Fighting Fit Article

Good article. I've definitely noticed a different tone to the mainstream media reporting this time around. Its been refreshing. A lot of media outlets seem to have actually made the effort to find out what GTA was all about.

Now back to LC ... I'm late for a date !

Great article. I'm enjoying both GTA IV and Wii Fit - but then I am a girl...
If I play Wii fit for 30 minutes I feel I can justify playing GTA for the rest of the day!

An excellently written, poignant and optimistic article. However, Jack Thompson's accusations of games being a threatening epidemic isn't far off the truth... regardless of the impact they have, I wouldn't want my children exposed to the likes of GTA, as much as I love it myself. In the words of our former PM, we need education, education, education about the adult nature of such games to parents. We also need a good, quality, suitable substitute, so devs need to be creating this content too. Only then will we be around that corner.

I think one of the most important turning points, in the UK at least, is the Daily Mail giving GTA IV a positive review. Unbelievable!

Wonderfully well written article, very interesting points.

More of this please.

moggsy: I dunno, I'd hardly call that glowing.Yeah, they praise its undoubted technical and creative accomplishments - how could they possibly do anything else? - but they're sure to qualify it every step of the way with jibes about how morally repugnant it is. Certainly, there's nothing in that even attempts to dissuade the average Daily Mail reader that they're anything other than 100% correct about this violent, despicable Grand Theft Auto business...still, things are looking up for the industry in general, as this article illustrates...

"Carefully cosider the nature of the content when you consider buying this five-star, best ever, technically and artistically brilliant British Made sick filth!"

From the Daily Mail, that's about as much as we could ever hope for.

They played it so much they still managed to get his name wrong...

Read the daily mail article. I have to say it reads like a petulant child being forced to apologise for hitting the the smaller children. Not really sorry and making every attempt to show it. Every sentence that points out something positive usually then balances it out by pointing out "you have to kill somone for no reason as soon as possible after doing anything nice......beause the game makes you".

"Critics had feared that Grand Theft Auto IV would be a sickening glorification of gangland savagery. Yet if anything, that turns out to be an understatement.

Prostitution, drug-dealing, criminality and breath-taking levels of casual violence do not so much punctuate the action as constitute almost every second of it.

The knifing of one GTA enthusiast, queueing up to buy his copy this week, has only reinforced the belief that such games are a deeply malign influence on society."

A classic piece of daily mail opener if ever i read one. They finally admit that this is a peice of amazing technology but refuse to even consider that people may not just want to buy it to practice murdering people.

This part particularly annoyed me:
"In fairness, though, the makers have for the first time utilised something that resembles a moral compass."
All the games in this series have never forced you to anything. The moral compas is always your own. If you found even the main missions distasteful you didnt have to do them. I dont remember the previous games painting your fellow criminals as particularly nice people you'd want to meet at a party or discotheque (what is a dicotheque?).
Rant over.
Still not played GTA4. Revision must be done first.

You know, (understandably given the nature of this website - and one which I enjoy, I might add), I'm not sure how helpful it is to have such a bias on this matter. Given it's a safe bet - you're preaching to the converted - but by assaulting us with your own pro-videogame argument you sound no less vehement than the many critics and their diatribes opposing them. Given the questionable ethics of some parents these days, children (who will inevitably end up playing and/or owning 18+ rated games) without an acute sense of right and wrong, whom may feel displaced by, and angry at society for circumstantial reasons, may feel encouraged to reenact the violence displayed in some games as a result of its glamourization and inconsequentiality. Given, games are not the instigator of said acts of violence I agree, but nor do I believe they're completely free from reprehensibility. It's a complex issue deserving more of a philosophical discussion than articles of partiality.

I write this not to be caustic or reactionary; only to encourage healthy debate.

Unclebenny: I agree with everything you said there, with one key exception:
"All the games in this series have never forced you to anything. The moral compas is always your own. If you found even the main missions distasteful you didnt have to do them."

This is a somewhat disingenuous line of reasoning, and I don't think we should have to resort to it. No, you don't have to kill and steal in GTA, but only in the same way that you don't have to try and win the races in Mario Kart, or you don't have to catch any monsters in Pokemon; in other words, committing immoral actions forms the central gameplay concept of the GTA series, and to choose to avoid doing them is essentially to choose to not actually play the game, at least not in the way the developers designed it to be played.

Whether the fictional immorality upon which the game is based affects real life morality is a different matter entirely, of course, but let's not kid ourselves and try to pretend that GTA is a game that offers up a full spectrum of ethical choice. For all the non-violent window-dressing on show, GTA is and always will be a killing and stealing game; to try and deny that makes us just as guilty of twisting facts as the Daily Mail is.

What I would have loved to read with a title like this would have been an article about the critics and so-called experts struggling to rate products like Wii Fit. But alas, an interesting article nonetheless.

RE: Muddtallica
A good point and I ceartainly thought of that when writing but the idea I was trying to get across and possibly failed at (my fault) is that the Daily Mail and co. always paint the GTA games as muder simulators. Yes you can murder people and it is also part of the main storyline but my beef is that they neever mention the option not to. Not one place in that article does it say murder is a choice. That is quite possible to play a paramedic in the vigilante missions for example. It is ceartainly true that you end up killing people and running drugs etc in the main missions but it is the lack of balance that annoys me.
I even used to try avoiding running people over back in GTA3. I just dont enjoy it. Does the DM ever say you dont have to run people over. If you took the article at face value you would assume that this game is only about violence and that yes its a good technical achievement but the DM warned you and it will come back and stab you in the arse if your not careful. I point you to the line

"The knifing of one GTA enthusiast, queueing up to buy his copy this week, has only reinforced the belief that such games are a deeply malign influence on society."

Yes its a good game... but here is concrete proof that it causes violence. Not that violence happens late at night in city centres.
I'm getting quite into this. Never written on a comments page before.

I'm not normally one for writing "good article" and nothing else, because, you know, that's pointless. And why would you care if I like it or not, internet?!?!

But this was such a very good article, I'm going to break with tradition this once:

(ahem)
"Good article! +1"

Just to echo other's sentiments - and not unnecessarily - a very enjoyable read.
Apart from raw fanboyism, it will be interesting to see how sales of GTAIV and Wii Fit compare over the next 2-3 months; being flagship games for very different type of gamers it could give us a rough and ready idea of how the games industry is doing.

Re: The DM (...Crumbs, Chief!) Review - To it's credit, it does point out that "killing is occasionally optional..." which is a surprisingly balanced description of GTA's gameplay. As noted, it does the whole thing through a massive grimace. Hey-ho.

Yep, games are officially no longer the source of all societies ills, say folk that grew up with them and like them.

Social networking sites, mobile phones, reality shows and youtube, on the other hand, wot the kidz like ... that's where the corruption of yoof and downfall of society is at nowadays.

At least until Gen Y also becomes old farts, and then it'll be holograms, flying cars, robots or something else new.

"The only thing history teaches us, is that history teaches us nothing."
- some clever dead bloke

Psycholow:

Given the questionable ethics of some parents these days,

Assumption. You imply by the use of the phrase "these days" that parents in the current era are somehow less moral or ethical than those in bygone eras, but you don't present any evidence or even reasoning to support that claim.

children (who will inevitably end up playing and/or owning 18+ rated games) without an acute sense of right and wrong,

Again, assumption. You're leading on from your flawed opening statement by suggesting that due to the (unproven and dubious) lack of ethical fibre of modern parents, children will grow up without a strong sense of right and wrong. Even if you had any evidence for the first statement, this is still further conjecture that you don't support in any way. Parents often impart a chunk of their moral beliefs to their children - this much is undeniable - but the development of people's morality is heavily influenced by a large number of factors, which you grossly oversimplify for the sake of your argument.

may feel encouraged to reenact the violence displayed in some games as a result of its glamourization and inconsequentiality.

Mother of all assumptions. Having set up two arguments that are completely devoid of evidence - firstly, that modern parents are less ethical than their forebears, and second, that this results in children without a strong sense of right and wrong - you then crown them with a massively contentious statement that you simply can't back up.

Whether people "may" feel encouraged to reenact violence displayed in media is not a question for cod philosophy or pop psychology, it is a question for empirical scientific research. In any rational debate, you can't make that kind of statement without having evidence to back it up - and you don't have evidence to back it up, because the mountains of scientific research into this topic simply don't support your statement. Granted, that research is a work in progress - as all research necessarily is - but the fact that thus far, it's shown up no direct causal link between violent media and violent acts is extremely telling.

Given, games are not the instigator of said acts of violence I agree, but nor do I believe they're completely free from reprehensibility.

Why? Explain your argument. You've clearly got a solid grasp of language, but you shy away from using it to actually justify, explain or provide evidence for any of your statements. If you're going to make statements essentially saying "games aren't the reason, but they're still sort-of to blame", you need to explain the distinction you're drawing and provide some evidence for it - otherwise you simply come across as saying "yeah but no but yeah but..."

It's a complex issue deserving more of a philosophical discussion than articles of partiality.

On the contrary - the very last thing this issue needs is philosophical discussion. It needs cold, hard facts, derived from scientific research into the reaction of the human brain to exposure to violent and sexual media content. Thus far, none of that research supports the position you are taking (and I do respect that you may well be playing Devil's Advocate in that). There are potentially moral questions to be asked in some parts of society about the exploitation of extreme violence as media entertainment - the line between art and commerce in this regard, essentially - but the overall question of whether violent media leads to violent acts is not a moral question, it is a scientific one. Until - and unless - the science is on your side, then games don't really have a case to answer; and I'll continue to write articles that are as partial as I like, because to do otherwise would be to pander to pseudo-science and ill-informed handwringing.

Unclebenny: It's true that there are a pleasingly large selection of non-violent gameplay options available in GTA games, enough to provide a level of variety to what could otherwise have been relentless carnage; similarly, it's also true that if you aren't the most bloodthirsty player in the world (I'm not), then the game accommodates that. Indeed, you could even make the argument that wanton killing in the game isn't only non-compulsory in GTA, it's actively discouraged through the means of increased police attention and the ensuing difficulty spike; the only crimes the game makes you commit are the ones required to further the plot and and your character's progression, which makes it no different from a large number of other games, films and other works of fiction.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't quite go as far as to argue that the game is "balanced" by these aspects of it; as I've said, for all its imaginative yet optional trimmings, the core GTA experience remains driven primarily, perhaps even exclusively, by murder, theft and other forms of violent crime. This case is not comparable to that of, say, The Sims, whose much-scrutinised sexual content can genuinely be considered just one of many different gameplay options open to the player; there are options open to the player in GTA, yes, but criminality and violence are the ones that the game is designed around, and the ones that the game to no small extent glories in. Once again, there is no judgment involved in my statement at all; I'm just stating things the way they are.

Still, Unclebenny, I maintain that what you're saying is broadly correct, and indeed, it's the quote you highlighted above all that demonstrates that the Mail and co. are still very far from judging this situation with anything close to an impartial stance. I do think that there probably are some valid moral questions to be asked about GTA and similar violent media, but I'm sure as hell not going to be reading the Daily Mail for the answers...

Muddtallica: Again i fear misunderstanding between us. when I refered to balance I mean in terms of the DM article. It is the lack of balance in that which annoys me. Even when they "praise" the game theys till cant do it without trying to kicjk it under the table. I ceartinly agree that violence/drugs etc is the main focus of the main story. Its when no other part of the game is mentioned. Its biased journalism from someone who has obviously not played the game, to me seems more like a statement
"you've won this round rockstar but we'll be back. Crimes have to happen and whenn they do we can link them to your evil game faster than we could make up immigration figures"
I think in terms of moral questions about violent media (and im not saying this is a final answer or anything) that it like most things in life is a choice. If you dont like it there is plenty of otherstuff to be doing in life or even plenty of other games to play. I dont like the idea that ywe cant be given the choice to play it as consenting adults. Some people would take this freedom away if they could because they do not like the game. I think the main action that should be taken is for parents to be educated about whats in games. Some will still buy 18 rated games for their children but a bad parent is a bad parent. Their lack of parenting skill is a much larger detriment to their child than any game.

I'd dispute that it's such a great week for gamers. As it is, for non-gamers this week's successes present two very distinct sides of gaming, the success of the murder simulator and the success of the fitness gimmick (as the mainstream see it, anyway). What this all suggests to me is that non-gaming people will continue to feel contempt and scorn for games, but their perceptions of what games are may simply be splitting into those like Wii Fit and those like GTA. I see I'm far from the only one who laments the willful misunderstanding of pieces like the Daily Mail review. Praising its technology is meaningless; many games look nicer, if they'd only look, and are more complex, if they'd take the time to try. Many games are also more basically immoral, I'd imagine (I am forced to wait for the PC version of GTA IV before I can be certain, however). What I understand GTA IV's main appeal to be is its refinement and consistently high quality across the whole playing experience, which that review totally fails to grasp. When mainstream press of that kind begins to praise the experience of playing the game, rather than the prettiness of the polygons, I'll feel they begin to understand games. However, I don't imagine that'll happen for a long time.

I am an anime fan. While I enjoy anime, I also realise that many people do not, cannot and will never enjoy it, so I have long ago given up any thought of it becoming much more popular than it currently is. It has its own merits and its own shortfalls, and if people want to see them, they will, and with that in mind, anime can be enjoyed despite (sometimes even because of) the limitations of the medium, which its creators by and large know and understand intimately. Meanwhile, while some people simply never come into contact with anime, many people who enjoy more mainstream entertainment simply cannot bring themselves to try to understand it as a medium and prefer to remain ignorant, which as long as they are happy and they leave me alone is fine by me. To me, games are not in a particularly different situation; they will never appeal to everyone, and trying to make them do so would destroy what makes them as they are.

Therefore, I for one see success for the likes of Wii Fit as nothing to be happy about; the more resources are assigned to throwaway tat of that ilk, the less remains for developing games that I and most existing gamers will enjoy, and the thinner that is spread, making the likelihood of more things of GTA's quality appearing lower. Wii Fit is certainly not a game in the same way GTA is a game, with no plot, no immersion and no sense of the incredible or the possibility of what is normally impossible.

Maybe someone can set me straight - perhaps GTA IV can be played in different ways. What I think is a shame is that, to my mind, GTA IV doesn't really offer a choice. This is why I think it often gets singled out, rightly or wrongly by the 'moral crusaders'. Personally, I would like to play it as a cop or a detective. Apart from the additional technical challenge of implementing two sides of the story, I don't see why it couldn't offer that option. If it offered a choice then it would be even harder to knock it. I have friends who play Fable as the bad guy, and join the 'bad' side in Warcraft (I haven't played the latter - I know I'd loose too much of my life!). I always play the good side. Just my choice and the one I feel comfortable playing, even when playing alone. Not one I'd want forced on anyone but I like to be able to make it. It seems to me that the argument that you don't have to do the distasteful missions isn't a very strong one - doesn't it mean you don't get to play a large part of the game?

I haven't bought GTA IV. Yet. I had it ordered on amazon, but too late for the initial delivery. I'd been on-off as to whether I'd want it since it was announced. Not receiving it on the release day was the meant I cooled off on the idea again, so I cancelled the order - not out of some over-riding moral outrage, just from a personal sense of uneasiness with the gameplay it seems to suggest to me. I am judging that purely on the gameplay outlined in the (overwhelmingly positive) reviews and videos I've seen to get a preview of what I would be playing.

I played one of the other GTA games for a short while on the PS2. Quite quickly I found I didn't warm to the main aim of the game which appeared to me to be to commit crimes. Consequently I didn't get very far with it. I did enjoy the free-roaming aspect, the fact that it felt like a real city. I did think the characterization / style was immersive for a video game. Plus even on the PS2 I thought the technical implementation was amazing.

I'm not pro censorship in general. I enjoy action movies, movies like the Matrix and Aliens are right up my street. I enjoyed Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - just an example. So it's not that I have a problem with violence per se. (In fact I bought Ninja Gaiden Sigma at the weekend instead - that's hardly a non-violent game. But the opponents are demons and 'bad guys')

Anyway, back (finally) to my point: If it offered the user a real choice as to how to play it I think there would be an even stronger case against its detractors.

As for Wii Fit - well, yes, I do have that. I don't think in the main it's a game in the traditional sense (although I have enjoyed the Ski Slalom and Ski Jump) but I can see its place in home entertainment (and even home fitness). Personally I think there's room for both (as well as many other types) of game - variety is a good thing

Unclebenny: Thanks for clarifying what you meant; I understand now, and I agree with you. :)

YourMessageHere: I'd dispute that it's such a great week for gamers. As it is, for non-gamers this week's successes present two very distinct sides of gaming, the success of the murder simulator and the success of the fitness gimmick (as the mainstream see it, anyway). What this all suggests to me is that non-gaming people will continue to feel contempt and scorn for games, but their perceptions of what games are may simply be splitting into those like Wii Fit and those like GTA. I see I'm far from the only one who laments the willful misunderstanding of pieces like the Daily Mail review. Praising its technology is meaningless; many games look nicer, if they'd only look, and are more complex, if they'd take the time to try. Many games are also more basically immoral, I'd imagine (I am forced to wait for the PC version of GTA IV before I can be certain, however). What I understand GTA IV's main appeal to be is its refinement and consistently high quality across the whole playing experience, which that review totally fails to grasp. When mainstream press of that kind begins to praise the experience of playing the game, rather than the prettiness of the polygons, I'll feel they begin to understand games. However, I don't imagine that'll happen for a long time.

So essentially, you feel that Wii Fit will not encourage any increase in mainstream acceptance of gaming, because non-gamers will simply choose to scorn in it in a different way than they scorn other games? Perhaps that's true in terms of the core hive of technophobes as represented by the likes of Jack Thompson and the Daily Mail, but it remains a demonstrable fact that the likes of Brain Training, Wii Sports and Wii Fit are making significant inroads into the consciousness and perceptions of large swathes of society who previously prided themselves on their complete ignorance and disdain of videogaming. No-one is claiming that this will lead to instantaneous (or indeed eventual) mainstream understanding and appreciation for all of the intricacies of the medium - the Daily Mail review is proof enough of that - but the fact remains that a lot of previously ignorant people have now been given an "in" into the previously daunting world of interactive entertainment, a way of at least forming a basic understanding that such a medium may not be the easily pigeonholed foreign concept they had held it as. In a climate where games had been previously treated as a pernicious force to be picketed, censored and banned, that's nothing but a positive step in my book.

I am an anime fan. While I enjoy anime, I also realise that many people do not, cannot and will never enjoy it, so I have long ago given up any thought of it becoming much more popular than it currently is. It has its own merits and its own shortfalls, and if people want to see them, they will, and with that in mind, anime can be enjoyed despite (sometimes even because of) the limitations of the medium, which its creators by and large know and understand intimately. Meanwhile, while some people simply never come into contact with anime, many people who enjoy more mainstream entertainment simply cannot bring themselves to try to understand it as a medium and prefer to remain ignorant, which as long as they are happy and they leave me alone is fine by me. To me, games are not in a particularly different situation; they will never appeal to everyone, and trying to make them do so would destroy what makes them as they are.

It's interesting that you should cite anime as an example, because the accusations currently being leveled at Wii Fit by games enthusiasts sound striking similar to those made by anime fans about "sellout" kid-friendly anime shows like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh:that they were a cheap, mercenary dilution of the form that would ultimately cause its downfall. Yet here we are, ten years after the Pokemon craze broke, and anime genuinely has become a far more popular and mainstream form of entertainment as a direct result of the ground broken by it amongst general western audiences. I can cite my own young cousins as an illustration of this trend; true mainstream penetration of Japanese and Japanese-influenced has conditioned them from an early age with an acceptance and enthusiasm of the medium, and now they can't get enough of drawing their own manga characters, or seeking out higher quality fare like Spirited Away or Porco Rosso. Hayao Miyazaki hasn't been forced to jack in his trade to start producing Beyblade episodes; indeed, he and his films are far more lucrative and widely appreciated worldwide now than they ever have been.

Therefore, I for one see success for the likes of Wii Fit as nothing to be happy about; the more resources are assigned to throwaway tat of that ilk, the less remains for developing games that I and most existing gamers will enjoy, and the thinner that is spread, making the likelihood of more things of GTA's quality appearing lower. Wii Fit is certainly not a game in the same way GTA is a game, with no plot, no immersion and no sense of the incredible or the possibility of what is normally impossible.

OK, at this point it's starting to sound less like you have any genuinely objective concerns about the future of the medium, and more of an insular paranoia about any games that don't conform to your fairly narrow personal view of what games "should" be. No, Wii Fit is not a game in the same way that GTA is a game; it is, however, a game in the same way that Tetris, Super Mario Bros or Dance Dance Revolution is a game, in that it's dedicated to fun for its own sake, via compulsive, immediately accessible gameplay that compels as a simple, self-contained challenge. Such games have been around for years - indeed, far longer than the atmospheric narrative adventures you emphasise, which are a much more recent offshoot - and have existed up to this point without having killed any other genres with their threateningly non-narrative gameplay. Sure, maybe they have hit a spike in popularity right now, but why should that make us assume that they're going to suddenly consume the entire industry? Certainly, we'll definitely be seeing, or indeed already are seeing, a glut of shoddy rip-offs rushed out to capitalise on this new trend whilst it's still a hot fad, but fads always - always - fade away; once it does, Wii Fit and its progeny will just be another genre, another string to the medium's bow and one that comes with a whole new expanded market, and a lucrative source of revenue and resources. That sounds like good news to me.

Shinji:

I put forward certain assumptions to point out why I thought it was wrong to inform people with such partiality. My argument was mostly about sitting on the fence because - and although the evidence lies with you thus far - one never can tell in an fast-changing society, one where young teens can become pregnant before grasping any sense of who they even are as a person, and so have little experience to draw upon for those children, what affect certain influences will have on people. This is an assumption to a degree, but a reasonable one. Would you not agree that the development of a child relies largely on the quality of its upbringing? Given, there are factors such as friendship, wider family influence, education, experience etc, (all of which are inherently variable), but your definition that games are thus far harmless is one open to falsifiability. And in a world of such exponential change and pace, it is wrong to suggest that games never will detrimentally affect an individual simply because they haven't so far.

In a perfect world I wouldn't even raise any of these arguments. Regardless, empirical research comes only with the passage of time, and with such complexities from which to prove over-arching points as cause and effect, they will never be completely invariable. Is the world better, safer, less fearful than it used to be? Care to find empirical research to prove it one way or another? Whether or not it actually is is almost less important than if it is perceived to be. The responsibility of this lies with those who inform the wider populace, aka the media.

But the question is, do the positives of having violent videogames outweigh the negatives? You say there's no or next to no evidence of the causal connection to suggest violent games have any negative impact. I say there is a far more subtle, ambiguous issues to be explored, one of societal responses and perception - which is ultimately "affect" in any case - pertaining ultimately to the affect on harmony of life.

But let's look at it another way. Say 5 youths took to the streets and did start shooting and stabbing people and when asked said they were inspired by violent game X. Now, no-one for a minute would believe that it was the game which provoked them and that there weren't any underlining factors taking place, but maybe the game gave them the appropriation and freedom to feel that they could behave in this way. Again I must stress that the game by itself does nothing, but could it, to particular people in particular circumstances, become an unwarranted incentive? No doubt you would again assert that it was a one off, particular case and that generally there's no problem. But what if, to those people, it was their inspiration? What if it happened sometime again in the future?

Now of course one can't act to change an event that may or may not happen in the future, but isn’t ultimately sitting on the fence the best way to assess an issue like this rather than dealing with absolutes only? It is in this way one can overlook a potential problem because they are too tenacious to change their own opinion and admit that their belief has, or has the potential to be, falsified. And that is why I think it's better for an website, informing thousands, if not millions, to remain impartial, like the BBC, and let their readers make up their own mind rather than forcing a bias.

Good christ what the bloody hell is going on in here? Can we keep this kind of thing to the forum, please?

Tch!

I neevr understood these weird internet etiquette rules. Whats wrong with posting long comments? I mean this as a serious question I'm not being arsey.
I'm new to this byt he way so please no one have a go at me.

Good piece!

As for Wii Fit - well, yes, I do have that. I don't think in the main it's a game in the traditional sense

Are people losing sight of what 'traditional' games are? I've mentioned before that I think many Wii titles are embracing 'traditional' gaming values far more than any console (although the DS is still ahead in this respect). I started with an Atari 2600 and have owned most consoles since then, the core of many titles across all systems up until the mid to late 90s had been the high-score and/or two player gaming. Over the past 5 or so years I think that aspect has been lost in the main and I've really missed it, but now I'm pleasantly surprised that many Wii games I'm buying embrace the 'traditional' high score aspect to gaming, even if it's slightly disguised in the likes of Wii Fit and Brain Training etc.

I guess I'm just asking 'what is a game in the "traditional sense"?' Because for me personally the Wii is in many ways returning to what I loved about games in the first place, high score tables and superb multi-player gaming.

Don't worry Unclebenny, I was joking. Usually the comments sections are a mess. Reasonable discussions (with lengthy posts) work much better in the main forum, though, generally.

Not that I'm encouraging any of you comments tards to do that ;-)

People will get used to stuff, like they did to radios, TVs and rock'n'roll... shocking, I tell you.

And the game's still more of an 8/10 than a 10/10, if we're talking about journalistic integrity, but whatever.

The Daily Mail review may be slightly grudging in it's tone but it's a massive step forward from outright condemnation and they give the game full marks.

It's as good as it gets, for the moment at least. It's definitely a reason to be cheerful about the media's perception of gaming as an accepted form of entertainment for adults in my opinion.

@ GamerForYears

I played one of the other GTA games for a short while on the PS2. Quite quickly I found I didn't warm to the main aim of the game which appeared to me to be to commit crimes.

You do know what GTA stands for no?

Anyway, back (finally) to my point: If it offered the user a real choice as to how to play it I think there would be an even stronger case against its detractors.

So you'd change the game to satisfy the Daily Mail - even though they would never be completely satisfied?

GTA IV is a great game, one of the best. There is absolutely no reason to change the formula to pander to the media. The best thing you can do is play it and make your own mind up. Yes it is violent, but it's so much more than that.

The forums are a scary place.....

Unclebenny, shouldn't you be revising? Tsk tsk!

The problem lies not in the game, but the idiots who allow minors to play restricted content. I was talking to somebody the other week and they were saying that their 14 year old son was getting really excited about the forthcoming release of GTA4. When I pointed out that it was an 18-rated game they replied that they didn't care.

I wondered, would they allow them to buy alcohol and watch porn? (I know, he probably does all that already. I doubt it's with his mother's blessing though.)

These are the sort of comparisons that need to be made, so parents act like adults when it comes to video games and their kids.

Muddtallica:

As you say, Wii Fit and Brain Training and their ilk are not especially different from certain types of games that have existed for some time. The 'In' has been there all along. What concerns me is the concentration by the industry on attempting to sell the least involving, most throwaway types of games to non-gamers. Gaming is being sold as a fad, and as you say, fads always die. If too much emphasis is put on pandering to this particular fad, I can see it coming back to bite developers when the fad dies. I don't see Wii Fit-alikes consuming the gaming industry, but gaming is a pretty me-too industry. As a PC gamer, I see this very well with the increasing exodus of games that previously would have been on PC to consoles only, GTA IV being a case in point, thanks in large part as I see it to console success not being measured against PC ownership and a lot of bullshit being spouted by the industry about the death of PC gaming and piracy. There are still many PC games, sure, but most really big and well polished games are on consoles only nowadays. I merely point out that the same sort of exodus from traditional to gimmick-based games is on the cards at this rate.

The likes of Mario, Tetris etc. have indeed been around far longer than more complex games, mostly for technical reasons; the equivalent complex games were simply not computer-based at the time Tetris was new. I came late to games, and I will happily admit games like Mario and Tetris have never personally appealed, and while I'll not deny their quality for those who like them, as far as I'm concerned, games with a narrative and immersive presentation are an evolution in every way (It's true, I'd not be sorry if nothing like Wii Fit were ever made again, but I never said I was objective). I don't think I'm going to be too contentious if I assert that most people find a story and characters that appeal to them is more immediately attractive than exercises in logic puzzles and simple arbitrary challenges. This is why I am puzzled and worried by the attempt to sell what many more broadly focused gamers than me see as the purest, most rarified form of the medium to those with no prior interest in it [EDIT: see Secombe's comment above; this is not how non-gamers feel, and not at all what I like in games]. Using games to tell different sorts of stories that appeal to different sorts of people seems an alternative approach that nobody seems interested in exploring, and to my mind if it were successful, that would be a much more solid inroad to gaming for non-gamers.

With regard to the anime analogy, anime is also suffering from its popularity. Financially, anime may be more successful, but in terms of quality, it's significantly down across the board. Pokemon may (I'd dispute the claim but it's arguable) have provided an inroad for many who are anime enthusiasts today, and it's true to an extent that Studio Ghibli is still a pinnacle of excellence. What has suffered is the middle ground. Anime TV series are increasing in quantity and nondescriptness, and decreasing in quality and originality, plus there is an increase in remakes, rehashes and inferior sequels are coming out, as studios attempt to widen their audiences. Studio Ghibli are the Rockstar of anime; they have the mixture of prior success, cash, reputation and a distinct style and focus that essentially guarantees high quality and high sales. On the other end of the scale, Pokemon and similar is indeed going strong in the way it always has. It is smaller studios in the middle that end up making more generic stuff that appeals less, simply because more attention is spent on making larger profits through appealing to more diverse audiences than on making a genuinely excellent product that is good enough for people of any demographic to want to buy it. The same amount of resources, more or less, have been spread thinner, and some anime studios and overseas distributors have already suffered cancellations, cuts and closures. The end result: the same quantity of both cheap kiddy series and excellent Ghibli films, and TV series that are more numerous but correspondingly less interesting or vital - that is, possessed of less of the things that make them quintessentially 'anime' - than they were. That, again, seems to me like the direction gaming seems to be going, and I don't like it.

Swedish sofa's are a deeply malign influence on society too.

Ban this sick filth.

A prime example of the hypocitical nature of much of the country's media, as metioned in the article. No one blamed IKEA for destroying the moral fabric of society.

YourMessageHere:As you say, Wii Fit and Brain Training and their ilk are not especially different from certain types of games that have existed for some time. The 'In' has been there all along. What concerns me is the concentration by the industry on attempting to sell the least involving, most throwaway types of games to non-gamers. Gaming is being sold as a fad, and as you say, fads always die. If too much emphasis is put on pandering to this particular fad, I can see it coming back to bite developers when the fad dies. I don't see Wii Fit-alikes consuming the gaming industry, but gaming is a pretty me-too industry. As a PC gamer, I see this very well with the increasing exodus of games that previously would have been on PC to consoles only, GTA IV being a case in point, thanks in large part as I see it to console success not being measured against PC ownership and a lot of bullshit being spouted by the industry about the death of PC gaming and piracy. There are still many PC games, sure, but most really big and well polished games are on consoles only nowadays. I merely point out that the same sort of exodus from traditional to gimmick-based games is on the cards at this rate.

I'll definitely agree that excessive emphasis on the current casual gaming fad is a financial and creative dead end that would certainly bite developers in the ass if they chose to go down that path - precisely why I don't believe it will happen. Yes, all the newspapers and Tesco mums are cock-a-hoop about Wii Fit right now, but whilst I do think that this surge in casual interest will do a lot to bring new games players on board and break down a lot of the barriers that previously existed between the gaming and non-gaming communities, I don't think that it'll last long enough to dictate control of the overall industry away from the thirty-year-old traditional games playing market. Sure, a lot of people are buying into gaming as a fad right now, and when that ends, they'll leave, taking out any developer stupid enough to base their business practices upon that fad with them; many others, however, will remain on board, and simply be subsumed into the wider games market. More to the point, though, you seem to be forgetting that gaming is as much a artistic industry as it is a business; shifting emphasis wholesale onto throwaway casual titles might turn a few bucks in the short term, but would creatively alienate far too many core gamemakers and gameplayers for it to be a viable long term plan. The development of gaming as a creative industry has always been about the broadening of horizons, the removal of limitations and the expansion of the scope of what's possible: hence the constant drive more processing power, hence the exploration of new means of control, hence the relocation of titles with potential to the most mainstream formats, hence the pursuit of new markets and genres with new sorts of game. Maybe the money men in charge of the industry's purse-strings are cynical and mercenary enough to throw away thirty years of progress for an easy buck, but I guess I'm just not that pessimistic.

The likes of Mario, Tetris etc. have indeed been around far longer than more complex games, mostly for technical reasons; the equivalent complex games were simply not computer-based at the time Tetris was new. I came late to games, and I will happily admit games like Mario and Tetris have never personally appealed, and while I'll not deny their quality for those who like them, as far as I'm concerned, games with a narrative and immersive presentation are an evolution in every way (It's true, I'd not be sorry if nothing like Wii Fit were ever made again, but I never said I was objective). I don't think I'm going to be too contentious if I assert that most people find a story and characters that appeal to them is more immediately attractive than exercises in logic puzzles and simple arbitrary challenges. This is why I am puzzled and worried by the attempt to sell what many more broadly focused gamers than me see as the purest, most rarified form of the medium to those with no prior interest in it [EDIT: see Secombe's comment above; this is not how non-gamers feel, and not at all what I like in games]. Using games to tell different sorts of stories that appeal to different sorts of people seems an alternative approach that nobody seems interested in exploring, and to my mind if it were successful, that would be a much more solid inroad to gaming for non-gamers.

I'm afraid I do find that a hugely contentious point, because as far as I'm concerned, those "exercises in logic puzzles and simple arbitrary challenges" are nothing less than the absolute basic foundation points that define what videogames are as a medium. The hint lies in the terminology itself; they're games that you play, as with a sport or a toy. There's a reason that the earliest games that defined the industry, such as Pong, Donkey Kong and Tetris, are plotless visual puzzles, reaction tests and competitive challenges, and it's not simply a technical issue; it's because gaming, at its heart, was never conceived of as a narrative or expressive medium. It's a recreational activity, like football, poker or Scrabble, and as such are geared above all else to be fun tactile experiences with well-designed internal rules, clear goal-and-reward structures and an interactive sense of challenge. Sure, a lot of games these days do also include stories, and they're often well-told, involving and emotional stories that really enhance the experience and the connection between the player and the gameworld, yet they accomplish this with narrative tricks and devices which are exclusively borrowed from other storytelling mediums. Grand Theft Auto IV is currently being praised for its "Hollywood-style" scripting and acting, but what is actually makes it a game as opposed to a film are the shooting and driving challenges; The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has stellar art direction and a moody score, but the actual playing of the game is still based upon maze-solving and reaction tests; even the plot-centric likes of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango, for all their fantastic humour and imaginative stories, still couldn't call themselves games if they too weren't built upon ""exercises in logic puzzles and simple arbitrary challenges".

From that perspective, then, I'm afraid I can't quite understand the argument that the medium could be better sold to non-gamers through pursuit of "more diverse storytelling". Why on earth would consumers who have demonstrated no interest in the core principles of gaming be enticed by prettier window-dressing, especially when that window-dressing has been borrowed wholesale from mediums they are already more than happy with in the first place? My mum, for example, really likes spy thriller films, but I know she'd have no interest in playing a spy thriller game, even a really well-written one; she doesn't like playing games, so why would she ever choose that over watching a film, especially considering that the only bits she might have enjoyed about the game would have been stolen from films anyway? It's a Trojan horse approach, dressing a wolf in sheep's clothing, and it's clear that the non-gamers aren't falling for it; unless, of course, you're suggesting that games developers should be seeking to reduce the "game" aspects of gaming at the expense of the story, which to me seems a far more egregious betrayal of the medium than a few minigame compilations could ever be. The approach taken by Wii Fit, to me, seems like the one with by far the most integrity; it's taking gaming, in your words, in its purest, most rarified form and presenting it to non-gamers minus all the daunting trimmings, in a way that they can understand for the first time. I'm not saying that the middle-aged house-husbands currently tapping away at Brain Training will be blasting you away on CoD4 tommorow or anything, but the fact remains that people are learning why games are fun both on their own terms and on the medium's own terms. As I've said, good news, as far as I'm concerned.

With regard to the anime analogy, anime is also suffering from its popularity. Financially, anime may be more successful, but in terms of quality, it's significantly down across the board. Pokemon may (I'd dispute the claim but it's arguable) have provided an inroad for many who are anime enthusiasts today, and it's true to an extent that Studio Ghibli is still a pinnacle of excellence. What has suffered is the middle ground. Anime TV series are increasing in quantity and nondescriptness, and decreasing in quality and originality, plus there is an increase in remakes, rehashes and inferior sequels are coming out, as studios attempt to widen their audiences. Studio Ghibli are the Rockstar of anime; they have the mixture of prior success, cash, reputation and a distinct style and focus that essentially guarantees high quality and high sales. On the other end of the scale, Pokemon and similar is indeed going strong in the way it always has. It is smaller studios in the middle that end up making more generic stuff that appeals less, simply because more attention is spent on making larger profits through appealing to more diverse audiences than on making a genuinely excellent product that is good enough for people of any demographic to want to buy it. The same amount of resources, more or less, have been spread thinner, and some anime studios and overseas distributors have already suffered cancellations, cuts and closures. The end result: the same quantity of both cheap kiddy series and excellent Ghibli films, and TV series that are more numerous but correspondingly less interesting or vital - that is, possessed of less of the things that make them quintessentially 'anime' - than they were. That, again, seems to me like the direction gaming seems to be going, and I don't like it.

I've been typing this for ages now and am really mentally fatigued, so I don't have very much to add to this other than that, whilst this is a valid concern, it's just something that you live with. Increased popularity means increased demand, which means increased productivity, which often leads to decreased quality; that's capitalism, and it's something that always happens across every industry, creative or otherwise, especially from the mid-to-low level producers. Nevertheless, I still see it as a glass-half-empty, glass-half-full situation; increased popularity means increased financial and cultural recognition of the genuinely good stuff, which means increased revenue, which can equally lead to increased resources and more creative autonomy to produce more good stuff. Why not focus on that? As you can probably tell, I do consider myself an optimist on this front, so I prefer to judge these industries on their best excesses, rather than their worst; right now, when I look at gaming, I see the top-level developers, the ones upon whose creativity the rest of the industry is based, flourishing like never before, consolidating core concepts and trying risky new ideas and meeting huge success in both endeavours. Naturally, it could all go pear-shaped from this point, quite possibly for the reasons you've highlighted, but we'll just have to wait and see, I guess. I just think there's every reason to do so with confidence.

Where we differ, then, is in what we want from games and what we see them being basically for. I play games to have experiences that are impossible to otherwise attain. The logic puzzle and tactile challenge aspects of certain games are, from my POV, things game designers put in to appeal to gamers who like other sorts of experiences. To me, GTA's tests of driving and shooting can occasionally be amusing but they largely represent an obstacle that I need to get past in order to continue the narrative and at the same time gain the run of the entire city, because what I like most of all in GTA is seeing what the story has to offer, and then after that, simply wandering about, exploring the world. I for one do not like games such as poker or football and I avoid computer games that concentrate on offering similar experiences; for me the fact that what we buy to play on computers are called 'games' is one of the biggest stumbling blocks the industry faces.

My mum also loves spy films; my mum also refuses to play games. I talked this out with her at one point and it emerged that basically she does not like games because they are games, still based on reaction tests and repetitive actions. She was initially unaware that computer games had stories, because why would a game have a story? Nothing that is done to dress up the basic attributes of a game will make her interested in them. Wii Fit, Brain Training and the like represents the industry's failure to deal with the fact that not everyone likes 'game-like' games (for want of a better term) but that what games can be is much more than that.

I'd still assert that pong and donkey kong happened first purely because of technical limitations. The idea of playing with narrative is not new; Dungeons and Dragons, to my knowledge the first real RPG, was invented in 1970 IIRC. Text adventures evolved alongside more game-like games, but for whatever reason, they either died out or turned into the likes of Monkey Island.

Reading or film watching, after all, is just as much an activity as playing a game. A child can play with Lego or other imagination-based toys just as legitimately as playing a tactile/reaction-based game. I for one play a 'what now, what if' game in my head all the time when I read a book or watch a film. What I am talking about, broadly, is making Hollywood text adventures, fully graphical Choose Your Own Adventure books, games (again, for want of a better term) in which people can influence or create their own storyline, and making them in genres that games usually don't approach - period drama, for example, or romantic comedy. This would not represent an "egregious betrayal of the medium", it would be another evolution, and far more of one than recycling the same basic ideas that games have used for 30 years with a balancing peripheral.

My glass is half empty. I'm happy you like the industry now, but I see too much money being spent on too many games with too little quality, I see innovation wasted and conservatism praised, I see smoke and mirrors and lies everywhere, I see rampant inefficiency, laziness and waste, and I see creativity and good ideas trumped time and again by pursuit of even more money. Some good stuff still slips through, but I'm buying, and wanting, fewer and fewer games.

Oh, and thanks for your time; this is interesting =)

YourMessageHere: Thanks to you, too, for your well-written and reasoned replies. This has been an interesting and challenging debate, and it's something of a shame that I'm going to have to call it quits at this point, because, well, I'm pretty much spent. :P Running my last two posts through Word, I just realised I've now typed 1821 words on this subject, which is almost a third of the length of my dissertation, but perhaps more importantly, is almost two-thirds the length of the history essay that I was supposed to have been spending this time writing. :( Still, I feel at this point that I've said everything that I want to say on this topic, and judging from your last post, it seems to me that we've reached a point of mutual understanding, if not agreement, and that's all I really ask from a discussion.

Before I leave you to return to the "fascinating" world of post-Maoist reform, I'd like to ask if you've ever heard of or tried a freeware PC program called Façade? If not, I would urge you to download and play through it, or least have a look at the trailer; I think it'd be right up your alley, as it's essentially an experiment in creating the kind of electronic narrative and truly interactive drama that you seek. It's a single scene, dialogue-and-response-based scenario that casts you as a friend and visitor to the apartment of an affluent urban couple for a relaxed soiree that quickly degenerates into a full-scale marital breakdown; through your typed communication, behavioural choices and levels of interaction with the quarreling pair, you can probe their personalities, guide the direction of events and effect different conclusions. Since it's a freeware program, the execution isn't 100% flawless, but it remains a pretty fascinating look at a truly new kind of narrative and dramatic form that's only made possible by the direct interaction and artificial intelligence that a computer can provide; it's also a distinctly different and altogether more artistic approach to the interactive medium than anything the mainstream industry is offering. Whilst I would still hold that software of this kind represents more of an offshoot/separate evolutionary pathway from traditional videogaming than a direct continuation of it, and I wouldn't necessarily like to see this kind of thing ever fully take the place of game-based software, it nevertheless remains a fascinating alternative direction that I would be very interested to see followed through in greater detail. To my mind, there can and should be a place in the industry for both...

Hell, I'm also dividing my time between writing my essay on Japanese feminism in the '70s and my more episodic essay here on narrative in games. I'll certainly have a dig around Facade, looks broadly like what I'm talking about, ta muchly for the link.