Are Guns in Gaming Saturating Style?

Originally written for Curious Culture, 9th February 2015

"Wanna play the new Call of Duty, online? It looks sick!" 'Sick' as in visually stunning or sick as in… vomit? No wait, I’ve got it – it looks realistic. There are several problems with this article’s opening statement in this current day and age. The first is that the default multiplayer game to play is now a military first person shooter which uses all manner of guns and realistic graphics comparable to the world outside its computer generated interior. The second is that the current generation of games are favoured by how realistic they look, as opposed to how stylistic they are. As such, plenty of other military shooters have smashed their way to the market and boasted realism to the extreme, from Medal of Honor, SOCOM, Battlefield, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon to name a few, leaving behind stylistic and different genres of gaming. My point? Is realism taking precedence over everything else, in gaming? I sure think that’s what the triple A titles are valued on, these days. So sit back, grab a gun and shoot me if you disagree at the end of this article.

Source: http://www.forum.everyeye.tit

Back in the early naughties, when graphical technology was on the up and a new console generation had recently been launched, led by the PlayStation 2, console and PC games alike couldn’t yet mimic visual realism by any means. What we had, instead, were the anthropomorphic animals of Sly Cooper, the faux-pas polygonal Gordon Freeman from Half Life and the cel-shaded XIII. Cel-shading was the layering of cartoonish textures on a 3D model, making it feel like you were playing an animated cartoon. None of the mentioned franchises were realistic, thanks to the limitations presented by their hardware, but boy did they have a lot of style. They worked within their limitations to give us a crisp visual experience in a stylistic way, one which just looks far more appealing than today’s modern and realistic graphics. So what happened? The hardware improved, basically, and as soon around the time of 2007, it was all about mimicking what couldn’t be done before; realistic skin, facial expressions, human hair… it all came to life. Great. That is by no means a bad thing, until many years later when this so happens to still be the norm in gaming. But it’s more than that, it’s had a detrimental effect on it.

Source: http://www.gamepur.com

Suddenly, the stylistic characters of Sly Cooper, Blinx the Time Sweeper, and Crash Bandicoot are pushed aside, following from the release of 2007’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which is exactly what it says on the tin. This instant success causes other video game publishers to turn their head to where the money is – mimicking this kind of game. The effect, of course, is that suddenly a lot of games start involving white, short-haired men with several guns as their weapon. This has been around since before 2007, of course, otherwise I needn’t have mentioned Half Life at all, but the main difference is that there’s little else in between since then, where there once was a lucrative and diverse market. In comes Phoenix’s jacked up body from Gears of War to replace the far more stylistic Halo, which at least sported an in-depth science fiction story and future technology, in comes Nathan Drake and his plain shirt, featureless face and generic pistol from Uncharted to replace the Crash Bandicoots, and in comes even the new Dante with short hair and white wife beater to replace the stylistic version from before, from Devil May Cry. In fact, it’s so noticeable that the appealing characters of yesterday have transformed in generic men that Crash Bandicoot topped a recent poll from the Official PlayStation Magazine, beating Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake at #2, and Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft, at #6. Now we have Soldier A for Destiny, instead.

http://www.gamesradar.com

The other large effect falls to guns, themselves. Due to the mimicking of reality and using white, male humans in a war environment, or in action, means the games have become very similar in their fundamental goal – to shoot someone else with a gun before they shoot you. Everything just seemed to suddenly be about guns. This is actually worse than it sounds, since if it isn’t a cliché terrorist organisation you have to face to somehow justify the use of a gun is 'morally good', then it's zombies. Yup. Good heavens, we can’t have you shooting other humans who aren’t terrorists, now, we have to go for infected humans who have no control of their mind. So suddenly zombies become heavily used in games to justify the use of guns. I’m looking at you, Left 4 Dead, The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, but at least they’re aware of this and try to weave drama in the narrative to take your attention away from this fact. It has by no means ever helped Resident Evil, however, which has been entirely ruined by shift in realism and guns, where it was originally about puzzles and surviving, but now it’s about action and shooting. Has the series lost its charm? Yes, by goodness, yes it has, as all the style is gone and replaced with the same stuff in every other game. Alone in the Dark also suffered from this upon its revival.

Source: www. moddbdotcom.com

To summarise, the three detrimental effects of the improved hardware to make a realistic looking environment and the rise of Call of Duty were that realism became the norm in games, the playable character became a white, American male, and the gameplay became about shooting something. There’s one particular genre of game which doesn’t adhere to this, but that’s perhaps because it’s always set in some medieval past and then still focuses on the making everything realistic instead of stylised and new – Fantasy (with a capital F). Perhaps that’s another can of worms to open another time, however, but you get my point – guns aren’t in those because of the time period (although crossbows have been fashioned into the alternative, in most modern variations).

Source: www. baixakijogos.com.br

Where does Nintendo fit into all of this? Let’s get one thing clear, here, Nintendo have done a bang up fine job of sticking to their guns… or rather, their not guns. By not following the western gaming trend of guns and realism, they’ve actually made themselves stand by having multiplayer affairs of all kinds of genres, such as Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros and Super Mario 3D World. Sure, they’re sticking to the franchises that they’d repeated over the years, but somehow it’s come full circle in that by doing so, their brands are strangely innovative in the face of Destiny, which promised so much and became the standard seek-and-shoot affair of most other games at the time. Good on Nintendo. At least Mario isn’t sporting a SMG and frag grenade, giving two fingers to the Middle-East terrorists he’s about to gun down with all his mates.

Source: www. destinythegame.com

So forgive me if I may come across as fickle in all of this, as I’ve been recently playing through Kingdom Hearts II again, realised in high definition on the PlayStation 3 (EDIT: and PlayStation 4). The game looks visually incredible, and still holds up after all this time. I think that’s the important thing, here – the game doesn’t need to look realistic to be perceived as visually decent, which is what a lot of stock seems to be put into these days, at least graphically. There’s not a gun in sight. It’s all so imaginative and colourful, but still looks and plays fantastically. Where have all those games gone? Why are they not cared about as much, these days? The 2014 cel-shaded Studio Ghibli game Ni No Kuni fared well on initial sales, so there’s still a call for something different, but I know no one who played it through. I think it’s a sign, though, that we’re finally pushing away from the saturated gunplay action that’s plagued the higher end gaming market for virtually a decade.

Source: – www. pastemagazine.com

It’s not all doom and gloom, then. In fact, it’s quite the opposite should the industry take the route of recent years. Whilst PlayStation 4 platformer Knack may have floundered, other games such as A Hat in Time and the indie gaming market have realised that there is a market for these stylised games with gameplay which doesn’t need a gun to have fun. In fact, the future looks promising and finally due to shift away from at least the military mania present since 2007, with the genre catalogue expanding once more, although perhaps not entirely away from realism and gun gameplay just yet, eh The Order? But hey, that’s fine for a few games, just not so many. Even Borderlands had a decent stab at not being overly realistic and serious with its visuals, which worked out in its favour, immensely. Perhaps more future releases will take a look at its back catalogue and realise there was some more imaginative flair with what games were showing, back before the mid naughties? If they do, no, when they eventually do, I’ll be right at the front of that hype train and ready to ride the line to the next stop.