Rage Against The Machine
Recently a lot of games have been straying away from the traditional bad guy/ evil villain roles; instead they've been moving the focus toward large, evil, nasty, uncaring corporations, that are trying to influence the society for their own benefit and wealth. Take a look at the recent games such as; Jet Grind Radio; MGS2; AirBlade; State of Emergency; and now Eve of Evolution. Kind of makes you wonder if the game developers are trying to imply something. Maybe they're expressing their resentment for huge corporations, such as Microsoft, one could even go as far to say the Government in certain ways.
Whatever the case, it seems that game companies are currently taking more free liberties with the ideas and concepts they've integrated into their games. The recent release of games like MGS2, GTA3, and State of Emergency are the proof of that. For once, games are and will be allowed to express fully whatever they wish, a freedom the movie and television industry's have had for a long time now.
So what does this mean for our industry? Just like the movie system, and the television system, ratings have been placed on games to allow for the 'justification' - if you will - of excessive violence, nudity, swearing -- and pretty much anything else you can think of -- to certain age types. It's the coming of age of the videogame industry, and I'm here, as I'm sure you are, to welcome it with open arms.
Finally our market is in the mainstream world, and I think game developers are just like us, they see things in society that don't please them. And just as we do, they express their resentment for certain subjects in many different ways. In their cases it could be video games. It could be seen this as reading too far into things, but the possibility is always there. Corporations have become and essential part to our economy, heck they 'ARE' our economy. It's seen as a very detrimental thing to us as a people if any of them acts in unethical ways. For example, look at the actions of the Texas based company Enron. Their company was practically built on lies -- in that they wrote a check to one of their subsidiaries for a billion dollars that they did not have, and then took out loans against that check - unethical actions like these are what people look down upon, and most feel ruins the reputation of large corporations, not to mention the negative influence it has on our economy.
So we're here to fight back, gamers against evil corporations! Hah, well its not quite that serious, but the point is, we as a people are now allowed to experience things once forbidden - like say beating people in the middle of a mall while throwing pipe bombs through the window of a few stores - but its all in good fun, so lets enjoy.
For the most part corporations help us to acquire things that we want, and many of them pay our salaries, but certainly they aren't able to escape any type of scrutiny presented by the media. And now that has been extended to our beloved gaming industry. In the time to come, its almost certain that you'll see new and better graphics, sound, better controls and controlling schemes, ideas for games, and now basically any form we might want. Who's to say that now we have grotesque and uncensored violence, that soon we wont have nudity, and swearing. All of these things can be seen in movies, and television programs. It'll be interesting to see the progression of the videogame market at the current point and time.
A few years ago, people couldn't say a number of swear words on TV, now people say 'bitch' openly on both the radio, and television programs. That is the sort of progress we should be looking forward to. A time when our game companies are not restricted by foolish censorship. Other countries -- for a long time now -- have had no problem with a lot of the issues that we focus on in America such as alcohol and nudity. These are just a few things on a long list that are considered 'issues' in our country. While there is still an amount of censorship on these things, after the right age, we as people and gamers will be able to experience the things that at one point we could not in our digitalized world.
To be frank, this is certainly a time we all should be celebrating. We can now pull cops out of their cars an shoot them in the head (GTA3), we can now stomp gang members to death just for the hell of it (SoE), we can also act as spies, criminals, tomb raiders, odd alien creatures, mosquitoes, differently colored flower children, 2D sprites, etc.. Put simply, we will now be experiencing anything we truly want, and this is just the beginning. I can remember a time when I wished to see blood in Mortal Kombat, and how that was a great controversy. But we finally saw it, and thought it was a terrific moment, to rip another's head off, pulling it out the spinal cord and all. That was a great time! So again, as a population of people looking to enjoy the same industry, we should all be excited to see what kind of prospects will come up next, and thank the industry for giving us freedom to do what we please. Now. This is a great time. So enjoy the games, the fight was well worth it.