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Revenge is Sweet
November 12, 2008
Last week, a news story did the rounds about a game called Run Clarkson Run. It featured truck drivers mowing down a man called Jeremy Clarkson. The previous week, Clarkson, a gobshite TV presenter, had made a joke about truck-drivers and their alleged penchant for murdering prostitutes.
The game was pure revenge, and was picked up by many of the British papers, not just the tabloids.
Sadia Chishti, who made the game, said, “Clarkson is a loveable rogue, but we think he's overstepped the mark this time. So we figured we'd give truckers the chance for revenge. And not just truckers; the whole family can spend hours playing the game, running over and killing Jeremy Clarkson just for fun."
It got me thinking about games as acts of vengeance.
I don’t mean games that feature revenge. There are plenty of those. Violent games often use revenge as the pretext for a major character going slightly balloons, exploding anything that had even the slightest relationship with the death of a beloved father / brother / comrade / quietish bloke known slightly from the pub who sometimes enjoyed a quick game of pool.
What I mean are games that are created purely as an act of revenge.
The beauty of this approach to revenge is two-fold. In games the player gets to actively do horrible things to the subject of the author’s ire. You can see the character being chopped up, mutilated and profoundly humilated. Sometimes, the deaths have a great dollop of irony in there. In Clarkson’s case, being mowed down by truckers is doubly sweet, as he is, famously, a smug twat who drives really nice cars for a living.
We have all seen plenty of silly Internet games in which our dear departing president is humiliated by, say, a killer pretzel. There must surely be a game somewhere in which the vile Sarah Palin gets lost in a wardrobe and must screech her way out. These games veer into the territory of satire, which is, after all, the most effective revenge of the powerless against the powerful.
The second power of games is their ability to draw headlines and thereby audiences. Journalists pick up on vengeance games as good copy because games are hot and pictures of famous people being humiliated – even in the context of a Flash game - are visually interesting.
It is almost entirely a waste of time to write an outraged blog post or online poem about the iniquities of the world. The powers that be will fail to tremble at the power of your prose. Even a searing YouTube production is unlikely to garner much in the way of column inches. But a videogame? The press loves a videogame. If you really hate someone powerful and arrogant who has done bad things to the world in general, it is your duty as a citizen to humiliate them in a funny, game, preferably one that’s violent.
Unfortunately, writing videogames – especially funny ones, is hard work. Traditionally, the reason to write a videogame is to make money rather than to speak of your anguish to the world, or to get even with some fellow or other. I can think of very few commercial games that were made as an expression of vengeance.
One, from the mid-1980s, comes to mind. It was written by a guy who had been stitched up by a games company that had gone bust. I forget what it was called, but it featured various in-jokes about the peculiarities of the UK games distribution network, circa 1984. Weird.
I don’t doubt that more than a few in-game creatures have been expressions of vengeance. Perhaps the odd hatchet-faced monster who looked a bit like the artist’s cold-cheeked mother-in-law. Or the hairy-arsed barbarian who sounded just a tad like the pompous boss (it would be great to hear of any such examples….please).
But, in general, revenge is not a big enough reason to invest thousands of hours in a game’s production.
Now though, games are becoming easier to create. Individuals can get to work, easing out all their frustrations and hatreds through a new and exciting media, in which literally, anything can happen to anyone. The age of videogames as satire is upon us.
Revenge is yours oh LittleBigPlanet player and Flash enthusiast. Take it.
I think enforcing using real names for all website forums, etc. would help cut out some of the assholes.
Just having seemingly half of our commentators use their real name, we've brought out more intelligent conversations and worthwhile posts.
Hiding behind a screen name is one of the worst features the internet provides.
At any rate,Great morning rant Colin about the A-holes ravaging the net!
I agree completely. Using real names would cut down alot of the BS pretty quickly. I would have if the system let me...For me it just feels better letting people know that I have something say, its important enough and I stand behind it...Thomas Heads
I'm not sure why you see Sony's reaction as hypocrisy. IMO its simply that they've learned their lesson. Plus, the details of each incident are a bit different, so they can't respond the same way in both.
For R1, the game was already released. They couldn't recall the game at that point, and admitting fault was just asking for the offended parties to demand a recall. With LBP they caught it internally before release, so they were in a position to recall.
Calling it cowardice is basically like saying that Sony should be equal-opportunity bastards: "They offended Christians before, they should offend Muslims now." Avoiding bad press and not pissing people off is just good business.
"Given a choice between a single game with shorter race-based campaigns, and a trilogy, most fans would vote for the former."
Well, WarCraft III ended up miserably that way (too many new things crammed into it) so I can understand Blizzard wants to do it more thorough this time while not delaying the main game with another two or three years or so. I would have loved to play all three campaigns at once (and get an extra race in an addon) but this move really isn't that awkward anymore for recent RTS games, just ask that other big name RTS dev Relic.
Besides, too many people and games media seem to glance past the things that will set the campaigns apart from previous Blizzard RTS's, those BlizzCon panels didn't talk about the 'split' alone you know. Just like with DoW II, the first StarCraft II campaign (Terrans: Wings of Liberty) doesn't seem to be your average mainstream RTS campaign at all (more player choices, 3D adventure parts between missions, etc.). In both cases this might just be the boost the genre needed in singleplayer...
As for Battle.net monetising, it doesn't sound like a big issue either, Rob Pardo on Joystiq:
With Battle.Net we're definitely looking at possible different features that we might be able to do for additional money. We're not talking about Hellgate or anything like that. We're not going to tack things on. I think World of Warcraft is a great example to look at. We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren't core to the game experience, they're really just optional things that some people want. It takes us some development work to do it, so it makes sense to charge for it. We would never do something like say to get the full game experience, you'll have to pay extra.
I agree the WoW stuff is controversial though as they already make quite a lot of money out of that.
Great write-up Colin. And I love the pic you chose for it, too. Very, very tasteful.
While I'm not very excited by the prospect of a future where you plug a fleshlight into your DS's GBA slot (Yes, yes, I know...DSi doesn't have one) and connect wirelessly to someone halfway across the world, as someone who has played and enjoyed many a hentai game (there, I said it), I'm glad there are others who are of the opinion that sex will, in some form, continue to become a bigger part of videogames.
Do videogames NEED sex to be good? No. Does it add another level of immersion to the experience if handled appropriately? It does. A lot of people may not agree with me on this subject, but my fascination with h-games is more or less due to the fact that the good ones almost always have excellent character development. I'm always amazed by the dialogue and character interactions in a lot of h-games I've played.
Clearly, there are things we can learn from that niche list of titles.
Why does it seems like all those not truly interested in games help make games targets. I truly doubt an EA product development exec coined the term "dildonics". Just like those crazy terrorist/white supremacist games. When someone compiles a book of nasty/illegal porn national governments don't discuss banning books. I know this is old news and an old discussion, but I appreciate the perspective. I'm going to go take a shower now.
Colin - Thanks for your great industry insight and humor on the GameTheory podcast. It was a favorite of mine for more than a year, even before the GT site. I will miss the banter and the intelligent discussion - something not found on the fanboy podcasts. Best of luck in your Edge endeavors.
I think Nintendo is really smart -- they could easily continue to print money for a few more years without innovating simply on the insatiable demand for Wii and DS alone. Yet they're already developing another market to penetrate. I know that my DS stays at home. Once you've added a camera, well, maybe I'll keep it with me, show my friends, etc.
I've read on Kotaku (I think) that Iwata's goal is one handheld per person - a goal that none would dare contemplate, yet they're on their way to making that a reality, numbers-wise anyway (1 of 6 in Japan own a DS). As for Wii HD, the only chink in their armor is keeping up with graphics - as more sets in the home go HD - this strategy makes sense.
On the Bungie Maddie-thing.
They will sure to get a major spanking for this. I mean, it's almost as scandalous as Keith Richards being caught with pot, right?
In all honesty, it's probably an honest mistake and nothing more. Still it baffles me that no one figured it out before the teaser was released. Just a matter of time before this catches real media attention and Bungie will be stoned in the mainstream media. Not like it will make any major difference to anything though.
I love the cheeky little Gamestop logo riding on the back of that great Wario ad!
About NoA: the problem is exactly as you put it. It's a marketing arm in the USA and nothing more. They are not even capable of "receiving properly" a powerful idea for a new concept and evaluate it (even if to turn it down at the end... it's not about that... it's about demonstrating your lack of power openly). No matter how hard you try, they're admittedly powerless about such things. I'm talking of first-hand experience here.
The problem with that however is at NoJ. They are who don't trust the west and don't want to increase that trust. Somehow they are happy keeping most of the power in Kyoto, and using Reggie's team as a pure subsidiary arm that executes their strategy on the territory. I am one of those who stay impressed with Iwata-san's superior intelligence and vision... But on this one, he is just plain wrong. Somebody lower than him in the Big N chain of command needs to grow a pair and tell him, explain how and why, and suggests ways to fix it.
It's not enough to come out on stage in sunny california and say "you're about to take names and kick asses". The US office should actually also take care of making some AAA games once in a while.
... and don't even get me started about Nintendo of Europe...
Bottom line: NoJ is an awesome company. It now needs to stem some of that awesomeness into its international branches.
PS: You're right about Yves Guillemot. He is a good man. I just wanted to back that statement, as it can't be made about that many successful businessmen in this world; be it the video games side of it or the other.
For the Saints row trailer, why are they playing God save the Queen?
I checked this on wiki. The US uses this tune - as do a number of other countries - for patriotic moments. I recall England and Macedonia (I think) playing each other and this song playing twice before the game. It is known in the US as My Country - very weird for Brits. Google God Save the Queen for an interesting history of the song.
Asking "Why?" in regards to anything Saints Row 2 does implies that there is some method to Volition & THQ's madness.
Do you really take antispore as a serious site? To me it looks like a publicity stunt by EA.
we can only hope....
@Kim_Naroz:
The 360 will definitely not outsell the Wii in any region. That pretty much goes without saying. Month on month, it was outselling 360 threefold. Wii's sales aren't based on price. They are based on popularity of the brand. No matter what games you think people want or what price the 360 is (unless it's 100 dollars less than the Wii, then maybe), it doesn't matter.
Saying the 360 has a better software library is completely disregarding the market that buys the Wii in the first place. You really think the mom and grandpa that bought the Wii really cares about Gears of War? The library isn't the issue at all. It's the strength of the brand. The 360 isn't selling that much better than the original Xbox did in this part of its life. It's not even been outselling the PS3, despite a much lower price than the PS3. What makes you think that lowering the price a bit more will make it sell 3 times more than it currently does? It's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
Also people obviously aren't interested in the features beyond gaming looking at Wii sales. Plus if they were, they'd get a PS3.
Xbox 360 will definitely outsell the Wii in North America...that much goes without saying. Now that the Xbox 360 has a price that is actually lower than the Wii, it is obvious that the Xbox 360 will regain its sales lead in North America.
There are two reasons "why" the Xbox 360 will outsell the Wii:
(1) Xbox 360 has a much bigger and better software library in every genre.
(2) Xbox 360 is now priced lower than the Wii.
Plus, if people are interested in features beyond gaming, the Xbox 360 is by far the best system, because of Xbox Live and all the movies and TV Shows that can be viewed and downloaded to your hard drive.
Are they putting something in your coffee over at Redmond?
The MILF is a gimmick............ When Jaffe speaks people listen !
hi-larious. jaffe is as always, funny as hell. just hope he doesn't vote that way... =^P