By Simon Carless
 [We're partnering with game criticism site Critical Distance to present some of the week's most inspiring writing about the art and design of video games from commentators worldwide. This week, Ben Abraham looks at Heavy Rain, video game auteurs, and a swifter than normal Passage.]
First up this week, Michael Clarkson makes a case for the open-world Santa Destroy as a valuable and necessary part of the original No More Heroes, and it’s omission from the sequel is all the more regrettable.
Zeke Virant is a new blogger who wrote in to let us know about a piece on ‘Expanding Sound in Videogame Narratives’ which sounds a lot like the sort of thing I was into with my undergrad thesis from 2008.
Elsewhere, Justin Keverne writes about Mass Effect 2 this week in ‘Living With Your Mistakes’; Radek Koncewicz also writes about the game, describing it as ‘A few steps forward and a few steps back’. In a longer-form piece, Kotaku goes in search of the Videogame Auteurs -- a set of people whose existence is apparently still hotly debated.
Brendan Keogh, a Brisbane based blogger writes about the old whipping-horse that is the ludology/narratology debate (or stalemate, as Keogh describes it). He suggests, ‘don't ask what narrative can do for games, but what games can do for narrative.’
In a new piece on his Psychology Of Games blog, Jamie Madigan takes inspiration from Penny Arcade and asks, ‘Why do we love genres so much?’, musing: "Why are we so obsessed with cramming games into genres and slapping labels on them? Most game reviews will remark on what genre a game fits in if not declare it outright, and if a game refuses to fit properly they’ll create a new genre just for it."
Joana Caldas, writing for The Border House on Local vs Online multiplayer, has some of the best use of captioning I’ve ever seen - lots of sarcastic fun.
I’m sure by now most have heard about or watched the DICE talk given by Jesse Schell but David Sirlin had a response, wondering whether external rewards are as unanimously positive as Schell proposes. Following on from both, Dan Lawrence thinks a bit about the psychology of game design, inspired by both Schell and Sirlin's comments, in a post titled ‘behaviourist game design’.
UK-based doctoral researcher Mitu Khandaker also has something to add to the commentary/responses to Schell’s talk, extrapolating some of the previous ideas into a series of possible futures for games. Lastly for this particular discussion, Jesper Juul has some thoughts on Schells’ talk with some excellent concrete examples that problematise a future where every action is tied to some kind of external reward. Juul notes:“A famous 1973 experiment (“Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward“) showed that when nursery school children consistently received external rewards for drawing, they lost interest in drawing and started drawing less.”
Also from the recent DICE conference is this piece by Brandon Sheffield covering a panel on racial diversity in games, a talk that will also be given in amended form at GDC in a few days. It’s a talk that I plan to attend.
UK newspaper The Independent has a take on Heavy Rain, comparing it to previous similar efforts in games, such as Facade, and Anthony Burch at Destructoid suggests that, in Heavy Rain’s case at least, Ebert was right.
This week Chris Dahlen made explicit the connections that Leigh Alexander has made previously, namely that games are perhaps more like music than they are like film.
In another neat piece, Kirk Hamilton wrote about open world games in ‘When the world changes’: "When it comes down to it, I guess it's pretty simple: I love it when a great game begins, and I hate it when it ends. So, I want to feel like I'm in the middle for as long as possible."
Coleen Hannon at Gamers With Jobs writes of being ‘Thumbless in Seattle’, which unfortunately involves less Tom Hanks and more disabling injuries.
Lastly, here’s a cool thing and some creative criticism for you – it’s totally possible to use more than just essays to critique games. As ‘Passage in 10 seconds’ shows, you can even use other games.   
 
By Simon Carless
 ['Diamond In The Rough' is a regularly scheduled GameSetWatch opinion column by Tom Cross focusing game narratives and the ways that play, gaming, and narrative mix. This week, Tom examines the pitfalls of an industry dominated by Modern Warfare.]
Infinity Ward's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has come and gone, although it isn't really gone: it lives on, unstoppable, powered by XBL and the PSN. The game's release may have been highly lucrative (750 million dollars, the last time I checked), but it was also fraught with controversy. Most notable among them were the “F.A.G.S.” scandal (and Infinity Ward's response to such criticisms), the lack of dedicated servers, and, of course, the “No Russian” level.
As Michael Abbott points out, while a small slice of the hardcore demographic and gaming press took offense, a large portion of the game's potential customers were either unaware of or unmoved by any of those issues. For them, the game lives and dies by its multiplayer.
We may natter on about FPS narrative conceits, forced participation, and issues of player agency, but this game doesn't care. It doesn't need to. It's built as a multiplayer juggernaut, and its single player is like some kind of vestigial malformed appendage: it sticks around almost out of habit. It's an old joke by now that IW moves Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer closer and closer to MMO status with each release. Playing Modern Warfare 2, you can see the changes and signs. Aside from the genre (FPS), this is more and more a pure RPG leveling experience. One wonders when IW will drop all the pretense and just release a multiplayer-only game.
Infinity Ward themselves seem to be doggedly resisting this change. To play this game (and to listen to its developers discuss the single and multiplayer) is to witness the work of people who honestly believe the characters and story they've created are deserving of further installments. It shouldn't be surprising that people think this kind of storytelling is important (we've lapped up neo-fascist drivel like this for decades in video games, movies, and books), but it’s surprising that the unfortunate disconnect between gameplay, setting and writing is explained away, excused, and sometimes lauded.
The plot, writing, and characters of Modern Warfare 2 are all wretched. There are other ways to put this, but none of them communicate my full disgust with the separate parts of this product, and its heft and intention as a whole entity. Infinity Ward has mastered the art of pretentious (not because it is in any way intelligent, but because it thinks it is saying anything of worth or import) military drama, just as it has mastered the art of the contemporary linear military shooter.
As an “entertaining” piece of jingoistic military schlock, Modern Warfare 2 hits a few good notes here and there. The idea of a massive invasion blasting apart and disfiguring everyday America is a potent one, although as I'll explain later, IW's execution of this interesting situation leaves much to be desired. Likewise, its depiction of a long firefight through a capital in ruins is tense, desperate, and perfectly paced. Even a problematic trip to Brazil (opening with a hugely annoying mission) salvages itself somewhat, delivering a tense, alarming firefight through a crowded market where sight lines are crap and the enemies are plentiful.
 Oscar Mike!
Even these deft touches, though, are undermined by the company's unsteady, encroaching sense of dramatic timing and exposition.
The dialogue is obtuse in the extreme, moving from topic to topic with alacrity, refusing to acknowledge that its language and execution obscure all but the simplest epithets and declarations. Everyone talks using the caricature of a caricature of a caricature of military slang and shop talk. Everyone everywhere is always "oscar mike," or every single enemy is “danger close.” This isn't to say that military jargon, shop talk, and slang don't have a place in dramatic fiction. They surely do.
The problem is that in Infinity Ward’s almost erotic fixation with military procedure and lingo (taken from military sources, probably, but also from pop culture like “Generation Kill”), Infinity Ward forgot to put more than a word or two of human dialogue into anybody's mouth. It's utterly incomprehensible, and every single person in the game speaks like this. When people do speak as the average person does, its only in the most hackneyed, tired of action movie clichés, with “those hostages won't rescue themselves” being my favorite by far.
I was surprised and delighted to find that while most of the game was populated by comically-accented murderers from the British Isles, Keith David (as your commanding officer, when you play as an American Army Ranger) and Lance Henriksen (as the main general in charge) play large parts in the game. Say what you will about the two, but their instantly recognizable voices and professional delivery do a lot to allay my hatred for the words they speak in this game (although Keith David is apparently "oscar mike" everywhere, from the toilet to his death bed. A dedicated man, to be sure).
 Beard Guy and Mohawk Guy!
I'm not sure who at Infinity Ward thought that we, as players, were in love with Mustache Guy (Captain Price, who is, wouldn't you guess it, alive) and Mohawk Guy (Soap, slightly less annoying than his old commander). Apparently, fans loved these two so much, we have to listen to them growl about tangos, hostiles, ACS's, and how amazingly badass they are for much of the game. Their dialogue ranges from the aforementioned movie clichés to the aforementioned meaningless jargon. It’s constant, forgettable, and often intrusive.
You might think that the sections of the game that feature good voice actors would be bright spots. Instead, we are forced to endure Keith David's game performance as Sergeant Foley, the American soldier who must Oscar Mike everything he sees or hears. The two plots' heroes are forced to defend America when we are invaded by Russians. One thread revolves around “Roach,” a Special Forces agent who is part of a secret task force ordered to halt the rise of a dangerous power, the other revolves around Foley's squad and its missions in the USA.
The task force hangs out in exciting foreign locales and kills foreigners (something the Modern Warfare series, and Call of Duty, delight in), while Foley and his crew protect America from a ludicrous, Boris and Natasha invasion comprised of husky Russians. Shepard spends his time mumbling about war, destiny, absolute power, and how that power never changes. He sounds like a college kid who just read Hobbes for the first time and took the wrong message away from it. All he needs to complete his look are a Bob Marley and some PBR, and maybe a few pretentious comments about human frailty.
Anything not having to do with Foley and DC is shrouded in bad writing, conservative military alarmism, and bad gameplay-story integration. I'm not saying that I didn't expect this kind of foolishness. Modern Warfare may have tried to sell itself as authentic, but it was still a kind of science fiction, it was still operating in some weird version of our universe. This new game is like James Bond mixed with Jack Bauer. Every new mission includes super-x-ray, night vision, invisible, frog men assault squads (actually, those are basically in the game, but they’re tame compared to some of the “modern” stuff). It’s all just as incomprehensible as the dialogue.
 War, Um, Never Changes ?
The two main pontificates are Captain Price and General Shepherd, and their speeches are long and offensive, for their smirking avowal of brutal, inhumane tactics, their mindless regurgitation of action movie tropes that were boring in the 80s, and for their continuous camp and stupidity (although that shouldn't fool you into thinking that the "good" guys in his story are anything other than war criminals and morons). I'm surprised the actors could read these lines out loud.
Again, it's not as if I was expecting something even mildly introspective, self-aware, or intelligent. This isn't Indigenes, the The Hurt Locker, hell, this isn't even Three Kings. It's everything bad and wrong about the glorification of American military power, and it's sloppy, lazy storytelling, from start to finish. You’d think that an action game would at least master the art of economical storytelling and exhibition, but the game’s incoherent writing and level continuity make even that low hanging branch inaccessible. It reflects well on no one but the people who designed the gameplay and world upon which these terrible trappings were hung: they know what they're doing, there's no doubt about it.
Still, the level designers and levels aren’t without fault. The missions set around Washington DC are lessons in how not to represent the familiar. This was an opportunity to take various things that the viewer took for granted and upend them. Even the misguided airport level does better, in this area. The point of these DC missions should have been to introduce the alarming abnormal into the presumably normal. I can only imagine that an invaded, ruined suburb that actually resembled those found on the East Coast might have struck a chord with people who lived there, and with people who only knew of such places because of a shared cultural experience.
Taking that kind of safe, welcoming environment and turning it dark and threatening is a time-tested method of unsettling the audience. Not so here. Instead, the locations feel wooden and fake (I’ve never seen suburbs, let alone malls, like these). Each burger joint is separated from the next by inexplicable swaths of parking lot, and the houses and white picket fences feel tiny and squat, especially when overflowing with Russians. It’s as if, in the night, someone came and made all of DC 7/8 size.
The missions are also badly held together, and badly paced. The siege on Capitol Hill is well-made (especially after the awfully, incomprehensible nuclear detonation over DC), but every other Foley mission (and all but one of the covert ops missions lead by “Roach,” your other inexplicably named avatar) is a long, long exploration of botched decisions. Even when the developers are truly flexing their FPS skills and creating something unique (the on-foot escape in Brazil is the best thing the game has to offer), you can sense something bad coming. It comes in the form of laughably serious scripted first person “non” cutscenes, which are, as ever, awkward, transparent, and equally as game-breaking as the cinematics they replace. You’ll watch as your character is murdered several times, since apparently the writers at Infinity Ward love this trick as much as they love the phrase “oscar mike.”
 Please, Please, No Russian!
The disconnect between gameplay and narrative is almost perfectly reproduced in the “No Russian” level.
This level, like the rest of the game, disappointed me. As a quick, effective play upon the fears swimming around the consciousnesses and sub-consciousnesses of many people around the world, this scene is no doubt effective and timely. Even if it is badly implemented and badly framed, it still is more relevant to the vast majority of gamers and non-gamers than any meditation on Ayn Rand (underwater!) ever could be. It's use of the "oh look, you are playing a game, we know it, you know it, we know that it creeps you out that we know, and we know that it surprises you that we force you to face your own game playing as a constructed, not natural, occurrence" tactic is capable enough.
Playing “No Russian,” I felt like someone had crystallized everything substandard in Modern Warfare 2 into one level. the writing within "No Russian" itself is bad. It isn’t up to the task of presenting and handling - well - an event with this kind of widespread public emotional impact. From Makarov’s nonsense monologue at the end, to the level’s stupid jokes (all of the flights suddenly switch to “delayed”), to the complete inability on the part of the game as a whole to deliver upon or contextualize this event, the writing and plotting fails “No Russian.” It's the instigator of the Russian invasion of America, the game's single most stupid plot development (even worse than Price's inexplicable missile launching act). Likewise, the game doesn't know what to do with this level from a continuity standpoint; it's shoehorned in between an intense Die Hard 2-esque snowmobile chase, and an assault on America that's straight out of bad Tom Clancy.
It's tonally out of place, and plot-wise, its villain (Makarov) disappears after this mission. It's like they forgot about him, and then gave him five lines of dialog in the second-to-last mission to make up for their forgetfulness. Likewise, the game lets you break the simulation by allowing you to fire on Makarov, who is invincible, and then instantly forces you to restart. If you're going to make me face the artificiality of the game I’m playing, and my own “complicity” in the act of play and the ruse enacted by the developers, actually do that: don't half-ass it, and in so doing, allow me to accidentally (I was trying to shoot a guard) punish me for it. Let me kill Makarov, or run away and make him come find me, or something. If the seams in your game show before I've even tried to find them, you've failed.
In short, regardless of the scene's supposed realism, emotional potency, or immersiveness, it's an especially disappointing part of a bad (single player) product. It only served to reinforce my distaste for the game in general, and the kind of decision-making that lead to this kind of overblown, egotistic junk, even if it was only for one mission.
The game’s science fiction storyline, bad writing, and spotty pacing are enough to tarnish it in my memory, but it commits many more errors within the mechanics of the game itself. Still, the multiplayer is incredible: Infinity Ward is so close to creating an incredibly addictive MMOFPS; another development cycle or two should do it. What’s alarming about Modern Warfare 2 is that Infinity Ward seems dead set on inflicting their bad brand of single player FPS upon us for years to come. If they moved on to a different franchise and genre (as they may be doing), they’ll take their overblown sense of drama, amazing design experience, and broken sense of gameplay narrative and pacing, and slip it into another game. They make single player (portions of) games that “push the envelope” of design in only the most superficial of ways, and they set the standard for the rest of the industry.
[Tom Cross writes for Gamers' Temple and Popmatters, is the Associate Editor at Sleeper Hit, and blogs about games at Delayed Responsibility. You can contact him at romain47 at gmail dot com.] 
 
By Simon Carless
 ['Diamond In The Rough' is a regularly scheduled GameSetWatch-exclusive opinion column by Tom Cross focusing game narratives and the ways that play, gaming, and narrative mix. This week, Tom continues his earlier examination of the sexual politics behind games by examining the sexual narrative and characters of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
In my last article, I expounded upon the more obvious and systematic methods of conservative, regressive sexualization that can be found throughout games, the video games industry, game critics, and gamers themselves. While I singled out Prince of Persia as a game that stepped (slightly) outside of these traditional boundaries, I also pointed to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves as a game that both subtly continues these traditions, and blatantly, brashly confounds them. It’s a game that is both safe and radical in its depiction of sex.
This isn’t to say that Drake (and the relationships he is a part of) is not sexual in any way. In fact, he and his various compatriots stand out as some of the few video game characters that are crafted to evince sexual desires and frustrations that are connected to actual human emotions. In that way he, Elena, Sully, and Chloe are similar to the Prince and Elika.
However, their romantic entanglements fall into extremely comfortable filmic roles: the plucky, independent female lead (who will end up with the roguish, devil-may-care male lead even though they have their differences), the lecherous old guy who isn’t really that bad, and the so bad she’s good femme fatale. They may be ahead of the grade by being empathetic, emotionally heartfelt, and sexual, but it’s well-worn territory they’re treading on. It doesn’t turn any heads. The Prince in the new Prince of Persia, is, as I have argued, cut from a slightly (importantly) different cloth than North's Drake. Likewise, the way he and Elika interact with each other is slightly different from those interactions seen in the Drake’s Fortune games.
 The Best of the Best
While Among Thieves creates interesting, fun characters, it still pigeon holes them into stock character story arcs: the good girl, the guy who will become good, and the bad girl, who is allowed to be sexually suggestive because the plot will ultimately remove her as a viable partner for the ultimately good guy. Among Thieves is an example of careful writing, world-building, and characterization, something we rarely see in games.
Among Thieves paradoxically picks one of the older, more clichéd and tired adventure stories (and settings), and turns it into an exciting, cleverly written adventure featuring characters who obviously have heartfelt connections with each other. The story and its characters don’t revolve around meaninglessly repetitive moralistic haranguing (yes, MGS, we understand that war is bad, we just wonder why it takes you a quartet of games to actually “say” something about the subject) and teenage angst surrounding aging and sex (we have the un-self-consciously teenage Braid and the endlessly weighty Final Fantasy series to serve all of our young men their fantasies and failures).
Among Thieves introduces us to characters familiar to anyone who has read a few books or watched a few movies (of the right sort, of course). Even as these characters fit into old molds, they also introduce quirks and wrinkles to the story and the tone of the game, in ways I have yet to see replicated in any other narrative-centric video game. Nathan Drake may have his flaws, as a character and as a narrative creation. This cannot be denied. The game may present us with interesting, fun, wholly realized and independently motivated characters (two are women, in an unprecedented occurrence) but for every step these characters take in the direction of originality, they carefully prop up certain expectations and tired tropes.
 What Does it Take to Get Nate to Grow Up?
Chloe and Elena may be strong women who have their own agendas, their own opinions on the game’s many characters and situations, but they, like the rest of the cast, serve to help Nathan come to understand his own situation and responsibilities. Elena may be a kickass reporter hell-bent on revealing the wrongs committed by horrible people to the rest of the world, but she also can’t help but fall for the lovable, flawed Drake.
Of course, part of the orbital nature of the main cast (inextricably attached to or attracted toward the wise-cracking Mr. Drake) is thanks to the fact that this is a game, and a heavily, carefully scripted and structured one. This doesn’t stop the game from using this seemingly inescapable gameplay trope (that all characters revolve around the player) to reinforce long-standing societal notions of race, class, and gender.
Chloe Frazer is (sadly) a first for video games: she is a smart, competent, sexually aware pointedly heterosexual female character who constantly disagrees with and harries the main male character, sometimes out of self-interest and sometimes out of deeply felt connection and respect. While it’s amazing that I can describe a character in a video game as possessing those qualities, it is depressingly astounding that I have just described a woman in a video game.
 So Bad She's Good?
Chloe Frazer stands head and shoulders above all video game characters, but compared to most women in games, she is truly unique. Forget, or the moment, the way in which her sexy bad girl status is both facilitated by and neutralized by the game’s traditionally romantic story arc.
Chloe, unlike Elena, starts and finishes the game doing what she wants, when she wants, however she wants. The initial heist, her subsequent allegiance hopping, and her final moments onscreen are all informed by whatever machinations are going on inside her head.
Elean, for all that I love her character, enters the narrative by chance, but she enters it with the express purpose of merging her path with Drake’s. She and her cameraman buddy (Jeff) run into Drake in the middle of a burning city. Drake is on the trail of the Cintamani Stone (and thus Lazarovich), while Elena is pursuing Lazarovich to expose him for the war criminal that he is. They may constantly bicker, but we (and more importantly, Chloe) know that they care about each other too much to let anything happen to each other, even if Drake pisses off Elena.
Chloe, even when she “finally” comes down on Drake’s side, does so not for Drake, but for her own sense of honor and morality (admittedly, Elena does the same). Chloe cares for Drake, but she sees that he cares more for Elena. Chloe understands the situation that her characterization has put her in.
 The Good, The Bad, and The Overtly Sexual
Early in the game, Chloe and Drake have what is, for a game, a love scene. Chloe is the aggressor, while Drake the wisecracking, diffident (yet quite willing) collaborator. There is no way that Elena and Drake could ever play out a similar scene. Their romantic scenes have to be light, sexually unthreatening, and focused around a more Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant school of romantic entanglement (not that there’s anything wrong with clever verbal sparing).
Chloe and Drake’s scene sets up several precedents and creates a track for the two characters: they have a romantic past (Drake broke it off), they are still attracted to each other, and both would like to get back together (although Chloe is slightly more verbally effusive on this topic). This dynamic in turn allows Chloe to play the part of the duplicitous (possibly?) moral (and adventuring) free agent.
This allows Chloe to play a dramatically interesting part, to be sure, but it is worth noting that she is enabled in her temporary duplicity by her already established “adventurous” or “promiscuous” sexual behavior. By establishing Chloe as a sexually “forward” character (and despite the fact that she is never judged negatively for this activity, except by Drake, who is in turn mocked for his own sexual profligacy) the story can quickly convince us of her morally worrisome, “gray” tendencies.
Likewise, Elena’s “goodness” and morally right-minded nature mark her as the only possible (final) subject of Drake’s affections, and the story’s attention and allegiance. True, Chloe exits the story gracefully, wittily, and self-assuredly, but she does so with the understanding (on the characters’ part and on the audience’s part) that the sexual, social threat she poses has been diffused.
 What it Takes to Get and Be The Girl
It is an old and sorry trope, that sexual “freeness” or what is deemed as promiscuous behavior are coupled with moral weakness or fluctuation. Chloe herself is shown to be an interesting, fun character who makes some dangerous “bad” choices (less than Drake does, the story thankfully is keen to point out) in search of personal gain and fulfillment. Drake himself makes many decisions based on selfish, unthinking urges. He is chastised by many (including himself) for these decisions and mistakes.
The difference between Drake and Chloe (the one among many that matters, in this case) is that Drake can makes these mistakes and think in this “problematic” way without the need for complimentary characterization. It is assumed, on a subliminal level, that players can accept and ruminate upon the nature of a flawed, selfish man who changes his ways. For a woman to make the same (or similar) mistakes, she must already be established as a problematic female presence, sexually, in this case (sexually promiscuous women are, after all, an almost universally worrisome topic to heterosexual men).
This is one of the many curses video game women suffer under. They are not considered to be strong enough as characters to survive without heavy handed, stereotyped characterization (of course, the dark, troubles male hero is his own, grand stereotype…).
Yet I would be a fool to fail to mention the incredible quality of Among Thieves’ script, story, and acting. The characters and actors sell their work excellently, and the characters of Elena, Chloe, and Drake are some of the most fun, interesting, inoffensive characters in video games. Naughty Dog deserves every single accolade possible in this area: I haven’t enjoyed the company of most video game characters and protagonists. I mostly tolerate them.
The three principal actors of Among Thieves may fall into the odd narrative or stylistic trap, but they’re a joy to play with and listen to. They act like mature, sexual beings, and I wish every game would stop and take note of their charm and wit. I can’t think of another game about which I could say the same things, as emphatically or as honestly.
Tom Cross writes for Gamers' Temple and Popmatters, is the Associate Editor at Sleeper Hit, and blogs about games at Delayed Responsibility. You can contact him at romain47 at gmail dot com.] 
By Simon Carless
 ['Diamond In The Rough' is a regularly scheduled GameSetWatch-exclusive opinion column by Tom Cross focusing game narratives and the ways that play, gaming, and narrative mix. This week, Tom continues last column's examination of the sexual politics behind games by examining game designers' (and gamers') reactions to certain games.]
Video game designers, PR companies, and gamers are deeply worried about sex.
Now hear me out: the average “mainstream" game is both obsessed with a peculiarly fragmented (but extremely popular in mainstream culture) version of hypersexuality, and deathly afraid of more realistic, meaningful sexual connection. There's a reason our games are filled with snarling, emotionless (aside from their totally straight love for their buddies) bros and women being crushed under the weight of their hypersexualized characterization.
People are very worried about sex. The worry may vary in its shape, orientation, and direction, but it is still something that makes a lot of people very nervous. They're very worried about thinking about sex. They're worried that thinking about sex, or consuming certain representations of sex will show them to be any of a number of deviant, unpopular, stigmatized representations of sexuality (or worse, to be party to those sexualities themselves). Video games culture (at its most “hardcore”) is, after all, already a shunned, de-masculinized (in the public eye) subset of white guy culture. White men who are dorks or gamers have struggled to build up some new brand of masculinity (which will never be as good, white, and manly as proper mainstream masculinity, and white guy geeks know this) around their deplored hobby, and, as always, once they solidified that identity, they needed a new Other, a new group to define as being less than and harmful to the grand, old tradition of white male gaming. In the kingdom of the white gamer, anyone obviously not white and/or male, or anyone professing to enjoy sexuality not strictly in line with white heterosexuality is both a worry and a threat.
 Confusion, Desperation, Dehumanization
There’s a reason why the gaming press’ (and gamers’) reactions to NieR’s possibly intersex character are so shrilly uncertain and alarmed.* They are worried that something that they think brings their own sexuality into question will be part of a game they play, and that they will subsequently have to accept that sexuality as something that exists and can be commonplace (the Other becoming in any small way the Normal is definitely high on any list of peoples’ fears).
At the same time, many heterosexual gamers are desperately trying, every day, to prove that they are really interested in sex, because they are totally not like those gay/bi/cis/not traditionally straight/not-white/etc. people (play XBL or Call of Duty to find out how worried they are). There are so many different kinds of sex and sexuality to avoid, it's a wonder people even play games with "sexy" stuff in them in the first place. It’s also surprising that companies work so hard to inject this “sexiness” into their games: they are dealing with a volatile, reactionary mainstream audience. Of course, “sex sells,” as long as it is designed for the straight white viewer, and when calibrated properly, can appeal to worried, pointedly, carefully heterosexual people.
Which is why designers normally don't do anything more than throw a few “sultry” big-breasted women into a game to appeal (so they hope) to the easiest to please of gamers. It's why they make sure their games are peculiarly non-sexual, despite all their to-ing and fro-ing about sexy women. Your average game (if it features any romantic or sexual tones or scenes, which are quite different from the vapid display of female flesh so common in games) will play out like this: a hero or heroes will do their thing. They'll do it (and mostly, they'll all be men), and be very good friends with each other. Maybe they're comrades, soldiers, best, old friends, or family.
But suddenly, a problem arises. What problem? They might be gay (after all, they are very good friends). Or maybe they might be too open about themselves with each other, making them unfit for proper masculinity. So a new element is needed. One that makes them both straight and the Right Kind of Man. We could call it a Beard, but in this article, we'll call this new element "Women."
 Women, Beards, and Keeping Things "Sexy"
Women are tricky. You need them to prove your hero’s straightness, but you can't have them be too powerful, smart, or likeable, because then your audience might A) like the female character over the male characters, B) feel threatened by the smart/strong/interesting female character.
So you turn her into a cutout, a representation of a representation of a woman, so far removed from what actual, interesting living women are like, she might as well be a robot. Then you make sure that she is “very sexy.” You do this by hypersexualizing her, emphasizing various physical attributes and character tics, so that she is denigrated, turned into a walking, talking re-affirmation of the player's (and just as importantly, the male hero’s) masculinity and heterosexuality.
You make sure that she has no character, that she is weak and annoying, or pitiable, or constantly in need of help, and you make it clear that she is sexually available to the player (implied) and to one of the male characters (implied, but also shown, sometimes).
Video games are, of course, just aping their older relative, film. Take a look at films both old and new: from Transformers to Casablanca, movies have carefully built up a bank of screen women who exist to titillate and tempt the audience, even as they reinforce their own uselessness and expendability.
This is all very well for our hypothetical designer. Following this set of tactics, we get the Russian Sexy Lady (who is, in the end, proved to be pathetically chasing after a Man’s Love) from inFamous, all of the female characters in Alpha Protocol (as seen in previews, at least), all of the female NPCs in Risen (depressingly), and many other games. Of course, it isn't always this blunt. Sometimes it's subtle.
 "Strong" Women and Disidentification
Sometimes we are given "strong women" (although that too is now a meaningless term, used by producers and PR types to say "oh yeah, we have a female hero"), who are quickly made available/inferior to the audience on a physical and visual level (think Lara Croft's various idling animations and advertising campaigns, especially the box art for the recent Underworld, which depicts her as a headless body). Other times, women are the subject of systematic, vicious in-game violence at every turn, so there can be no doubt about their place (GTA IV springs to mind).
We don’t need studies to tell us the obvious: overwhelmingly, the characters available for player-identification in video games are men. If video games are more successful when they create characters that players can identify with and transpose their experiences to and from, then it is obvious that it’s safer to make male characters (and characters that facilitate male gaze and male identification) that represent what the hardcore, heterosexual mainstream wants (this is, of course, ignoring the fact that in actuality women and people of color buy many more games than PR people and video game companies want to believe).
Tomb Raider and the like (from Drakan to Perfect Dark Zero to Heavenly Sword) are subversively designed to help male gamers to disidentify with the female heroine. Those of us who want to empathize with and identify with these women can, but that’s not what they’re designed to aid the player in doing (unless a smart, sure hand like Valve’s or Naughty Dog’s is at the wheel). Everything about the average, exploitatively designed video game heroine is angled towards her delegitimization and subjugation.
Of course, these tactics aren't just used on heterosexual women. Off the top of my head, I can think of the same kinds of denigrating, stereotyping tactics being used upon black people (any game with black people), gay people (to a lesser extent, because they're almost too scary to straight gamers to put in games), and various other marginalized groups.
 Gay Tony, Acceptance, and The Price of "Inclusion"
When such groups are included in games, they have to be both lionized and defanged. After all, it’s all well and good to say that your game revolves around a gay character (and it sure looks good when you put it in your title, a la Ballad of Gay Tony, even if that game focuses on Tony’s best friend and partner), but you, as a designer, can’t leave it at that. The game has to constantly deflect and delegitimize (in certain dramatic, narrative ways) that portion of the story.
Even an article like Gus Mastrapa’s “The Ballad of Gay Tony: Who is the Man,”** which argues for the game (and Rockstar’s) maturity and admirable stance on the portrayal of gays and minorities in games, must admit that Rockstar has created all of these characters with extreme reservations.
He lauds the game for its better-than-most, when compared to video games, including Rockstar’s stupid, offensive earlier games, one of which (GTA IV) only included one gay character, who existed only to be killed, and whose characterization in the game revolved solely around his homosexuality and the ways that his orientation allowed hero Nico Bellic to kill him.
He argues that Rockstar is trying to create less offensive, alarming minority caricatures, but he also cannot deny that they still work to keep such undesirables at arms length: "There's no hanky-panky happening, even though every jerk in Liberty City likes to infer as much. Luis is profoundly heterosexual. At first, tales of his prowess come secondhand. Dude has a reputation. But just in case the player (or anybody else in Liberty City) doubts Luis' manhood, we see the man pick up and hook up with a club-goer in Maisonette. Luis makes some Hot Coffee right there in the club; then, fairly suavely, gets back down to the business of security. But you gotta wonder: Is Luis (and, behind the scenes, Rockstar) putting on a show -- maybe overcompensating a little?”
It’s telling that Mastrapa uses the main character’s rejection of the word “nigger” as a derogatory slur as an argument for the game’s good intentions. It might be a sentiment that most people would not disagree with, but that’s why Rockstar can make it: it’s a safe “liberal” and “progressive” thing to say. Even the worst denizens of XBL might (but many don’t) hesitate to use such words in the presence of people who have experienced such racism first-hand.
To say this, is, of course, to ignore Rockstar’s continued, gleefully expressed misogyny and anti-Semitism, to pick the most obvious targets. If Rockstar is to be commended for this game (and forgiven for their previous sins), then the industry as a whole is in terrible shape. How many decades behind the rest of America are video games right now?
 Sexulaity, "Mature" Content, and Actual Maturity
Whenever a game goes against the grain and tries to create characters and situations that aren't horrible and offensive, it's amazing, if it’s done well. It's incredibly unexpected and welcome, even if, when compared to most games, it’s a cold comfort. What happens more often is that marginalized groups are presented at their most clichéd and stereotyped; they are offered up as people the player can laugh at and ridicule freely, knowing that the designers, and the society that the designers and players live in, has their backs.
It's also why it isn't surprising that the Prince and Elika (I'm going to assume that disapproval on her front was a little quieter) are so alarming to people. They represent a kind of sexuality seldom seen in games. That this kind of portrayal is positively quaint when compared to those seen in other medias is telling of video games’ (and video gamers’ and designers’) inability to accept even the tamest of interesting, mature sexual situations. Again, let us not forget that this inability does not extend to "sexy" and "mature" content as can be found in such laudable titles as Warrior Within and The Witcher, games whose "mature" sexual explorations often fell flat on their faces.
There are mistakes in the story and writing that surround the Prince and Elika. There are bits that people miss, and conversations that get played at the wrong time. Yes, their relationship is not as smoothly, palatably designed as some. In fact, when you look at Among Thieves, Nolan North’s other recent voice-acting effort, you see a game that gets away with high levels of sexual innuendo (and worse, genuine emotional connections between less-than-stereotypical adults!). How do they do it?
(This article is a companion to those articles that precede and follow it, but it is also in many ways a primer and an initial discussion of sex and sexualization in games. I would be remiss if I didn't link to every single blog and site that focuses on these issues (in much greater detail). Forgive me, then, as for now I will just link to The Border House, an excellent collective blog and resource for those interested in having more such discussions. If you follow that link, please be polite and courteous.)
* Nier Kotaku article: http://kotaku.com/5360369/niers-hermaphrodite-character
** “The Ballad of Gay Tony: Who is the Man?”: http://www.crispygamer.com/features/2009-11-05/the-ballad-of-gay-tony-who-is-the-man.aspx
[Next week, Tom will turn the same lens on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and examine that game's successes and failures. Tom Cross writes for Gamers' Temple and Popmatters, is the Associate Editor at Sleeper Hit, and blogs about games at Delayed Responsibility. You can contact him at romain47 at gmail dot com.]  
By Simon Carless
 [‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Andrew Vanden Bossche. It looks at the unexpected moments when games take us behind the scenes, and the details of how game design engages us. This time -- a look at Mirror's Edge and what makes a memorable game character.]
Mirror’s Edge should have been a picture book. It was the game that should have been seen, not heard, the game that could have been art if it didn’t have a plot. Mirror’s Edge shows what happens with games tell a story like a movie instead of a game
There is more emotion in a half second of Mirror’s Edge gameplay than in its entire script. While it's disappointing that the dialogue couldn’t live up to the standards of the art direction and gameplay, this is DICE’s success, not their failure. Faith’s movements are highly detailed, from the impact of landing to blur of acceleration, and it is these little details that bring the exhilaration, panic, tension, and joy of flying from rooftop to rooftop to life. This wordless story was the real Mirror’s Edge.
Unfortunately, this story was buried underneath an assumption that stories need words, and a lack of commitment to the same level of quality in the game’s art direction as its writing. While it is tempting to say that biggest problem with the videogame narratives is the writing (and it is a big one), in the case of Mirror’s Edge the words aren’t just poorly chosen, but unnecessary.
Video games are mixed media. Taking advantage of all the different options is one thing, but there are no bonus points awarded for using all of them. Passage, for example, made players contemplate death with pixels alone, and the experience would not have been greatly enhanced with words (HOW ABOUT THINKING ABOUT SOME DEATH). Thankfully, Passage is more subtle than that. Mirror’s Edge achieved something very close to that level of depth with its gameplay until it was promptly smothered with a cliched plot and undeveloped characters. Games With Character
Games don’t always need stories, but that fact seems forgotten most of the time, especially in AAA titles. It's easy to see where the temptation to fall back on it comes from. Narrative does more than just justify the game world and glue it together for the player. Good stories make the world come to life, and frankly, they're entertaining. So it has become standard to use the same techniques used in film to keep players interested in their games.
Iconic characters also play their part in selling games, although Mario and Sonic are both a testament to how you don’t need to have a story to have an iconic character. In fact, Mirror’s Edge has quite a bit in common with those games (at least in their early incarnations) with its emphasis on jumping and speed. It's a shame then that
Faith herself was supposed to be a bold step forward for heroines; tasteful, independent, and not overly sexualized. While she is these things, she is ultimately just built out of less offensive stereotypes rather than the depth of real person. Her somewhat irrationally violent personality is, disappointingly, all too common in videogame heroines. Again, Mirror’s Edge seems to step forward only with its visuals: Faith’s character design is far more revolutionary than her personality.
One Liners
So what makes people like Snake, Mario, or even Duke Nukem so much more iconic and memorable than Faith? Duke is actually the best example since he, unlike Faith, he has no contrived backstory, no past trauma, and only tenuous motivation. Yet Duke Nukem, of all people, has more depth of character than Faith and all he had to do to get it was wear sunglasses and say “It’s time to kick ass and chew gum, and I’m all out of gum.”
That line, in all of its glorious stupidity, is Duke in a nutshell. It’s hilarious, and Duke is one of the few protagonists to this day that gives a running commentary on the action. He is memorable because he has personality, and that shines though in what he does and how he talks. One of his early 2D games started with him going on Oprah promoting an autobiography titled "Why I’m So Great". That little scene tells you everything you need to know about Duke, and he doesn't need to talk about his past because he is so very present.
This is why Duke, conceived as a satire of action heroes, is still a more fully developed character than Faith. Protagonists do not become deeper the more of their family members are killed off, and relatives are certainly not a shortcut for actually developing bonds between characters. Faith’s relationship with her sister is supposed to be her motivation for the entire game, but they barely exchange more than a few sentences. “She’s my sister." Oh, that explains why Faith blew up buildings, ran from helicopters and killed dozens of police officers. No, there’s no need to articulate their relationship at all.
The Story With Words
The plot is supposed to build up some sort of shadowy final adversary (not helped by the fact Mirror's Edge was planned as a trilogy), while showing players that no one in this world can really be trusted. But both of the characters that do the betraying are so casual about their treachery, so unrepentant, that they come off as merely greedy. The twists are melodramatic, since they seem to have the luxury to betray Faith out of greed rather than survival. Rather than conveying the feeling of a society turned against itself out of fear, they reek of Saturday morning cartoon villainy.
It’s not just that the scenery and gameplay conveys the world with more depth and subtly than the narrative does. Sure, the plot could have been fixed with better writing, but it never needed any writing to get its point across in the first place. Ironically, Mirror’s Edge is a brilliant example of why games don’t need narratives, not only for gameplay, but for art as well. After all, music and the visual arts find the inclusion of a narrative to be quite optional, and both can tell a story without the use of words at all.
The Story Without Words
The real story of Mirror’s Edge is told through the constant presence of police and cameras, the propaganda in the elevators, and the sensation of running itself. Mirror’s Edge is wonder of visual design, and nothing else looks quite like it. The stark colors and blazing sunlight paint a picture of a city that is as beautiful as it is unnatural. All of these elements contribute to the game’s conflicting themes of repression and freedom. By running and weaving through the rooftops, it feels as if Faith could almost escape to the sky, if gravity didn’t always brings her back.
This sensation is entirely visual and gameplay driven, and best of all, occurs in real time as the player goes through the game. In contrast, Faith just sort of vaguely describes a history of protests and riots against a mayor that seems dedicated to taking away freedom without a clear reason. Since the mayor is never seen in the game, it’s hard to really understand why, although this narrative given by Faith provokes that very question. This empty premise stands out when the world itself so vividly conveys the feeling of oppression. The history lesson is really quite superfluous, and doesn’t really convey anything that we don’t already know other than the breaking apart of Faith’s family, which is dealt with so shallowly that it is hard to care about.
In fact, games may have greater potential as non-narrative art. The fact that there is more emotion in a gameplay than story is not a bad thing. It’s a testament to the inherent strength of video games. Mirror’s Edge could have articulated the struggle for freedom in a repressive society through the act of running alone, and that is art in the way only a video game can be. 
By Simon Carless
 [Currently writing the 'This Week In Video Game Criticism' series, Ben Abraham is also contributing exclusive GameSetWatch analysis from time to time - starting out with this commentary on unintentional themes in the latest Red Faction game.]
Video game blogger Nick Dinicola noted recently in an essay on 'The State of Social Commentary in Videogames’ that, “as more effort and thought is put into video game narratives, there’s also more effort put into avoiding any social commentary.” Volition and THQ's Red Faction: Guerrilla tries incredibly hard to avoid making unsavoury comparisons to things like the Iraq War, bloody revolutions and other less-than glamorous realities when it comes to struggles for dominance and freedom.
And yet it cannot escape the fact that it is itself a game about violent resistance against an oppressive military junta occupying Mars (the planet, not the confectionary maker). The EDF treat the peaceful inhabitants little better than slaves, are clearly in the pocket of Big Business and similarly appear to be controlling the government, having at the very least the government’s blessing for a pogrom of civilian annihilation.
So why does the game blanche at the thought of examining the serious side of its mindless fun? As we’ve seen more recently with Modern Warfare 2, there is undoubtedly a market for games that deal with serious issues like terrorism, murder and atrocities. Wherever the answer lies, it’s clear that a large number of people working on this game went out of their way to stamp out any kind of meaning or message that the game could be construed as conveying about thorny issues like terrorism and the questionable merits of violent resistance. In our post-modern society.
However, we know that meaning does not rest solely in the hands of the creators, so I’m going to point out some of the things that I noticed that either slipped through the net, or were simply happy accidents of the development process. Setting up a conflict as being between opposing forces of unambiguously good and evil is one of the easiest ways to pre-emptively put out the fires that could arise from saying something thoughtful about the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. It’s telegraphed from the outset that the Earth Defence Force is unmistakably the bad guys (they even go so far as to kill your brother for no reason in something like the second cut scene just so you’re sure).
There is no grey area, Red Faction good; EDF bad. And once you’re convinced that the enemy is the ultimate evil in the galaxy it becomes remarkably easy to justify doing horrible things to stop them. It’s ‘the ends justify the means’ argument and Red Faction Guerrilla employs it liberally, and only escapes an examination of the very real consequences of this ideology by virtue of its nature as a videogame.
More abstractly however, RFG has a particular quirk with regards to its treatment of the ‘morale’ of the zones of Mars. It tells you how well you’re doing in your efforts to evict the EDF this metric displays an odd inclination that I found rather fascinating. There are a number of ways to increase a zone’s morale; chiefly among them is scoring kill streaks of enemy soldiers, and optional ‘Guerrilla actions’ often also award some level of morale. Basically, killing lots of enemy soldiers is the quickest way to boost a zone’s morale.
This is all well and good when the EDF are still ‘oppressing’ a zone since there’s plenty of soldiers around to beat up on to raise the morale of your own troops. However once you’ve cleared a zone of EDF, their level of control having dropped to zero, they moves out and give over the areas to the Red Faction. When this occurs there’s little action to be had in a zone besides the odd unfinished Guerilla action like bravely destroying some abandoned EDF buildings.
A strange and counterintuitive thing then occurs in the newly liberated zone: morale begins to drop. Wait a minute there Volition – you mean to tell me that since having the people’s necks lifted out from under the oppressive boot of the EDF they are now less happy than before? Could it be?
Have we uncovered a secret statement that Volition are making about that most perverse of elements of the human condition, that is, the ability to find something to complain about in any situation? Have the civilians of Parker, Dust, and Oasis become so blasé and, dare I say, practically bourgeoisie in their newfound freedom that they are actually becoming unhappy? Well, no. But it is nice to pretend.
The real explanation is that, as in life, people occasionally die even when they aren’t being oppressed by a malevolent military organisation. And when they die in Red Faction Guerrilla, morale drops. If it were at all intentional it would be quite the profound statement to be making about human nature.
More insight into the human condition is also revealed, if once again accidentally, by a tactic the Red Faction employs when referring to EDF soldiers. For those who have played along at home, you will recall that most of the time the Faction refer to the EDF as “drones”, and you’d never know that you were actually fighting other human beings unless they occasionally appeared with their helmets off in the cut scenes. The Red Faction employs the commonly utilized tactic of ‘Othering’, often employed by cultures, social groups and other communities to de-humanize outsiders and non-members. By calling the EDF soldiers ‘Drones’ they avoid having to admit that they are fighting other humans – the Red Faction, in their minds at least, turns them into robots.
For the longest time I wasn’t actually sure that they weren’t just robots as you need to be looking rather closely to discern that you are killing hundreds and thousands of fellow human beings. The repetitive, faceless EDF armour-slash-uniform certainly doesn’t help with that impression, nor does their mechanical shouts and death cries. Certainly Volition has gone to a lot of effort to hide the humanity of the EDF from players. After all we wouldn’t want them troubled by petty notions such as empathy or understanding.
At the conclusion of the game, the Red Faction predictably wrests control of Mars from the armoured fist of the EDF, and another strange and contrary happening occurs - The Red Faction becomes the new Establishment and it’s really quite boring. When there’s no one left to fight the game gets tedious incredibly fast. No wonder the EDF wanted to crack heads since it is so dull being in charge of a Mars at peace. Most governments are not oblivious of this fact, as they know how easy it is to use a common enemy to stir up support for a cause that threatens a nation – it’s called the rally effect (or Rally Round the Flag Syndrome).
Before then, however, while the fight is still in progress Alex Mason, the player’s character, becomes the symbol for the resistance by virtue of his near invincibility. You could say that Alex Mason is the flag the Red Faction would have people rally around; his/your death only results in a dip in morale, a mere blip, and while this is almost certainly a product of contemporary game design and accessibility, it’s quite possible to read Mason as a ludic metaphor for the immortal nature of revolutionary ideals. That Volition may not have intended this to be so is largely irrelevant – as I said; the work is out of its creators hands now.
Lastly, and in one of my favourite aspects of RFG (aside from the procedural destruction naturally), the final boss whose name is entirely forgettable and unimportant is no harder to kill than any other elite solder of the EDF. To me, this was such a refreshing change, and it also just happens to be a convenient metaphor for the frailty of man. If Alex Mason is the undying ideals of the revolution then the big bad boss at the end is the face of real humanity. If I wanted to stretch this metaphor to its very limits – and I do – I’d say that in your quest to free humanity, you pretty much end the game by killing humanity itself it.
And that’s one of the most complex pieces of socio-political, even philosophical, commentary in a game ever. What a pity that it was all unintentional. 
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