Hi Jeremy.
I haven't played psycho strike yet sinse I'm waiting for the xp error
mentioned earlier to be fixed, however I was interested to read your
thoughts about violence.
Firstly, I am not sure what you mean by "blocks in place to prevent miners
from playing" sinse practically there isn't a huge amount a developer can
do. Besides, what is exactly a miner seems pretty debatable, hay I was
watching the alien filmes and nightmare on elm street when i was 10 years
old, not to mention playing games like mortal combat and moonstone, and I
was quite fine with the idea that these were games and the difference
between playing a game where I slice someone up with a big nasty blade and
doing the same in reality, likewise violence in and of itself never did, or
indeed never does bother me for just being bloody or graphic.
In the game's description on the Vgstorm website there is the message:
WARNING
The game features violence, drugs, and other themes not suitable for younger
players. We advise that no children under the
age of 16 play the game without parental approval.
Now, on the one hand this message perhaps isn't as prominant or informative
as it could be, however it is there, and other than sticking a message about
the game's content on site I'm not sure what a developer could do, or indeed
what a developer should! do, sinse generally speaking if a miner is old
enough to be browsing the internet and downloading games unsupervised she/he
should be old enough to take warnings seriously.
On the violence and motivation angle more generally, I would say it's a
matter of presentation. I remember a game on our old Amigar computer I used
to play with my friend and indeed my brother sinse it was three players
called rampage. In the game you played three large monsters, a Kingkong
style gorilla, a godzilla like reptile, and a large wolf creature. each game
was a side scrolling city stage full of buildings. to complete each level,
the monsters had to pull down all the buildings by climbing the sides,
punching out sections, eating people who ran out of them etc, not to mention
of course punching and exploding the various police helicopters, tanks and
other puny humans who tried to stop you :D.
Violent? destructive? hell of a yes! you could eat people(and get energy
back), break bridges by stomping on them, eat petral cans and belch out
fireballs, hay it wasn't called "rampage!" for nothing. I had great fun, and
indeed it served as a great way for me to get back at my very evil
specialist school at the time by making believe that was the buildings my
gorilla was smashing up :D.
The thing was the game was most definitely commical! no more realistic in
fact than any real godzilla film.
i'd argue to a great extent the original mortal Kombat and indeed mk2 had
very much the same vibe in a lot of places, sinse the violence was so insane
it definitely had a hint of the hwacky about it, ---- being able to chop
someone in half and leave their legs standing there spurting blood? or
pulling out someone's heart and raising it in triumph?
I could well see how a super destructive crime game could fall into this
sort of patterr, just going completely psycho in an unbelievable insane way,
blowing up everything you come across.
Of course, I have not played psychostrike yet and I admit the idea of
killing someone who says "don't hurt me" does make me a little uneasy,
however from the description of blowing up buildings, pounding on police and
grabbing loot and running, i do wonder if commedy, monty pythoon style
violence was the intent here?
I'm not sure, indeed like everything else it strikes me it comes down to
presentation and style as much as content.
Btw, this is a different point to the idea of violence in a story sense as
you might get in an rpg, and action game or even a serious crime game. heck,
in the grand theft auto series though you must commit crimes to complete the
games the more violence you commit the more the police chase you to the
point that you will be shot and killed by them, meaning that often it's best
to limit the amount of violence needed to carry out each crime your required
to do as you said in your message.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org
If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org.
You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org.
All messages are archived and can be searched and read at
http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list,
please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
