Angry Gaming 05.07.07: Virtual Vices
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 05.07.2007
Who would have thought that video games would be a smoker’s last sanctuary?
Welcome to Angry Gaming, the loud, trash talking white boy that crashes the game industry's Asian-American speed dating party. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and for all the drinking I did this weekend, the De La Hoya/Mayweather fight sucked enough to sober me up for weeks. Skull!
Virtual Vices
This article goes out to my good friend Poonsta, whose 21st birthday party inspired today's topic. As I learned the hard way, Poonsta's parties can run quite late and get quite wild, particularly in the department of alcohol abuse. See, one of the advantages of being a socially inept gamer is that I'm able to set aside my emotions and inhibitions, whether drunk or sober. I've got the professional and personal experiences as a bartender and a janitor behind me. As such, I tend to become sort of a mother hen designated driver for those around me. While others are getting lit and having the night of their lives, I make sure nothing breaks, everyone gets home safe, vomit gets cleaned up etc.
The latter turned out to be my real duty last night. After destroying the entire party roster in an ongoing Tekken 5 tournament (but remembering to be humble about it) I made the rookie mistake of letting some hard liquor noobs have a few too many shots of Jaggermeister. Thus, when our friends began locking themselves in closets, bathrooms, and puking violently, it became our job to keep them straight and keep the house clean.
After things settled down, Poonsta and the rest of those remaining had a brief heart to heart while watching the sun rise off the outside balcony. It occurred to us that the use and abuse of alcohol is yet another one of those many things in life that only experience and here say can prepare you for. As is the case with certain taboos, we rarely get to see these acts placed into popular media, so even watching movies or emulating TV never really prepares you for what you see. We don't really learn about the effects of alcohol until we learn to drive, if we choose to do so, and even then we are only given bare minimal information to keep us alive on the road.
It is perhaps for this reason that, surprisingly, games do not have the same censorship restrictions as other media forms in this area. You would think that, given the constant correlation between games and underage audiences, games would be heavily watched and censored for the use of any vice products. Yet the ESRB and parents have remained merciful so far, and if a game contains drug use of any sort, it is still permissible and released even at the teenage level.
This is something that needs to be encouraged and expanded upon, yet I doubt that pointing out the advantages of this would garner a positive response from a public who is already somewhat critical of the amount of violence in our games. If that's the case, then there must be some other reason why we are still allowed to see the substance use in our games. Perhaps it's because the developers are good at using vices to expand upon their storylines and characters, not just to cause controversy. Maybe it's because the powers that be in the gaming industry honestly don't feel the need to crack down on this particular aspect of gaming. Hell, maybe everyone is too concerned with keep the level of violence in games down as much as possible.
Let's take a look at three instances of vices in video games. These three games not only teach us the value of keeping this harsh reality in our entertainment, but also provide a glimpse as to what might happen to gaming in the future:
Metal Gear – Solid Smoker
Probably the most infamous instance of vices in video games comes from Konami's Metal Gear series. The super spy character known as Solid Snake has always been known for being a smoker, and with the release of the epic Metal Gear Solid for the Sony Playstation, Konami decided to make a point about this.
The story goes that while on his important stealth mission, Snake smuggles a pack of cigarettes along with him by swallowing them whole. His superiors are understandably upset about this, but Snake, like several other addicted smokers, tends to put more loyalty into his habit under anything other than the most of extreme circumstances.
Yet Snake's habit actually turns out to work in his favor. While venturing through a secret terrorist complex, Snake happens upon a hallway that is lined with infrared trip beams, which are invisible to the human eye. While Snake does not have the necessary equipment to deal with the situation, he does have his trusty cigarettes. While smoking them, Snake can create small puffs of smoke which he can use to see the beams somewhat while crawling under them.
While this is certainly an innovative use of the act of smoking and one that impacts both the storyline and the gameplay, Konami was painfully aware that they were in fact showing smoking in a positive light. Given the results of several medical studies, the designers knew that this was not the right thing to do. As such, Konami also used Snake's smoking as a way to hammer home a much more important point: smoking can kill you. In this case, Konami means literally. When players choose to use Solid Snake's cigarettes, his life bar is literally drained away slowly. While this happens at a far faster rate than it would in real life, it does get the message across. Besides, video games often need to show true life actions at an accelerated rate in order to further fictional storylines. And if the prince of Persia can rewind time itself to undo his past mistakes, then Snake can die from smoking too much in a five minute time period, by god.
We learn from this then, that sending a somewhat correct message about the effects of vices allows developers to leave usage of said drugs in video games. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, though it is a little morbid that game developers of all people have a responsibility to preach the facts about drug abuse when most school teachers don't. Still, for all intents and purposes, this plot device is good both for developers and the public at large.
Conker's Bad Fur Day – Had a Drink about an Hour Ago
Have you ever played a game that had so many extreme elements it left you scratching your head as to how it was released? God of War comes to mind, but an even more extreme case would be Rareware's Conker's Bad Fur Day. For all intents and purposes, the character of Conker is designed for kids. He's a bushy tailed, big eyed squirrel with a shirt on, and he even appeared in the kid's title Diddy Kong Racing. So when Rareware decided to take the character of Conker and place him in a series of adult situations throughout his own game, its surprising the game was ever allowed to hit the market at all.
Conker is a squirrel who likes drinking, but hates the after effects involved with it. One night, Conker has a few too many drinks at a pub and becomes far too drunk to find his way home properly. As such, when Conker awakens the next day, he has no idea where he is and must maneuver several obstacles and stages in order to get back home. Once again we see vices used in a negative light in video games, thus appealing to would be censors and the more uptight public. However, Conker's alcohol usage doesn't only set off his misadventures, and it appears again later on in the game.
Like most cartoon style characters, Conker is able to perform several exaggerated actions that normal humans couldn't dream of. One such example is the fact that Conker can spend an entire night getting drunk and simply cure his hangover the next morning with a single glass of Alka-seltzer (or a reasonable knockoff). Even more interesting is Conker's encounter with several flame creatures later on in the game, which are intent on singeing our squirrel protagonist to a crisp. In order to combat these enemies, Conker must once again get drunk, and use his exaggerated state to urinate on the flame creatures, thus dousing and killing them. Since getting drunk messes with one's balance as well as their bladder, Conker must constantly switch from being drunk to being sober and back again in order to succeed against his fiery opponents.
Conker's Bad Fur Day pushed cartoon antics to the extreme and found a whole new appeal for adult audiences. While the game was rated M for mature, it still depicted child friendly characters indulging in some seriously child unfriendly behavior (urinating on a fire is generally not an action to be emulated). However, the Conker's use of alcohol once again had an effect on the plot and the comedy elements of the game, which made it all the more significant during its development. The fact that alcohol could be used as a comedic element in video games shows hope even for the most hardcore censors, and teaches us all a valuable lesson about not taking ourselves too seriously.
The Warriors – Hey, That Wasn't In There!
While the popular 1970's movie The Warriors is known for many things, depiction of drug use is not one of them. Years later, when Rockstar games decided to celebrate the anniversary of The Warriors by releasing a detailed brawler video game based on the movie (not the book) it depicted all the violence and hard hitting action that was shown in the movie…yet added drug use to the franchise's list of controversial elements.
The Warriors video game introduces "flash", a fictional street drug that essentially gets characters high and has relatively no depicted side effects. While flash dealers throughout the game certainly don't sound like they are in the best of shape, the main characters that use flash to heal themselves throughout the game are never really affected by it. The Warriors themselves are supposed to be a rough and tough street gang from Coney Island, and one of the best parts of the game is the visible damage each member takes during each fight. When using flash, characters make a vague motion that resembles doing a hit of acid, followed by a light exhaling sound. The player's health is restored and the game continues on as if nothing had happened. In fact, all that visible damage that players have acquired from the previous gang fight also disappears as if it were never there in the first place.
Flash is never really a focus in The Warriors game, its simply a plot device used to quickly explain how each gang member can repeatedly get into the most violent of street fights and still walk away unscathed. The Warriors movie and game both have plenty of extreme depictions of crime and violence, but adding drug use to the mix seems a bit unnecessary here. What we learn then, is that it's possible for substance abuse to pass under the radar in game development. When drugs aren't shown in a negative light, they can still be implemented into a game just by drawing the public's attention elsewhere.
The Anger
After everything that I experienced this weekend, I have to reiterate how important life experience and general information can actually be. Had I or someone else not known how to handle a situation like the one encountered at my friends party, there is no telling what damage could have been done to a bunch of good kids who were looking to have an innocent good time. The fact that game developers are putting relatively correct information into their games when dealing with drugs and alcohol is to be commended, as is the board of censors who recognize this. While I still feel that games will continue to come under fire for violence levels and be needlessly blamed for real world actions, substance use has been accurately crossed from the real world to the game world and for the most part, we can all agree on its depiction and proper use. Until next time, embrace the hatred.
