Early morning in the Russian countryside. Outnumbered and abandoned, accompanied by your squad members, you approach a Russian convoy. As you get nearer, word reaches your captain, air support is available. The plane flies over, bombs are dropped, the convoy is destroyed
“That’s bloody outrageous mate!”
Your team cheer in exaltation as you wade through dazed Russians to collect your bounty and continue your mission.
Out of all the repetitive fire fights in dilapidated cities found in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, this was by far the most memorable, but for the wrong reasons.
Playing through Modern Warfare at home this Christmas took the form of a constant quest for justification to my parents that it was more than “just killing people”.
“It’s about strategy, tactics and quick response times. The game is not about killing people, it’s about surviving the fight”.
As the game progressed, however, I found my belief in this line of argument wavering exponentially until I reached the moment mentioned above. What struck me in this instance is that all I was doing was killing people: strategy and tactics amounted to “not getting shot”, and response times to faster killing. In this one instance during the Russian mission you are forced to play through, and rejoice in, the easy murder of a significant number of soldiers. I was genuinely troubled by this moment. It may seem insignificant under the airport level in Modern Warfare 2, but this event lacked any sort of self reflexivity that made the follow-up so much more appropriate.
With the recent, and much discussed, “victory” for video game distribution in California (as excellently grappled with by Line Hollis) thoughts around interactivity, agency and influence are returning to the forefront of video game debates. This piece does not attempt to grapple with these questions, rather, the focus is on agency and activity in the player role, focussing on the recent flash game, The Killer.
Current flavour-of-the-video-game month, The Killer is a flash game, or “notgame”, by Jordan Magnuson as part of his Gametrekking series. It has caught the attention of PC Gamer and Giant Bomb and has garnered a significant play count and heated debate on its home site, New Grounds.
In The Killer the player is tasked with holding the space bar to walk through the Cambodian landscape, from the left of the screen, to the right, forcing a captive prisoner as they go. The “player” must endure this movement for a lengthy period of time until one of three endings emerges. The first is that a landmine explodes, killing both soldier and prisoner. The second, the player shoots the prisoner. Or the third, the player shoots the sky and lets the prisoner escape. (My description hardly does the game justice as the experience of endurance and surprise is no necessary to the game’s ambition, but it’s short, so play it!)
The possible avenues of praise for such a game are rather obvious: it’s anti Call of Duty, it teaches the player of Cambodia’s horror and it has emotional impact unlike anything around at the moment. Yet, for every argument towards the game’s positive potential there is a team of critical responses waiting to attack: this not-game, the argument goes, appropriates one of the most horrific human tragedies of recent times and manipulates it for a ham-fisted attempt at “art” – its emotional impact relies on abusive practices, they say.
As Giant Bomb’s insanejedi states to Patrick, the author of the article: “This isn’t deep or powerful in any way Patrick. It’s cheap. It’s a piece of art…that uses an emotionally impactful scene like a mass grave as a cheap grab at your heart strings to say “You should care about Cambodia”.”
The Killer suffers because people expect it, as a piece of art, to present a totality to the reader – to present a fully formed argument on the matter at hand. But The Killer is so promising because it does not do this. Outside of it’s problematic interpretation of Cambodia’s trouble, the game offers an important view on games as an interactive medium.
The Killer is not fun, nor is it challenging, it is nothing that is normally associated with “video games” – the ‘player’ does little more than hold space bar to watch the action unfold, not too far removed from pressing Play to begin a DVD. As such, this “notgame” urges the player to contemplate the possibilities of the medium that is so persistently tied down by its inevitable focus on AAA titles like Call of Duty. In his interview with PC Gamer, Magnuson discusses his belief that “there’s this whole unexplored world of potential out there”:
I really don’t have anything against fun. But I do think there is a dearth of games that can really be considered meaningful or significant, partly because, as I was just saying, the rules and restrictions of gameplay don’t really lend themselves to exploring those things.
Magnuson has touched on an important issue here. During my stay in Russia in Modern Warfare, I found myself responsible for the deaths of many soldiers but, in the event that opened this editorial, I was not challenged – I was no more of a “player” than I was in The Killer. I sat there, doing little more than pressing play as my team murdered the unsuspecting soldiers. If our mainstream games have been so streamlined into narrative experiences that (thanks to regenerating health et al) the player simply wanders through, unchallenged, then who is to say that The Killer is not an astute critique of the mindless violence found in our AAA titles?
What is most interesting about The Killer is that it is a simple, short, independently developed game with a simple message. There is no totality to Magnuson’s argument, neither to this editorial, nor does it make the world’s most coherent and poignant commentary on Cambodia, or on interactivity in games. It does, however, inspire conversation and discussion around an unavoidable issue that will forever trouble video games and their violent tendencies. Not only this, but it goes some way to promote an understanding of our beloved interactive medium as something with serious artistic and social potential.
Welcome to The Vibrant Popular! | The Vibrant Popular says:
[...] A short meditation on Jordan Magnuson’s flash game – The Killer [...]
Tom Towers says:
Good stuff, though overall I think it shot itself in the foot. I don’t even mind that I was basically watching someone walk right through the whole “game”, but the editorial kinda ruined the message for me. I thought the mass grave actually had a pretty good impact, but then I was immediately whisked away to a rather out of place editorial for such a minimalistic game and given no time to think about what had just happened. Ruined the whole thing for me to be honest, and seems completely unnecessary.
A bunch of pixellated stick figures can be far more effective than a bunch of words and facts I suppose. A separate accompanying editorial would have been acceptable to me, but merging the two together destroys the impact of both because they work on completely different levels.
Fraser Elliott says:
Thanks for the feedback, I’m certainly sorry you feel that way! I tried to aim my writing away from the game itself and toward the conflict it caused in the people who played it: those who felt it was cheap and those who felt it was “art”.
Rather than explaining The Killer, or commenting on its ‘impact’, I thought to focus on the interactivity debate in games on the whole, something which, personally, The Killer made me seriously think about, but something I hadn’t seen written about with regard to the game.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by the “merging together” of the game and the editorial, as I end the piece with a minor dismissal of the game and a promotion of the discussion it provokes, which is, I suppose, what we’re doing now!
Mike Lewis says:
I just ‘played’ it. It definitely makes an impact, but in some ways it is easier to make an impact with something as minimalist as this.
For better or for worse, the likes of Call of Duty aren’t there to help promote interactivity or to engage people in debate. Their aim is to entertain at a relatively base level, and to make mega bucks whilst doing it.
Also, I may have got things confused here, but I was under the impression that when Tom talked about the editorial in his comment, he was referring to the info given at the conclusion of ‘The Killer’, rather than about your piece (obviously feel free to correct me on that one if I’m wrong, Tom!). And I agree to some extent, it comes across a little like ‘bad things happened in Cambodia, and that is sad – do you feel bad for killing in the game now? DO YOU?’ To lay on the moralising with a sledgehammer after what is quite a minimalist work does feel a little jarring.
Though as you say Fraser, it’s obviously done a good job of promoting debate!
Fraser Elliott says:
That makes significantly more sense! I think reading comments 10 minutes after waking up is a bad idea!
With that in mind, I agree with both of you, it lays on the emotional weight a little hard for such a short, internet game and ultimately cheapens any message in the process.
I’m just glad someone is articulating an opinion on violence in games through a game, rather than an overly aggressive article!
Tom Towers says:
Haha, yeah I meant the bit at the end of the game, not your excellent piece! Sorry for the confusion.
Es geht um Erfahrung says:
[...] The Killer – ein sehr kleines Notgame zum Ausprobieren [...]