Much as I’d like to say things are winding down for E3, they’re really not. You have to wind up before you can wind down, after all. The announcements are over, the plans are in place, and 2008’s heavy hitters have finally been played. There isn’t too much more to say about E3 08’s broad implications for gaming as a medium and today didn’t yield any revelations that would necessitate any further waxing philosophical (though the Wii did finally surpass Xbox 360’s install base in North America. Surprise, surprise, surprise.)
That said, while it’s still too early to call it a trend, two of E3’s more intriguing titles share a unique quirk: Ubisoft’s just announced I Am Alive, teased only with a CGI trailer, and EA’s freshly playable Mirror’s Edge are both blockbuster positioned games that de-emphasize violence.
As exciting as the gaming medium is today, full of fresh ideas and tempting technology, few games are total mold-breakers. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is truly novel. The vast majority of videogames find their most basic play in violence, whether it be shooting, cutting, or simply jumping on turtles. Violence is immediate, a readily accessible and exciting hook to elicit an emotional and visceral response from a player. It’s not that game designers and gamers are bloodthirsty so much as it’s a base fundamental of all forms of play, digital and non. Just look at the world’s most popular sports, soccer, football, tennis, baseball, etc. Athletic, competitive sport is, in large part, based around hitting, around impact. Hell, look at board games; chess is one of the world’s most respected intellectual pursuits and it is about slaughter and regicide. Mirror’s Edge is about avoiding confrontation, escaping from hostile forces through flight. When violence does rear its head in the game, it’s typically to disarm. Assaulting your aggressors with a weapon is penalized, hampering your greatest asset of free movement.
I Am Alive, unfortunately, is still an unknown quantity regarding actual rules-of-engagement. The trailer, depicting a young man pursued by urbanites in the aftermath of a city-leveling disaster, also implies a game about steering clear of conflict. The protagonist’s route to escape is not entirely free of bloodshed; he lures his pursuers onto a glass surface that cannot support their collective weight and they plummet to an aurally messy end. But the solution is still one free of outright brutality.
Perhaps, after thirty years, game makers are finding their way around the ever-roiling controversy that surrounds the medium by taking the weapons out of players’ hands. No harm, no foul, as they say. I like to think that, instead, artists are finding inspiration in alternative modes of stimulation. No blades, no bows. Leave your weapons in the past.
Related links:
E3 Day 3: No Alarms and No Surprises
E3 Day 1: Microsoft, Sony, Final Fantasy, and For Whom the Bell Tolls
E3 Day 2: Spin, Malaise, Sony's New Clothes, and Nintendo's True Disruption
