The Brainy Gamer Blog recently presented a very fair analysis of the violent receipt of a review of Metroid Online: Other M for Wii, released on the G4tv.com website. As noted by Brainy Gamer, Abbie Heppe, author of the criticism was probably far from suspecting that his text would generate a flame war so violent over 500 comments. The criticism itself is about the inconsistencies in the continuity of the Metroid saga, and the decision of the team of external developers to previous episodes to suddenly Samus, the heroine of the series, a woman vulnerable and submissive, binary to psychology, while the decisive episodes the story is that Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission, Samus appeared as a hothead in the past and sensitive to the complex moral dilemmas in which his position instead:
In short, you're Asked To Forget That The Last Samus has Spent 10-15 Years On solitary missions ridding the galaxy of Space Pirates, The Universe and saving Surviving On Her Own as a bounty hunter. Instead, Other M Expects you to accept Her as a submissive, child-like and self-doubting little girl That Can not Possibly wield The Amount of power she possessive UNLESS directed to by a man.Where it gets strange is in the violence and contempt of readers' response to this criticism G4tv.com banal and legitimate. Analysis of Brainy Gamer constructed a typology of summary comments. It identifies four broad categories of arguments:
1 - violently misogynistic comments like "video games done for the guys, it's been that women, eh, stagger;
2 - arguments of type" video games are a form of entertainment without the complexity of the characters is secondary;
3 - arguments about "the video game critic should focus exclusively on the pleasure to play and the realism of the graphics, not on the account;
4 - Finally, a type of argument quite singular, which concerns the nature of the game, an argument could be summarized as "the game world created by the developers is completely independent, and asked that the criticism as such, for his only consistent with itself, without adding anything to the outside. "
Brainy Gamer The analysis stops here, at the termination of the primary rejection of criticism and concludes in advocacy for the video game industry appears more sensitive to bad reviews that this type of comment . But anyone who has read a bit and Adorno Horckheimer and media criticism has yet much to be rather distraught. Because these arguments against the critics are even those of submission to dominant forms of power: on one hand it minimizes the value of its cultural and social events while on the other, it enhances the value exhilarating experience individually they provide.
What is terrible here is the lack of criticism even within the collective submission of the game, which Adorno and speak Hockheimer, called a power structure, a kind of alignment of all bids into each other. In fascism, the individual power, the power family, institutional power and political power all aligned on the same model of domination by a larger majority on minorities in general lower. In Metroid: Other M, what is wrong is not only sexist submission in which it plunges Samus, suddenly became the vehicle without the personality of military power, but more importantly, as pointed criticism Abbie Heppe, which obliterates complete history and rich and complex personality that made Samus's character so fascinating in this series. It is thus relegated to a scenario that renewed a banal sexism, completely invisible and generic, so generic that 500 reviewers Site G4TV even refuse to see, literally making themselves complicit in this revisionist enterprise.
This invisibility is dangerous because it is so effective as to renew the relations of power and submission as to neutralize any possibility of critical thinking. Because it is always difficult to criticize what nobody wants to see. As such, the Grand Theft Auto series is more moral and healthy in its exacerbation of violence as antisocial behavior that she presents are given to instantly see all their cruelty. This is the reason Grand Theft Auto which creates such a stir in the mass media with each new issue: it asks questions that the mainstream media, aligned to the defense of conformism and submission banal, fail to ask. Unlike Grand Theft Auto, a game like Metroid: Other M will never cause such an uproar, it does not pose the problem of the bid, he reaffirms rather in its least offensive, most durable and most damaging in giving a pleasant experience, made of realistic graphics and a gameplay dynamic and fun that reminds us that the humiliations and abuses of power are serious when they are integrated into a narrative, without giving us the opportunity to criticize the legitimacy and, above all, the history of this story.
Such a game is borderline culturally irrelevant and that is what makes the analysis of Brain Gamer so maddening. Because for a moment, through the comments to a coherent critique violent, impulses of power in our own time have revealed.
It is interesting that Boing Boing, where one could read an account of Gamers Brain article, headlined his note " Games not art after all, say angry gamers " by focusing his summary on the conflict between critics who would see in video games an art form in itself and on the gaming community that accepts its artistic value when it offers a positive legitimacy to video games. From this observation, we can still measure the displacement that has occurred in recent years. The question of the artistic value of video games is here completely returned. While until recently the conflict was between the legitimation snobbery institutional representatives of the great culture and determination of cultural critics sometimes naive enthusiasm to assign artistic, we are here before a more decisive epistemological debate between those same critics are now calling accounts ideological and aesthetic to video games and a population of enthusiasts who refuse to blatantly a responsibility that they can more increasingly difficult to deny. About violence in their will prevail.
Link "Backlash," the note Brainy Gamer . Link to criticism of Metroid: Other M and comments on G4TV.com.
0 comments:
Post a Comment