I don't even see the hookers

The video game series Grand Theft Auto has been surrounded by controversy since its inception. The original outcry (parodied here) against the game centered around the argument that it taught kids to be hooker-beating carjackers. For those that haven't played the game, hookers serve as a health-boosting game mechanic, but they cost money. However, the player can get his money back if he beats the hooker after having sex with her. That's an optimal situation in terms of advancing towards winning the game.

I don't even see the hookers. I just see a free mechanism for boosting the health of my in-game character, and health is vital for succeeding in the game.

Hopefully people are still reading, because this is where I admit, I'm kidding. I'm not kidding about Grand Theft Auto, that's all true. I'm kidding about not seeing the hookers. Of course I see them, but the point is that non-gamers don't realize how gamers (particularly so-called hard core gamers) see games. Hard core gamers play to win, whatever the victory conditions may be. We all see the hookers, but conceptually and morally we see a health regeneration mechanism. We see 'just a game' and 'just a game mechanism'.

Now, instead of a plea for understanding from non-gamers, I'm going to take a ninety-degree turn and talk directly to game designers about the wallpaper they choose to stick to their game mechanisms.

ATTENTION GAME DESIGNERS: Graphics and theme should not detract from the underlying game.

First, if buying/beating hookers is the only free way to regenerate health, I'd say that detracts from the game, because a lot of people are going to squirm a little at the thought of doing that, even in a game.

Secondly, game concerns should trump graphics concerns. I'm looking at you Halo 2.

Just look at this muzzle flash! It takes up most of the screen. It's impossible to see what is going on. I played a lot of Halo 2 and at first I had a big problem with this, but eventually, I stopped seeing the muzzle flash. Of course it was still there, but it literally became invisible to me. The brain is an amazing organ and visual processing is highly sophisticated. My brain learned to filter out the information-poor, distracting graphics.

There was another controversy recently (this one entirely confined within the gamer community) regarding Blizzard Entertainment's choices about art direction for the upcoming Diablo III. I first heard of this over at Penny Arcade. Apparently the DIII color palette is brighter and richer than previous Diablo games and this has upset some people.

In this fascinating article, Blizzard defends its choices. (Also you can see some nice screenshots of the game, and how some players thought the game ought to look.)

The player-modified images are dark and evocative, but I fully support Blizzard's choices and justification on the new art. The lead DIII designer says of the player-modified images:

Now in terms of the actual texturing, this texturing, where they grayed out everything and it’s very flat and the monsters are all kind of a similar tone — that does not play well. It’s very boring to run through more than a couple of times, and it’s very difficult to tell creatures apart and pop them out of the environment.

That's what I'm talking about. Take a look at an image of Diablo II, which is an even brighter and richer game than DI.

Can you tell what is going on? Maybe. Can you see the player's character? Barely and probably only if you are familiar with the game and know that the screen is always centered on the character, so you know where to look. Maybe that seems not so bad. How about in this image, also from DII?

That's just awful. Nothing to see there. These images don't even show any examples of the horrible loot clutter that ran rampant throughout DII. Few things are worse than destroying your eyes rapidly scanning a text-filled screen to click on that one good item. Hopefully Blizzard fixed that too.

So, that's my 2 cents on the controversy: hurting the player's ability to see should be a Twinkie Denial Condition. Don't do it game designers. Oh yeah, and do we really need to associate hookers with health improvement? That doesn't even make logical sense.

Other tags this item is listed under include: smartamusement, video games,