Aaaanyway. Very good article. Regardless of anyone’s stance on the particular issues in this or any other game, you absolutely hit the nail on the head when you said “the politics of games are not only a legitimate subject of criticism, but are in fact something critics should feel obligated to address.” I mean, I stood up and cheered when I read that.** Most game criticism, professional and especially amateur, is painfully knuckleheaded.

Eight thumbs up.

*that I bothered to read
**figuratively speaking

What I am a bit less clear on, and this is important to me, why does it matter that they were minorities? Would the game be any worse if they had been an ethnically diverse crowd of thugs that you viciously murder with rocket launchers? I would not argue that the game was violent, but having put a fair bit of time into the game, the question I’m asking myself isn’t ‘why am I playing a game that encourages me to murder immigrants’. It’s ‘Why am I enjoying a game that is literally nothing BUT mass murder’.

The fact is, reviewing my own behavior? I’m not concerned about the fact that the Volks are clearly slavic. In fact, I was surprised by the Shai-Gen faction, because they were NOT stereotypical Asian villains. In fact, with the exception of a few bosses, they weren’t Asian at all. The majority of the security guards I kept killing had a Texan accent, I think I may have even offed a few Brit’s in there somewhere.

What concerns me is my own complete disregard for any of the computer controlled organisms in the game world. Frankly, in crackdown, you play a rampaging psychotic who has absolutely no reason to avoid collateral damage. That’s the soulless part to me, that where GTA is a sandbox game where you get immersed in the criminal underlife, Crackdown is a sandbox game where literally everything in the world is either someone you can kill but shouldn’t, someone you can kill and should, or something you can use to kill people with.

So I’m not arguing with your take that the game is pretty twisted, I’m curious why you chose to focus on the fact that you are mass murdering racial stereotypes (as opposed to the fact that you are committing mass murder in the first place).

You get it: Games are all about *fun*. Annoyances get in the way of fun, and therefore annoyances of all stripes — technical and psychological included — are legitimate targets in game reviews. As long as game companies keep stuffing annoyances into the box, reviewers ought to keep calling them on it.

It’s too bad the gaming sites haven’t figured it out yet.

I guess that’s why I read your blog and ignore the gaming sites.

Cheers,
Tom

But let me bring up just a few great games that come to mind that are NOT mindless violence

* Guitar Hero
* Brain Age
* Wii Sports
* Katamari Damacy

You instead want attempts at storytelling? Sure: Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, KOTOR, Fable (to a lesser extent)

So it seems to me we’re perfectly capable of more or less mindful entertainment.

Oh, and don’t call me Mr. Blum – I’ll be looking for my Dad

While it’s true that out of the total number of games created and sold, relatively few can be characterized as vile amoral adolescent fever-dreams, it has also been my observation that it is exacly those few that are constantly put up as the cream of the industry:

- GTA
- Gears of War
- God of War
- Devil May Cry

Games with tamer material, especially if made by Nintendo and not called Zelda are almost universally greeted in a way that is less enthusiastic.

I am as guilty as anyone for occasionally indulging in this sort of entertainment. I’m sure I’m worse about this than Mr. Blum. Still, I don’t think it’s completely unfair to paint the industry as a whole with an adolescent brush. Especially when they take themselves oh-so-seriously sometimes.

I think it’s time for some Paper Mario.

I never felt like a policeman in Crackdown. I was just a mass-murderer with a “Get out of jail free” pass. And frankly it got pretty boring after the first few boss fights.

A game that took a similar topic and did it properly was Mercenaries. The criminals were actually distinct criminals, but more importantly you were rewarded for NOT slaughtering them. Trying to capture them alive and bring them to justice not only made the game morally better, but made it much more fun. I wish Crackdown had an option like that, or some other strategy besides “Jump to the red arrow as quickly as possible and kick to death.”

With the complete dearth of story, I don’t think that making all the enemies in Crackdown white Americans would have helped at all.

(Why does everybody keep bringing up the “great engine” argument, by the way? I’ve never discussed the technical merits of the game)

And again, if you criticize the entire industry, it *is* additional fodder for the pro-censorship camp. Which is why I asked to keep that in mind. Don’t attack an entire group if you just meant to attack a few.

Yup. Which is “Gaming’s Stillborn Conscience”. I’m sorry, maybe less inflammatory produces a better debate?

Second, I categorically reject the idea that because the video game industry feels threatened by some of the reactions to their games, critics should ignore (or worse, laud) games that are morally or ethically repugnant.

I don’t believe that has been said _anywhere_ in the comments.

I haven’t seen a single word discussing the game’s very explicit theme of immigrant-killing cop.

Not. One. Goddamn. Word.

Yes. When you have TV series like “The Shield” glorified as “great TV”, are you _really_ surprised?

So if you think that my review has “gone wrong” by addressing this issue head on
I think it’s great you adressed the issue. I object to being grouped with the people who wrote Crackdown. This is not the conscience of an entire industry. This is not even a large part of the industry. There are a few high-profile pre-adolescent fantasies, and I’m sick and tired of hearing that that represents the industry at large.

The title may be hyperbolic, but I definitely agree with Peter that something’s definitely wrong when it’s not legitimate to discuss these issues — as he mentioned, this is basically the onlyCrackdown review that even mentions the icky moral theme of the game.

It may not be entirely fair to condemn the whole industry for that, but it’s more than a little creepy for people to claim that discussing that theme at all is inappropriate.

If you want to take the post title as a direct personal assault against yourself, nobody can stop you, but I do think you’re overreacting to it more than a little.

Because, when you choose to paint an entire profession with broad strokes,(“Gaming’s Stillborn Conscience”) you better provide insights into the underlying issues – not just one example. Otherwise it’s simply inflammatory and not to the point. I’d have never brought up these points if the article wasn’t headlined this way.

And the movie industry doesn’t freak out because Ebert & Kael usually don’t accuse the entire industry of having no conscience, just because one crappy movie gets produced. (That, and they’re smart enough at lobbying that they’re not as much under pressure as games.)