Co-operative schmoperative.

One of the best things about finishing a draft of the book (especially since I’m probably never going to make any money off of it, so I need to take the positives where I can), is that I can start playing games again relatively guilt free. I’m pretty stoked that this freedom coincides neatly with the release of Gears of War 3 on the Xbox. Normally I’m not one for threequels, either as a concept or a portmanteau, but the Gears series holds sentimental value for me beyond the fact you get a chainsaw attached to the bottom of your gun. (Gunsaw. Now that’s a wordwhich. I mean portmanteau.)

Gears is a co-op game, and I’ve played through the first two with my long-suffering and now sadly ex-housemate Joe (I moved out, he didn’t die). The games themselves are fun to play (gunsaw!) but I enjoyed them primarily because it was a diverting and occasionally hilarious bonding experience. I sincerely hope Joe feels the same way – it won’t be nearly as fun playing it without him – but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s dreading the experience. You see, I’m a terrible co-op player.

When it comes to Gears I have a specific condition known as ‘chainsaw blindness.’ If I’ve got the gunsaw, I feel like I really ought to use it, and the satisfaction of slicing a big monster into chunky salsa is much greater than just plugging him full of bullets from across the room. The satisfaction is roughly the same each time, which means I feel compelled to do it to every enemy I see. The only problem is that in a game designed almost completely around taking cover behind things and shooting at other things, wandering around the room waving your gunsaw (still not getting tired of that) at monsters tends to get you shot. A lot. And that means your co-op buddy has to bring you back to life. A lot. Or get swarmed by bad guys you were supposed to be helping with and dying himself. A lot. Which sends you back to the next checkpoint. A lot.

Joe, saint that he is, mostly suffers this in silence. He also kindly ignores my tendency to throw explosives at his feet, when I begin personal vendettas with specific bad guys at the expense of everything else, my shameless thieving of all the good weapons and ammo, and my categorical refusal to snipe people even when the game demands it (“but it’s booooring!”).

I also play co-op games with my youngest brother, whose patience (perhaps correctly) is far more limited. We therefore tend to play the sort of hack-everyone-to-pieces fighty games that don’t really require a huge amount of teamwork bar you being on the same screen. Rather than a pairing of valiant heroes fighting side by side, we operate as two desperate individuals fighting against impossible odds... several feet apart from one another. We’ve made an executive decision to stay away from co-op shooters (his preferred name for ‘chainsaw blindness’ is ‘Joshua being a dick’).

I’ve also been known to deliberately sabotage team efforts for the sake of humour. Which is fine if everyone else finds it funny, but as I have what might charitably be described as an individual sense of humour, it’s really only me that sees the funny side. Imagine my joy when I discovered that in Little Big Planet one could grab onto the other players as well as ledges and buttons and suchlike. It looks like I’m not going to make that leap! And now neither are you, because I’m clinging on to your shins!

This problem with co-operation stems not from competitiveness (I get it world, I suck at stuff), but from what might be termed ‘fun-blindness.’ In that, I’m blind to everything that isn’t fun. Fun for me. The most important guy in the equation. Pick that thing up! Hold that checkpoint! Leave me that medkit! Pass me the ball! Um... sorry, can’t hear you over my GUNSAW! Wait, we’re dead again? Shit, sorry mate. It happens in real life too: I’m that guy that runs backwards and forwards in the penalty box, demanding the ball, even though you know, the referee knows, everyone knows that the opposition goalie has a better chance of finding the net than he has.

It’s not that I’m ignoring other people’s needs, I’m just... not exactly paying attention to them. Which is weird, because I much prefer co-op games to anything else. And it’s a bit of a shame because when I can be forced to concentrate I can be a useful team player, both in sport and in video games. I have all the basic skills, I just need to be reminded to deploy them in a way that actually benefits... anyone at all. That’s when the whole thing gets more rewarding, because it’s about group achievement as well as individuality, and when it comes to individual achievement in video games you can really do that all by your onesie.

Joe’s got it figured. He uses me as what he generously calls a ‘diversion,’ but perhaps might be better described as ‘bait.’ We (and when I say ‘we’ I of course mean ‘he’), beat the final boss in the original Gears with a sublime headshot, while I crouched behind a barrel, out of ammo, blindly dry-firing my pistol and muttering “dontkillmedontkillmedontkillme.”

We shared the credit equally, because that’s the kind of guy he is. I can’t wait to play it again.

Grief and upgrades

I learnt a new word the other day. Well, actually I try and learn a new word every day, to infuriate and patronise my friends, but this word was a little different, as it hinted at a concept – and beyond it a subculture of sorts – that I never knew existed.

The word was ‘griefer,’ and I doubt very much that it’s in the OED. I ran into it on the fun and informative website TVTropes, a place where any writer of fiction can easily while away a deadline or three learning about the cultural archetypes that help stories work (if you haven’t already clicked on the hyperlink I recommend postponing it until you have no pressing engagements, appointments, workloads or meals that you need to get through. The website is high-octane procrastination fuel).

A griefer is, in the simplest terms, someone who gains enjoyment from ruining other people’s experience in organised play. Basically, they fuck up videogames for their own pleasure. A police artist's sketch:

The term exists mostly in online videogame forums and chatrooms, where its existence is much debated and derided. The TVTropes page has an incredible list of observed ways that a griefer might muck about with your videogame experience.

This isn’t my first encounter with a completely new cultural concept on the internet, but it’s not like I’m at the bleeding edge of online memes. I’d do better in a 4chan message board than, say, my dad, but I’m hardly a huge presence on the information superhighway, or whatever they call it now. But I’m interested in the concept of a ‘griefer’ because it might be a completely new way of expressing oneself.

My first point is this: what exactly did griefers do before the opportunity to spoil other peoples games existed? Online gaming provides the twin buffers of distance and anonymity; annoying someone over the net might result in hurled obscenities, threats, or at most in a ban from the game being played. Beyond that, the person you’ve pissed off is stymied; they’re unlikely to show up and egg your house, for example. In ‘real life’ no such buffer exists: if you deliberately puncture someone’s football there’s nothing to stop them from pounding the snot out of you in retaliation. At the very least, you won’t be allowed to play, and here another difference from online games becomes apparent: because there are millions of games on thousands of servers, beginning and ending all the time, once a griefer has messed up one group of people’s online experience he or she can simply move onto the next one. Even if they are caught, booted or banned they can always begin again elsewhere.

Did this desire to seek gratification by spoiling other’s enjoyment always exist, or is it a new development? Are these the same people who knock over litterbins and smash peoples windscreens in the dead of night?

I personally do not think that it is a new phenomenon, rather an old one in a new garb. The online videogame revolution certainly did not ‘create’ the potential for griefers among the population; instead it provided a new and (mildly) destructive outlet for a certain type of person. And clearly if it occurs enough to have a TVTropes page dedicated to it, there are more of these people than might immediately be imagined.

This train of thought reminded me of a conversation I had nearly a year ago, not long after I started Verbal Slapstick. I was having dinner with my step-mother, and was trying to explain the purpose of this blog to her. This was quite difficult, partly because I was on my third glass of wine, but mostly because this blog has no real purpose, beyond my own vanity. It isn’t a diary, and it’s not really about things that happen in my life (save the things that happen in my head). I’m not reviewing anything, and I’m not, as many of my friends and colleagues do, gatekeeping my own media experience by posting photos or videos or anything like that. I get the occasional piece of free crit for my creative writing which is cool and much appreciated, but beyond that this whole platform is simply me hurling my own badly formed musings and self-deprecations into an indelible public sphere. Why do I do it? Because I’m an unremitting egotist and I think I know best, obviously. And if I didn’t have a blog, if the opportunity to blog didn’t even exist?

What my step-mum really wanted to know related to the apparent readiness of my generation to transcribe their experience for all to see. She pointed out that when she was my age, there wasn’t the readiness or desire to constantly communicate with friends and acquaintances, either by phone or online. People her age (and she is not, in truth, that old) are far less comfortable with keeping everyone they know posted on their likes, dislikes and movements. If, as has been argued, a blog is just a diary that you show to everybody, why the sudden need to show each other our private lives? Why, in short, was my generation so self-consciously media savvy?

My answer? Because we can be. It is my firm belief that human beings have a desire to communicate their experience and feelings that is so strong they will wholeheartedly adopt any new method with which to do so. Until we finally all learn telepathy and are able to instantly and accurately experience and empathise with everybody, we will boldly take up any new technology or concept that allows us a greater glimpse of ourselves and each other. Maybe, and this is mere conjecture, we always wanted the world to read our diaries. Like griefers, the potential is within us already: all things like the internet are doing is giving us new ways to realise this potential. Mobile phones have not created a desire for constant contact. We always wanted to be in touch with one another all the time. Now we have a way to do it. Is it any wonder that these new media forms become so quickly integral to the fabric of our existence?

All this leads to one final, obvious question. If the potential for mass media uptake, for instant and gregarious communication, even for the sadistic inversion of organised play, all already reside fully formed within us, waiting for an outlet, what other strange and novel patterns of behaviour exist in our collective psyches? A whole raft of behaviours, some which could become integral to the way we act as a species, might be restrained by a gap in our technological development, waiting for a bridge to to flow across, out into the world. It’s a potentially scary concept, la, but it sure is exciting.

Love affairs, spinerips and explosions

My apologies for the late post, I’ve got my job at Waterstone’s back and coupled with my writing course I’m basically working a six day week. Having said that, I should still find the energy to lumber you with my self-indulgent attempts at wit and comment- I’m just being a bit pathetic. Although if you’ve been paying attention to the blog thus far this shouldn’t come as a major surprise.

I’ve started playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 in strictly rationed bursts. Rationed, partly because it belongs to my long-suffering and ever-tolerant housemate and I’m already a massive drain on his time and possessions (and, although he doesn’t know it, all the good food out of his part of the fridge) but MOSTLY because my love affair with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 got a little… intense. ‘Hanging around in the car park of her job’ or ‘four hundred page letters written in blood’ intense. I got over it (with the help of a 12-step programme) but it didn’t do wonders for my undergraduate degree or my interpersonal relationships.

It wasn’t exactly a new problem either. When it comes to computer games, I am the addict’s addict. Before inexorable and intrusive things like deadlines, bills and council tax started to hammer spitefully at my door, I used to spend hours playing up to the stereotype of my generation. I wasn’t even that good at games, I just had more than my fair share of bloody mindedness and less than my fair share of proper mates. Sigh.

I also treated video games as a true competition; I dislike losing in any circumstances, and video games allowed my to pick my battles a bit. When, at age 9, the final boss on Spider-Man VS. The Kingpin proved too much of a challenge for my tiny thumbs, I put it aside. But I didn’t forget. Instead I waited six years for my motor skills to reach their peak, took the Mega Drive down from the shelf, blew the dust off it, and then rained down pixillated fury on the my digital adversary.

Having an interest in video games and relatively lax parents meant that, like many of my close friends, I was exposed to a high level of simulated violence at a young age. I stress simulated in order to establish the proper context. In Final Fight you would punch, kick and suplex your never-ending enemies (who all for some reason looked like members of Public Image Ltd.) until they kicked the virtual bucket, uttering a touching woeful scream and then disappearing. In an episode of Tom and Jerry that has stuck with me through the years, Tom restrains the local dog with a sturdy rope and, while the dog strains and barks in an effort to escape, smashes all his teeth out with a baseball bat.

I’m being unfair on Tom and Jerry, certainly. They and other classic cartoons of their ilk adhere strictly to the laws of cartoon physics, which establish an easily understood set of parameters relating to violence and its effects. Video games used to operate under a similar set of parameters- it quite clearly wasn’t ‘real’ as the same bad guys appeared each time. And also (and this should not be discounted) the whole thing looked like crap. Up until about five minutes ago most computer renderings of fisticuffs looked like the work of impressionist artists whose chosen medium was Lego.

As graphical accuracy improved, the level of violence seemed to increase. This doesn’t strike me as unlikely; violence can sometimes be a direct partner to excitement, as action films have long demonstrated. The urge to blow things up in video games had always been present, submerged under poor rendering. I’m sure game designers would have been ripping people’s heads of and attaching guns to chainsaws from the very start had the tools been available.

In the last five years or so it has been argued that video games depict reality with such accuracy as to be as direct an influence on people as reality itself. I’m not going to explore this. Really, I’m not. Video games come out of the telly, and you make them go by wiggling your fingers and thumbs. You can’t play them in a power cut, and in them you get to be a racecar driver or an interstellar soldier or a world champion martial artist, whereas in real life you just go to school and watch The Apprentice and your favourite cereal is Wheetos. If you get computer games confused with real life then you are deluded or otherwise mentally handicapped.

An argument I will give more credence to is that accurate depiction or not, people are influenced by what they see. This one is backed up with a lot more in the way of scientific investigation. We learn from what we see and, as social animals, we learn especially from the actions of other people, whether they be real or imagined. Panic journalism and selfish political agendas normally overtake the argument, which leads to it being wildly inflated. Just because in GTA you can have sex with a prostitute, and then run her over with your car to get the money back, doesn’t mean your twelve year old is going to start doing it (he probably can’t even drive).

However, some of the logic is apparent. For example, fairy tales teach children lessons about fear, love, justice and self-sacrifice, and it doesn’t matter that even a child could tell them apart from reality for their lessons to influence.

The idea that children might be influenced by violent video games enough to commit violent acts is therefore a compelling one. And yet… I spent my tweens learning the button combination to make Sub-Zero rip peoples’ spines out, and I have never (successfully) ripped out a real person’s spine. In Call of Duty I shoot on sight. Or maybe grenade on sight. Or stab on sight. But when I bumped into someone on campus today as they unexpectedly rounded a corner I did not frantically thrust my combat knife into their sternum; instead I said, “I’m awfully sorry, pardon me,” and let them brush past. (They just glared at me. I wish I had stabbed them).

The difference, obviously, is that I know that ripping people’s spines out is morally wrong (as well as frightfully rude). The fact that I have attempted it in fiction and enjoyed it is not enough to make me experiment with it in reality.

I have been sufficiently socialised to accept the ‘right’ way of acting in society. I have a moral code implanted in me that overrides all else. I do not want to cause suffering in real people because society has taught me that it is wrong to do so. I can cause in video games if I feel like it precisely because I know it is not real suffering (although that isn’t my normal intention- unless it’s the suffering of my friends as I grind them into paste).

The children most likely influenced by violent imagery are those that lack ‘adequate’ socialisation. If they do not have people to show them the right way to act, they may draw inference from what they see instead. And, if the morals and norms of society are not properly ingrained, just telling them otherwise isn’t going to help. If most of your parenting was done by an Xbox, other people telling you how to act will end up as just that- a set of commands you can choose to ignore.

The problem with this argument is that is identifies those who are vulnerable as those most likely to be negatively affected by violent imagery games and other media. And well, people who are labelled as vulnerable are just that. Obviously they need stronger guidance, closer watching. Removing a single set of influencing risk factors isn’t going to make very much difference. There are more than enough examples of violence and moral skulduggery in real life for them to copy.

So if (God forbid) children ever end up in my care I’ll be more worried about they time they spend on the computer than what they do while they’re there. Except in regards to the Internet, obviously. That invention is a bringer of malice and sin and anyone who uses it is a lily-livered wanksock. You there, you reading this- how do you sleep at night?