GameblurgKids Talking About the Future

During my experience of running through Metal Gear Solid 4, there were things in the game (apart from the diluted gun-play) that began to irritate me. This small gripe pertains to the consistent ill-advised exposure of the casts’ women, and the series’ congruent wishes to showcase every woman’s physical assets whenever possible.

Sensibly, I realize that this tasteless form of female celebration exists in other realms, but certain elements inside of some out our biggest titles to date continue to flamboyantly exaggerate the presence of a woman’s private body parts. Through various instances, the player is prompted to focus on the women who innocently bend over, or staring at a woman’s chest as she leans her upper-body towards your camera’s gaze. It is obvious; Snake, the story’s main protagonist, is a pervert, and I am not disappointed by this fact. The unsophisticated manner in which the coordinated situations rise for Snake to capitalize is what stimulates the nausea.

This repugnant display of the lack of respect for female physicality in MGS4 is widely on display, from using quick time events to “score” peeking shots of vulnerable women to the exaggeration of the physical exposure to all that is female. There are many minuscule arguments and moments in this game that have led up to amass the grand scale of ethical dismissal. Our industry remains infantile to those entertainment districts involved with visual/verbal art, but the stride to solve our interpreted problems are not being implicated during many aspects of our industry. What’s flowing through the mind of a project leader when an artists provides a sketch of scantly clad women? “Yeah, that’ll work. Now all we need is unrealistic breast physics to make her look attractive.” Game developers need to bear moral responsibility when appropriate (i.e., not Grand Theft Auto/Saints Row), as well as those who support its (deplorable game elements) existence. As I peer into the mirror, expanding my search into the depths of the rebounding reflection, I realize that I don’t want to advocate deplorable habits exhibited by videogame developers.

Although game developers carry an abundant weight of providing a positive image for our community and our industry, the responsibility of maintaining this particular image lies within the gamers participating within our world of videogaming as well. There are, and will continue to be, cynical perspectives aimed to discredit and depreciate our hobby’s value, and we need to take strives in helping its maturation. One prime example of the opposite of this goal is expressed by the vivacious Adam Sessler of the G4 network during his video podcast, Sessler’s Soapbox, where he addresses the existence of the abounding amount of bigotry and ignorance that plagues headsets nationwide while playing Xbox Live. The benighted behavior distributes a unwanted contribution to a fragile foundation that is theory of videogamer maturity.

There is passionate speculation about the current status of the videogame industry and how it compares to other entertainment districts in terms of legitimacy. Personally, I am a firm believer that the requirements for respect among the surrounding mediums warrants mental maturity on the broad scale consisting of gamers and game developers. Obviously, things like nudity and homophobia exists elsewhere in other mediums, but the examples of Metal Gear Solid 4 and the Sessler argument gives a tangible example of the childish perspectives that infest our questionable image (Obviously, there are many more). The perverted and racist nature of the stereotypical, ‘core’ gamer must be exterminated, and the judgment that is often bestowed upon us all that creates the notion of primitive behavior among gamers and developers alike that must die as well in order for us to move forward. Generally speaking, this is all about behavior and our principal accountability for such. Furthermore, it is about the conduction of our work without the reprehensible ethics and moral capacity that drags our maturity’s credibility to the floor. In order to garner a wider audience to our media, we must be mindful of other, alienated perspectives and their lifestyles in order to mitigate the skepticism of our shady community.

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