaning, and therefore hatred to those “Taliban” in the game? As a gamer striving to kill all the enemy players or grab territory, I have a hard time doing anything else.

The Taliban in MoH - are they just virtual fighters or hated enemies?

In order for me to have that type of hatred, I need to see that these characters are real Taliban.  I need to be able to demonize them for their heinous acts and their anti-American fervor.  On the other side, I need to be reminded that the Americans fight to protect their homes and families from terrorists and those who harbor them. Without that I feel nothing when I gun down an “American” or a “Taliban” except that, for a moment, I was better than the other guy.  I need that connection so that when I kill the Taliban I know that now there is one less person who can attack America.  Without that I feel no shame when the match starts and I see that for the next five minutes I will play as Taliban. This is part of what’s missing from all the news coverage of the Medal of Honor controversy, but it certainly need to be part of the conversation.

The Incomplete Language of Gaming

Much of the basis for my thinking about the language of gaming from this article by Matthew Sakey.  There is, in particular, one portion of that text I want to focus on.  He writes:

As [Steven] Poole noted, much of film’s critical language can be transplanted without alteration into the world of gaming. Concepts of narrative style, perspective, shot construction, and mechanics should be able to switch parties without too much confusion. But just as film couldn’t use theatre’s language as its own, the inherently more complicated medium that is gaming will need to find its own language for a significant portion – say, more than fifty percent – of its own academic vocabulary. The process will be an evolutionary one.

Sakey does a good job at filling in the history of film theory and how its history matches and diverges from the history of game theory.  I want to look at a different aspect of game theory however.

Perhaps we could best do that by examining two games: Half Life 2 and Mass Effect 2.  HL2, and its sequels episodes 1 and 2, allows the gamer to fill the shoes of scientist turned freedom fighter Gordon Freeman.  HL2 has been hailed as one of the best shooters in recent years.  I played it.  I loved it.  I finished it.  However HL2 is linear in nature. The player moves from one point to the next, overcoming enemy soldiers, aliens, and aircraft all the while.  To developer Valve’s credit, HL2 features some memorable characters, not the least of which is Freeeman’s companion Alyx Vance.

The NPC Vance, based on actress Jamil Mullen’s face, is voice phenomenally by Merle Dandridge. Vance comes across as quite believable and the player finds himself/herself concerned when she is injured.  HL2 contains several other quality NPCs and one could say that the beauty of this game is that as you move though blasting enemies, you also find that you have become immersed in the world of Half Life thanks to the memorable characters you meet.

Many games are structured just like that.  You move from place to place in order to find someone or blow up something or some other goal.  Sometimes there are large set-piece battles and other times there are cut scenes where you receive your next assignment.  Find problem.  Solve problem.  Find new problem.  Now if all games were like that, then it would certainly make more sense to use the language of film to describe video games, at least for content, since the beginning, the middle, and end are always the same.  However games have that one feature that will forever separate them from film: interactivity.

To use the term “interactive” is to use a word that is dynamic in nature.  The meaning differs from game to game.  In HL2 is means changing the environment slightly by moving objects, opening doors, or killing enemies.  As long as you overcome and progress, you will eventually reach the end.  That end never changes.  If the programmers decided that an NPC is going to die, you cannot change that.

As we have seen, Mass Effect 2 is different in that by the end of the game you have decided, by your actions, which NPCs live at the end of the game. You can even lose Commander Shepard and will not be able to import him/her into Mass Effect 3 if you make enough bad choices.  Likewise the ending will change somewhat in response to your actions. Yes, the bad guys will still lose, but there are several choices you must make that will play a significant role in ME3. Also, characters that die are sill dead for the final game in the trilogy.  It is this different that truly separates games from film. The language must accurately express how the player can now alter his/her experience every time he/she plays.  If you look at gaming in that light, then yes, the language of gaming is, as Sakey expresses, incomplete.

So how do academic researchers begin to create this language?  The first thing we have to do recognize where gaming does and does not intersect with other media.  One of my first papers as a doctoral student was to apply cultivation theory to video games.  This theory, first made popular by George Gerbner, was one of the first we learned in communication theory; I used it because most of video game theory has its roots in other media, especially television and film. (If I were to write it today, I might very well ask if playing video games helps to combat the mean world syndrome instead..oh well.)  The quote I pulled from Sakey reminds us that some conventions of gaming and film are the same and that’s okay.  But we think of video games as little interactive movies, we do both media a disservice.

The second thing we must do is play more games.  Or at least make sure our studies involve participants playing more games.  How many studies have you read where participants only played for a few minutes? This may work if the researcher seeks information of aggression levels after a session.  However if we want to know how players feel after completing tough objectives or how difficult it was to make a moral choice or even how they feel about the outcome of a game after playing for 20+ hours then we must be willing to play or watch other plays for extended periods and use our instruments accordingly. I believe these extended sessions will help us see how player input changes not only the outcome of the game and the virtual environment, but also the player himself/herself.  And that will allow us to add to the language of gaming.