Why I Won’t Be Playing Resident Evil 5, Part Two

So my last post, detailing why I had chosen not to play Resident Evil 5, seems to have touched a few nerves with some readers. I’ve decided to dedicate the second part of my discussion about RE5 to some of the issues raised in last week’s comments section.

Before I start though, there are few things I’d like to say lest passion take you over and you want to rush to the comments section to tell me how wrong my opinions are:

First, shoulderbuttons is a discussion space. Please treat it as such. It’s not a cage match, nor a petition. This means no more personal attacks on me or other commenters, please. If you disagree with me, that’s peachy. I hope we can learn from it. But I don’t need to be attacked to understand your point. I’m simply trying to foster discussion with those who want to have it and think critically about gaming culture and the industry. I don’t need to be told that I will not, or cannot, change things by writing this blog, and that I should be out protesting or something if I truly cared about the topics I choose to write about. Intelligent discussion is where new ideas, and changes, begin. Thank you, everyone reading this, for respecting these guidelines and ideas.

Hopefully, with this out of the way, we can all tastefully disagree with each other without mudslinging, and maybe, just maybe, start to treat the videogame medium with the seriousness it is finally starting to deserve. The industry is no longer in its infancy and we owe it to gaming, and to ourselves as gamers, to give it a critical look now and then. Too often, we blindly defend our entertainment of choice because we are so used to protecting it from uninformed scrutiny (Hot Coffee mod, the Mass Effect ‘sex scandal,’ uh, anything that ever came out of Jack’s mouth). If, however, you are like me and wish someday to see games be recognized as a legitimate form of narrative, or even art, then we as gamers have to start treating it seriously ourselves first.

That includes making criticisms and asking difficult questions about some of our favorite games when they broach sensitive topics like racism, sexism, violence against women, homosexuality, disability, mental illness, religion or anything of that nature. Games, and developers, are not always in the right in the ways they choose to present some of these issues. To smooth things over by saying “it’s just a game” is doing videogames, as a growing medium, an injustice. Games must treat their subject matter with as much respect as any other medium. Even satire, something like the Grand Theft Auto series, must understand what it is before it can make humor from serious situations. I think GTA does, for the most part, understand how to present itself and how it can be a (de)constructive commentary about North American culture, despite themes of murder, drug-abuse, racism, kidnapping, extortion, etc. The trouble I have with RE5 is that I don’t think it is aware of itself.

I don’t mean to say this as a condemnation of Capcom. A lot of people seem to think I am making the claim that Capcom is overtly trying to ‘say something’ about black people. I don’t think that RE5 is inherently racist. I do believe that there are scenarios in the game that depict black people pretty poorly, to say the least. I think that Capcom has inadvertently leaned on some serious racial stereotypes in their game, and my problem is that these kinds of issues weren’t checked at the door. So to be clear: I don’t think Capcom invented racism. Also, I don’t believe that playing RE5 will make you a racist, or that if you enjoyed the game it is because you are a racist. Far from it. However, I think that RE5 is a prime example of the kind of game that needs a critical eye turned on it, and not to be forgiven simply because so many of us love the series, or because it is a videogame, or any other excuse. I believe, to some extent, that the developers must have been aware of the imagery they used, and how it is plays into racism. There are some stark themes in the game: white versus black (Chris versus black zombie hordes and no, half-black half-white companions do not make it better), black as scary, black as primitive, black as poor, black as weak and susceptible, ‘developed’ nations versus ‘undeveloped’ nations just to list a few.

Now, despite the title of this post, I have started to play RE5, but with a pen and notepad in hand. It was clear that I couldn’t criticize the game based solely on what I had seen in trailers and in the demo. I just wrapped the Ogre-boss (the one you fight from the mounted truck-gun, and who whips telephone poles at you), so I’m a few good hours into the game. To be honest, when I started playing, I really felt like I was going to see a lot of what I had already written about and feel embarrassed for having spoken out against it. From playing, I’ve actually come away more surprised with the racial representations in the game than I thought I would be. One of the stand-out worst moments for me is still the sack beating (the whole scene starts at 4:10 in the video) at the beginning of the game. Again, there’s no indication that anyone involved in the scene is infected. The beating happens in the middle of the day, in an otherwise bustling kind of town. There are other villagers walking around and no one is paying any mind to the men with large knives and bats beating something or someone tied up in a sack. Even as Chris and Sheva, you can watch this beating for as long as you like, but you are never allowed to actually intervene. This scene seems to speak that this place--Africa, as opposed to North America or Spain--is dangerous normally, never mind the impending zombie infestation. To go back on something I said in my last post, this scene actually isn’t anything like the burning of the policeman (seen at 2:40 in the video) in RE4. By the sack beating scene in RE5 the player hasn’t even been attacked yet, nor are they attacked by the perpetrating thugs. Why not? If it were an infected in the sack, would they not say something about it to Chris or anyone else in the town? Would no one in the town show some concern? If those men themselves were infected, would they not attack Chris and Sheva? This is how the violence in RE5 is normalized and contemporized. Violence in this new setting is treated as normal in the first thirty seconds of the game.

A second sore point that has stood out for me in the first half of the game is the color of the enemy hierarchy. Every game with enemies has weak, moderate, and strong enemies that are usually distinguished visually somehow. In RE5, the stronger an enemy, the darker his skin. Many have pointed out the peppering of white zombies in the hordes at the beginning of the game, but it didn’t take long (maybe until the mine level) that the white zombies disappeared almost entirely. On top of that, the game had by then started introducing more difficult enemies, like the burly guys who bull-rush you, or the chainsaw men similar to those in RE4. Both of these enemies are darker skinned than the regular zombie horde. The burly guys are so dark that, at one point, my co-op partner said “I’m not trying to be racist or anything, but these guys are so dark I can’t even see them.”

Now this is where the message might be confused and some might think I’m accusing Capcom of saying that the darker someone is, the scarier they are. No. I am not saying that. I am, however, calling out that exact pre-existing stereotype and saying that Capcom has applied it here in their enemy hierarchy (outside of stylized bosses). This is the issue I have with RE5 as a whole: it’s latched onto pre-existing stereotypes about public violence in Africa, darkness being scary, whiteness as good and cleansing and has incorporated these ideas into their game, misinformed as they are.

Like Yahtzee said, “Capcom aren’t bad people, they’re just idiots.”

So, no, I don’t think RE5 is a bad game that no one should play. I simply think that it’s a game deserving some raised eyebrows and some thought to how it represents race. I could easily go on about RE5, but I’d really like to move on from this discussion here at shoulderbuttons for the time being. I hope everyone can bring some constructive points to the comments section. Thank you.

Here’s some behind the scenes for you. There’s a handful of quotes I dug up to use in the article, but decided against in favour of letting my own voice drive the post, and also part of a discussion I had with a friend that really helped open up how I thought about the game. Have a look and see what you think:

“The comparison to RE4 is a great one that I fully intend to build upon in one of my next posts. Yes, shooting a bunch of Spaniards is just as bad, but, like you and many other people pointed out, the game will have zombies local to wherever the game is set. Spain will have Spanish zombies. Africa will have African zombies. But the Spanish zombies in RE4 didn't imp Spanish stereotypes. There were no zombie matadors. Why are there Africans that "revert" (to stereotypes, mind you) to their more "primal" selves and don headdresses and the like in RE5? Nothing in RE4 made commentary on Spanish people. It could have been set in Amish America without having changed a thing other than the voice acting. I guess I want to know why African zombies imp African stereotypes when Spanish ones didn't. And why there is so much recognizable imagery of African strife (the huge, dark guy with the megaphone a la Black Hawk Down, but who is also reminiscent of a diamond lord or a guerilla warlord) but none to be found in RE4? There's social problems in Spain. Why did they choose to highlight the social problems and associated imagery only in RE5, in Africa, and never in Spain or even America in REs 1,2 and 3? Seems fishy to me. Not intentional, I don't think, but definitely not very cognizant of existing social stigmas.” – Me, in a conversation about RE5

“But discussions about colonialism are only dealt with obliquely in the game — Chris never reflects on his position as a white male in Africa nor does he discuss race with his African partner, Sheva. The game presents only one option to survive against African zombies: kill every single one.” – Jamin Brophy-Warren, “’Resident Evil 5’ Reignites Debate About Race in Videogames,” The Wall Street Journal

“The point isn't that you can't have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn't see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don't understand what you're talking about and think that you're sort of seeing race where nothing exists?” – N’Gai Croal, “This Imagery Has A History,” MTV Multiplayer

“My problem is that it presents a fantasy I don't desire. It looks like it's an advertisement to virtually shoot poor people...Shooting zombies is something I can get behind...But when I see a town of what looks like impoverished African villagers — the very image of global poverty, the very spectacle that since my youth has been coded in me to evoke sympathy and charity — I don't want to pull the trigger.” – Stephen Totilo, “That Notorious “Resident Evil 5″ Trailer And The People I Met In Africa,” MTV Multiplayer

And of course, Zero Punctuation's review of RE5, which makes a brief but hilariously critical comment on racism in the game.

Why I Won’t Be Playing Resident Evil 5, Part One: Reinforcing the Stereotype of a Black Threat (aka “The Other”)

Having wrestled with the decision for a long time, I’ve finally reached some personal conclusions that I’d like to outline in my next few posts. There’s simply too much to discuss in Resident Evil 5 for one single blog post, so I’m going to break it down into a few pieces expressing my views on the game itself and also its coverage in the gaming press. Here goes.

I’ve been a fan of the Resident Evil series since Resident Evil 2 was released in 1998 and, truthfully, I am sad to be passing up the fifth instalment now after being a fan of eleven years. I’m not going to forsake the series altogether, but after researching for this article I just can’t reconcile my desire to play the game with its representation of Africans and the use of violent imagery as it is in RE5.

From a story and love-of-the-series perspective, I really do want to find out what’s happened to Jill, how Wesker’s plot will be resolved (if it ever is) and how the hell the Mansion comes back into play (if that even is the Mansion shown in trailers). However, from what I’ve played of the demo, seen in trailers, and read about in the bevy of articles written prior to its release, it seems to me that Capcom has released a socially irresponsible product in Resident Evil 5 that I simply cannot justify playing for myself. I don’t want to tacitly accept its ill conceived messages, and I hate to think of how many people may play the game without ever giving it the critical look it deserves. It’s not that RE5 is the only game that has skirted the lines of political correctness, but it’s a prime example of a game that players should be giving serious thought to why they are playing, and what they are gaining from the experience, be it positive or negative.

To give some context to my feelings about RE5, I think I need to identify myself a bit. I am a white middle class, able-bodied, male. I’m privileged over many people in so many ways—experiencing a system of unearned benefits every day—and I must always recognize this in order to be the socially responsible person I aspire to be. I have no conception of what it is like to be discriminated against in any significant way. I have never struggled financially, experienced what it is like to be a person of color (POC), or experienced the challenges disabled individuals face.

Now you may be reading this thinking “Okay, well, RE5 never goes out of its way to be explicitly racist or discriminatory to people of African decent or anyone else. Besides, we’ve all killed thousands of zombies of every creed (especially Spanish in RE4) in all the Resident Evil games since the first. Why should I feel any different about killing African zombies than Spanish ones? Why do you, Reid?”

Well, there’s a good laundry list of reasons, but it starts with me not understanding what it’s like to be a POC. When I’m talking about racism, I don’t mean the overt kind that isn’t socially acceptable, like racial slurs, denying job opportunities or outright violence towards people of color: I mean a more subtle kind of racism, one that is no less damaging or inappropriate. The kind that keeps people from taking a seat next to a POC on the bus because they are vaguely uncomfortable, or the kind that makes you cross the street from someone different from you at night so you don’t have to cross paths with them. My problem with RE5 is that it reinforces this kind of thinking. After a few days of playing the game, it can and will become engrained in some players’ minds that a black body is a dangerous one. If this translates into real life, even if the player knows it is silly to think a black person might be a zombie, or more particularly a dangerous threat, if the thought so much as enters a player’s mind after playing the game, then is that not fostering racism? Is that not participating in racist behaviour?

This may be difficult to imagine, but I know that for me, after playing a game like Tony Hawk or Skate for weeks on end I start to see things in the real world that look like I could trick off of or grind. I know that after playing horde in Gears of War for a couple of days it becomes second nature to see objects, real-world ones, as cover for a would-be gunfight. I feel like I learned the basic mechanics of driving a car from Grand Theft Auto III. I realize in the moment that it is silly, but it is a lens through which my world experience is filtered, simply because of the media that I choose to consume and experience most days: videogames. I imagine it is the same for many.

If I chose to purchase and play Resident Evil 5 and found that it functioned to make me, in any way, relate seeing a black person specifically as a threat (even on some very small level) I would be extremely disappointed and ashamed, to say the least. But if I am honest with myself, and I hope anyone that reads this article and also chooses to play RE5 is with themselves as well, could I truly make the claim that this would never happen to me if I played RE5? I don’t know. Maybe being aware of this potential issue I could avoid it, but how many people that will play RE5 without a critical eye will have this same experience and not be able to identify it? How will someone who is ambivalent (no, ‘ambivalent’ is not a synonym of ‘indifferent)’ towards black people digest the information, that black people are threats, after playing Resident Evil 5? How would a member of the black community feel playing White-as-Snow, Super-Buff Chris Redfield, killing skinny, starving, fully-dark African one after another, zombie or no? There is reinforced imagery and behaviour happening in doing this, even if the player is able to remind themselves that these Africans are simply zombies.

“Early on in the game a group of black Africans are seen beating a bag with a body inside. When Chris approaches them they stop, the bag is motionless and they stare menacingly at Chris. There is no suggestion that the men are infected.” - Wesley Yin-Poole, Videogamer.com

How would this imagery, for instance, be perceived by someone who has never played a RE game before? This is the first RE on this generation of consoles, so there is a strong likelihood that it will be attracting many new players who aren’t used to the tropes of the RE universe. This scene seems menacing, to be sure, and it sets a tone, but it’s so straightforward in its brutishness that it is problematic. In the beginning of Resident Evil 4 there is a similar tone-setting scene in which one of the two police officers that escort the player to the infected town is discovered impaled and burning in the middle of the village. The villagers are going about their work as usual, ignoring the burning body. This scene seems so horrific, and so outlandish that it’s clear that it’s meant to provoke scares, showing the player what these infected people are capable of.

But a beating in the street? It’s clear that these men couldn’t put Chris Redfield in a sack and knock him around. And there’s no sign that what they’re doing, publicly beating somebody, is any different from their normal routine when Chris arrives. It’s not a horror mechanic showing an extreme and unbelievable violence to shock the audience. It’s a mundane, contemporary kind of violence that actually happens in real life. Why choose to use this kind of imagery now, Capcom, when the game is set in an impoverished nation that is not predominately white? Why is violence so much more real, so much more normalized, now that Resident Evil is set in Africa?

This use of imagery, whether intended as racist or not, quite simply is racist, even if I don’t personally believe that Capcom desired to create a racist product. The imagery used is a message open to interpretation, and there is a strong likelihood that it will be interpreted in ways outside of the simple zombie vs. human dynamic, and I highly doubt that Capcom was blind to this possibility. Were they right in releasing Resident Evil 5? Was it necessary to set it in Africa, and contemporize the violence used? Did this chapter in the Resident Evil saga actually need its own blockbuster game to be told, or could it have simply been a sidenote in the lore, eliminating the need for the repeated use of imagery of violence against blacks?

More thoughts coming soon. Thanks for reading.

The Medium is the Message, Not the Opposite: Violence in Video Games

“Violence is inherent in the medium, inseparable from the essential experience of playing games. Without competition and conflict resolved by violence, games wouldn’t be games: they’d be screensavers.” – Joe McNeilly, “2008: A Year to Dismember,” Gamesradar.com

To anyone who plays games on a regular basis, it is absolutely clear that there is no shortage of violence in video games. Often though, that violence is labeled as an integral part to the experience of gaming. Video games, to too many people, are equated with violence.

As a player whom many of my favorite games include no trace of violence, I take personal exception to this. To reduce the medium to such a base component is to do it an injustice. Many meaningful movies, for instance, have violence, but the violence is not showcased. Maybe this is another example of game development, in a misinformed fashion, mimicking the Hollywood machine. It seems that many developers choose to label their products as action games, if only because they exhibit a lack of horror, drama, or any other genre’s element in them (probably because they have no story to sustain any of these elements). An “action game” might as well be synonymous with “video game” for the average consumer, and from that it is not difficult to see how video games invite violence.

It takes an agency outside of simply consuming to see games for what they can, and should be: engaging entertainment. This lens does not necessitate violence.

If engaging film and literature can be created about the difficulties of the mundane, why can’t the same be said for videogames? Is that not what art is? What the industry strives for? Games, ones that aspire to be art, should aspire to teach about life. Real, regular life. Not space adventure, not treasure hunting, not bringing down colossi.

It just seems such a preposterous idea: waste a near limitless digital canvas, a video game, on the mundane. Or it must seem that way to most gamers, since there is very little in the way of reality-based games. Is it not arrogant of developers, to assume so little of their audience, or so much of their own fiction, that they think nothing of ignoring the real world? A world we, their customers, can all relate to?

The more violent a game becomes, the more it becomes removed from its audiences’ reality. Video game consumers do not gun down monsters, civilians or anything for that matter, in droves in their everyday lives. Nor do they want to, any more than an avid horror fan wants to kill unsuspecting teenagers, or a war film buff would like to be caught in a fire fight. These situations are escapism—limit testing, psychologically—but escapism nonetheless. For the average consumer, they represent nothing of what they would like their lives to be modeled after. For some, a world completely removed from reality is an attractive one, but that world could be one of fantasy, where gravity is skewed and the people are made out of yarn. I think there was something called Little Big Planet that did all right for itself. Not all games are violent, and violence absolutely does not need to be a staple of the industry.

Andrew Przybylski, researcher at the University of Rochester, recently published findings showing that players engage no more or no less with games that are overtly violent when compared to games that are not (you should really read about it). He notes:

“The message for game designers is that their resources are probably better spent designing games that will satisfy the psychological needs of players to feel competent, a feeling of autonomy and being connected to other players.” - Andrew Przybylski, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, University of Rochester

All I can do is contrast this kind of reasonable, forward thinking to that of someone like Joe McNeilly, who says that:

“With Fallout 3’s VATS system, players target specific limbs in a semi-turn-based combat. Add in the Bloody Mess perk, in which limbs spontaneously explode off the body of a vanquished foe, and you have the Game of the Year.” – Joe McNeilly, “2008: A Year to Dismember,” Gamesradar.com

McNeilly is clearly missing the point. For whatever reason, he has actively ignored Fallout 3’s incredible achievements in exploration, storytelling and interaction, and is purporting the assumption that all of the game’s success stems from the fact that the player can dismember his enemies.

McNeilly then launches into a ludicrous diatribe, likening gamers’ alleged hunger for this dismemberment to the division between Right and Left wing politics, global warming, religious wars and the Patriot Act. What? It’s articles like McNeilly’s that lead me to believe that maybe the industry is sabotaging itself.

If we, as video game consumers, believe that there is nothing more than violence and strife in our worlds, real and digital, then that’s all there will ever be.

Some References:

Joe McNeilly, and his thoughts on how much you like to kill when you play, 2008, A Year to Dismember.

Andrew Przybylski, and his idea that people do not lust after blood in their gaming.

Joe Baca, California Congressman, and his proposed labeling for violent viodegames. This is a good one. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

AJ Glasser, editor for Kotaku.com, and her feelings towards videogame violence.

Please Read This

If you care about where games are going as an art form.

I know it's long. Try anyway.

"The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists; if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we’re going to have a whole new art form." -John Lanchester, London Review of Books

...keep reading.

Proof of Concept: Narrative in Games

I don’t see why there is a debate about whether or not story has a place in videogames. I think it’s very clear that most, if not all, people are compelled by narrative in games or otherwise. We have clear examples in film and literature, two fields dedicated solely to the craft of narrative (experimental film and literature aside, for now), but we can still find less obvious examples that show us how much more involved we become when a set of events becomes story.

Good games deserve a good narrative. Granted, a game doesn’t need a narrative to survive, or even be fun, but leaving it out is akin to, say, using nothing but stock art from the 8-bit-era. In both cases, things are going on onscreen, but none of it makes very much sense. Tetris’ art is about equivalent to its story.

But every game, even the simplest of designs, can benefit from story, if it is intelligently conceived. Jeff Ross, of Sony bend, has a quote on Joystiq:

“Since game mechanics can only reproduce the abstraction an experience, it is left to story/theme/narrative to help complete player immersion. Consider Frequency and Amplitude, two fun and very abstract music games that most people have never heard of. Simply changing the theme and adding a guitar-shaped controller transformed the experience completely. People were no longer pressing random buttons in sequence to music, they were rock stars. This is narrative at work.”[Joystiq 2008/12/22]

Maybe Tetris could have been even more with this kind of creative thought. The key is to have narrative that can amplify the gameplay, much like good art in a game. It seems though that all too often developers don’t consider this balance when creating their product. They choose to mimic the motions of a ‘riveting story’ so that they can use the claim as a bullet point on the back of their box. They don’t consider whether their story is serving their gameplay or vice versa. When developers recognize how to find this balance, their game succeeds. It is, however, often too difficult a question to answer whether a game concept calls for more or less narrative. The ‘narrative’ given in the example above, transforming Amplitude into Guitar Hero, is really more of a change of framing than an added narrative, but it is a valid narrative design choice nonetheless. It’s clear how that small shift can affect sales, at least.

Tom Gaubatz, producer for publisher Mastiff, says of story in games that:

“It depends completely on the genre and the title. That said, a huge part of our concept of games is still inherited from early arcade games: stimulate the player just enough to make him put in another quarter. Games are still, in most cases, very much about short-term rewards. Regardless of the quality of the story, if the gameplay doesn't deliver regular challenges and psychological rewards, people won't play it.”[Joystiq, 2008/12/22]

But what about games that have a balance that favors narrative over gameplay? Look at the Ace Attorney series. It is difficult to argue that they are more game than novel, but they are popular among a hardcore gaming crowd nonetheless. Capcom has attempted, and largely succeeded, in delivering those same challenges and psychological thrills that would normally come from gameplay through their storytelling. The player must be smart enough and, more importantly in this case, absolutely engaged in the minutia of the story to complete the game. Knowing the story is being good at the game.

A large part of the resistance to story in games seems to be simple misunderstanding. Have a look at the following quote by Ben Mattes, producer of the newest Prince of Persia:

“As I mentioned earlier, I think we could have done a better job in giving more challenge to those gamers who play a game to Accomplish and Achieve, rather then Experience. We talked a lot about it during development (multiple difficulty settings, etc) but could not come up with a way to modify all aspects of the game (combat, acrobatics, trap difficulty) in a graceful and interesting way.”[IGN, Prince of Persia Afterthoughts]

Mattes, here, is making the mistaken assumption that players that want to Achieve and those who want to Experience are mutually exclusive. He is also asserting that games cannot offer both at once. By attempting to separate the desires of what may very well be the same buyer, one who wants to both Experience and Achieve in their gaming, the team created a product that did little in the way of grabbing peoples’ attention (beautiful art style aside).

It seems that many developers are pre-disposed against including story in their games, if only for the simple reason that it is difficult:

“Telling stories in games is hard. Consider that a game is an 8-24 hour experience. When did you see an interesting and compelling 8-24 hour movie last? Games have to find their own way of telling stories, instead of relying on old methods from other mediums. The problem is that movies are so standard it's a hard thing to change.”[Ulf Andersson, GRIN co-founder and Bionic Commando game director, Joystiq 2008/12/23]

Why is Hollywood so many developers’ first choice for inspiration? Ulf is right, in a way: why is the short and intense method of storytelling that is a movie taking the helm for a medium that does indeed have a minimum of ten or more hours worth of content? It seems clear that the pacing in a movie would never match that of the pacing in a game. Nobody enjoys filler levels in a movie-licensed game; but it’s no wonder, they’re filler, and without them the game would only be as long as the movie it is attempting to re-create, which would be far too short for what gamers are used to in this generation.

It is surprising that more developers haven’t started looking for other methods of telling their stories. Good ideas for pacing and tension wouldn’t be hard to find. Maybe they could turn on their televisions and realize that shows like Lost, Dexter, House, any television drama, really, have perfected, to an art, the idea of drawing out a story. Granted, Lost might have alienated a lot of its viewership with a convoluted plot, but it had the idea of small, focused stories inside a larger narrative absolutely right, which is something more games, especially ones that are seeking to be called story-based, should look to include. How many life stories can you find, should you choose, on the computers in Fallout 3? Enough for a few hours of good reading, certainly, and it all gets counted towards “gameplay length” because the disc is still spinning in your console. Tricky.

Regardless of how developers choose to justify their aversion to story, they can’t avoid that people look for it in nearly all aspects of their lives. Sports fans follow their favorite teams, and players, and usually know the ups and downs of any given career. That investment adds to the excitement. You can see peoples’ personal investment in soap operas, in professional wrestling, racing, reality television—in almost all aspects of life, recreational or otherwise. If there’s a plot, natural or conceived, there’s a reason to follow it.

Dear Wired Magazine,

I would love it if you were to stop creating asinine lists for their own sake. I’m just going to start with then “10 Most Disappointing Games of 2008” gem you dropped on December 12^th. Maybe we can branch out and discuss some others later on.

What really gets me about this latest list, Wired, is that six of the ten games on it are brand new IPs. Did you guys realize that when you were writing it? That you’ve gone out of your way to compile a list that nay-says new ideas? I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of hate mail about that already though, so I won’t start.

What I want to look at here is the number of games you completely sidestepped that were truly disappointing. By that I mean games, and developers, that really didn’t accomplish anything with their new titles. Teams that played it safe and made exactly what we were expecting. Do you not find that disappointing? Or do you crave the predictability that populates all your “Ten Best” lists of games for 2008? Let’s have a look.

I noticed that both Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 made your top ten best 360 games of ’08. Really? Two of the most derivative games released this year and that’s your best? That’s not to say that Epic didn’t get it right the first time around, and that the Gears formula isn’t a solid one; but that’s all it is: a formula. We all knew, going in, what was going to happen, that there would be no end of locust, no end of the manly quips from Marcus and co. and that there would be no real ending to the game because it was the second chapter in a trilogy. There was maybe, maybe, one fresh moment in that whole game, and it wasn’t even playable.

And Fable 2? It’s another case of the money-safe copy-paste business doctrine. You skewer games like Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge for not ascending the golden peaks of your overly-imaginative expectations, but when a game reproduces itself, seemingly asexually, and slaps a “2” on the end of its name you call it a top game of the year. What?

If you’re going to take the time to list this stuff, negative things like disappointing games, why not call out some developers that have either been ignoring their fanbase, or that have burrowed so far into their niche that can no longer remember what an original game looks like?

I think I’ll try my hand at this thing. This is what I think a “Disappointing games of 2008” list looks like:

Rock Band 2: I love you, Harmonix, but this glorified track pack, released just in time to defer a few sales away from Guitar Hero World Tour, was never worth sixty dollars. Good job on the new peripherals though, I guess.

Guitar Hero World Tour: This game was a year behind the first Rock Band in almost every way. It’s as though Neversoft wasn’t allowed to play the competition’s game to get a good idea of how to copy it. They just imagined what the game was like based off of what all their friends who were playing it said about it. They got it so wrong Harmonix actually got away with RB2, because it least it wasn’t a step backwards.

Call of Duty: World at War: I find it unbelievable that no major publication has called this game out. This premise, this gameplay, this entire franchise, was old news in 2006. We’re almost into 2009 and Activision has actually gone back in time to deliver us more WW2 games we never wanted. This, like Guitar Hero (which Activision also owns), has taken a giant step backwards from its last iteration. Everything about this game is disappointing, because it’s just too predictable and so, so safe from a development standpoint. It’s got low cost because it recycles most of its resources from Call of Duty 4, no thought needed to be put into the story, because we all know how WW2 ends (especially when it’s told from the Allied side), and finally, the game has a built in consumer base. Everyone who only buys one shooter game a year is just going to buy the new version of the one they bought last year. Congratulations Activision, you’ve successfully tricked your customers. Again.

Sonic Unleashed: This game wasn’t disappointing for the reasons you’d think. It wasn’t because being a were-hog was dumb. It wasn’t because Sega almost had it this time. It was just because it got made in the first place. It’s amazing that Sonic keeps coming back for more punishment. It’s clear that gamers don’t want him anymore. Not the way Sega seems intent on presenting him (too-cool-for-school 80’s inspired teenager with too many “anthropomorphic neon friends”[Ben Crawshaw]). And that really is what’s mind-boggling about the Sonic franchise. The fans have told Sega, in no uncertain terms, what they want from a Sonic game. They want to go fast, and to go fast in 2D. The fans are actually asking Sega to produce a very simple game and have promised to buy it up in droves if they ever do make it. But, for whatever reason, Sega has flat-out refused to do this. They’ve been refusing for almost ten years. If they want to starve themselves out, I think it’s time we let them. We don’t need to see Sonic get lashed any further.

Gears of War 2: I liked Gears 2, I did. But, again, it was so safe and cookie-cutter that it really has no place calling itself one of the best games of 2008. Maybe one of the best games of 2006 but, oh yeah, that’s when the original Gears was released. Whoops.

Horde mode was cool, but I’m willing to bet it took all of a week to produce, test and certify. It was a tack-on-addition that turned out to be a lot of fun in its simplicity, not an award-winning effort.

Fable 2: Same gameplay, same “expressions” with no real interactions, same Molyneux super-hype. Sorry friends, good vs. evil just doesn’t cut it as far as an “immersive, nuanced canvas”(Earnest Cavalli, Wired) goes. Morality has grey areas, Fable does not. The dog and the crumb trail were neat ideas, but between Dogmeat and Isaac Clarke’s onboard nav-computer I think you’ve been beat.

Prince of Persia on the Nintendo DS

I like it. I don’t know what these guys are talking about. So long as I can keep Prince wall-running and somersaulting at a respectable flow, I’m good. And I can, so I am. An option for D-pad controls in tandem with the touch screen might have been nice, but the touch controls work more than well enough.

The game is cool for what it is. I don’t see what there is to 6.8 about (yes, I just turned a review score into a verb). It plays like classic prince. Not Sands of Time. The original original. The combat may be a bit easy, but we’re all here for the sweet Jackie Chan wall jumps and avoiding spike pits, aren’t we?

Oh, and Matt? You may want to think about sprinkling a bit of objectivity into your reviews now and then. You “want[ing] to punch this version of Prince in the face” because of the art style doesn’t tell anyone if this game is worth their money. It might tell them you’re overly judgmental when it comes to small details and that you might award games lower scores than they probably deserve, but hey—maybe that’s what you’re going for.