Croal vs. Totilo - The Manhunt 2 Letters

N'Gai Croal (of Newsweek) and Stephen Totilo (of MTV) once again match wits in a textual format, this time over the Manhunt 2 controversy. In Round One, the two reporters discuss the process of playing the game for the first time, and wonder what the experience must have been like for the ESRB raters. Round Two sees them take things up a notch, discussing what exactly it is about the game that's so violent. Round Three ... has them questioning the nature of gaming itself. As always, these are two smart guys with some interesting insights into the medium. Well worth your time. From N'Gai's final letter: "It's difficult to 'read' or derive much meaning from a game. That's why in our three Vs. Modes, we ultimately don't spend very much time talking about or analyzing the experience of playing a game, because it's hard to do so without turning our emails into "I went here. I did this. I picked that up." Which is, after all, what games are. So if the essence of a game is located in what we do, is a walkthrough--go here, do this, pick up that--the most truthful way to write about the experience of playing a game? I hope not. But it's something we should consider. Once again, if the essence of any game is located in its action, reaction, interaction, and the rules which circumscribe those three elements, what does the narrative do?"

Obvious...

[badasscat]

Once again, if the essence of any game is located in its action, reaction, interaction, and the rules which circumscribe those three elements, what does the narrative do?

Here's an example of a writer trying to sound smart by taking something obvious and "deconstructing" it to make it look not obvious. ("Deconstructing" is in quotes because that's not actually what deconstruction is, but it's how some writers define it if they don't know any better.)

The answer is the narrative guides your action, reaction and interaction, and it describes the rules which circumscribe those three elements.

There - happy? It really is that simple. The narrative exists for the purposes of guiding you to various places to do various things, and to tell you what you are and aren't allowed to do in those places and with those things with which you can interact.

Which is just a fancy way of saying what we've all known narratives do since time began. Questioning it now doesn't make it any less true.

(You can question anything - is the sun hot? Is ice cold? Does gravity = 9.8? But those questions don't in themselves form indictments or arguments against tradition or fact, which means they really have no point.)

Re:Wit? MTV?

[Gothic_Walrus]

They allow wit on MTV? o_O

Sure. After all, it's not music...

Re:Environment matters

[Aladrin]

From what I've heard before, you are correct about them not playing the game. It is up to the developer to give them a sample of the game (in video format) that they could expect the user to see. The rating is based on that.

As for the 'political' motivation... What political motivation is needed to rate a game? They didn't sit down and say 'Well, we hate them, and AO will basically ban their game, so let's do that.' They watched the video, it was beyond M rating, and they rated it appropriately.

Without seeing what they saw, or at least playing the game, none of us could possibly argue that they rating it improperly. We don't -know- what's in the game and how it compares to other games in existance.

What we -do- now is that the first game was extremely violent, and that second games usually try to out-do the first one. Why is it so hard to believe that this is more violent than the first?

As for the AO rating itself: What point is there in having that rating exist if they aren't allowed to use it when warranted? I seriously doubt they are flippant with their ratings. They don't just watch video while eating popcorn and say 'Oh, hmm.... AO.' and go for a beer at the pub.

Ouch...

[travdaddy]

Anybody see anything wrong with this? It's a quote from Croal in the article:

It's hard to argue that games have anything approaching the depth of theater, novels, movies or television given the medium's newness; its requirement of repetitive action, reaction and interaction to maintain the player's interest; the thinness of its characters; the perfunctoriness of its plots; the lack of complex or even complicated psychology. It would be like arguing that an activity--a mountain hike, laps in a pool or a game of chess--is profound.

Re:Ouch...

[MeanderingMind]

The quote is missing context. I'm not sure I can do his position justice through a summary and highly recommend you RTFAs. It's probably the best set of articles on Video Games I've read in ages.

That said, here's my limited understanding.

Croal's position is not that video games, hiking mountains, etc. can't be profound or deep. It's that they are not analogous or similar to movies, books, theatre etc. in that regard. In movies and books, we are merely viewers who are plunging the depths of someone else's content. While the setting may have been created by someone else, video games, hiking and chess put us in the position of players. We are creating the content, and the depths of it are our own.

Video games are not, and can not be by definition, the same as books and "viewer" media. They can share elements such as stories, narratives, characters, musical scores etc. But the ways in which they are deep and profound are fundamentally different.

Re:Obvious...

[Lord Bitman]

I read and re-read the gp, and nowhere did it imply that its writing was somehow "superior" to the article in question's. ("superior" in quotes because I'm quoting you). The poster seems annoyed by assholes, and doesn't at all bring up whether or not /he/ may be an asshole, as it is not strictly relevant to his annoyance.

I defend because I can sympathize.